The real population timebomb - and why we need a more family-friendly society

Depopulating trends are global, across the developed world. After decades of worrying when Paul Ehrlich’s “population bomb” would go off, we are seeing a rapid decline in child-rearing, so much so that, for the first time, there are more grandparents than grandchildren on the planet. The lower birthrates are leading some demographers to suggest that global populations, instead of growing into the next century, will start to decline as early as 2070.

There is a profound and growing population crisis in the developed, urban world and it isn't what most of you think it is - we are no longer, indeed haven't been for a long while, replacing ourselves. It's not just headlines like the one about there being more grandparents than grandchildren but an accelerating decline in communities outside big cities and, without immigration, the growing inability to provide the care and support those grandparents will require.

Here's what it means:

According to a 2016 Italian environmental association report, there are nearly 2,500 rural Italian villages that are perilously depopulated, some semi-abandoned and others virtual ghost towns.

From the 1850s through to 2004 the population of the village always hovered around the 80 to 100 mark, but since 2004 the population has dropped to 50 and only 20 of those are under the age of 60.

Those living in the village are losing hope that the village – and indeed all of rural Ireland – can be saved.

In Hara-izumi, there's no worry about an influx of foreigners. There are no immigrants here, nor the prospect of any. A bigger issue now is wildlife: The village's population has become so sparse that wild bears, boars and deer are roaming the streets with increasing frequency.

The Alpine hamlet of Albinen is so desperate for new residents that it has voted to offer $70,000 for a family of four to settle in the southern Swiss community.

In the first referendum of its kind, 100 of Albinen's 248 residents showed up to vote Thursday, and 71 approved a proposal to pay $25,000 to each adult and $10,000 per child to live in their picturesque village.

"Only the elderly stayed behind, the parents of those who left, and over time they grew older and died," he said as he stumbled across rubble to reach his dilapidated former office. He said Kalna's population had shrunk from 4,000 to 1,000.

Just take the figures: 85 out of the town's 820 houses are empty. The town had 3,000 inhabitants not too long ago, but now there are only 1,900. When elderly citizens have passed away, there has been no one there to replace them.

"Nobody lives there anymore either," Daum says, pointing to a mint-green single-family house. The industrial bakery moved to the east, he explains, and the area in front of the former garden furniture factory is full of dandelions. The Edeka grocery store closed its doors for good last year, and no trains have passed through the town since 1994.

I could continue - these examples from Italy, Ireland, Japan, Switzerland, Serbia and Germany could be joined by others from Poland, from Canada and from the USA. Our cities are, where they've sustained their economies, thriving but the people making that thriving possible are the ones who've left these small towns and rural villages. All this sits against a background of concern about immigration and integration for the people who - because there's far fewer young people in these rich nations - are filling the gaps left by those empty villages.

Eighty percent of US counties, notes a study by Economic Innovation Group, with roughly 150 million people, have seen their labor force decline in the past decade. The demography of the United States will become more difficult in the next quarter century, with an increase in the working population (15-64) of 18 million projected to be swamped by 28 million new senior citizens, according to the United Nations.

For Joel Kotkin and Wendell Cox, whose article the quote above comes from, the problem isn't how you square the need for labour with local resentment of immigration but rather how we create a society and economy that allows population replacement. Not the explosive population growth of the past 200 years but a recognition that, if we're to continue the betterment of humanity, we need to achieve a steady state. Kotkin & Cox point to housing policies as a key component but we should also ask questions about policy and attitudes towards families, to childcare and to a more dynamic work environment allowing people to move in and out of paid employment. Above all we need to recognise the value of family and that it cannot really be measured in purely economic terms.

We need to place community and family policy right there alongside climate change, the impact of technology and long term healthcare as one of the 21st century's biggest challenges. If we don't we will see more and more of these shattered, even abandoned, communities, places filled with old people trying their best to look after very old people.

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