This idea that's been gaining currency that "#populationcollapse" due to declining birth rates is a "problem," is beyond perverse.
#Overpopulation remains near the top of the list of world crises. It's only overshadowed by #ClimateChange which is partially the *result* of past overpopulation.
We're deeply into population #overshoot in terms of having crashed through about 5 of the 9 #planetary boundaries. So yes, there will be a population collapse and it won't just be from declining birth rates.
It's likely to be far more unpleasant than that--competition over scarce resources leading to war, mass migrations, and famines.
#dieoff is the appropriate term. And it applies to humans just as any other species that's overfilled its ecological niche.
It would be possible for Earth to support 10 billion or more people, if we lived more sustainably. But that's way easier said than done. People want what they want and they will kill and die to get it. To say nothing about the devastating impacts of global income inequality.
We should be so lucky, as to "only" face a crisis of a greying population and not enough young people. If that were the case, #automation would be able to handle any worker shortages, provided we put in place the wealth redistribution and basic income needed to offset the decline of compensated labor.
What's actually likely to happen is we'll continue to make all the wrong decisions due to the #fascist / #nationalistic political insanity that's sweeping the globe.
We're out of runway to keep making repeated bad decisions, without consequences that will be terribly disruptive to #civilization as we once knew it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_boundaries