Housing, Social Security and Doomsday?

This link (https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/interactive/age-sex-pyramid-for-the-united-states.html) will bring you to charts highlighting the population by age. Please look at the difference between 1980 and 2020. Back in the 1930's social security was implemented and the best way to visualize this policy is as a government sanctioned Ponzi scheme. So long as the base of the population is larger than the top, the elderly can be supported by the youth with little strain on either class.

When it was originally implemented in 1934 the fertility rate was 2.2 children per woman, but by 1964 that had jumped to 3.6! In that same time, the program was expanded and began to include larger and larger segments of the population culminating with everyone in the US being a part of the program, and disability be accessed at any age.

However, in 1965 the birthrate began to decline rapidly and reached a low in 1976 of 1.74. In the 90's and 2000's it leveled off at roughly 2 children but since 2010 it has stayed well below that level. And this is very clearly illustrated by the graphs below.

There are two paths ahead of us now. Starting with the unrealistic; families could start having upwards of 3 children on average over the next 10 to 20 years, which would increase the base and hopefully enough jobs would be available to support that. This would stabilize the housing market as they would replace the dying population and may even create a need for new constructions. But in order for this to happen, drastic change would need to occur.

First, wages would need to go up to support day care costs, or women would need to reorient as a culture and become primarily homemakers again. Still men would need to see a drastic increase in wages. Second, in conjunction with wages increasing, tax liability should decrease or stay stagnant (it would be optimal if that decreased as well) along with housing prices decreasing or staying stagnant. Third, a public call to action through incentives, religion, and state promises would be needed to shift the culture to focus on child rearing. Finally, the currency's buying power would need to remain stagnant with absolutely zero inflation moving forward.

I don't think this strategy is realistic or even possible. I am trying to illustrate how difficult it would be to increase the birth rate in America, which I believe to be symptoms of a poorly managed economy full of fraud and money printing which has lead to unaffordability and an oppressive tax system.

Realistically, I don't believe any of this will change and if you are under the age of 40 today at some point in the next 20 to 30 years I believe we will witness a cataclysmic financial event. First, it may actually seem like a good thing. Initially, home prices will drop and depending on interest rates it will be welcomed as a final "relief" of a housing unaffordability crisis. Whatever the current administration is they will surely take credit. However, this will be the beginning of a reversion to the mean. Eventually, investors who have lived through the events of today will begin buying property as quickly as they can. Yet, in some time when they look to rent or sell they will find there is not enough demand in either market.

Then the administration at the time will be playing a game of hot potato, juggling increasing the tax liability on the base, or cutting benefits for those who are reliant on the paycheck. Never mind the resources needed to take care of the elderly, there won't be enough people to work that job and produce goods and services in the broader domestic economy. It may become a high class luxury to move into a nursing home as many will be priced out strictly because of a lack of manpower.

If this sounds outrageous, just look to China who is facing the ramifications of this today. Their initial two pronged approach of new construction and child rearing limitation has lead to entire ghost cities. Real-estate development now fluctuates between a quarter and a third of their GDP. Think of how big that must be in comparison to their manufacturing output?

I believe the United States real-estate developers have witnessed the mistakes of China. If you look at a graph of new constructions it has trended down since 1974 only briefly hitting that same high again in 2006 (this may be a new early warning indicator for housing recessions). In part (I speculate) they know that eventually they are risking their returns on new construction. They may shift to additions or converting multifamily to single family but that we will have to wait and see.