Japan's Population Decline

Japan has seen her population decline for the third  year in a row. Her population is aging, and though infant mortality rates are some of the lowest in the world, her birth rate has declined at such a rate that it has failed to replace deaths by natural causes. Most industrialized societies play host to such a decline. France has been stagnant for over a century, Italy is on the brink of following Japan and so it goes for most of the industrialized world. The United States is presently immune to this because we are one of the few countries with a very robust immigration. A country's wealth (wealth can be defined as the amount of time one spends not working, leisure time) often dictates its population. The more wealth the slower the birth rate . . . the need for children deceases and the desire to augment leisure time is increased.

You see this throughout  history. Country's grow in size and density and then slow, stop and revert. France in the 1800s is a perfect example. The most powerful nation under Napoleon, by the 1880s her population increase stopped and by the outbreak of World War I they had seen no significant population increase for 30 years.

The world's population trajectory is presently on the decline. It will rise for a spell, the next 30 years or so, crapping out at 9.5 billion or thereabouts, but as more countries shift from agricultural based societies to industrial the population will enjoy the same fruits that Japan is reaping . . . wealth in leisure.

Once the decline begins it will be rapid, within a century or so. Economies will collapse, especially those built on the model of the labor of the young to feed the needs of the elderly; with them societies. New structures will evolve and the face of the planet and the species will markedly change.

Technology, like discovering how to master fire, will not go away, and soon we'll be living in iron and steel conclaves in a vast sea of wilderness that is both unknown and terrifying to those who live in the cities.

A few, only a few, will venture into the wilds, exploring the wasted lot of the past that the earth in time consumes as it does all things.