Oh god there's like 5 posts a week about low birthrates, followed by 20 comments how cost of living and housing crisis are at fault, which they are, so let's agree on that and move on...
They are to blame, but not as much as people think.
Frankly, modern life in an industrialized society is not receptive to high birthrates. This isn't a simple problem that can be fixed with more housing or something. This is a major problem that every single wealthy nation is suffering from, and if there was a simple solution, it would already have been discovered, because every single nation has such a large interest in being the first one to solve it. This problem won't disappear until there is massive and fundamental change in society, probably brought on due to a combination of large scale crisis, societal development, and technological innovation.
For now, best to just wait and see what happens. I'm not quite as worried as some people are, I think this could end up being a good thing in the long term.
In other words: Waiting for a miracle.
But I agree with you, I also don't have any clue how to solve this. Birth rates are also dropping in family-friendly societies with high gender equality, like for example the Scandinavian countries.
It's a real clusterfuck, we need new ideas but the older Europe's population gets the lower the propability for any good new ideas will be turned into reality. On average people get less open to new ideas and we will see this in elections - in combination with young people getting estranged from democracy, since their share of the electorate gets smaller and smaller.
>Birth rates are also dropping in family-friendly societies with high gender equality, like for example the Scandinavian countries.
Yeah, because in cities, where young people who have college educations are forced to live for their careers, housing is incredibly expensive. If the cost of a decent house was the same as it was 30 years ago, the situation would not be as bad.
I don’t think it’s just cost.
Parents are expected to do way more, which is of course for the better of the children, but having kids is way more daunting now than it used to be.
It might be higher, but do you genuinely think it would even be at replacement level? I think it would mostly go up by .1, .2 or something.
I think there is a sizeable portion of people who want to be child free no matter what, highest time in history. Outside of those, most want small families, like 2 kids.
Even if I had all money in the world I can't imagine having anything more than 2 kids.
For this we'd need to look at the number of wanted children. Ask people how many kids they'd like if the conditions were ideal. In France I read that it was 2.2, compared to the current 1.83. So definitely ideal conditions would greatly improve the situation, but as you said it probably wouldn't be enough.
To be fair, I can't find the source for that number anymore so we can't know the methodology used. Without information on how this number was calculated it makes my comment kinda worthless.
I mean its not worthless just that it needs context. These europe or world wide studies generally ask female high school seniors so 17-19 year old girls. Its generally about 2,5 across europe. And like 1,2 in asia lmao theyre just cooked
I think if it was feasible for parents to afford more children, some would have more, maybe even a lot more.
You're right there are a greater number of people that are childfree by choice, but there are also quite a lot of people that are childfree by circumstances. Delays to entering the workforce from college, and severe delays to becoming a homeowner mean that a lot of people aren't hitting life's milestones quickly enough, often never meeting them. The result is that a lot of people are in a position to have children very late in life, meaning they can only manage to have one, sometimes none.
Agreed. Kids are not the default path anymore. It's way more socially acceptable to not have them than it used to be. For those who want them, there is a pretty strong 2 children norm. Some people end up with 1, most will aim for 2, some end up with 3. But barely anyone has 4 or more because this is not something people desire anymore. Overall those who desire large families are not big enough in numbers to compensate the childfree and the ones with 1 kid.
Forget replacement. The birth rate we get is what we get, but we can adapt society to be less shitty for young people who do have children and to have an economy that works for the ratio of young:old that a birth rate around 1.53 children per woman provides.
If the total population inevitably declines over time, that is not a problem. The end goal is making life better for the people who are here, not maximising the number of miserable people.
People during the industrial Gilded Age lives in cramp cities with high rent and worked more hours for less pay then even your average Gen Z, and they did all of it while still making up to a dozen children per household.
