Birth Rates in Rich Countries Halve To Hit Record Low (ft.com) 359
Birth rates in the world's rich economies have more than halved since 1960 to hit a record low, according to a study that urged countries to prepare for a "lower fertility future." From a report: The average number of children per woman across the 38 most industrialised countries has fallen from 3.3 in 1960 to 1.5 in 2022, according to a study by the OECD published on Thursday. The fertility rate is now well below the "replacement level" of 2.1 children per woman -- at which a country's population is considered to be stable without immigration -- in all the group's member countries except for Israel. "This decline will change the face of societies, communities and families and potentially have large effects on economic growth and prosperity," warned the Paris-based organisation.
Faltering population growth acts as a drag on economic expansion. Across the EU, the rise in overall labour force participation will soon not be enough to compensate for its falling working-age population, exacerbating labour shortages, according to the IMF and European Commission's 2024 ageing report. Coupled with rising life expectancy, low births also put pressure on public finances as they leave fewer people contributing the tax revenues needed to pay for the rising costs of an ageing population. A lack of pupils is also driving an increase in school closures across Europe, Japan and South Korea.
Faltering population growth acts as a drag on economic expansion. Across the EU, the rise in overall labour force participation will soon not be enough to compensate for its falling working-age population, exacerbating labour shortages, according to the IMF and European Commission's 2024 ageing report. Coupled with rising life expectancy, low births also put pressure on public finances as they leave fewer people contributing the tax revenues needed to pay for the rising costs of an ageing population. A lack of pupils is also driving an increase in school closures across Europe, Japan and South Korea.
Feminism! (Score:3, Informative)
A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle. --Irina Dunn, 1970.
Re:Feminism! (Score:4, Insightful)
Historically, egalitarian societies have not had any problem having kids.
What has changed is the cost-benefit analysis for having kids: kids are no longer the retirement plan; having kids is incredibly expensive; kids are no longer free labor on your farm. If a government fully paid for the cost of raising a child [duckduckgo.com] they'd be flooded with more kids than the economy can support.
I'm still helping out my kid (Score:3)
I'm not mad at the kid. They did everything right. Worked their asses off in college and got a degree
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If "the government" paid for the cost of raising a child, that would translate to "the tax paying public" paying for it.
Which is the same as it is now, only less efficient.
Your solution literally makes having children less attractive, because of the massively increased tax burden.
egalitarian societies [Re:Feminism!] (Score:3)
Historically, egalitarian societies have not had any problem having kids.
Do you have data to back that up?
From the data I've seen, if "egalitarian societies" means progressive western culture, the more egalitarian a society is, the fewer children they have they have.
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I don't know about progressive western societies I just looked up birth rates per woman in Russia https://data.worldbank.org/ind... [worldbank.org], which 1.4 less than the US 1.7. Russia is not particularly wealthy either I don't know much about its culture though. I am discounting China because of its 1 child policy. Even India is heading down at 2.1 from 6 in 1964.
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Rhetorically speaking, why should only wealthy people be able to afford to have children? That seems to be a form of eugenics.
And why should a child's educational opportunities depend on the parent's wealth? Shouldn't a child born into a poor family and a child born into a wealthy family have equal odds of success in life?
Any government that is worried about how to afford all the children could offer free birth control (including sterilization), free prenatal care, and free abortions during the first part o
Re:Feminism! (Score:5, Insightful)
There are three reasons, and they cascade into one another:
- Housing is too expensive
- You need two full time incomes to be housed
- Therefor a two income couple has no time for children
There. Solved. If you want your country to return to replacement levels, you need to start making sure everyone can have home on a single income.
Re:Feminism! (Score:4, Informative)
Also for many, having a child is financial suicide. Ahh, corporate capitalism.
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Why women? Why can't the man be the stay at home parent?
Oh wait, both parents need to work in order to actually afford the child. Sure, traditionally the male was the breadwinner, but these days, it doesn't matter - because without both incomes, neither can maintain their lifestyle.
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No mothers can give up work anymore, even if they have a partner. One income isn't enough.
Re:Feminism! (Score:4, Insightful)
Are you for freedom or not? You seem to want to force women to have children.
I'm all for women feeling free to choose the best path in life for them.
It sounds to me like encouraging women to be "free" of men is actually more about freeing men from women. Men are now free to have the occasional encounters with women to propagate the species and then go home alone to be free from the crying of babies, any nagging from a wife, as well as the eventual care for their own parents or in-laws as they age.
Usually they got stuck taking care of the kids while their mate was banging floozies at work.
In case you haven't realized this it is the woman that has the womb and breasts in a married couple. That is kind of how we define a woman. Or at least used to define a woman before some people decided "woman" lost all meaning. By having the womb it means as the bearer of children it is best for her health, and the future health of her child, to stay relatively immobile for the late stages of pregnancy. Then once the child is born it is best for the health of the mother and child for the child to be breastfed. That doesn't necessarily mean staying home everyday all day to care for the kids but it does kind of end up that way for a few years in the game of life. Society doesn't require this of women, biology does.
