Fertility rates are declining around the world, and it's leading to dramatic generational and economic shifts.
Plus, from babies to boomers. As the number of babies being born continues to fall, boomers are aging more gracefully than ever.
This year, the post-World War II babies are turning 80 and they’re changing old age for themselves and future generations.
We're looking at why the U.S. has hit a record low fertility rate on this hour of All Sides.
Guests:
- Wendy Manning, co-director, Bowling Green State University's National Center for Family & Marriage Research
- Michael Kuhn, Vienna Institute of Demography at the Austrian Academy of Sciences
- Luke Yoquinto, science writer and research associate, MIT Age Lab
Transcript
This transcript is generated with AI. To ensure its accuracy, review the audio file.
Amy Juravich: Welcome to All Sides with Amy Juravich. From 1946 to 1964, the birth rate in the U.S. Exploded. The children born during this post-war period became known as boomers. However, those years of fertility, with 1957 seeing the most births, have given way to a sharp decline. Last year, the nation hit a record low fertility rate, making it the sixth straight year. The number of children born in the U.S. Has declined.
We're looking at what's driving this trend and what it means for the nation. Joining us now is Wendy Manning, co-director of Bowling Green State University's National Center for Family and Marriage Research. Welcome to All Sides, Wendy. Thanks for having me. I wanted to begin with the obvious question, why are birth rates declining? I know there's a lot of answers there, but if you could just like, you know. Pick one or two of the key points. Why are we seeing birth rates declining right now?
Wendy Manning: I think one of the key issues is the total fertility rate, which you mentioned, is declining, and that's a projection, it's an estimate of the number of children that we think people are going to have, but it's really based on our best guess, assuming that people on in the fertility in their next 10 to 15 years based on estimates of what they're going to be doing and not what's actually happening. And so there's sort of this confusion within interpreting these demographic numbers because a lot of people could still be postponing fertility. People could be waiting longer to have their children. And we know that the age at first birth is increasing in the United States. Currently 27 for women. And I think that's something we don't talk about enough is this delay.
And so people are waiting longer into their 30s maybe to have their first child and this could influence fertility rates and our understanding of fertility rates. So this total fertility rate isn't really the number of children that women have at the end of their reproductive careers. We can't tell you that because we'd have to wait until they reached age 40. We have to wake 20 years to answer that question. We come up with these estimates, but these estimates aren't really great when we have these dramatic changes in timing of births. One of the big things that I think is driving this is the delay in first births and delay in second births as well.
Juravich: Okay, yeah. So during the baby boom years, the average number of children per family was three. But would you say that most of those children were being born, you know, when the when the woman involved was more in her 20s and 30s. And now you're having to wait and look in the 30s and 40s? Is that what you mean? To see?
Manning: Yeah. Exactly. That's what I'm talking about. Yeah.
Juravich: Okay, so the birth rate is, but however, the birthrate is declining because that average number of children per family of three is certainly not what's happening now. So tell me more about that.
Manning: Yeah, so there's been a lot of changes. If we think about this, we're talking about the 1960s, and so right now it's so far forward. We've had so many changes in society. Women's education is increasing. We have had access to long-acting contraception. More women are in the labor force. There's a lot other big societal changes that have occurred.
And what most people are interested in, and I think what some of the alarm is about, is recent declines in fertility since the Great Recession. So we saw, since the great recession, we often see declines and fertility when there's some big economic shock like that. And what have I think people concerned is that it hasn't rebounded. So we've had improvement in the economy, and we didn't see a corresponding increase in fertility. And I think that's the big question that people are trying to get at is what's happened since 2008, and not these long societal changes that are going. But the baby boom is fascinating. It was unanticipated. Demographers didn't predict it.
Manning: And so that's also something that people talk about like who knows we could have another baby boom sometime in the future and so it's really harder than you might think to predict fertility.
Juravich: Yeah, I mean, I could see that, that we could have an unexpected baby boom in the future, but perhaps not with two parents working and with the cost of childcare and how much it costs now to raise a child versus in the 1960s. So is it, it is possible to have a baby boom, but probably not probable or practical? I'm not sure. What do you think?
