Babies and the Macroeconomy 148
Abstract of a paper [PDF] published on National Bureau of Economic Research: Fertility levels have greatly decreased in virtually every nation in the world, but the timing of the decline has differed even among developed countries. In Europe, Asia, and North America, total fertility rates of some nations dipped below the magic replacement figure of 2.1 as early as the 1970s. But in other nations, fertility rates remained substantial until the 1990s but plummeted subsequently.
This paper addresses why some countries in Europe and Asia with moderate fertility levels in 1980s, have become the "lowest-low" nations today (total fertility rates of less than 1.3), whereas those that decreased earlier have not. Also addressed is why the crossover point for the two groups of nations was around the 1980s and 1990s. An important factor that distinguishes the two groups is their economic growth in the 1960s and 1970s. Countries with "lowest low" fertility rates today experienced rapid growth in GNP per capita after a long period of stagnation or decline. They were catapulted into modernity, but the beliefs, values, and traditions of their citizens changed more slowly. Thus, swift economic change may lead to both generational and gendered conflicts that result in a rapid decrease in the total fertility rate.
This paper addresses why some countries in Europe and Asia with moderate fertility levels in 1980s, have become the "lowest-low" nations today (total fertility rates of less than 1.3), whereas those that decreased earlier have not. Also addressed is why the crossover point for the two groups of nations was around the 1980s and 1990s. An important factor that distinguishes the two groups is their economic growth in the 1960s and 1970s. Countries with "lowest low" fertility rates today experienced rapid growth in GNP per capita after a long period of stagnation or decline. They were catapulted into modernity, but the beliefs, values, and traditions of their citizens changed more slowly. Thus, swift economic change may lead to both generational and gendered conflicts that result in a rapid decrease in the total fertility rate.
Short term gains for long term pain (Score:3, Insightful)
The economic gains occurred when the workforce was doubled by encouraging women to get jobs instead of families.
That makes balance sheets look good in the short term and only has the minor downside of extinction-level fertility rates and a long term outcome indistinguishable from genocide.
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A broad and highly successful propaganda campaign painting men as evil, marriage as slavery, and approaching girls as harassment.
Preferential hiring of women and preferential college admission for women resulting in women, who don't want men who make less than them, having more money.
Telling women and girls that they don't need self-improvement.
Telling girls and boys that there is one True Love that will drop out of the sky just for them instead of the re
Re:Short term gains for long term pain (Score:5, Interesting)
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What if women live longer and collect more in old age so your reasoning only applies to grannies?
Lifetime net taxes paid by gender (Score:5, Informative)
There is research from New Zealand on this.
The Distribution of Income and Fiscal Incidence by Age and Gender: Some Evidence from New Zealand
Aziz, Omar; Gemmell, Norman; Laws, Athene
https://ir.wgtn.ac.nz/handle/1... [wgtn.ac.nz]
Refer to Figure 16 on page 21.
- Men starting paying more in taxes than they receive in government spending at age 24. Men pay much more in taxes than they receive in government spending for 40 years until age 65.
- Women receive more in government spending for 45 years, then barely pay their way in taxes for 20 years; and then receive more in government spending for the rest of their life
At one level, the current birth rate focus by economists, government, business leaders, NGOs is about keeping government's funded and if the higher taxpaying half of society reduces labor and the taxes they pay, the other half will have to pay their half of government spending.
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I don't think those graphs are showing quite what you think, since they are based on prevailing wages and do not account for differences in salary between men and women.
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The cumulative graphs show taxes paid by gender versus government spending received by gender throughout their lifespan.
Women barely pay their own way for 20 years out of age 0 to 65.
Men pay their own way for 40 years out of 0 to 65 and also pay taxes to subsidize women for 20 of those women's adult years
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In Scandinavia you see sex-based differences in group averages and in the US those same measurements show both sex-based and race-based differences in group averages
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I've seen claims to the contrary stating that there is a small difference in the average and a significant difference in standard deviation.
