Raw GDP is the wrong metric

Reader comment on: Paul Ryan on Birth Rates

Submitted by lyle (United States), Dec 17, 2017 09:04

A much better metric is GDP per capita which measures how well the typical individual is doing. It normalizes away the part of economic growth related to a growing population. The total fertilty world wide for all countries went from 5.05 in 1950 to 2.49 in 2015 which is a huge drop. https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate
Given that a large part of this is women now realize that there are better things to do with their life than have a lot of kids (plus the odds of a child surviving to adulthood have increased) to try to raise the birth rate is tilting at windmills.
But of course if you replace non existent human workers with silicon based workers it can still increase GDP per capita.
Consider that the environment of a field is easier to handle than a highway, and one can expect self driving tractors soon. Or when in 10-15 years (not the current hype cycle time) when self driving trucks arrive.

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