Manning: Yeah, I mean, I think other things would have to change. We have to have a lot of other societal changes. And I think you're getting at some of the reasons that people are talking about, about wanting to delay and maybe forego childbearing. And I that's one of the issues is what we're seeing that people just waiting till they have bought a house, might have a more stable job, might have things in place. Are they waiting for that? Or are they going to keep waiting and then it'll be foregone eventually? And especially given that fertility of course has a, for women has a biological endpoint.
And so we are concerned about people waiting too long to have the children they wanna have. But we haven't seen a change really in people who desire wanting children or the number of children people still wanna have on average about two children. And so I think there's some optimism there in thinking about that we still as a nation want to have children. It's just a matter of trying to help people achieve their fertility goals.
Juravich: This is All Sides on 89.7 NPR News. We're talking about why the United States fertility rate has hit a record low. And we're talking with Wendy Manning, co-director of the Bowling Green State University's National Center for Family and Marriage Research. So it's not just the US where birth rates are declining. We're seeing it around the world, is that right?
Manning: Yes, in a lot of high-income industrialized societies, we're seeing this in Europe, a lot of countries in Asia, famously probably South Korea has one of the lowest fertility rates in the world, yes.
Juravich: And in a few minutes, we're gonna be talking about the global debate over falling fertility. And we have someone coming on who basically, that you wrote a paper and it's asking the question, is having fewer people in the world ultimately a good thing or a bad thing? So what are your thoughts on that?
Manning: I think globally it's such a big question and I don't know if, it depends on how those, the well-being of those children are. And so I think that's one of the issues when people talk about the United States at least. They're wanting to ensure that people have the children they want and they can invest the time and resources they want into those children. And maybe having... Fewer people might mean we could spend more resources on those who are here, but of course, there's other debates about future generations and what are we going to do to support. When you talked about the baby boomers, one of our great ways that we support people and old age in the United States is a lot of family support.
Manning: And so if you don't have very many children, you might not have very much support for yourself in old age. And so there's some concerns about how are we gonna be caring for our aging population.
Juravich: Yeah. And there's that whole idea of the replacement rate. Like, do you need one person for every one person? So as someone dies, you need someone younger? Or do you need two? You know, just solely based on the taking care of them and the tax base to support retirement programs. Do you get into that in your studies at all?
Manning: Um, we ask people about, um, about their not concerns. We don't ask, it'd be hard to ask a 20 year old. Are you going to, are you worried about caring for yourself in old age? Is that a reason for having children or not? I think that's not something that might be front and center, but we do ask about if they're concerned about, economic factors, that the future, um, is unpredictable, the uncertainty in the relationships. And we find that these. Subjective feelings of stress and uncertainty are related to lower fertility desires and also people wanting to wait longer to have to have children.
Juravich: Can the decline in fertility be seen as a good thing for the U.S. As far as taxing our resources? I mean, there is an argument there to be had that, you know.
Manning: Yeah, a lot of people talk about that. I mean, one of the issues is not just the number of people, but what are our levels of consumption. And so I think this comes up quite a bit when we have a population that's consuming a lot resources that could have a lot negative impacts. And so maybe we need to rethink how we are. Investing in our resources and natural resources. But another issue is really the intensive parenting that people have as a social, there's sort of the social norm of a very intensive parenting that needs to occur.
And so there's a lot of investments that need to occur by parents to be considered a good parent in our society. And so that also comes up too, I think, and we could invest more in every child and we might not. Some people might say, well, then you don't have to have as many children. And also when you're thinking about caring and old age, we all know of families where not everybody is equally qualified or willing caregiver. And so, uh, having, you know, having children just for that purpose might not be very effective use of your time or resources. And so as a, I think these are all big questions that I don't think there's a right or wrong answer to them.
Juravich: You also, in your research, talk about teen birth rates, and that is down. But that doesn't mean that we've, you know, we've been teaching kids for years. So basically, if the teen birth rate is down, we have been teaching for years, you know, don't have a kid too young, it will ruin your life. So did that work? Did we over-correct on that, because no one is having kids much younger?