I know women that have children and still work, often working from home as the child plays relatively quietly in the corner of her office. I know places of work that have daycare in the building where there's a responsible adult to watch children while the parents (not always the mother, in fact it is more often the father) is always nearby and can visit the child periodically through the day.
With modern life we can offer all kinds of paths in life for women that wish to be married with children. Some more healthy for them and their children than others. Working from home is an option. There's various forms of daycare. There's also women choosing to get pregnant and have no further interaction with the father of their child for the rest of their life. It used to be that when this happened it wasn't a choice, the father died in war or in a workplace accident such as a trip and fall while chasing their secretary around a desk.
Anyhow, we in the USA have a bigly supply of immigrants into the foreseeable future, as the orange dude loves to emphasize, such that we don't have a population problem.
Those immigrants will be bringing their culture with them. On the average they will come from cultures that encourage large families, mothers staying home to care for children, and women choosing to have the father of their children be their husband and provide an income for the family.
A stable society kind of requires a stable family. This is because of mammalian biology, not some dictate from a patriarchy or some deity. Well, maybe a deity was involved, you believe what you want to believe. If we don't impose some kind of framework of encouraging women to have children, and the fathers of those children to stick around to provide and care for their family, then we will have our society replaced by a society that does hold such a framework for society. It's happening already. We are seeing immigrants from cultures with this "traditional" view of family come to the USA and replace those that believe women need men like a fish needs a bicycle. It's biology, not any other force that is imposing this on people. If women choose to ignore their biology then in time their place on Earth will be taken by a woman that embraces their biological role in the propagation of the species and with it the maintenance of a stable society.
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Men are now free to have the occasional encounters with women to propagate the species and then go home alone to be free from the crying of babies, any nagging from a wife, as well as the eventual care for their own parents or in-laws as they age.
Don't most countries force the father to pay quite a lot of money to support the mother if they are not an active part of the child's daily life?
That doesn't necessarily mean staying home everyday all day to care for the kids but it does kind of end up that way for a few years in the game of life. Society doesn't require this of women, biology does.
You contradicted yourself. As your first sentence points out, it's not necessary. Duties could be shared equally by both parents. They could even work half days each. It's definitely a social issue.
If we don't impose some kind of framework of encouraging women to have children, and the fathers of those children to stick around to provide and care for their family, then we will have our society replaced by a society that does hold such a framework for society.
You don't need to encourage, you need to facilitate. We are still a very long way from that in most developed countries. Imagine how many people, both men and women, wou
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The point is that men aren't actually free to have children and then abandon them. That fact is quite well known.
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That's a lot of text to say "I am a misogynist incel asshat that can't thrive in a world where women are on an equal footing." Disinclined to respond to all of that nonsense but I'll bite on this one:
Modern feminism has pushed women to think the way to go, is to forego trying to pair bond and mate during their most fertile years, and reproduce, but, instead...to put that off, work hard and make it in the working world
Your beef shouldn't be with feminism. Your beef should be with American workplace culture and how central career and financial standing is to identity for most Americans. Feminism didn't create that. All it did was say that woman should be allowed to play the game men were already playing. "Hate the game,
Nordic countries [Re:Feminism!] (Score:4, Informative)
My friends in the Nordics do not face this struggle, nearly all of them had children younger than my American friends
Nope.
The article we're discussing is about low birth rates in the industrialized world, and the Nordic countries have some of the lowest birth rates [nordicstatistics.org] of all. Finland, for example, had a fertility rate of 1.32 children per woman, barely more than half the replacement rate (2.1).
, and they're a lot further along on the gender equality train than we are. The difference there is there's a solid social safety net, legal protections, and corporate cultures that don't diminish your standing if you take time off to attend to your child(ren). It's not a binary choice in those cultures between "career success" and "children" for men or women. Conversely, in America, it's all about the rat race, family is a distraction, you need to devote mind, body, and soul to your career. This is arguably as unfair to fathers as it is to mothers.
If you're saying that helping women and being more family-friendly society has made women in Nordic countries more likely to raise families: nope. Every single Nordic country has a lower fertility rate than the US.
*(well, except the Faroe Islands, which is tiny and isolated)
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I was responding to the (probably hidden from your view since he got modded down) post above mine, not the article.
My married Nordic friends all had kids in their mid to late 20s. None of my American friends did the same. Most were in their mid-30s, one couple in their late-20s, and a few in the late-30s. The difference there is the American work culture/career first mindset and the fact that it often is a binary choice for us (children or career) that people in the Nordics are not confronted with.
My p
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When the cost of living goes through the roof and people are given so little time off from work, because people are expected to have two jobs each, there is going to be a sense of, "why would you want to bring a child into this world if it can be avoided?" The USA is the worst when it comes to standards, where even a "two weeks per year of paid vacation" minimum isn't mandated by the government. When you get no time off from working, many people won't take care of themselves, because why put in your own
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Meanwhile wages stagnated because of an over-abundance of bodies looking for jobs.