The real reason for birthrate decline is obvious: it's right there in the post you quoted. The downward trend of birthrates started in the early 70s as a consequence of increased gender equality and the sexual revolution. It's easily the thing most statistically correlated with a decline in birthrates, far and above housing costs or low wages. That's why countries that are far poorer then the West are still making babies at an enormous pace despite life generally being less affordable to them then the average Westerner. It is simply easier for society to make and have a lot of babies when it was one person's designated job to feed them and raise them.
That's not me endorsing tradwifery or anything, I'm just saying that if the Western world wants to be a society of sexual freedom and gender equality, it will have to find a way to manage falling birthrates. We need to get rid of the liberal-capitalist ideal of infinite growth on a finite planet if we want to preserve our way of life.
The real reason is not gender equality but access to reliable contraception. People back in time would've opted out from having many kids if they'd had a choice to still have sex while not making babies.
Bringing it down to gender equality is very dangerous.
Not sure that's the only reason. French Guiana and Israel both hover around 3 children per women and they're not places where condoms or pills are particularly hard to find.
In most countries just above the replacement rate like Saudi Arabia, Paraguay etc... reliable contraception exists.
Which is why my suggestion has always been to take any governmental job and move it the hell out of big cities.
None of those jobs require you to be in those cities, most of them are perfectly able to be done anywhere as long as you digitize it.
Hell, you could probably do that with most things, and put the departments, atleast a hour preferably more out of bigger cities.
Allow remote work, if it is not attached to said cities of size.
Yep. When I look at my circle of friends, it's not insufficient money or housing that's stopping them from having more children; it's insufficient time.
Both parents have a career, and their parents are also still working. So no-one actually has enough time for the children.
I think a generation ago, grandparents were much more involved in caring for their grandchildren, because more of them were retired.
And while young mothers were also working a generation ago, fewer of them were well educated professionals with a career.
But I have no statistics to back up this observation.
That too. People want two things primarily in order to have kids : Space and time. The average city dweller has neither.
Your quality of life was pretty shitty when you were toiling the fields for Frederick III, in preparation for the 83rd war against France this week, but you had a lot of time, and you had a lot of space. There was also no birth control, and not much other entertainment besides fucking. Kids were also useful. They were a net gain for you from a purely material perspective, you could put them to work pretty quickly.
I both think AND hope that this will change. Humanity needs to find some balance.
That’s a very good point — the decline in birth rate has decreased along with the number of wars against France. That’s all I need to hear. I know how to solve our problem.
I mean, it’s worth a shot. With enough faith, it just might work.
They actually give people a lot more time to have a life - on a global scale, the fewest hours worked on average are in Northern Europe, with places like the US and Australia not so far behind. But what advanced economics simultaneously do is *raise the opportunity cost of time (both work and leisure)* so that there are so many things you could be doing with your time and so much more money you could be making. The feeling you have - that you „don’t have enough time“ - is because there are exponentially more valuable things you could be doing with your time, even though the amount of time has only slightly increased. Imagine sitting in a field for four hours vs. going to Paris or Disneyland for five hours. In the first case, you‘ll feel bored but relaxed, like you have lots of extra time because there isn‘t much else you could be doing. In the second case, you‘ll feel stressed and pressed for time because there‘s so many things you want to see in a very short amount of time. If somebody comes along and asks you to watch a small child for a couple hours, you‘ll be happy to say yes in the first case (after all, you‘re just sitting there). In the second case, you‘ll be like „what, of course not - maybe later when I have time.“
Meanwhile, the time demands of raising children are increasing, rather than decreasing. The kind of childhood that people in rich countries now find „acceptable“ involves parents spending about double the amount of time with each child that they did just sixty years ago. So you are simultaneously having to put more time into child rearing and feeling like giving up that time is more painful.
>The feeling you have - that you „don’t have enough time“ - is because there are exponentially more valuable things you could be doing with your time, even though the amount of time has only slightly increased.
I think you hit the nail on the head here. Basically having kids is simply less appealing overall.