Manning: I don't think a declining teen birth rate is a problem at all. I think it's a good outcome because we want people to have children when they want to have them. Most teen births are unwanted or unintended. They're occurring earlier than folks want to have them and we know that children are better off when parents can invest more time and resources into the children they have. And so I can't imagine a situation where the teen birth rate, that message, I don't think the message about waiting to have children is really causing people to not want children at all.
It might be they're reflecting on their own experiences as a child and saying, wow, it takes a lot to be a good parent, and that bar might be quite high and they might to wait till they're psychologically set or economically set. Have the right partner. That's something we don't talk about, that the relationship is really important. And so until you're set in your relationship, I don't think a lot of people are interested in thinking too heavily about having children.
Juravich: So last year, the U.S. Recorded just over a half a million more births than deaths. Do we need the birth rate to increase to ensure the nation's future? Just that whole one for one thing. Do we, is it, do we need more birth than deaths to sustain, you know?
Manning: Our population will sustain for quite a long time at this fertility level. It's not like we're going to die out. One thing that's happening that often I don't know why people don't think more about is people are living longer. And so when you're in a society where the average life expectancy might be 50, that might be a bigger issue. But the life expectancy in the United States is, it's sort of stagnant right now, but it's actually quite high. And we're, so that's, I don't think we have to worry about, we have more births than deaths and our population is going to die out like a science fiction movie, I think is what we, our imaginations go to right away.
Juravich: Yeah, well, and just to end on, so, you know, the head it's headline making every time that, you know, that there's a declining fertility rate every to every year, whenever they say, we're having fewer babies than the year before, and that's the sixth year in a row that this has happened. But you're saying that overall, we need to we need to wait longer, look at longer term trends, we can't just worry about one, one to two or five years.
Manning: I think, yeah, I think we want to think of the big picture and that this might be indicating a delay of births and so we want pay attention to what young people say in terms of their fertility goals and are they, and I think as a good objective would be how can we help people achieve and have the number of children they want to have. So if someone, how can make that possible as a society by providing support for parents. And making child care more affordable, providing that for them.
And we have a bunch of policies that I think people are interested in, but we haven't seen that they've had this major effect. It's not gonna suddenly, people are gonna want a whole nother child. We can see small upticks in these policies. And we know this from looking at countries like in Europe where they have very generous parental leave programs. Example, or they have a lot of social safety nets to help support families and children. And so this could increase fertility slightly, but some of these plans where we're talking about cash benefits are relatively small amounts of money when it comes to the cost of raising a child.
Juravich: We've been speaking with Wendy Manning, co-director of Bowling Green State University's National Center for Family and Marriage Research. Thank you so much for your time today, Wendy.
Manning: Thank you, it was great to be here.
Juravich: And coming up, we're gonna talk about the global impact of declining fertility rates and take a look at some other countries. That's when All Sides continues on 89.7 NPR News.
You're listening to All Sides, I'm your host Amy Juravich.
The global fertility rate in 1950 was five. This meant the average number of children a woman would give birth to was five children. However, times have changed. The world's fertility rate now stands at 2.24 and is projected to drop below 2.1 by the year 2050. We're talking about declining fertility rates, and now we're gonna look at the global and economic impact of falling fertility. We're joined now by Michael Kuhn, Director of the Economic Frontiers Program at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis. He's also working with the Vienna Institute of Demography. Welcome to All Sides, Michael.
Michael Kuhn: Hello, hello, thanks for having me.
Juravich: Well, you co-authored an article that's titled "The Debate Over Falling Fertility." So I assume this debate, by using the word debate, it means there's pros and cons to falling fertility. So let's start with the benefits, the pros. What are the pros to a lower fertility rate?
Kuhn: Right. Yes, I mean, it's actually a surprising debate because for many years up to the year 2000, a little bit after, actually all of the debate was on the pros of lower fertility in the economic context or general development context, so the idea... By and large, that childbearing is terribly resource intensive, especially if it's a developing country. And it's resource incentive for the family, for the government, for the community. And a lower fertility simply means you're freeing resources, which otherwise you would need to spend on raising the kids, educating them.