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More at the top and more at the bottom, and the effects on earnings are not symmetrical. Once somebody is cognitively deficient enough to be considered a ward of the state the amount of resources they require to survive remains more or less constant with diminishing IQ but on the other end of the curve income potential does not have an corresponding cap.
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The difference in the average is there and soundly proven. The reason is that women, on average, have a smaller motor-cortex and that comes with worse skills thinking in 3D. This is also the main and probably only reason that women's brains are, on average, a bit lighter. Since IQ tests usually include 3D thinking tasks, women score a bit worse on them overall. As far as I know, no other differences. Hence for most things, that a bit lower IQ does not matter at all.
No idea about the standard deviations, but
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I watched a guy from Scandinavia doing a interview recently, and talking about these topics. One fact that blew me away was that on average men are overall contributors to the welfare state over their lives, and women, on average, receive 1.3 million (he said dollars - not sure what currency precisely) from the welfare state over their lifetime. He had two points... 1) by and large men are OK with this when polled, but 2) this reduced one of the primary reasons women would have been seeking to partner up with a male partner in the past... extra resources. If the state is forcibly transferring wealth from men to women (on average), then when women look around at potential mates, those men no longer look as high status as they used to. Women are repeatedly saying they can't find men that meet their standards, one of which is a six-figure income, and men are like... come on!
How about you do us a solid and post the link?
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As if all women care about is money while men are some kind of enlightened souls who care for nothing superficial when choosing mates.
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That's not my experience. In my own experience making more than the woman has rarely been important as long as I make a decent wage and wont be a burden for the woman and that's what I see amongst the people I know as well.
Then again if you live in a more conservative part of the country then I do you likely have people with more conservative opinions on the role of a woman and man in a relationship. I can imagine there are a lot of conservative ladies who want all of the expectations feminism has brought t
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when I have watched interviews with these young women it is clear that they mostly seem to have no idea of what a reasonable, fresh out of university salary might be.
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Well, they were told they could be whatever they wanted (mostly true), and then were dumb enough to decide they wanted to be the wives of "666" type men (pretty much the exception).
Not that much of a surprise. About half of all idiots are women and there are plenty of idiots around.
Re:Short term gains for long term pain (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, the issues the OP mentioned affect everyone, not just men. I can't even count the number of young women who have recently stated that their lives have improved after they started considering men's perspectives and issues in addition to women's. Whether we like it or not, we're all in this together and the sooner we start acting like it, the better our shared existence will be.
Re: Short term gains for long term pain (Score:2)
I generally vote Democratic, but they are going to lose on the national level if the main message getting to voters is of identity politics. Addressing social injustice is what you do AFTER you get into power. Actually getting elected is the prerequisite to all other agendas.
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I can't even count the number of young women who have recently stated that their lives have improved after they started considering men's perspectives and issues in addition to women's.
Who is saying this and where are they saying it?
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Re:Short term gains for long term pain (Score:5, Insightful)
These pronatalism arguments are such bullshit. These "fertility level" studies only deal with economic consequences, not the survival of the species. The human race is in no danger of going extinct due to birthrates. We can kill ourselves with greater success in many other ways, thank you very much.
The economic model relying on parabolic fertility rates, on the other hand...
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That obviously doesn't mean that the species will die and nobody is predicting that.
But there's lots of world level forecasting that forecasted 10 billion and 50 billion people on the planet and now all of that seems unlikely. Now we also have to figure out why, because none of it actually makes sense.
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Re:Short term gains for long term pain (Score:4, Insightful)
For 6 years the world has teetered on birth rate falling under replacement rate. Almost for sure it will fall below that. That obviously doesn't mean that the species will die and nobody is predicting that. But there's lots of world level forecasting that forecasted 10 billion and 50 billion people on the planet and now all of that seems unlikely. Now we also have to figure out why, because none of it actually makes sense.
