The case for adaptation

1. Societies should prepare for longer lives, smaller families, changing dependency ratios, and greater demand for care.
2. Adaptation will require productivity growth, flexible labor markets, sustainable pension systems, immigration where politically and socially feasible, and investment in health and technology.
3. Smaller populations need not mean poorer lives, but they do require different assumptions about growth, infrastructure, institutions, and intergenerational responsibility.
4. Adaptation, however, has limits. A civilization can manage decline for a time, but it cannot indefinitely escape the consequences of fewer people, fewer workers, fewer families, and fewer minds contributing to its future.