And, well, if you have lower fertility, you have free time, free money. You can spend this on better quality education, as well as on other things. So the quality education thing has become famous by Nobel laureate Gary Becker, who has dedicatedly talked about a quality-quantity trade-off. But of course you can also then use that education to later on enhance your technological development and just in a sense drive economic development. It's been all pro and a bit later actually there's of course all the environmental concerns that ecosystems are under pressure if populations get too large, climate issues may arise and all the rest of it.
Juravich: Okay, so I mean, that's a lot of pros to having fewer babies. But there are also some cons. Can you talk about the hindrance toward economic progress? Maybe talk about the idea that there'll be fewer humans there to become future scientists, future innovators. What are some of the cons to having less humans?
Kuhn: Yeah, so I think there's two things to be distinguished, actually. So one is to have a lower level of the population at one point, which may or may not be good. I mean, there is the argument that indeed, if you have too few people that may actually stifle economic growth. I am personally a bit skeptical about this because on the other hand, you have. That quality of education. By now you even have technologies such as as AI digitalization which actually help you on this.
So the level may not even be so much the issue, but if you have a decline or a negative population growth, because you have too low a level of fertility, which is below the replacement level of around two kids, actually you have an imbalance and that imbalance is now tipping towards having an overly elderly population. So a shrinking workforce has to support an ever larger number of elderly people who at some point sooner or later become dependent and that is creating problems. It's creating problems for the labor market and output just not being enough to support all of these people. It creates strain on social security, on health care, etc. And that is indeed difficult to resolve. And the point is that if you just stay a little bit below replacement level, in fact you're fairly close to balance, so it's sustainable. But now in many countries we have dropped probably too far below it.
Juravich: Yeah, let's use China as an example. So from 1979 to 2015, China implemented a one child policy. And now has that provided a preview of what lower fertility rates can mean for the greater population?
Kuhn: Yes, it's actually a great, what economists call, almost natural experiment. Of course, that experiment having very real implications for the economy and for people at the end of the day. So up to now, actually, China has been on the benefiting side from this in the sense that. Kind of the decline and the fertility rate from relatively high levels has freed the resources and China could realize what a colleague of mine, David Bloom, and others call the demographic dividend.
So it has worked out well and you can actually see that in the Chinese economic miracle. So they've been super productive, the single children getting educated, very skilled, a lot of saving going on. But now it's tipping and it's dipping very rapidly. And that is interesting because the one child policy has set in so abruptly that it's actually now a big dive. And now that these sort of larger generations are actually entering their retirement, China will be facing a lot of problem. And I guess you can see some of them even to date. So lack in domestic demand, all the rest of it.
Juravich: Yeah, this is All Sides on 89.7 NPR News. We're talking about the global and economic impact of falling fertility with Michael Kuhn, director of the Economic Frontiers program at the International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis. So let's talk more about that aging population. So that's what we're seeing in China. So now, if a couple, they're both getting older and they only have one child, you're running out of to help take care of the older people, right? Are other countries going to get to that that way too, or is this a China only problem?
Kuhn: In the extent, it's probably a China-only problem, but in fact, you can just look into the data, wherever the fertility has gone significantly below the replacement level, you're going to have similar problems. So it's most of Europe, of course. It's also India is actually starting to near that threshold. And the US are... Still doing okay I guess and in some countries you actually don't see it because you have a lot of immigration so that is of course offsetting this tendency so interestingly enough Austria is a country where fertility has been quite way below replacement since even the 1950s but the aging problem so to speak is kicking in only now so what has happened in over these past Well, 50 plus years is actually that immigration was taking some of the pressure off the system. But yes, I mean, it's going to be a global problem at the end of the day, I mean with the exception perhaps of Africa.