Or we're finally at a point where nature is forcing us back off the cliff-edge we were sprinting towards when it comes to population. We all know there are too many people, yet the fear of economic collapse if we dare back away from the "everything grows always forever and ever amen" approach has the media shrieking about population collapse as the ultimate evil. We're not collapsing. We're backing away from exponential population growth. A small tapering in the ridiculous rates of population growth that the prognosticators wanted to see in order to support forever growth economic model isn't a species on the brink. It's a species beginning a long overdue correction.
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A small tapering in the ridiculous rates of population growth that the prognosticators wanted to see in order to support forever growth economic model isn't a species on the brink. It's a species beginning a long overdue correction.
Exactly. Hopefully not too late. That unfortunately remains to be seen.
Re:Short term gains for long term pain (Score:5, Insightful)
One thing I found fascinating about the Mouse Utopia experiments is that, even when they took the mice out of their fucked up environment and into a better one, the damage was already done and the mice refused to reproduce.
Of course, they're mice and we're people, but the fundamental idea remains. If the environment isn't encouraging for reproduction, improving the environment doesn't suddenly make the individuals want to have children, not after they have spent the entirety of their youth and early adulthood thinking that having children is a negative.
Also don't forget that what the loss of fertility means isn't a proportional loss of the population, it means that we will have 9 billion old people and 1 billion working ones to support them. If economic stress is what's preventing people from having children, it will only continue to get worse as the years pass until a fundamental solution is found.
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A punk band in the 80s sang along the lines: "kill a retired one for the benefit of the state" (sorry for the rough translation). Sometimes I joke it may become a sustainable solution. After all, we are living longer, and economically speaking the elderly are becoming a large expenditure for many nations. Families not only are taking care of the children, also for the elders.
Hey, if we can keep pushing the generational hate like we have here in the US for the last couple decades, we may just have a socially sourced way to right-size the elderly population in an few years. Granted, the boomers own a lot of guns, but us GenXers may be fair game. And probably deserve it. I mean, we did participate in the extravagance of the 1980s.
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White people are terrified of becoming a minority.
Bullshit, if that was the case they would be breading like rabbits its the obvious solution to the problem.
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"they would be breading like rabbits"
Rabbit, lightly breaded and pan-fried. Yum.
History - India's forcing sterilization of men (Score:2)
History
he UN has multiple rounds of programs since the 1960s to lower India's birth rate.
India has used a declared emergency lead by Indira Ganhdi, the daughter of India leader Nheru, for mass forced sterilization of men, often in life-threatening unsanitary conditions.
India forced sterilization of men - "The Emergency" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
- 1975 to 1977 when Prime Minister Indira Gandhi declared a state of emergency across the country by citing internal and external threats
- The order bestowed
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Freedom and independence are good things, and that goes equally for men and women.
There is *no going back* to a world where women don't have the opportunities to get an education and a job if they want. That ship has sailed, that world is gone, and we aren't going to fix any birthrate problems by trying to bring it back. That's a fool's errand. The only way forward is to embrace equality of opportunity and find a way to adapt our cultural and legal framework to work with it.
For starters, we can update va
Family laws and fixing them for families (Score:5, Interesting)
The decreasing birth rate and increasing percentage of people never having a child will continue largely until laws and the legal system are changed to be more equal before marriage, during marriage, and post-divorce with equal treatment of both halves of the marriage and, if any, the children.
The driving force in unequal treatment is due to Title IV which gives government a profit motive to split families apart - the foster care part, and after divorce - the child support.
Each of those gives the state, county and local government direct cash payments from the federal government for each child put into foster care and each dollar of child support collected. The state, county and local governments try to maximize their revenue from this program and claim to work in the 'best interests of the child' as a cover.
Family courts are discussed as a revenue generating center in government reports.
Read the transcript or listen to the interview: https://www.wypr.org/show/midd... [wypr.org]
Injustice, Inc.- How America’s Justice System Commodifies Children and the Poor
Daniel Hatcher
https://www.ucpress.edu/books/... [ucpress.edu]
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The driving force in unequal treatment is due to Title IV which gives government a profit motive to split families apart
That reason that sounds crazy is because it's crazy. That's not *the* driving force; it may not be a significant factor.