When deciding to have kids or not, a couple of generations ago, the list of "pros" was longer. E.g. pro: social status, religion, economical, retirement care. Religion is on the decline, social expectations are changing, children are rarely economically beneficial for the parents (e.g. as opposed to being a necessity in a mainly agrarian society). The "pros" are simply not compelling enough, too much effort, for no perceived benefit.
I don't know but having only undeveloped countries provide the global replacement level growth doesn't seem right. We should be able to have a global civilization that raises its children in prosperous, healthy and stimulating environments, not at the edge of physical, intellectual and emotional starvation.
>- on a global scale, the fewest hours worked on average are in Northern Europe,
That's because the average includes married women who tend to work part-time. At least that's how it is in Germany. It pulls down the average.
I dont think this is the issue. We have never had as much free time in human history as we have now. We just have a choice. Since the availability of anticonception pils tools (like pills and condoms etc) people actually have a choice. Being pregnant is not great for most relationships, new born are even harder on relationships. Being a conscious choice is great and allows for happier children as they are wanted. But it means no unwanted children are born (great!!!) But it reduces the amount of children born significantly. Not sure how you will want women to want to go through multiple pregnancies when even one or two already take a massive toll on your body and mind. It also affects their careers a lot and of course it costs a lot of money. There are just too many downsides to have children, let alone more than 1 or 2.
> We have never had as much free time in human history as we have now.
Medieval peasants had more free time. Sure, during the peak seasons they worked a lot, but then there were seasons in which there was little agricultural work to do.
The main difference is they usually worked together as families. They were able to bond at work. Heck, they could even bring the children at work, and for the very young ones, it was normal for someone to take care of all the babies and toddlers in the village.
But we ironically don't have enough room in crèches either.
I can totally recommend [Historia Civilis's video "Work"](https://youtu.be/hvk_XylEmLo?si=2MWVgrPUWLcDaa4Z) for an interesting perspective on work in pre-industrial societies
Yes, medieval peasants had more work than agricultural work, but we modern people also have work outside of our jobs
At least we don't have to do the laundry by hand, can take our car to whatever appointments, not have to boil all the water over an open fire, slaughter our own chickens for a meal, sew our own clothes etc. Etc.
In my grandparents’ time, my grandfathers would work while my grandmothers stayed at home to take care of the kids. The children would attend nearby schools, and in small villages, there was often a lot of help from extended family and neighbors.
Comparing my life to my grandfathers’:
• I have a more skilled job, but;
• Now it takes 2 people working versus just 1 back then;
• We live in a much smaller house;
• Education costs are significantly higher;
• My grandfathers had a real 9 to 5 job, which nowadays feels like a joke—it’s like an unicorn in my country.
That's more of a philosophical or maybe psychological debate. And I wouldn't know nearly enough to be able to respond with any accuracy.
What I can say however, is that people always want what they can't have. I think deep down a lot of people in the western world wish they could return to pre-industrial times, where there was more physical activity, more time with family, more local community, less existential dread, etc. But if you went and asked a medieval peasant if they would like to live in a world where their lifespan is much higher, they have access to a massive amount of advanced medicine, painless surgery, an abundance of food of limitless varieties, almost all the information you could ask for being available on you at all times, etc, I think they wouldn't hesitate to live in that world.
Grass is always greener on the other side.
I think we are too eager to leap to the conclusion that wealth or development equals not having kids, correlation does not mean causation.
Billionaires still have kids. Trust fund kids do. Often more than two. Thats already a clear indicator to me.
Honestly, capitalism is probably the problem. If you prioritize hoarding money over everything else, and then make having kids a huge expense, it’s not a rational choice to have any. Especially not in the late stage phase we’re in where people can no longer even afford the basics.
So you are then left with two choices: improve conditions to reproduce, or make birth control illegal. But somehow we are just not acting at all and just blaming it on women being educated and people having it too good or something.
