Why didn't people 40 years ago worry about population collapse today?

In the 1970s people were looking at a "hockey stick" graph of world population and thought we were cooked.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Population_Bomb

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_to_Growth [1]

McLuhan said "We look at the present through a rear-view mirror" and there is no area like that more than gender and reproductive issues. For instance the idea that men have it better than woman still persists although it's definitely not true for those under 30. [2]

The diffusion of the idea is still suppressed because it is right wing coded, it's going to take another 20 years or so for it to be safe to talk about in mixed company.

[1] this aged better, it predicted that real trouble starts in the next few decades

The people it affects the most aren’t engaging those sort of thoughts day to day.

The architects of it don’t care, as they will have secured their own feudal power .by the point things get nasty

In college 25 years ago I was hearing about how over population was going to be the end of us and had professors tell us the worst thing we could do for the planet was have a kid.

Back then we could not imagine a world so hostile to working families as we have today. Back then, even making minimum wage, I could have saved up to buy a small condo. The future was BRIGHT so of course the default assumption is people marrying, buying homes, and having babies.

People were much more worried about teen pregnancy. I suppose they were successful in their campaign.

There is no population collapse in advanced countries. Population is going up due to immigration. It's only a problem if you care about existing population being "replaced". This doesn't seem like a topic it's possible to have a polite conversation about.

They did and longer before 1985. They imported foreigners to prop up everything from health care to pensions. All for the sake of "line go up".

I just read the last chapter of "The Psychology of Money" so with recency bias say that each generation has a different perception and perspective.

What people? Be specific. There are different countries with different interests. The dumbest ones has bought into scarcity, socialism , individualism, egoism and other self destructive narratives sold by their enemies (implicit or explicit, internal or external). Smarter ones are doing okay as far as population goes.

When I was a kid, overpopulation was going to lead to famines, right before the next ice age started.

(Or... the commies pushed the button, and we all lived out a Tom Lehrer song, together)

They're called boomers because there was a population boom. It was the era of contraceptives, where we thought we would run out of food.

Lagging indicators always seem to throw people off, especially one that takes a whole generation. China had an overpopulation problem and now they're facing a different kind of population problem as back then Chinese would opt for only one male child.

Longer lifespans and overpriced education led to other kinds of problems that took decades to kick in. It's really hard to model this in.

I don't think it's individualism, perhaps that is the case for a small percentage of people.

I think it's the fact that 2 workers per household (or family unit) is now common.

More people working in general, generally, reduces the value of labour, people are now paid relatively less.

If people are working and have career goals, plus are struggling to pay their own way, having children is less of an attractive prospect.

The costs of childcare here in the UK are also very prohibitive. We also have some other significant factors I won't go into.

It looks like generally, the more two worker households in a society, the lower the birthrate.

There are multiple ways to address this but I believe these are the main reasons.

Some numbers (courtesy of claude 4 research): Japan 1925 - 5.4 children per woman - ~20% women working

Japan 1950 - 3.6 children per woman - ~35% women working

Japan 1980 - 1.8 children per woman - ~47% women working

Japan 2000 - 1.4 children per woman - ~56% women working

Japan 2025 - 1.2 children per woman - ~74% women working

Actually, 40 years ago, people were mainly worried about more immediate and tangible issues like poverty and economic development. Population collapse simply wasn’t a major concern back then. It’s kind of like how nowadays hardly anyone seriously worries about the Earth exploding and everyone moving to Mars — people tend to focus on the problems that feel most urgent at the time. That’s why population collapse wasn’t really on the radar back then.

Nothing to do with individualism.

This has everything to do with government consequences.

When egalitarianism got women working; it meant they wouldnt be having kids.

When women have an income, they are able to 'escape' from relationships which reduces kids.

When you require kids to be in child seats; and your automotive regulations are shrinking cars for 'fuel efficiency' aka reducing the number of seats for kids to sit in.

All of these things then had state propaganda to push that these were good things for various reasons. It led to population collapse or worse, the pyramid schemes of retirement and socialized systems collapse.