Juravich: You also, you write about an example where world events impact a country and the fertility rate there. And an example you gave is both Russia and Ukraine are seeing population declines, but this is related to the ongoing war there. So this also can fluctuate and change, right? So we're seeing that in the past couple of years because of Russia and the Ukraine's war. Is that happening around the globe?
Kuhn: The fluctuation due to global crisis, yes, definitely. So you had not as drastic as a war, but for instance, in my native country, Germany, after the reunification, actually, there was a marked drop in fertility in the eastern part of the country, which largely is due to people actually struggling, trying to understand what is going on, trying to cope with the new economic system with some transitory high unemployment levels and all of that. So yes, this can kick in. It can come back to kind of normal levels, say. But there is indeed a tendency that some of the kind of low fertility gets stuck. So almost like a... It's again, it's quite ironic because development economists in the 1970s and later have been speaking of the high fertility trap.
Juravich: Oh, yeah, tell me more about that. So we used to have a higher fertility trap and now we.
Kuhn: Yeah, so high fertility trap is you have a kind of a poorly developed economy, no social security, you actually need to have many kids just to make sure, first of all, that they survive. Second, that if they survive, they can actually kind of provide for you when you're old. And then you couldn't educate these kids. So all of them were getting on the labor market earning just low incomes are working as farm workers. And there you are, you're in a way trapped in the system because you couldn't get the economy rolling for lack of skilled people and lack of resources.
Juravich: In the United States, there's a movement called pronatalism, and it's trying to encourage more people to have more babies, to get more babies to be born. How are other countries handling this? Are other countries telling people to have more babies? Is there a pronatalist movement elsewhere?
Kuhn: Yes, in Europe, it varies a lot. I mean, it's not always called that explicitly a pro-natalist movement. So, for instance, France has always, historically, had, to some extent, a pro natalist stance. In Germany and Austria and those countries which were involved in the Third Reich and the Nazi regime, actually there was a strong pro-Natalist argument and that of course got morally entirely discredited. So people in these countries are very careful not to refer to it.
That said, over the past... Past few years with the realization that fertility may just be too low, of course, there are discussions on what can be done. And it's indeed very interesting in Austria. It's just really cropping up even this year. So in a couple of days, I'm going to give another interview to the Austrian broadcaster, which is on a similar topic. So it is making inroads and of course kind of one can have very different takes on this. The question is... Yeah, it's very much how it's cast and what it implies or what is implied policy wise.
Juravich: Well, let's talk a little bit more about the policy thing. So under what circumstances should policy lawmakers address fertility issues? I mean, when does it become a problem that like governments need to step in and make sure there's enough humans?
Kuhn: Yeah, that's almost a million dollar question, I think, because it's proven so intractable to answer. Let me say, because you've asked me, when should governments move in? So yes, there's the need arises if social security systems start to fail, if there's a severe undersupply of the workforce. So just to make that argument, first of all, there's of course... Other policies which may help to mitigate and especially in Europe many countries are really dragging behind in social security reform. Austria again been one good example where there's simply a great reluctancy to raise the retirement age which would be entirely possible with a much higher life expectancy and it would not resolve the entire problem but of course would relieve it, then there's issues about the really widespread... Good education and education that is actually kind of helping on to bring on the workforce. Things like that.
But assuming that is not enough, then yes, you may need to talk about how one could raise fertility. Now, the thing is most schemes have failed. One thing is monetary incentives, actually. So these have been, you mentioned Russia. These have been used in Russia before the war, actually, and it turned out that actually what they were paying was more than what they would save in terms of having then to pay less on the on the, on the pensions record. So it's incredibly costly and the effects are vanishing in a sense as soon as you, and kind of take out the incentive. Then there's sort of structural things which have been propagated in Europe a lot, which is free childcare, good access, good childcare, even access to childcare at all, flexible employment kind of possibilities for women. All of them, yes, helping to some extent, but again, they have shown not to have a huge impact.