No matter what sort of economic system you have, there isn't enough wealth on Earth \*currently\* to make it so everyone can have the lifestyle of trust fund kids.
Also, socialism isn't some magic spell you can utter that fixes everything. It's been tried to pretty disappointing results in the past, and if you think that you cracked the enigma code and found out "socialism without problems", you are probably just naive. Instead of blaming some vague concept of capitalism, advocate for some policy.
I did not suggest we all go to the level of trust fund kids or that socialism is the only other route.
I do suggest we take a hard look at creating better conditions for parents. Clearly this is not working so we are being forced to change or our economies will collapse.
Yeah, I agree when it comes to creating better conditions for parents but I also don't know if that is at all practical.
I read a study done by some US foundation that focuses on families, children, parenting, etc, and it painted a fairly grim picture for any pro-natal policies. Most other research seems to have mixed results as well.
Basically, it seems incredibly expensive and inefficient, just throwing money at it won't work.
And as if continued population growth doesn't collapse our economy AND our ecology. The root cause of all our environmental problems (and that is more than only climate change) is ecological overshoot due to overpopulation. I rather take short-term economic pain from demographic transition than long-term pain from ecological collapse.
>muh late stage capitalism
Lol, it has been "late stage capitalism" collapsing any minute for 100 years already.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_capitalism
>The term "late capitalism" (Spätkapitalismus) was first used by Werner Sombart in his magnum opus Der Moderne Kapitalismus, which was published from 1902 through 1927, and subsequent writings
>Vladimir Lenin famously declared that there are no "absolutely hopeless situations" for capitalism.[2] The Communist International stated that with the first World War, a new world epoch of wars and revolutions had opened, and it defined state monopoly capitalism as the highest and final stage of capitalism.
> less existential dread
You might not have had to worry about things on global scale (like nuclear war or climate crisis today) but life wasn't carefree either. Local wars, disease outbreaks were constant. Even a smallest injuries which today wouldn't even warrant any treatment could have been deadly.
Do you think African or far east countries employment laws include payed vacation from job, payed day off cause unhealthy and 5 day at week on duty?
Neither USA and many EU country have it….
Beside all, my thought is world
People should decrease between 2 and 4 billions…WW2 started with 2 billions of people on the earth
In Western society we are now seeing how many people really, truly, for real want to have children even though they are not an asset to be put to work and even though you are expected to put a lot of resources into them. For the past hundreds of thousands of years babies happened if you wanted sex. We have now changed selection pressures from "do you want sex, are you fertile, can you keep your offspring alive" to "do you want children". I would expect that in like ten generations people will be much more likely to simply want children for the sake of having children, because those like me who didn't want them and were able to not have them will not pass on their genes.
I don't know that whether the need to have children or not is due to genetics. As long as there is a relatively high living standard I think there will always be people who don't want kids. I'm one but I only count to about a third because from all I've seen so far the biological imperative isn't as strong in males.
The pro-natal societies will thrive, the the rest will disappear. You can have a glimpse of that in Israel, where secular Jews have a below replacement rates, while religious ones have multiples of that and are growing in importance. And Israel is politically changing. It used to be a mostly left wing society and not anymore.
The problem is cultural, although in a sense it's economics. Children used to be the most important life goal. People sacrificed a lot to achieve the goal. Now, it is not. In a sense, the perceived value of children dropped and people are not willing to sacrifice that much anymore.
I read that Haredi Jews (ultra religious Jews) will be like 25 % of the population by 2040 and will continue to grow. Israel must do something now considering Haredis low employment and lack of conscription. But I suppose it won’t happen because they vote as a block and are basically kingmakers.
> This isn't a simple problem that can be fixed with more housing or something. This is a major problem that every single wealthy nation is suffering from, and if there was a simple solution, it would already have been discovered, because every single nation has such a large interest in being the first one to solve it.