Hatcher's work is primarily about the how system's that are intended to avoid the cycle of poverty are instead being exploited and continue to exacerbate the cycle. I will be very surprised if you can ANYTHING in his publications or other's that supports your claim about
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Corrected: No transcript, only the 19 minute audio interview is available.
The declining birth rate is partially due to multi-generational government policies of splitting families apart and keeping them apart to increase state, county and legal government revenue. Once a poor person gets in the foster care, juvenile offender system, or child support system they face fines, fees, court costs, etc. which trap them with a large debt owed to the family court and that follows them for years affecting their ed
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100% Bullshit.
Stagnant wages and inflation lead to women having to work. Gone are the days you could land a job out of high school and eventually be able to support a family on a single income.
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There's a big difference between population reduction by murder and population reduction by the aggregate of free personal choices. It's as different as being Tutsi in Rwanda in 1994 and being a young double income couple in current-day Japan. Both countries have problems but the nature of the problems and solutions are different.
Many economic behaviors are driven by marginal rates. If you look at fertility rates in a country by household income, it's a U shaped curve, with households with less than $50k
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extinction-level fertility rates
And here we see nicely that you are lying scum. There are no "extinction level" fertility rates until a human population drops below 100'000 or so members. We are _very_ far removed from that. Even with global (!) 1.3, and, say, 10M global for only some communities above 100k being left and 20 years per generation, this would take > 500 years to reach. If that happens, we can begin to talk about the problem. Before? Only deranged fanatics would make claims like yours.
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Well if you think women can think for themselves then what about the millennia where they thought for themselves and decided to stay home and have children?
Of course that was men oppressing women because why would anyone value being loved over earning an income /sarcasm. Women did not somehow become smarter around the 1980s. Before then there was social pressure from society that includes both men and women to stay home and look after children, now there is social and economic pressure to go out and get a j
Re: Short term gains for long term pain (Score:2)
Women historically had children AND worked. The period of time in which it became common to just be a stay at home mom came in after the industrial revolution. The idea that people have so much wealth they can be supported by a single income is a very modern concept.
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Right, because everyone can just decide to not work. The sad reality is that yes, we do tell them what to do, and in that regard they are no different than men. I wish it was as simple as bigotry, because then it would be easier to fix.
Re: Short term gains for long term pain (Score:2)
They did in fact do what we asked them to, it was wartime and they went to work because we pressured them into it so we could win the war after first helping Hitler rise to power by selling him fuel and other war supplies.
Then they didn't want to stop working when they got a taste of freedom.
If we had just entered the war when it started none of that would have happened, or at least not in the same numbers, but some already rich people wouldn't have gotten richer.
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What if we teach children to think for themselves?
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But we don't, and we never did.
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Sure...present to women via the media, etc that independence, jobs, etc...can be good.
But also...promote as positive, the notions of being a Mom...maybe even a stay at home mom while children are young and in the formative years as an important and fulfilling part of our society?
We've, as a culture, in the past few decades not only NOT promoted this as a positive life path...we've gone out of our way to say it is a BAD thing, oppression....etc.
No one
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Why not present BOTH sides of the picture as positive?
Sure...present to women via the media, etc that independence, jobs, etc...can be good.
But also...promote as positive, the notions of being a Mom...maybe even a stay at home mom while children are young and in the formative years as an important and fulfilling part of our society?
We've, as a culture, in the past few decades not only NOT promoted this as a positive life path...we've gone out of our way to say it is a BAD thing, oppression....etc.
The problem is that corporations and government both continue policies and laws that punish women for being moms. Theoretically women can have children without negative impacts to their career. However, in reality, they cannot. In the past, women were pushed to accept the sacrifice of worse careers due to bearing children via ideology and the paucity of good career opportunities. The problem is that now the ideology is no longer credible and the good career opportunities are somewhat more available. Th
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Some find out how to do this themselves. The about 10-15% "independent thinkers" in the human race come from that. There seems to be no real correlation with education, though. No surprise, education is about teaching conformity. There are quite a few highly intelligent and capable people around that could not stand it and terminated their formal education early.