Shouldn't a self-proclaimed conservative have a better understanding of economics than this? Women entering the workforce doesn't depress wages on a macro basis. More wage-earners -- regardless of gender -- equates to more economic activity and growth. That's a net win for everyone. You can certainly find a micro example of a labor market driving down wages when confronted with a sudden influx of workers but you can't extrapolate that out to the fallacy of "women entering the workforce drove down wages.
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I am a bit curious regarding how that wikipedia article can state the 2024 fertility rate given that we are only half way through the year.
Your curiosity made me wonder.
As far as I can tell, it's legit because it's "total fertility rate in 2024", not "for 2024". Some countries may provide interim or even live statistics. Doing a little Google-sleuthing, I found that month-by-month variance in birth rate is in the realm of 10% for Canada and UK, which is when I got bored. A half-year's statistics are just fine to draw a reasonable conclusion about where a country is at, especially when you have previous years to compare to. It's not like
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Ah the mostly homogeneous Nordic nations...I wonder what's different. Hmm... Could it be everyone is 90% the same color, religion, and has similar world views and moral compass alignments? --- Kind of why "small town USA" is still a great place to live.
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My friends in the Nordics do not face this struggle, nearly all of them had children younger than my American friends, and they're a lot further along on the gender equality train than we are.
That's provably false.
Conversely, in America, it's all about the rat race, family is a distraction, you need to devote mind, body, and soul to your career.
Yep, and if it weren't for America, all the Nordic countries would be speaking German.
Maybe next time the "oh fuck" phone rings we'll just let it go to voice mail huh?
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That "central career and fiscal standing being a big part of one's identity....until just recently, was pretty much only a masculine set of traits.
That's what feminism stands for, the wildly crazy idea that women should be able to do anything men can do. If you have an issue with this concept you're talking to the wrong person.
Men do this in order to establish themselves and attract a mate...
I like how you reduce humanity to the status of a wild animal and assume that humans make fundamental life altering decisions on such a primal level. We have free choice, the ability to override our primal instincts, and that's what separates us from the vast majority of the animal kingdom. I suspect you've been consuming to
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They are free to "try" to do anything men can do.
But again, there is a problem..there are some small, but VERY important and powerful differences between men/women biologically....and they have serious consequences, as we are seeing these days with women that choose the wait till "ready" in career, etc before wanting to settle down and have a kid, vs women that do it earlier during their prime years
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Feminism gone wild in Japan? Are nuts? That's one of the most male dominated societies on the planet. So is China and their pop, is dropping as well.
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High school math is that's required to show low birth rates are bad for a sustainable economy.
Economic disruption [Re:Feminism!] (Score:2)
Both too high birth rates and too low birth rates cause economic disruption.
We may be correcting an overshoot in human population, which in the long run will be beneficial. But in the short run, it will cause economic disruption, because we have not built an economic system that operates with lower population in each generation.
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Still necessary. We're quite a ways off from women being able to produce children without the participation, at some level, of a man.
A world with only women is, literally, one generation away from extinction.
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Or women will be completely over when men figure out artificial wombs. [wikipedia.org]
Re:Feminism! (Score:4, Insightful)
And here, my prize, the Black
Widow. Isn't she lovely?.. and so deadly. Her kiss is
fifteen times as poisonous as that of the rattlesnake.
You see her venom is highly neurotoxic, which is to say
that it attacks the central nervous system causing
intense pain, profuse sweating, difficulty in
breathing, loss of consciousness, violent convulsions
and, finally.. death. You know what I think I love the
most about her is her inborn need to dominate,
possess. In fact, immediately after the consummation
of her marriage to the smaller and weaker male of the
species she kills and eats him - *laugh* oh, she is
delicious.. and I hope he was! Such power and dignity
- unhampered by sentiment. If I may put forward a
slice of personal philosophy, I feel that man has ruled
this world as a stumbling dimented child-king long
enough! And as his empire crumbles, my precious Black
Widow shall rise as his most fitting successor!
Re:Alternative take... (Score:4, Interesting)
When birth rates are below replacement, the population shrinks. As it does, it ages. As it ages, a higher and higher percentage of the population ages out of productive work years, meaning a smaller and smaller percentage of the population must work to feed the rest. This is a recipe for revolution, or worse.
Do the powers that be overhype the propaganda? Yes. That's really all they do, after all. But there is a serious issue.
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As it ages, a higher and higher percentage of the population ages out of productive work years, meaning a smaller and smaller percentage of the population must work to feed the rest.
A declining population breaks social security and economies structured around the assumption of perpetual growth, but nobody is going to starve. Modern mechanized farming practices have significantly reduced the amount of human labor required to produce food.