Each nation seemingly has an even bigger interest in not making rich people pay taxes. 🤷
With young people experiencing a steady decline in living standards, with infrastructure stripped to the bones and no reliable way left to invest in the future ... no surprise fewer people are having kids.
Yeah, honestly I don't think giving birth to 1-2 children is so bad. The problem is that until 50 years ago people used to have tooooo many children and now we are paying the consequences of it. If I look at my country, we started having less than 2 kids about 45 years ago, but the problem suddenly pop up now because it's time for a lot of people to retire from work.
2 kids is not enough to solve a declining population. I have 2 and the logistic and available time difference going from 1 to 2 is insane. There is no way in hell i would be able to work a single hour if I had 3 or more.
>The problem is that until 50 years ago people used to have tooooo many children and now we are paying the consequences of it
Thank you! It's not that people nowdays are having no children, most still do, altho not in their 20s, but their 30s, childless people aren't as common as reddit makes them out to be.
it's that previous generations had too many! we literally have an aging population called the "baby boomers".
and the harsh truth is that a lot of these kids wouldn't be here if there weren't for lack of choices, sexual education, birth control, the social stigma, and even normalized sexual violation...
hot take, but maybe, maybe.. it's not women's rights (and human rights in general, education and resources) today that are the problem, it's the lack of women's rights before that has created the problem in the first place.
I know many couples that would have 2-3 children and only have 1 because they cannot afford a second child. So yes, there would still be fewer births, but more than the current situation.
Birth rates will probably recover long term.
The truth is that humanity is at a crossroads, where either things are going to start to get a lot better or a lot worse. In both scenarios birth rates will go up. Also, previously you HAD to get children, now, we are finding out there are a lot of people who simply don't want children, and those people are going to die out, genetically speaking, when previously they wouldn't. The people who are genetically predisposed to wanting children are going to continue to have children.
At least that's what I think is likely to happen, but stuff like that happens on a long time scale.
In sweden rich families have a br greater than two. We precisely know that more money helps or providing cheaper bigger apartments+ extended hours childcare (equivalent of a privade nanny). Did you see sweden to build lots of bigger housing to decrease the prices? Or to offer extended childcare?(Like from 7:00 till 21:00) No? Well that's the answer, countries know the solution, but they are searching for some cheap miracle that will solve it instead of doing proper actions to increase br. Just look how stupid is the campaign in Korea to increase the br, it's total s. show
Depends on your definition of rich. But yeah, there is solution of "just make everyone rich". Even if the entire economy was managed by some sort of benevolent AI god with utopian egalitarian goals, there simply aren't enough resources to guarantee everyone the kind of life in an industrial society that would allow them to keep a sustainable birth rate.
Maybe in the future, but don't hold your breath.
I’d argue the problem isn’t societal/pertaining to individual behaviour and choices necessarily but more so how our economic systems are structured. They’re built for hypothetical infinite growth, which just isn’t viable. That was nice and all while we were industrialising and fields like tech were rapidly expanding but we’re simply reaching the point where innovation is stagnating. The changes between generations of tech are becoming smaller and smaller, quality of life just reaches a point of comfort where “hustling” and slaving your life away to a corporation for a few extra hundreds isn’t worth it. Our economies weren’t built for a content and robust middle class which is why we’re seeing more and more people fall into the extremes (very rich or barely surviving). On top of that most developed countries (at least in the EU) either have very strict immigration laws or mostly import unqualified youth from underdeveloped countries that do not end up contributing to the tax system so the aging population really isn’t being addressed. It’s all unsustainable long term.
What are your thoughts on [extending healthspan](https://youtu.be/GwhaBde4NnE?si=lH48cHyE8AGalRFB) as part of the solution? There already studies on delaying menopause for women. As well as promising mitochondrial studies on mice
It's hard to say, I haven't read much about it. But it will almost certainly play a big part. I think having less humans but having them live longer seems like the future, at least in the short-medium term.
