Hussar
Legend
It's very much the "slow apocalypse". There's no "one thing" that is the problem. There's just a cascade of little things - low birth rate, work pressures, societal pressures, etc.When I hoped to live in a science fiction novel when I grew up, I wasn't thinking of dystopias, and yet here we are.
OTOH, it will balance out eventually. It will be painful as heck while it adjusts, but, it will balance out. Japan's going the same route as Canada - the writing is on the wall - and importing massive numbers of young people to keep the country running. Which provides a release valve for the pressures in other countries.
It just means that societies that have been fairly stable for quite some time are about to get seriously shaken up.
I do reject the idea that we're living in some sort of dystopia though. Things are still better now than they were before.