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There is a solution: immigration. For some reason some people don't like it, but they also usually prefer to have someone to wipe their arse in old age, pay taxes to fund their pension etc.
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a smaller and smaller percentage of the population must work to feed the rest
The percentage stabilizes after a few generations, provided the fertility rate is constant. At a fertility rate a bit below replacement, say 1.9-2.0, the decline is soft and manageable, but at a very low fertility rate, e.g. 1.1-1.2 it is ... not.
Not sustainable (Score:5, Informative)
Unbounded population growth is, obviously, not sustainable. I mean, we can disagree about the maximum number of humans on the planet, but clearly once there is 1 human per sq. ft. of dry land - that should be about the limit, although I guess we could build up from thence.
So is any economic paradigm based on perpetual "expansion". It's not going to be easy, because "more == better" is, likely, currently a built in genetic trait in humans (and pretty much any other live organism). But we will have to adapt or die, as usual.
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Uh, the problem right now is the opposite. Many countries have fallen below replacement. Without immigration, that means population contraction. Fewer workers to take care of more older people.
Fewer workers means less tax revenue to pay for more older people. There may be a sort of revolution in 20-30 years.
The idea of being able to retire might die again.
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We have more people than can be supported by subsistence farming. At this population level we're firmly locked into industrial scale farming practices. So by some metrics we've already exceeded the maximum number of humans. (I don't agree, but wanted to play Devil's advocate. because the Devil has better clothes and better music)
So is any economic paradigm based on perpetual "expansion".
That's bad news for stock market investors. You mean a P/E ratio of over 50 isn't a good investment? All this assumes that reality is important. But perception of growth has a huge
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Carrying capacity grows as technology rises. Declining birthrates however are an economic cost. While higher populations advance technology faster (some argue for higher population growth specifically on this grounds, as tech advance generally correlates to quality of life).
That said, declining birth rates are not some sort of untenable economic cost. Like, you may take a 30% hit to per-capita GPD in 2100 vs. a population steady-state, which may sound bad, but that's a hit to the *2100* GDP per-capita, wh
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We CAN support more people on this planet... but we do not NEED more people on this planet.
A contraction in population is a benefit for the future of the species. Much like technological advancements, it may be hard on those of us alive now to deal with the fact that we are not necessary, but it will present a better quality of life for those in future generations.
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Carrying capacity grows as technology rises. Declining birthrates however are an economic cost. While higher populations advance technology faster (some argue for higher population growth specifically on this grounds, as tech advance generally correlates to quality of life).
Some people argue that, but there is no evidence for it.
Some of the greatest innovation in history has come from very small populations. The entire Renaissance, from daVinci and Michelangelo through Galileo, sprang out of a population of about a million people, about 0.01% of the current world population.
This is a good thing (Score:3)
Endless growth is impossible
We need steady-state sustainability
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The bullshit is catching up. (Score:2, Insightful)
It's almost like rich people saying, "actually doing something about climate change is too expensive so let's lie about it and pretend everything is fine" has resulted in ordinary people thinking, "what kind of fool would have children now?" Who could have foreseen such a result?! -_-
You reap what you sow.
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Meanwhile everyone worries about excess workers (Score:2)
On the one hand we have these stories about a shortage of people of working age. On the other we have the supposed problem of AI meaning that most of the population won't have jobs to do.
Specifically in China at the moment they are seeing a serious growth of unemployment - at a time when the government is panicking about demographics.
Note that if handled properly, the effect of AI will be to make most things very cheap to buy - because there will be little human labour in their creation. Therefore the unive
[surprised pikachu face] (Score:2)
You're saying that one of the most expensive things you can do in life that has life-long implications and ever-decreasing government support is less popular now than when wages were higher and schools had more funding? Gosh, I wonder why educated people concerned for the future of the planet with shrinking paycheques and fewer housing options are deciding that this isn't for them.
Truly a mystery of our time.
Cultural problem (Score:5, Informative)
Once people move to the city then their standard of living improves, but kids become less of a "help around the farm" benefit and instead become a very significant expense. We all want to give our kids the best start, so we delay starting a family until we have all the pieces in place. In my own life (late 40s and have had 3 kids) I can tell you that if you eventually want to have kids you should resist this urge to wait until everything is perfect. It doesn't really matter if the mom takes a couple years off now, or five years from now, it's the same amount of time out of her career.
I'm sure there are people who regrets having kids, but it's very rare in my experience. I can't think of anyone, actually. Also, there are surveys which indicate that single people with no kids are happier than married people with kids, but generally only while the kids are little, and even then the parents will report higher life satisfaction than people with no kids.
If you go on tiktok or Youtube you're going to find a never-ending stream of people telling young women not to have kids, but something like 90 percent of women aged 18 to 30 report wanting to have kids eventually. But if you don't start until you're in your 30's you may run out of time (over 35 is considered a geriatric pregnancy). Yet as someone who's gone through being a parent (and someone who likes to be prepared) I can honestly say this is one of those things you can spend too much time preparing for. People have been "figuring it out" for literally hundreds of thousands of years, and most of them were far less prepared than you already are.