Re:Short term gains for long term pain (Score:5, Insightful)
Ah, yes, I remember my school textbook!
Chapter 1: Men Are Pigs ...
Chapter 2: Don't Have Children
Chapter 3: Having A Husband Sucks
Chapter 4: Only Your Career Matters
Anyway, what was I saying? Oh yeah - hooray for genocide! Not being forced by society to be a broodmare is the same thing as rounding people up in trains and sending them off to death camps! Fuck humanity! Wooooo! Let's bring back the 1960s! I want banks to demand permission from my husband before I can get a credit card! Domestic violence should be a private manner between a husband and his chattel once again! Spousal rape will be an oxymoron once again! Aw yeah, bring back the good ol' days!
Look, you utter potato, nobody brainwashed women and convinced us, hey, wouldn't it be grand to actually be treated as an actual human being, with equal opportunities as your fellow human beings. There was a fight for every right gained, one at a time, against resistance that came from, and still come, overwhelmingly from men.
And can I add that there was nothing historically "normal" about the 1950s atomic family even in western society? The "male breadwinner, female housewife" situation was not even a plurality scenario in the US until WWI, and didn't become common until the 1950s (where it was slowly overtaken by dual-income families) (and even at its peak, only 50% of women were out of the workforce). Before WWI, and increasingly the further back you go, was the "corporate family". For the vast majority of people, there was a "family business" which was passed down from generation to generation, and everyone in the family - both parents and all children old enough to do so - worked in the business. Different people may tend to have different roles in the business, but everyone did income-earning work.
(I certainly don't want to glorify that timeperiod, either, because rights were *even worse* then, and the struggles were on things like "the right to vote" and "making it illegal for husbands to freely beat their wives"). Even in the 1950s it was majority sentiment among men in the US that it was morally justifiable for them to physically punish their wives to keep them in line (see for example Aidala 1958, "If a woman needs it, should she be spanked?"). The fact that half of women weren't in the workplace and didn't have career qualifications to fall back on, or even the legal right to their own bank account without their husband's signature, kept them forced to tolerate such abuse.
And to loop back to the beginning: no, humanity is not going extinct (it's actually projected to rise and then roughly level off at around 10 1/2B to 2100), though I do understand that the fact that the median skin tone will be somewhat darker by 2100 terrifies you. Nor is there some sort of "shortage of humans" on the planet. Nor is the demographic shift in any way devastating (it's a couple tenths of a percent per year hit to GDP growth). It's most hilarious to hear this atitudes from "Imminent AI God" people like Elon Musk. Dude, you believe that AI, not humans, will be inventing everything in the future - what exactly do you need so many people for? You believe that robots will be doing all the work, not people - the *fewer* the people, the *more* resources per capita become directed to them.
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>hooray for genocide! Not being forced by society to be a broodmare is the same thing as rounding people up in trains and sending them off to death camps! Fuck humanity!
I'm sorry about your brain injury. I hope we can get single payer healthcare in place so everyone can get help for serious ailments like that can get treatement, not just the wealthy. Keep your head up, eh?
>Let's bring back the 1960s! I want banks to demand permission from my husband before
Re: Short term gains for long term pain (Score:3)
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You're not even worth the time of a personal response . I'll let Claude do it.
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Historical Banking and Credit Claims:
The author's explanation of women's credit restrictions is oversimplified and historically inaccurate. While joint liability existed, the restrictions on women's credit access were primarily rooted in gender discrimination. The Equal Credit Opportunity Act wasn't passed until 1974 specifically because banks were discriminating against women regardless of their financial status or their husba
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The old selection bias, of course there are examples of men that do that. Of course you are like that because you are a man and you deserve to be judged by the actions of other men. If I find 5 cases of women killing someone in the world then I am free to treat them all like murders right?
