Ask HN: Why didn't people 40 years ago worry about population collapse today?
8amichail247/24/2025, 10:43:25 PM
Did they not see the trend towards individualism in economically advanced countries?
Comments (24)
supportengineer · 21h ago
Back then we could not imagine a world so hostile to working families as we have today. Back then, even making minimum wage, I could have saved up to buy a small condo. The future was BRIGHT so of course the default assumption is people marrying, buying homes, and having babies.
al_borland · 22h ago
In college 25 years ago I was hearing about how over population was going to be the end of us and had professors tell us the worst thing we could do for the planet was have a kid.
giantg2 · 21h ago
They weren't wrong. One of the best things for the planet would be a population collapse. It just wouldn't be the best thing for many people.
moomoo11 · 21h ago
I’d also argue not everyone should have children.
There are so many broken families and it is horrible for the children. It leads to increase in crime and drug use. This is bad for everyone else who has to deal with it. It’s like that saying don’t get a dog if you can’t care for it. dog is way easier to care for than a human and people still fail at that (animal shelters full)
I think what’s happening right now is fine. Socioeconomic pressure, hopefully for better than worse, will make it so that those who are responsible and capable will have healthy and happy families, and I think it will be good that we are making progress in automation.
WHA8m · 15h ago
I just assume when you say "broken" you don't mean "poor".
PaulHoule · 8h ago
There was a very pretty girl who sat next to me in English class in high school, who I had a crush on, who grew up in an upper middle class family that was going through a terrible divorce.
Last I heard she's a professor of the Quechua language in Hawaii and lives alone with a large dog and has probably aged out of her fertile window. I can't prove that her family's divorce had anything to do with the trajectory of her life and her not reproducing, but on average there is a correlation.
giantg2 · 10h ago
Different person, but broken can happen across class and take different forms. However, lower income families tend to mean higher rates of child abuse and more single parent households. Single parent households have been linked to lower educational and economic attainment and higher incarceration rates. So while it can happen across the spectrum, it does seem to have some correlation.
muzani · 14h ago
In college, a socioeconomics book brought up that rich people were having less kids and poor people were having many many many kids (like 10), so this wouldn't have been healthy when the majority of the families came from those with less resources. I thought I'd get 5 kids or so back then to balance it out.
paulcole · 20h ago
Was this a case of computer science professors trying to help the sexless students feel better about their celibacy?
al_borland · 1h ago
No, it wasn’t a CS class. I don’t remember the name of the class or why I was even taking it, but the professor tried to turn everyone into vegans and organic farmers for most of the semester.
thomassmith65 · 8h ago
If I ever heard "population collapse" as a kid, it would have been in relation to endangered species of animals.
The phrase one did hear - and fairly often - was "population explosion".
In fact, "population collapse" is a less intuitive concept. Egg heads, 40 years ago, worried about the "population explosion"; people reproduce, and there is only so much space and so much food to go around.
Incidentally, the first I heard anyone attribute "population collapse" to a "trend towards individualism" was, I think, last year.
callamdelaney · 12h ago
I don't think it's individualism, perhaps that is the case for a small percentage of people.
I think it's the fact that 2 workers per household (or family unit) is now common.
More people working in general, generally, reduces the value of labour, people are now paid relatively less.
If people are working and have career goals, plus are struggling to pay their own way, having children is less of an attractive prospect.
The costs of childcare here in the UK are also very prohibitive. We also have some other significant factors I won't go into.
It looks like generally, the more two worker households in a society, the lower the birthrate.
There are multiple ways to address this but I believe these are the main reasons.
Some numbers (courtesy of claude 4 research):
Japan 1925 - 5.4 children per woman - ~20% women working
Japan 1950 - 3.6 children per woman - ~35% women working
Japan 1980 - 1.8 children per woman - ~47% women working
Japan 2000 - 1.4 children per woman - ~56% women working
Japan 2025 - 1.2 children per woman - ~74% women working
sloaken · 7h ago
Back then, the two (allegedly) extremest positions:
1) We are running out of room, need to target zero population
2) More people lead to more innovation. Grow grow grow.