If you don't want kids, I have no problem with that, but if you do, don't let our culture scare you away from it. Yeah, it's a lot of work. It's not as hard, but it's probably more effort than climbing Mount Everest, and putting your effort into raising a conscientious kid is way more beneficial for society than throwing some more litter on a mountain.
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Three kids? Did they consent?
You completely overlook the moral issue: what gives you the right to force yourself upon non-consenting children? Just to give YOUR life meaning and purpose? And then you reserve the right to kick the children out when they turn 18!
Negative option contracts are illegal because it is immoral. Entering contracts with children is illegal because it is immoral.
I say that the declining birth rates is caused by people realising the moral issues with forcing themselves upon children.
Be
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Make parenting a real job (Score:2)
Pay for kids - a stay-at-home parent should get minimum wage for 7h/day, 5d/week, 50w/year until the jud hits kindergarten.
Add a small bonus for overlapping children.
After the 5th year, free daycare / after school care for parents who rejoin the main economy, until the kids are old enough to stay home alone.
Do that, you'll see a spike. Lots of people put off having kids until it's too late because of the costs.
Will we pay? No. So more immigration and complaints about being replaced by racists.
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* or mother works while the father stays home, but either way a single wage should be plenty but currently even two is barely enough.
Re:Make parenting a real job (Score:5, Insightful)
Counter-intuitively, work is freedom. The standard of 'everybody works' means everybody can leave a partner who needs leaving.
Currently, a stay-at-home parent is at the economic mercy of the breadwinner.
Re:Make parenting a real job (Score:5, Insightful)
And yet...it worked out perfectly well for the overwhelming majority of couples in the US (and the western world) up until about 25-30 years ago....
2 parent, stay at home wife was the norm for ages and it worked well....in fact, most of the societal problems we see today can largely be attributed to the destruction of the "nuclear family".
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Nah. That's red-pill bullshit.
Even if it isn't, your implied solution of keeping women at home to be baby factories is not acceptable.
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The agenda is to stop you from having a happy productive family. To do so, they encourage women to compete with men. The outcome, of course, is that both are destroyed.
If both husband and wife were united and working together, they would make forward progress and strengthen their neighborhood and country. If they are disunited and working at cross purposes, they destroy each other, their neighborhood and country.
It's really not that complicated.
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And yet...it worked out perfectly well for the overwhelming majority of couples in the US (and the western world) up until about 25-30 years ago....
2 parent, stay at home wife was the norm for ages and it worked well....in fact, most of the societal problems we see today can largely be attributed to the destruction of the "nuclear family".
The "nuclear family" is a sad degeneration of the multi generation family that was common for much of the 20th century. The nuclear family was a lot less happy than the myths say. Way back was also a time that people in the neighborhood would look out for each other, and each others' kids. That is not today's culture.
Its good for kids to naturally hang out in unplanned groups of varying ages where the slightly older kids teach the younger ones. Adults would be drinking beer outside, more or less in view of
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And yet...it worked out perfectly well for the overwhelming majority of couples in the US (and the western world) up until about 25-30 years ago....
Did it? Or did those people stay in unhappy, even abusive relationships, that today they could walk away from?
From a related 2009 study. (Score:2)
The paper in question [nih.gov]
There are several factors such as lifestyle factors, an increase in sexually transmitted diseases, rise in obesity and environmental factors involved in urbanisation and urban lifestyle that are affecting fertility and have led to rise in male and female subfertility. In addition there are socio-economic factors that have led to women and couples delaying having children. Lack of affordable housing, flexible and part-time career posts for women and affordable and publicly funded (free) child care have contributed to the current low fertility/birth rates. Couples/women are delaying starting a family which has led to a true decline in their fertility levels due to ovarian ageing and related reasons leading to reduced chance of conception.
I think a lot of people keep ignoring how there are antibiotic resistant STDs floating around that can render you sterile and the number people infected with them is year after year on the rise. [who.int]
The obesity epidemic isn't over, people just stopped paying attention. [who.int] Over 2.5 Billion people [who.int] on this planet are at weights that are dangerous to one's health.
Urbanization has introduced new problems with isolation, diet, and stress (not even getting into the economic issues here as that's a
Paywalls continue ... (Score:2)
Short version: here is non-paywall linke to the article [archive.is].
Long version, including rant ...
I get it, Slashdot editors, you probably have a deal to drive traffic to certain sites. Running the site costs money, and you have to get revenue from somewhere.
But, these deals are to sites who are not of interest to the target audience of this site. Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, ...etc. Slashdotters will NOT subscribe to these sites just because you link to them.
