Interesting post! Personally, I would have liked more soft and hard data.
For the former, the lack of anecdota or specific examples of residents meant I didn’t feel the emotions I normally feel in a town without children. The book Children of Mendoes this quite well—capturing the spiritual sense of ‘what is this all for?’ There is something very sombre about 1-2 people left remaining in a town which previously held hundreds and sometimes even thousands. Before-after comparisons show this powerfully. Satellite image comparisons using birthrate proxies?
For the latter, I would have liked more forecasts. It seems low birthrates cascade slowly, with nurseries closing, then primary schools, and finally secondary schools. Each can have progressively large catchment areas so the cascade is not linear. As they go, swimming pools, play parks, sports fields, and community centres (in the UK at least) begin falling into disrepair. I suspect ‘children qua customers’ is actually more load-bearing in our society than we realise, and all manner of things not typically associated with children by non-parents will shrink or transform (exhibit 30). The distribution of young people in society also seems to be shifting, hiding to some extent the falling birthrate—e.g., university towns, particular areas of cities, suburbs with good schools. Concretising this with some stats would be fascinating.
Finally, the effects of low birthrates superficially look similar to rural depopulation. But they are clearly not: when do you think the first city in japan will be abandoned/cease running normally? That seems like an important threshold.
Interesting post! Personally, I would have liked more soft and hard data.
For the former, the lack of anecdota or specific examples of residents meant I didn’t feel the emotions I normally feel in a town without children. The book Children of Men does this quite well—capturing the spiritual sense of ‘what is this all for?’ There is something very sombre about 1-2 people left remaining in a town which previously held hundreds and sometimes even thousands. Before-after comparisons show this powerfully. Satellite image comparisons using birthrate proxies?
For the latter, I would have liked more forecasts. It seems low birthrates cascade slowly, with nurseries closing, then primary schools, and finally secondary schools. Each can have progressively large catchment areas so the cascade is not linear. As they go, swimming pools, play parks, sports fields, and community centres (in the UK at least) begin falling into disrepair. I suspect ‘children qua customers’ is actually more load-bearing in our society than we realise, and all manner of things not typically associated with children by non-parents will shrink or transform (exhibit 30). The distribution of young people in society also seems to be shifting, hiding to some extent the falling birthrate—e.g., university towns, particular areas of cities, suburbs with good schools. Concretising this with some stats would be fascinating.
Finally, the effects of low birthrates superficially look similar to rural depopulation. But they are clearly not: when do you think the first city in japan will be abandoned/cease running normally? That seems like an important threshold.