Finally, one could think about, but that's actually... Difficult for policymakers to get it, to some extent change or influence social norms. So Scandinavia has been praised a long time for their equitable kind of stance towards parenting and shared parenting and this has worked but notably since 10 or so years ago, well, essentially since the COVID pandemic, actually, fertility rates have slumped in Scandinavia as well. So people are really puzzled what it is. Now, one thing which is probably true is that... Outlook. If you think about young people considering to parent children, and many of them actually report that they would like to have children, two, three, and they never realize these intentions. So that's one thing to get at. Now, that's where many of the economists have argued, OK, it's access to childcare, it is access to these resources, but that doesn't quite seem to do the job. So. One suggestion I would offer is actually the outlook. So when you parent a child, we are looking at your own life course over the next 20 years, raising the child, but even more you're looking into the child kind of the prospects of the child itself. And at the moment, frankly speaking, the kind of society's economies are so disrupted and that's almost everywhere. Probably these outlooks are not so great and even if people are struggling to state it in this way I'm sure it's making an influence so
Juravich: So we need to make the world a better place for these.
Kuhn: It sounds a bit trite, but part of the story is actually to offer good policy-making. And it's maybe even just the effort to do this rather than doing it successfully, because many of these problems, actually including the low fertility problem, will take a few decades to resolve.
Juravich: Our guest has been Michael Kuhn, Director of the Economic Frontiers Program at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis. Thank you so much for your time today.
Kuhn: That's been a pleasure. Thank you for having me on the show. Thank you.
Juravich: Thank you. Yes, and coming up, we're gonna talk about going from low fertility to baby boomers. We're gonna to talk about how they're changing old age as they turn 80 this year. That's when All Sides continues on 89.7 NPR News.
You're listening to All Sides. I'm your host, Amy Juravich.
The post-World War II period from 1946 to 1964 became known as the baby boom. Birth rates exploded. This group has had a significant impact on our world, from pop culture to political activism. This year, boomers are turning 80, and now they're changing old age for themselves and for future generations. Joining us now to talk about boomers wanting to live better and longer is Luke Yoquinto. Science writer and researcher at the MIT Age Lab. Welcome to all sides, Luke.
Luke Yoquinto: Hi, Amy, thank you so much for having me. So boomers have been agents of change throughout their whole lives. How are they changing old age for themselves and predictably for future generations? Sure. The way I think about boomers, first of all, is that it's hard to say any one thing about them, because this is 76 million people. This is the population of the entire UK, right? And this is a country within our country. And so you don't want to be too essentialist about the boomers and say they are this or they are that. But one thing they definitely are is big. When they hit the scene... There was not enough for them.
When they started going to school, there were not enough desks in the classrooms. There are not enough classrooms in the schools. Then they started moving out further into the world. This is when like the Levittown started to be built in suburbs. They get a little older, we start to see the growth of malls and housing further out from the cities and so on and so their demand has been this driving force in the economy. For their entire lives and for good reason, because any business who didn't recognize the power of that demand was screwing up. They're missing a huge opportunity and potentially making a big mistake. So now the boomers are in this older age range. And so the oldest boomers returning this year, I would add that the youngest boomers are turning 62 this year. So the earliest you can get social security. By the end of this year we are fully into the older age for baby boomers and The problem is the options available for how to live in old age are still sort of stuck in the previous generation's inception.
Juravich: Yeah, that's what I was gonna ask you. How was old age viewed prior to right now? I'm thinking of, is it called the silent generation? The one, right?
Yoquinto: The silent generation precedes the baby boom, and they're still with us. Thank goodness.
Juravich: And then, but they're more silent about it, they're not demanding things.
Yoquinto: They do demand things, but what I would say is the history of stuff and services and housing for older people, it's as long an interesting history and it begins in the 19th century when you had this movement of people who are getting, who are dislocated from their families because they all moved to cities from the country and you have major industrial employers who started retiring people, which back then was not something you wanted. It was something your boss did to you and it meant you were not working anymore.
Yoquinto: But as a result, we had this wave of people move into what were then known as poor houses, which actually changed their name to old age homes. And that was sort of the background culturally for a lot of services for older adults. This is sort of a charity situation. And you should be, and even when it became not a charity, it became a business anymore, the vibe, if I may be so bold as to say the vibe was still, you should so lucky as to have three square meals a day in a roof over your head. And this is sort of beggars can't be choosers here, folks. You should be, you're lucky to have this kind of stuff.