There is no such deal you say? More re
Issue with educational system + tax code (Score:4, Interesting)
1. We're hyper competitive about education. A lot of our best and brightest don't enter the workforce until their late 20s. This is killing us as a species. You're biologically supposed to have kids in your 20s. If you have your first kid at 35, your risk of birth defects and development disorders increases drastically. Advanced maternal age causes A LOT of issues and advanced paternal age is strongly linked to autism. If you leave college 8 years later than your parents to get a post doc, by the time you can afford a place big enough to have a kid and not hate your life, you're in your mid-30s. And you've seen your peers have fertility issues, and children with health or development issues...so...most don't have many kids and quite a few just figure...my life is better with disposable income and freedom.
We really need to stop practices like post-docs and encouraging PhDs in fields where they're not needed. These schools aren't teaching much, just exploiting grad students for cheap labor.
2. Recent tax breaks are KILLING us, demographically. Since Reagan especially after George W Bush, Republicans have been very aggressive about tax cuts, which have increased our number of millionaires and billionaires....and for the majority of the wealthy, real estate is their favorite investment vehicle. The USA, Canada, and Australia have HUGE issues with the wealthy hoarding real estate, making it expensive to live. So in my area, housing prices are through the roof. Why? Because I live in a great location and therefore investors snap up building all the time. Since it is just a vehicle for the wealthy to avoid taxes and earn money, no price is too high. We've seen housing prices well over triple in my area....and because they're wealthy, they can buy as many as they can get loans for...so lots of luxury houses in my neighborhood are vacant...either a rarely used second home or just an investment vehicle....with no occupant from what I can tell. The reduced supply means everyone is either commuting for an hour and living far away or living in a much smaller house than their parents raised them in.
Also, when you spend all your money on a mortgage or rent, it leaves little else for raising a kid....but you also have many wealthy in the area who can afford to pay top dollar for child care, so daycare costs are through the roof. And even if you live in a cheap area, the standards for child care have risen in ways that are always more expensive. Everyone has a 'back when we were kids..." story of something that was normal that is considered bad today...for example letting your kids independently leave the house at young age or eat garbage food...not to mention technology is mandatory today. Your kids need some sort of device to complete their homework and be generally normal. Nothing about having children has gotten cheaper in my lifetime.
So yeah, we've spent decades making bad decision after bad decision...and making life suck for all those but those wealthy enough to be top Republican Donors...and huh...who woulda thunk?...people don't want to live in poverty to have children...and those that do stop at 1 or 2.
Want people to have children?...make life suck less. We can do it. France and Sweden and Israel do it and they have much better birthrates than we do.
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Then of course, there is the societal problems afflicting young families. You can't own a home, you cannot have a decent job (so you both get to work your ass off), your healthcare sucks so having a kid will cost a fortune (and thanks to price-inflation it'll continue to cost a mint), you cannot get laid even if you do get married bec
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France and Sweden and Israel do it and they have much better birthrates than we do.
I agree with most of what you say but this is factually incorrect. Sweden has the same (1.7) fertility rate [wikipedia.org] as the US. Metropolitan France is close enough (1.8) to dismiss the difference as statistical noise. Israel does have a much higher rate (2.9) but those numbers are skewed by the Orthodox community (there are locales in New York State with the same disparity) and if you were to subtract them out I wager you'd get numbers similar to other Western countries.
Expecting Israel, there isn't a single Fir
This is GOOD, actually (Score:2, Interesting)
Lowering birthrates is a *good* thing. The world population doubled between about 1800 and 1925. It doubled again by about 1975, and again by today. It can't double many more times before we run out of space to grow food or drown in our own waste. (Some would argue that we're already past that point.) Given that lifespan is increasing due to better medicine, we either need to slow down birthrate or implement some sort of lifespan limits a la Logan's Run.
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Add in a few more tech advances lilely to happen in the next century, and you reach the conclusion that we’re nowhere near the capacity limit.
GOOD in Long Run, Tragic in the Short (Score:2)
That's one way to do it (Score:3)
This is a good thing (Score:2)
Because of this:
https://www.independent.co.uk/... [independent.co.uk]
Self-solving problem. (Score:2)
Most Humane Solution to Overpopulation (Score:3)
A species that finds a habitat with an excess of food and a lack of predators (humans created excess food through agriculture and have no meaningful predators besides other humans) will continue to multiply until disease, a new predator, a lack of resources, or low fertility stops their growth. Population growth must stop eventually. Far better for everyone if that growth is stopped by voluntary falling fertility as opposed to disease, running out of resources, or human predators (i.e. something like a nuclear war).
As to why fertility is falling: I think it's the simple fact that when given a choice most people don't want to have large families. Most people do want to have some children, but most often one or two. Rasing kids is hard. It's expensive. One child can take care of you in old age almost as well as five (usually there's one child that ends up the primary caregiver in that situation anyways).
In any society, there will be some portion of the population that can't have children, don't want children, or are otherwise prevented from having them by circumstance. That leads to a birthrate in the ~1.5ish range once people have a choice. Fertility is generally only dramatically higher than that when birth control is not widely available, meaning people don't have much of a choice (yes, there are ways not to have children without birth control but the practical result of not having it tends to be people having children who didn't really intend to).