I had some relatives that were convinced that population growth yielded pollution and thus damage to the environment. Therefore they had no kids. Of course, despite advocating for the environment they had a small private plane they enjoyed flying for fun.
PaulHoule · 23h ago
In the 1970s people were looking at a "hockey stick" graph of world population and thought we were cooked.
McLuhan said "We look at the present through a rear-view mirror" and there is no area like that more than gender and reproductive issues. For instance the idea that men have it better than woman still persists although it's definitely not true for those under 30. [2]
The diffusion of the idea is still suppressed because it is right wing coded, it's going to take another 20 years or so for it to be safe to talk about in mixed company. If you believe in sustainability, the reproductive rate has to be regulated to a tight band over the long term: someday "my child my choice" and "my carbon my choice" will be seen the same way.
[1] this aged better, it predicted that real trouble starts in the next few decades
[2] Girls have internalizing problems and we say they are sensitive, Boys have externalizing problems and we say they are brutes. Boys who have internalizing problems are invisible. Reviving Ophelia was actually a great book that brought Kohut's self-psychology into the mainstream but people came to the wrong conclusions from it: while teenage girls are anguished about their self-image, teenage boys are getting killed or winding up in jail.
selenedyxx · 12h ago
Actually, 40 years ago, people were mainly worried about more immediate and tangible issues like poverty and economic development. Population collapse simply wasn’t a major concern back then. It’s kind of like how nowadays hardly anyone seriously worries about the Earth exploding and everyone moving to Mars — people tend to focus on the problems that feel most urgent at the time. That’s why population collapse wasn’t really on the radar back then.
gishglish · 22h ago
The people it affects the most aren’t engaging those sort of thoughts day to day.
The architects of it don’t care, as they will have secured their own feudal power .by the point things get nasty
supportengineer · 21h ago
It's the "Got Mine!" attitude.
mathiaspoint · 20h ago
People were much more worried about teen pregnancy. I suppose they were successful in their campaign.
bhag2066 · 18h ago
I just read the last chapter of "The Psychology of Money" so with recency bias say that each generation has a different perception and perspective.
muzani · 14h ago
They're called boomers because there was a population boom. It was the era of contraceptives, where we thought we would run out of food.
Lagging indicators always seem to throw people off, especially one that takes a whole generation. China had an overpopulation problem and now they're facing a different kind of population problem as back then Chinese would opt for only one male child.
Longer lifespans and overpriced education led to other kinds of problems that took decades to kick in. It's really hard to model this in.
mikewarot · 17h ago
When I was a kid, overpopulation was going to lead to famines, right before the next ice age started.
(Or... the commies pushed the button, and we all lived out a Tom Lehrer song, together)
aristofun · 18h ago
What people? Be specific.
There are different countries with different interests. The dumbest ones has bought into scarcity, socialism , individualism, egoism and other self destructive narratives sold by their enemies (implicit or explicit, internal or external). Smarter ones are doing okay as far as population goes.
incomingpain · 10h ago
Nothing to do with individualism.
This has everything to do with government consequences.
When egalitarianism got women working; it meant they wouldnt be having kids.
When women have an income, they are able to 'escape' from relationships which reduces kids.
When you require kids to be in child seats; and your automotive regulations are shrinking cars for 'fuel efficiency' aka reducing the number of seats for kids to sit in.
All of these things then had state propaganda to push that these were good things for various reasons. It led to population collapse or worse, the pyramid schemes of retirement and socialized systems collapse.
Am4TIfIsER0ppos · 20h ago
They did and longer before 1985. They imported foreigners to prop up everything from health care to pensions. All for the sake of "line go up".