And the problem is baby boomers have spent their whole life being choosiers because the whole economy has been built around their economic power. And now they're aging into this world and they're saying, no, no that's not right. You're not gonna just ask me to accept something that's, not up to my standards. I've spent my entire life. Being surrounded by shopping malls and Apple stores and all this kind of stuff that's built to meet my demand. And now you're expecting me just to accept good enough? Not likely.
Juravich: So those who are turning 80 right about now and in the next few years expect to live longer as well. There's a Pew Research Center study that said that people who are 80 or older now aspire to live to 93. Do they expect to continue to feel well at 93? Because I know if they feel well at 80 they wanna live to 90, is that right?
Yoquinto: I'm sure that's the hope. Everyone wants to square the health curve. So that means basically feel as healthy as you can for the majority of your life, as opposed to having this tapering off of your health leading up to your final years. That would be the goal. I will say, again, because the baby boomers are so large as a generation and so diverse, you have people... At all levels of health and wealth. And so you will have a lot of people living longer than their parents and they will be healthier than their the parents too.
We don't necessarily know who on an individual basis is going to be so lucky, but that's going to an important force in the country in the years ahead. And especially as you sort of cut the population by age and the higher you go, start saying the 75 plus is growing at a rate x, 85 plus is growing at faster rate, the older you go, the faster the faster the population is growing. And the higher you go. That becomes smaller numbers until eventually you're talking about super centenarians. And that's sort of a small, a small number of people. But that number of people is growing too. And it's going faster and faster.
Juravich: This is All Sides on 89.7 NPR News. We're talking about baby boomers turning 80 with Luke Yoquinto, science writer and researcher at the MIT Age Lab. We spent the previous part of the show talking about the declining birth rate and asking the question basically of whether or not having more people in the world is a good thing or a bad thing. You know, that was kind of like, and I was told that's the million dollar question, right? But as people live longer, okay, there's more people up at that age, but then if people are having fewer babies, you know, like, what's your view on this? Like, do we need more babies at the same time as people are living longer, or is it, you know? Balancing out.
Yoquinto: So I don't get too hung up on the absolute number of people in the world, but I do get a little more hung up on the change. So whether you're talking about a China where there are very few babies too, like even in India where they still have more than two babies per woman is the rate in India, but there's a big change because it used to be more than six.
Speaker 5: So
Yoquinto: So as a result, you have this population tilting towards an older structure where you sort of have four grandparents for every grandchild or thereabouts. And so that moment of change to me is where the challenges arise. And I personally place a huge premium on the act of muddling through that moment. So what is it gonna take? I'm sure there are people who are going to worry about the birth rate, I'm sure there people are going worry about extreme longevity. I'm worrying about just how, how is this going to work when we're in this moment of profound change. And so this, this is part of the story. When I, when we talk about, well, can business make life better for older people in a way that it hasn't been in the past? That to me is an important part of, um, of the story. Yeah. What's
Juravich: Yeah, what's the answer to that, can they?
Yoquinto: I think, not only do I think they can, I think they're better because if they don't, someone else will. There's going to, this is just an economic story. You're gonna have older, in some cases healthier people, a huge amount of wealth potentially being concentrated at these older age ranges. Because people talk about the great wealth transfer to the, you know, from the baby boomers to the millennials, and they talk about it as though it's 75 year olds handing. Down wealth to 40 year olds. But I really think that it's going to be a story of 90 pluses handing it down to 60 pluses.
And so when you think about sort of the wealth that is cycling between 90 year olds and 60 year olds for the indefinite future, if you're a business and you're targeting the general public and hopefully serving the general public and not just targeting, that should become more of your default consumer. You should be doing a better job. Meeting their needs. And even going so far as not just meet the basic needs, but really try to delight them. These are important people.