Re:Easy reasons (Score:5, Insightful)
Man, the 2016 did a number on the internet... Can't go anywhere without someone pulling republicans or democrats out of his hat to start punching at them.
The article is about birthrates in developed countries, the summary doesn't mention the US once, but OP somehow manages to find a way to blame it on republicans... Impressive.
As for the article itself, as someone else said before me, a "rich" country where both parents have to leave their child behind to go work, is not rich at all. I read somewhere that the number of children is well below the desired number of children, simply because of the cost, but also because of how late the couple starts to feel financially secure enough to support a child.
Supporting population numbers through immigration is just kicking the can down the road, though, since most countries are starting to feel the dent in population growth, and brain drain is a real issue they will have to contend with.
That's because this is an economic problem (Score:2)
Or megadeath (and I don't mean the band). That works too. But it's usually the 1% that set that off and they don't want us breaking their stuff.
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Man, the 2016 did a number on the internet... Can't go anywhere without someone pulling republicans or democrats out of his hat to start punching at them. ...
The article is about birthrates in developed countries, the summary doesn't mention the US once, but OP somehow manages to find a way to blame it on republicans... Impressive
The Supreme Court changing 49 years of standard case law, taking women's rights back decades has a tendency to do that.
The US is mentioned several times -- the US is part of the OECD which is mentioned in the summary, and the US is mentioned in the article.
The person you're criticizing makes two valid points:
1. There is a large cost to having children, and that is preventing people from having them. This is in part supported by the article: "The study found a positive association between female employment r
Re:Easy reasons (Score:4, Insightful)
I mean, solutions to boost birth rates are simple, and they all come down to cash.
* Long paid parental leave
* Subsidies for childcare
* Subsidized / free fertility treatments
Etc. Also cash into fertility research for the infertile.
Does the birth rate matter to you? Pony up.
Re:Easy reasons (Score:5, Insightful)
Sweden has all of those things and has -- wait for it -- the exact same (1.7) birthrate as the United States. Finland has all of those things and a lower (1.4) birthrate. If one looked at the correlation between wealth/education and birthrate, the conclusion would be the exact opposite of yours: Keep people poor and ignorant and they'll breed like rabbits.
Weirdly, once people have education, money, and free choice, they often decide not to spend their best years raising children. My partner and I are happily child free. Our bloodlines die with us. You can call that selfish, we'll be retired one day without future taxpayers paying into the system for us, but meh, not having children is the single most effective thing you can do to reduce your carbon foot print.
Humanity will survive and eventually stabilize at a population considerably less than we have today. The bigger problem in the short term is going to be the economic and cultural impact. The former is coming and the latter is already here if you've been paying attention to the divisive debate about immigration in developed countries.
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Easy - those aren't easy (Score:2)
A consistent position? (Score:2)
The logic of the 'Republican' position is that parents have responsibility for bringing up children and there is no duty on fellow taxpayers to help this happen. That's an entirely reasonable position, even if it is one that is somewhat unfashionable these days.
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Then you also cant complain about the birth rate.
Complain about it then do something about it
We also used to have extended family living with/near us to help out
My closest relative is 75 miles away.
The farthest is 3,000 miles away.
Tough to get someone to help out at midnight for an emergency like that
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Re:A consistent position? (Score:4, Insightful)
Funny...just go back 2-3 decades ago...or maybe a couple more and well....nothing wrong with the birthrate then, and Govt STILL wasn't providing free child.care, etc.
If you want to be closer to family, don't fucking MOVE away from everyone you know?
Sure things are tighter right now, but it hasn't been this bad that long...the pandemic fucked things up a good bit, I'll grant you.
But couples CAN live in states and cities that aren't an arm and a leg for housing or other living costs.
They can sacrifice lifestyle, much like most all parents in the recent past did, in order to have kids and afford to raise them....even with Mom's being housewives at least till the kids got into school....
But no...now, everyone wants the latest "shiny" toy...to keep up with the Joneses....live in big houses, etc.
Behaviors and changes in values have led us to where we are today more than economics....although recent ecomonic factors have piled on top to make things worse.
But one of the basics has been lost:
Being a 2 parent household helped a lot "back in the day"....but the promotion that the single mom can do it all....hasn't helped anyone.
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If you want to be closer to family, don't fucking MOVE away from everyone you know?
People usually need to move to a place with a lower cost of living just to afford a home now. In a lot of communities an economically average person who grew up in that community can't afford a home in that community as an adult. Keeping people's wages stagnant since the '70s has consequences.
Re:A consistent position? (Score:5, Insightful)
The logic of the 'Republican' position is that parents have responsibility for bringing up children and there is no duty on fellow taxpayers to help this happen. That's an entirely reasonable position, even if it is one that is somewhat unfashionable these days.
