Why Young People Aren’t Having Babies—Malthus, Revisited

January 29, 2026 – JD Vance and his white-supremacist buddies are all aflutter over declining birthrates in the white population. But here’s some news for you JD, it’s not just happening here (and in Aryan Europe). It’s happening in China.

In 1979, the Communist Party in China tried to force a slowing of population growth through it’s one-child policy. Chinese families were allowed only one child and were subject to penalties if they had more. This policy ended in 2015. But it turns out that voluntary decisions against having children might be more effective than a mandatory policy.

Chinese young people (that is, people the age of my grown children) are deciding not to have kids, but to have fur babies instead.

What gives?

Two-hundred some years ago, a guy named Thomas Malthus hypothesized that population growth would outpace the growth of the food supply, which would result in a catastrophe of war, famine, and disease.

The industrialization of food production kinda pulled the rug out from under Thomas Malthus. Society began to think food resources could outpace population growth for the foreseeable future, even if not forever. We don’t care about the far future, so we don’t need to think about Malthus.

But what if population size is controlled socially rather than by simply running out of resources?

What if the imminent prospect of diminishing futures trigger something in our bodies that make us less likely to want to procreate? Young adults are aware of the fortunes of their peers and know when their upward mobility becomes less than their parents—or even negative. It’s a social cue, not something that comes from commodity futures (as Malthus thought).

This would explain why population growth in rich populations has been declining. We see the end of upward mobility and making children becomes less desirable. The poor have nothing but upward mobility (they can’t go down!), so they continue to make babies.

The poor have hopes. The rich do not.

That kinda sounds backwards and insane. But so does the supremacist drivel that comes out of JD Vance’s mouth. He wants to blame it on the poor. I’m more inclined to blame the rich.

But this is not a fully thought-out hypothesis. It’s just something to think about.

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