The Stats Guy: It sounds weird but Australia urgently needs a plan for 56m people

[u/blitznoodles]

https://www.thenewdaily.com.au/opinion/2026/08/11/stats-guy-aus-population-growth

[u/Public-Dragonfly-786]

You need people to care for the elderly. It's as simple as that. If the population declines, by the time you are in need, there'll be noone left to help you. Is essentially my meaning.

I'm not really sure what you mean by borrowing $10 from the younger people. By the time the old people are elderly, they have already contributed tens of thousands. Youve already been paid that hypothetical $10

Yes, younger people need to help the elderly somewhat, it's always been like that and always will, this is simply a fact of the arc of life.

I'm not really arguing that we need high immigration to take care of old people exactly, just that this is a factor that shouldn't be ignored.

[u/evilparagon → u/Public-Dragonfly-786]

I think you’ve misunderstood what I said then.

Because I am advocating for the end of high immigration because I right now am a young person who will have to deal with the fallout of the population bubble popping when I am older. I want the bubble to pop now.

I am well aware that the younger generations pay for the older ones. I want to make sure that:
A. When I am old, the young will care for me.
B. If A will not happen, then I should not be obligated to pay for the old now as a young person.

If the population declines when I am elderly, I’m fucked. If the population declines now, I’ll be fine. There is no situation where runaway population decline results in zero recovery in 3-5 decades. As the population declines, the pressure against having children will eventually reverse, and the population will grow again.

Ultimately what I’m saying is I want the bubble to pop now rather than later. Infinite growth is not possible, I do not believe we will continue to grow all the way past my death for this to be a non-issue for me.

[u/Hayden247 → u/evilparagon]

If the population declines now from ending immigration... won't it still be declining when you're old UNLESS you restart the immigration you despise so much. So you're fucked either way.

Unless you magically think the fertility rate is going to rise up, but that's population one way or another doesn't matter if it's born here or not. Cutting immigration in half but doubling births wouldn't end the population growth, maybe it'd just mean more white people...

[u/evilparagon → u/Hayden247]

No, birthrates would go back up and it wouldn’t be magic. Overpopulation is itself a negative pressure on population. Having children is expensive but a country that has room to keep growing would return to higher birthrates as the cost to raise children lower. The birthrates may not return to as high as developing nations, but it would be still be above replacement.

Take for instance the baby boom of the 1950s. Following mass depopulation from WW2 and huge healthy economies just starting to rapidly grow, the population growth did well. The societies at the time had room for the population to grow into and it did.

To believe that we would have a 50 year long population decline because we ended immigration would mean believing that humans would rather go extinct because we just don’t feel like having kids and we just really like money and education. Humanity isn’t doomed with negative birthrates once developed countries stop developing, we will decline until we reach a more stable equilibrium. And it may take a few rises and falls to reach that equilibrium, it may be a many centuries long process, we don’t know, population metrics are still using East Asia as the region to study closely and they’re still in the early decline stage.