If that was their only position then I could support it a bit. Unfortunately, it's not. Their position is that women's main purpose in life is to birth babies, no matter what it costs the mother. Her life, sanity and economic future can all be sacrificed just so she'll push out that kid. Even if the kid is brain dead, even if by carrying the child it substantially destroys the health of the mother (both physical and mental), even if by having the child the mother will be trapped in a life of poverty for the rest of her life. Because, somehow, by doing that "society" is better. And no, I'm not making this up. Please see the Texas Republican's defense of their abortion restrictions which has been widely documented. Those idiots claimed that they were "saving" lives when in fact their restrictions actually caused more deaths (Link here: https://www.yahoo.com/news/tex... [yahoo.com] ). To put it mildly, the cold heartedness of their position is staggering.
The other thing is that these restrictions don't affect Upper Middle Class or Rich people. As my father told me growing up "Rich Girls never have unexpected births because Daddy can always send them to a country or clinic to have an abortion". So the hypocrisy here is overwhelming. The clear message here is that Republicans don't want poor people to have choices while they themselves can.
Re: Easy reasons (Score:2)
That can't be it: the financial incentives are very different in other countries ... including huge paternal leave, tax breaks, and free university. But the birth rate still falls.
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The countries with heavy growth are in Africa, Middle East and parts of Asia, not developed countries.
With some luck, the world's population will level off and start to decline at the end of the century. Otherwise, who knows, we might experience what Harry Harrison wrote about in the dystopian science fiction novel Make Room! Make Room!, where overpo
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The agenda is really very easy to understand. If you divert women from being wives and mothers, the entire society unravels.
The only reason men produce excess economic value is to impress women. Without a wife or children, a man has no incentive to achieve. So he produces just enough for himself.
This of course leaves aside the emotional carnage of turning women against men. It destroys the women too, but they aren't the objective.
As the situation worsens, machinery breaks down, infrastructure crumbles, the
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You really are a Neanderthal if you actually believe any of that nonsense. People who take pride in what they do will actually work, not to impress others, but because we WANT to see things improve as a result of our hard work. It is those who only do the bare minimum that think in terms of, "what do I have to do in order to XXXXXX? No more, no less" that end up never getting promoted, or never go the extra mile.
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People who take pride in what they do will actually work, not to impress others, but because we WANT to see things improve as a result of our hard work.
That would be compelling if we didn't have daily evidence of the millions who have checked out and are now doing just enough Doordash to feed themselves and play Call of Duty.
It is those who only do the bare minimum that think in terms of, "what do I have to do in order to XXXXXX? No more, no less" that end up never getting promoted, or never go the extra mile.
Never get promoted? The never get hired in the first place. See recent headlines for proof.
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Goebbels, is that you?
Tell me how feminism is a psyop by the Soviets to destroy western civilization- please, I love that story, mein vater!
You know why I produce excess economic value? Because I like having cool toys. Women are sadly not impressed by my light saber collection or my car (contrary to what I was raised to believe)
I like donating money to causes I think are important.
You're a nasty fucker, and your viewpoint isn't just vile, it's based on a flat out pro
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Ah, yes. The Reich needs mothers.
You don't need critical thinking to see the agenda now. Anything that leads to traditional, secure, happy families is Naziracistfacistsupremacist.
Everything they do has a single goal: stop you from having a happy family.
You know why I produce excess economic value?
Because communists get along with modern HR departments?
Women are sadly not impressed by my light saber collection or my car
Why is that sad? I thought mothers were racistNazi?
You're a nasty fucker, and your viewpoint isn't just vile, it's based on a flat out provably false premise.
Yeah I've heard communists get upset when you talk about happy families. At this point anyone who denies the agenda is doing so deliberately.
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Three bedroom apartments aren't cheap either. Parents don't want to force children to share a bedroom, it's almost considered child abuse now. (boggles my mind how old I am, because shared bedrooms used to be normal)
Re: "rich" countries (Score:2)
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That's bullshit. If someone in the Congo can live on $2 a day .. surely you can live on $185 a day (what childless households are making: https://www.urban.org/sites/de... [urban.org] ). The only difference is that YOU don't want to live like the guy in the Congo. But ironically it's the middle class not having kids. It's because they want to have money and enjoy life and keep up with neighbors. You want your kids to "have everything" .. but don't realize that it doesn't matter and in fact being handed everything cause
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What?
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If you're driving a hundred miles an hour, stopping won't kill you. But stopping abruptly-- hitting a brick wall, say-- will.
Declining population may be good. But dropping the population abruptly will be disruptive.
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Everything they do and say has one goal: to stop you from having a happy family.
What they want is shipwrecked women, wandering men, no children and a broken nation ready for total government control.
This has been the agenda since the first Chinese challenge to American employment all the way back in the early 90s. They've wrecked the Internet, our manufacturing, the space program, the church, our schools, our culture, our civic institutions and our governments.
First they came for your job. Then they came af