The first one Gisele Pelicot was the only one that initially challenged my view of the world how could this guy find 50 men to rape his wife and not one of them report him, it seemed insanely odd. This was not until I re
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The person you responded to is not interested in facts. Misandrists are the same scum as misogynists. Only that they are even more stupid.
Selection bias also (Score:2)
Examples of women and crimes committed.
Elanor Williams - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
https://www.kplctv.com/2024/07... [kplctv.com]
https://people.com/georgia-mot... [people.com]
https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/20... [cnn.com]
https://www.cnn.com/2017/07/06... [cnn.com]
And then there is the case where an 11 year old boy was groomed, r*ped, and the woman rapist gave birth to a child. The woman who r*aped the 11 year old boy was able to get child support because somehow the Kansas supreme court found that he 'could consent' to fathering a child at 11 year
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All men are evil because some (few) are? Here is news for you: There are women murderers, torturers, even rapists as well. Carefully done studies show that in the west, women lead on domestic violence in some countries. Hence, by your logic, all women are evil just the same as men.
Either your logic applies or it does not. You cannot have it both ways.
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See Tom Nicolas' recent essay Baby Bust: Why Conservatives are Obsessed with Birth Rates Now [youtube.com]. He makes a convincing case that while fertility rates are not a tempest in a tea cup, that the increased hyperventilation about them is a distraction from just the sorts of issues you allude to.
Not really, it's the voting base and daughters (Score:2)
It doesn't really hit either political party as a topic worthy of discussing until
- They start losing their voter base and existing voting base's loyalty to the party
- Their daughters have a harder time finding partners who meet all of the 'marriage material' requirements, and those that do have options
South Korea still socially conservative (Score:2)
https://www.straitstimes.com/l... [straitstimes.com]
Despite their abysmally-low birth rates, they're still miffed over an unmarried model having a child out of wedlock.
Conspicuous by its absence (Score:2, Offtopic)
The paper implies that the decreases in birthrate are entirely a result of economic, social, cultural, and religious factors. While I can easily believe that these factors are responsible for the majority of the decrease, I can't help wondering about the contribution of environmental factors.
Recently we've been hearing a lot about the biological effects - and the ubiquity - of microplastics in various human tissues and organs. Could it be that women are now less likely to conceive, because the plastics have
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Microplastics also aren't new in this kind of timescale.
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The paper starts out sus.
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My university research account was the source of funding for this project. The views expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.
NBER working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not been peer-reviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official NBER publications.
```
OK, you're a Harvard researcher but you published using an
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Re: Conspicuous by its absence (Score:2)
In my small non scientific view of the world, it aeems to me that the reasons are essentially social and economic. People want to give their kids the best life. Raising kids and sending them to college is stupidly expensive. So people opt to have fewer kids but make sure they are well talen care of.
Anthropology course (Score:5, Interesting)
Just recently going through an Anthropology course [youtube.com] at Stanford, which is largely an historical overview of culture from the point of view of fertility.
The Lecture 11 [youtube.com] and Lecture 12 [youtube.com] are on point and give a good overview of aspects of fertility in the world today.
From that course, the underlying reasons for changes in fertility are a complete unknown. Changes in fertility happened in Europe over the last 200 years, there was a massive study (described as part of the course) that went through all the countries and localities in Europe looking at all the historical evidence, and lots of hypotheses were put forward... none of which turned out to be correct.
As cultures advance, fertility drops and we just don't know why.
Another tidbit from the course: when fertility drops, people are less open to the idea of immigration. It appears that when you have a low birthrate, people worry about diluting their culture with too many people from another culture. (Probably a deeply held biological imperative, although note that he didn't say that in the course lecture.)
He also outlines various ways people have tried to address and mitigate low fertility, the various ways have little effect and varying costs to society. For example, tax incentives to have more children.
A previous lecture talked about the industrial revolution, but pointed out that the revolution didn't change the average standard of living. The IR had been going for 80 years before standard of living began to change for most people.
