Is population decline a bad thing for a country? Must greying population necessarily a hazard?

The population of the world is growing at an unmatched pace in history.

Though I believe that the world is still producing enough food and issue is about distribution, I don't think the world can support endless increase of human population.

If seen from a simple matter of physics and chemistry, our bodies are just atoms composed into self-replicating cells, sustained by input of additional materials.

Given finite number of atoms in the world, production of food is simply a matter of converting matter from one form to another, powered by solar energy of course, but overall, there is no real increase in amount of matter (not that significantly, solar energy can theoretically be converted to matter, but most solar energy used go into converting matter from one form to another).

Hence, it is only a matter of time, if human population is to continue to grow, for the Earth to run out of matter to be converted into food.

Of course, if by then humans can colonise other planets in other solar systems, shortage of matter would not be a pressing problem.

Still, it is only practical to acknowledge that at the present, it is wiser for Earth to look forward to declining population.

But declining population is seen as a problem by the governments of developed nations, including Japan and Singapore.  The fear is a greying population will pose a burden on a shrinking base of productive members of the society, or lead to decline in economic competitiveness.

To me, human beings have been progressively equipped to take care of themselves in the old age such that older people rely less on younger people.

Of course, it is a matter of personal responsibility for individuals to keep themselves in good health and have financial security when one's income declines.

Modern workers are far more productive than those in the past, and we do rely on fewer to produce the same amount of goods and services.

Rather than anxiously seeking to maintain population levels by immigration, it might be better to consider how fewer people would allow more living space for the citizens, especially in an already crowded city-state like Singapore.

Even if people earn less nominal income, a better quality of life with the increased living space might be just what would prompt them to have more children.

In all things, there is such a thing as a natural balance, and artificial measures working against natural principles are never effective.

Deliberately adding more foreigners just increases the stress and may put more citizens off having children.

As a migrant myself, I got nothing against migrants themselves - migration is part of natural activity.  But when governments seek to manipulate it for certain ends, the results are often counter-productive.