There are so many broken families and it is horrible for the children. It leads to increase in crime and drug use. This is bad for everyone else who has to deal with it. It’s like that saying don’t get a dog if you can’t care for it. dog is way easier to care for than a human and people still fail at that (animal shelters full)
I think what’s happening right now is fine. Socioeconomic pressure, hopefully for better than worse, will make it so that those who are responsible and capable will have healthy and happy families, and I think it will be good that we are making progress in automation.
Last I heard she's a professor of the Quechua language in Hawaii and lives alone with a large dog and has probably aged out of her fertile window. I can't prove that her family's divorce had anything to do with the trajectory of her life and her not reproducing, but on average there is a correlation.
The phrase one did hear - and fairly often - was "population explosion".
In fact, "population collapse" is a less intuitive concept. Egg heads, 40 years ago, worried about the "population explosion"; people reproduce, and there is only so much space and so much food to go around.
Incidentally, the first I heard anyone attribute "population collapse" to a "trend towards individualism" was, I think, last year.
I think it's the fact that 2 workers per household (or family unit) is now common.
More people working in general, generally, reduces the value of labour, people are now paid relatively less.
If people are working and have career goals, plus are struggling to pay their own way, having children is less of an attractive prospect.
The costs of childcare here in the UK are also very prohibitive. We also have some other significant factors I won't go into.
It looks like generally, the more two worker households in a society, the lower the birthrate.
There are multiple ways to address this but I believe these are the main reasons.
Some numbers (courtesy of claude 4 research):
Japan 1925 - 5.4 children per woman - ~20% women working
Japan 1950 - 3.6 children per woman - ~35% women working
Japan 1980 - 1.8 children per woman - ~47% women working
Japan 2000 - 1.4 children per woman - ~56% women working
Japan 2025 - 1.2 children per woman - ~74% women working
1) We are running out of room, need to target zero population
2) More people lead to more innovation. Grow grow grow.
I had some relatives that were convinced that population growth yielded pollution and thus damage to the environment. Therefore they had no kids. Of course, despite advocating for the environment they had a small private plane they enjoyed flying for fun.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Population_Bomb
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_to_Growth [1]
McLuhan said "We look at the present through a rear-view mirror" and there is no area like that more than gender and reproductive issues. For instance the idea that men have it better than woman still persists although it's definitely not true for those under 30. [2]
The diffusion of the idea is still suppressed because it is right wing coded, it's going to take another 20 years or so for it to be safe to talk about in mixed company. If you believe in sustainability, the reproductive rate has to be regulated to a tight band over the long term: someday "my child my choice" and "my carbon my choice" will be seen the same way.
[1] this aged better, it predicted that real trouble starts in the next few decades
[2] Girls have internalizing problems and we say they are sensitive, Boys have externalizing problems and we say they are brutes. Boys who have internalizing problems are invisible. Reviving Ophelia was actually a great book that brought Kohut's self-psychology into the mainstream but people came to the wrong conclusions from it: while teenage girls are anguished about their self-image, teenage boys are getting killed or winding up in jail.
The architects of it don’t care, as they will have secured their own feudal power .by the point things get nasty
Lagging indicators always seem to throw people off, especially one that takes a whole generation. China had an overpopulation problem and now they're facing a different kind of population problem as back then Chinese would opt for only one male child.
Longer lifespans and overpriced education led to other kinds of problems that took decades to kick in. It's really hard to model this in.
(Or... the commies pushed the button, and we all lived out a Tom Lehrer song, together)
This has everything to do with government consequences.
When egalitarianism got women working; it meant they wouldnt be having kids.
When women have an income, they are able to 'escape' from relationships which reduces kids.
When you require kids to be in child seats; and your automotive regulations are shrinking cars for 'fuel efficiency' aka reducing the number of seats for kids to sit in.
All of these things then had state propaganda to push that these were good things for various reasons. It led to population collapse or worse, the pyramid schemes of retirement and socialized systems collapse.