And finally, the lectures talk about the various changes that will happen. For example, we will be transitioning to a culture of older people and Japan and Germany will probably get there first and we can see how they handle it.
The lecture series is pretty interesting, recommended for anyone who wants an explanation of why things are the way they are.
(The bit about land ownership in medieval Europe as a way to limit fertility was particularly interesting.)
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As cultures advance, fertility drops and we just don't know why.
People realize they no longer need a dozen free workers on the family farm. That and children are time consuming and expensive.
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That was probably one of the hypotheses tested and wasn't supported.
Re: Anthropology course (Score:2)
Beyond just "free workers" we've shifted from societies where children are expected to care for their elders directly to societies where elder care is "outsourced." The issue is the economic cost of elder care is still tied deeply to the birth rate, but that individual link is broken. So if you're young now you are trained to expect that all you need are resources and you can "rent" care from someone else's offspring when you age. Of course we're finding both the resources set aside and the system as a whol
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It's extremely obvious why the fertility rate drops.
Women are empowered to control their fertility, and no longer pressured to stay in bad relationships. A single parent on an average wage can no longer raise a family, and all the advice is to not have more children than you can afford. The future is bleak, with climate change and many countries in political decline (actual or imagined by press that has got better at scaring us).
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We don't know why?? Seriously?
https://www.bps.org.uk/psychol... [bps.org.uk]
Why would an adult wants to spend a lot of time with a 3- or 13-year old instead of other adults (or even pets)?
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Real estate prices ... (Score:2)
Fertility levels have greatly decreased in virtually every nation in the world, ...
In my neck of the woods the biggest problem is older generations voting to maximise real estate prices with the result that younger people don't really have a way to easily get into the market. Every time somebody wants to launch an effort to incentivise the construction of affordable housing the over 40 brigade shows up and votes in even higher real estate prices.
The problem is automation (Score:4, Interesting)
Our policy makers in politicians saw this coming in the '90s and as a short-term solution they try to ship this to a service sector economy. I guess the idea was we'd all have jobs providing services to each other. The problem is without that base of good paying manufacturing jobs there aren't a lot of people that can afford to hire anyone for services. You can train up all the plumbers you want if people can't afford to hire a plumber they're not going to have much work.
We've got a major disaster coming when the baby boomers die off because they're the only ones with any disposable income. And it looks like they're going to take it with them. They're either spending it all or having it sucked out of them by the United States health care system. Other more civilized countries might see a bit of that money get passed on to the next generation since they have proper and functioning health care systems though...
Basically low paying service sector jobs like driving for Uber eats isn't going to keep our economy functional. It doesn't matter how many kids you drop we just don't need this many people and we have more people than we need.
A little while ago Elon Musk came out with the backing of Donald Trump and called for a massive increase in the number of high skilled work visas, specifically H1B. He tried making the argument that they would always be more jobs created. The entire internet called him on his bullshit.
We know we're running out of work we just don't know what to do about it
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We've got a major disaster coming when the baby boomers die off because they're the only ones with any disposable income. And it looks like they're going to take it with them.
I've yet to hear of someone taking their money with them when they die. Being buried with money encourages grave robbery. I suppose they could have their money cremated.
Spending money is a transfer of wealth.
It's a figure of speech (Score:2)
The problem is they're spending the money on "experiences", e.g. things like RVs and fancy nights out and gambling at casinos. The money flows a bit but there are also large amounts of resources being used up as well as a lot of that money just flowing to the top and staying there.
And of course healthcare costs just eat up the money. It ends up in the bank of a
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You know that wasn't always true right? There was a time when a high school diploma got you a wife, 3 kids and a nice house...
Re: The problem is automation (Score:5, Interesting)
The biggest lie in modern politics is the existence of the middle class. There is a middle ground statistically But politically, there are only two classes. Those who have to work, the working class; and those who don't have to work; the rich.