Juravich: One of the concerns we see with boomers is when they should step aside, you know, let the younger generation advance. This is evidenced in politics. You know, a lot of politicians in office are in their eighties and they stay in office beyond that, but people see it in their jobs. Is it that they don't want to leave their jobs or is it that some of them cannot afford to leave jobs? Maybe some cannot afford a retire. What are you seeing there?
Yoquinto: Um, the, the answer is yes, you're going to have people who derive an immense amount of meaning from their jobs. Um, and you're gonna have an even more immense amount of people who are frankly, not able to stop working. Um, again, the boomers contain multitudes. This is a huge number of people and they're going to be different motivations for different people. I will, my, my perspective is people tend to make a move when it feels like they're trading up.
And so if you have a person in a place of immense influence. It's important to provide some upside for the next step. What's gonna be, for instance, if you're in an institution and you're worried about this kind of thing in terms of succession, make a next step in the institution or in your company. Make a place for them to go because if people are very happy in their role, they're not gonna wanna leave. It just makes sense to me.
Juravich: Is there are there efforts underway or are you seeing things as as boomers are aging here? And you said the youngest boomers or about 62 Are there efforts under way to make retiring easier? That's kind of what you're talking about about policy change is needed, but can we make retirement easier?
Yoquinto: I think we should make retirement more flexible to fit the needs of people. I mean, already it is. If you look at the history of social security, it used to be that you were not allowed to work and collect social security. Not a meaningful amount of work. And over time that has changed because people have sort of voted with their votes and voted with your feet to continue to work in some degree. Retirement is, it used be much more of a discreet phase of life than I think it is now.
And I will add, just to bring in another mega trend here, the rise of AI is potentially gonna, we don't know what it means, but it could mean people are working less per week at different points in their lives. If we figure out what to do with retirement, I think they might have ramifications for people of younger ages as well. As we try to just look for places for meaning, maybe outside of work. Think about how we fill our day. Think about the things we do. I think retirees are in many ways going to be guinea pigs for what's coming.
Juravich: Many boomers are wealthier, better educated, and live longer than previous generations. But there are still huge inequities that exist. Can you explain a little bit about what they are? Because not all the boomers or wealthier and living longer.
Yoquinto: No, not by any means. And so this is one of the things that makes sort of the hair on my arm stand up when people say, well, we just need to raise the retirement age. The fact is, if you do that, you're potentially going to rob those years of retirement from the people who are less, so to back up, there's a correlation between wealth and education and how long you live and health. And people who're less wealthy and less educated tend in aggregate not to live as long. And so what worries me about just blanket raising the retirement age for everyone as a quote unquote solution to aging is that you're disproportionately going to affect those who have been least privileged in our society and take those years away from them.
Juravich: One of the hardest parts about when the retirement age is health care, because we in this country, as everyone well knows, we have tied health care to work. So do you feel like that is where, with this boomer generation, with how many there are, we're going to need to see health care changes in the next few years?
Yoquinto: Uh, yeah. I mean, that is, that's the biggest, the biggest cost area. You know, this has proven to be a very sticky point in our society. You know_ personally, we'd love to see some changes. I, I tend to be very pragmatic. Let's, let's change what we can and with the, with the tools we have available to us now, but, um,
Juravich: Okay, well, we only have 30 seconds left, so if we're not going to get universal health care, because obviously that's not going happen, what's one change that is more manageable we can see in 30 seconds?
Yoquinto: Just everybody protect your hearing. I talk to older people all the time of different ages. The one thing I hear again and again is I wish I protected my hearing. It matters for your social life, it matters for the quality of life. Young people, you go to concert, give some of your plugs.
Juravich: Okay, as I turn my headphones down while I talk to you. All right, there we go, I'll protect my hearing. We've been talking with Luke Yoquinto, science writer and researcher at the MIT Age Lab. Thank you so much for your time today, Luke. You've been listening to All Sides on 89.7 NPR News. If you missed any part of today's show, listen back at www.wosu.org slash All Sides. Subscribe to our podcast. Every episode is in our mobile app. Thanks for joining us. I'm Amy Juravich. This is 89.7 NPR News.