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Why The Global Economy Needs Children

Jonathan Stephen Harry Riley
5 min readNov 21, 2024

Societies and civilisations need children to replace previous generations, who are needed to fight wars, work in the workforce, and help run the world’s consumer-led economy; without these societies, the economy will collapse.

(Here is the link to read the article behind the paywall.)

The best way to understand this is to imagine a society like a pyramid with the elderly at the top and young people at the bottom.

If the top of the pyramid becomes too large, with older adults, society and the economy will collapse.

This does not mean older people are the problem or there is anything wrong with older people.

Still, with societies not having a replacement population, the cost of capital will rise, and there won’t be enough people paying into the tax system to help run systems like social care.

With the Europeans, apart from France’s population, which has an average birth rate of 1.2%, there isn’t a generation to replace the previous generation.

Old Chinese Person

What Happens with the Population, Not at Replacement Levels

After World War II, most nations experienced a baby boom, but places like Germany and Japan did not have this baby room for several reasons.

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Jonathan Stephen Harry Riley
Jonathan Stephen Harry Riley

Written by Jonathan Stephen Harry Riley

I have been writing from 2014 to the present day; my writing is focused on history, politics, culture, geopolitics and other related topics.

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