The middleclass provided a great amorphous class of people for politicians to leverage "The middle class is suffering because the poor is taking their taxes in welfare programs". "The real problem is that some leople are not working enough". It is all bullshit the lroblem is modern american politics is that the rich have been raiding the working class for decades.
They made up a poorly defined middle class to keep everyone thinking that they are doing too poorly because they are middle class and the real problem is downstairs. That way we don't look up as much.
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Children used to be cheap labor ... (Score:5, Interesting)
... now they are ultra-expensive pets.
Urbanisation & Mechanisation leads to employing children to be less and less feasible, turning them into a notable cost-factor above all else.
The first-world has childrens rights for the sole reason that we can _afford_ it.
Point in case: I'm a Gen-X and did performing arts in the 90ies and now I do web-coding to earn some decent money. That is - on the broad scale of things - a _very_ marginal job and a exception to the general population. My daughter is now 27, a millenial. She's basically still doing self-discovery (while living well within her means and doing useful ecological work). Something like our lives was unthinkable for the vast majority of humans only 2 centuries ago.
We've already crossed the line of more obese than undernurished humans. A feat that should've been epic prime time news when it happened.
There is no economic pressure to push out babies anymore and enough reproduction management to even prevent the few remaining pregnancies.
If we want more babies, producing them has to become a value in itself. For that we likely need some new female motherhood/fertility/matriarchy cult. Sadly, contemporary feminism is completely failing at precisely that, turning this whole feminism thing into an hilarious oxymoron about to die out. I personally strongly feel it's going to be up to men once again to focus on women ready to become mothers and ignore the rest, because to me it doesn't look like the ladies are going to figure this out before time is up. ... Just my impression anyway.
This is a good thing (Score:5, Insightful)
Endless growth is impossible
We need steady-state sustainability
Translation: some countries (Score:2)
I can see 2 causes: real estate and right-wing (Score:2)
Firstly to have a baby a woman usually would like to have a supporting partner, not right-wing patriarchy fan considering his rudeness and lack of manners as fight for freedom of speech against political correctness ...
Secondly you need some room and some time to have a baby comfortably... instead you work overtime just to pay high interest on a tiny appartment mortgage...
Not something making you romantically dreaming about bringing baby into...
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I don't see this trend reversing (Score:2)
I don't see this trend reversing because people are realizing that having kids is expensive, hard work, and frequently unrewarding. (The "frequently unrewarding" part is something most people know but that is taboo to mention.)
I have three kids and I doubt any of them will have kids. I don't blame them.
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This is the tough part - telling your kids it's ok to opt out of reproduction without them inferring they themselves are unwanted.
I'm dead no matter what, so upon reflection I really shouldn't have cared about having my particular genes still active in the biosphere. If my kids want extra time and money to enjoy life without kids of their own, all the power to them.
Optimal world population (Score:3, Insightful)
2.1 every one knows the US is #1 (Score:2)
Its the distribution of consumption (Score:2)
Political Issue based Industry and Jobs (Score:2)
Speculation: There are millions (tens of millions?) of people whose entire job depends on the narrative that there is a catastrophe due to some combination of
Population growth ...
- Consuming ever more energy
- Polluting more
- Consuming ever more food
- Loss of agricultural lands and lower production from over used farm fields
- Social ills from overcrowding
- Increased stress levels, mental health crisis
-
The political types, bureaucrats, academic researchers, nonprofits, government agencies, NGOs, UN, World Ban
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Women are far more interested in taking pictures of their assholes and posting them on AssforWelfareMoney.com now.
If you look at FIGURE 2: Total fertility rates across four countries and the world, 1950 to 2022 in the PDF [nber.org], or Figure 1 for that matter, the time dependence of decline doesn't seem to tie in to the popularity of that website (or anything like it). The similarity of the declines in China, with its One Child Policy, and Mexico (no government action on the same scale AFAIK) is interesting.
Back in September you left [slashdot.org] Slashdot with some choice words. Why are you back?
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A minus one score for stating the blindly obvious. There's also the decline in sperm count caused by hormone-disrupting chemicals found in plastics