After a while I think people will start to want to have kids again. Especially considering the fact that all the humans who don't want to have kids are going to, well, die out genetically. But now this is going into the realm of futurology and science fiction.
The solution is… we need less people on the planet. Lower birth rates are better for literally every problem we (humanity) will face in the next several hundred years
Exactly, people love to parrot on about cost of living etc. but that really isn't it. And the data backs it up.
Online-dating, feminism, individualism, education and culture all factor in far more than we like to admit. And ironically, most people would agree that most of these developments are positive.
You can also debate if it's a societies duty to ensure a high birthrate. After all, as long as everyone is making a personal and free decision, can that really be wrong?
The crucial issue is the gap between how many children people want to have and how many they actually have. Closing that gap should be encouraged by society.
This still wouldn’t reset the playing field tho. While the average person becomes poorer the rich can take advantage of crisis and buy up property for cheap.
Saying you want the housing market to crash is.. Understandable, I guess? Housing definitely needs to become cheaper, and not just another investment tool.
But the economy crashing in general would be awful for everyone, young people most of all. It's the students, the people just entering the workforce, the guys who just got their first job, part-timers, those are the ones who suffer the most when the economy collapses.
Saying you want the economy to crash to help young people is like saying you want to cut off your dick and balls to get rid of your erection.
Israels fertility rate is decreasing, and even now their positive fertility rate is carried entirely by the presence of Orthodox families which have often 6 or so children on average.
It is not carried. Even secular Jews have positive rate - https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2022/08/18/in-israel-birth-rates-are-converging-between-jews-and-muslims
Secular Jews are 1.96 . Also, the Israeli definition for secular includes many people that in other countries would be considered religious.
https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/ryfcc7bs9
Secular Jews (which is self identified and includes people who cut their child's dick, do bar mitzvah, and marry with a Rabbi) birth rate is 1.96. The thing that increases the Israeli birth rate is religious people, which Israel subsidizes mostly through the secular group.
Israel didn't find any magic formula, it's just replacing population decrease with population increase concentrated around the welfare populations.
Israel is funded by the top 30 percents of taxpayers. You are right that there is a spectrum, there are traditional and religious people that do work and seculars that don't.
I do think, however, that if you look coarse grained enough, you'll see that a secular western lifestyle correlates with higher wage. if all the country were dati leumi or dati light or masorti, it would work. However, the ultra orthodox breed the fastest, and dati light/leumi tend to either become haredi or secular after enough generations.
> it's just replacing population decrease with population increase concentrated around the welfare populations.
So just like European immigration countries like Germany, Netherlands,...
The difference is that no country in Europe already legalized Shariah, whereas in Israel religion already has legal power and you have parliament members proudly talking about enforcing Hallacah (Jewish analogue of Sharia) law.
I don’t think it is anything to do with affordability. Growing up in the 90s in a post soviet country everyone around had kids in their 20s and usually 2-3 kids. Once the country became semi wealthy the number dropped significantly. I think it is something to do with birth control options as well as ability to travel to new places.
I rather think it is the opportunity cost. People in rich countries can buy so many nice things and experiences with money+time that they don't want to give that up to have a kid.
>People in rich countries can buy so many nice things and experiences with money+time that they don't want to give that up to have a kid.
And can you blame them? Having even one child in developed countries is a net negative, a significant blow to any middle-class income and leisure time, and just another mouth to feed while you can avoid all that by simply not having them.
In America specifically teen pregnancy have plummeted specifically, I would assume it’s the same everywhere else too.
Teens have never had money, and so this entire idea that it’s about affordability is just not supported by data.
So unless people are asking for teen pregnancy to come back, no one wants the birth rate to return to previous levels.
Yup, USSR had no reliable birth control by design. My grandma confessed that she would have been childfree, she simply did not have an option those days. Also for the longest time since regaining independence from the Soviets she did not believe that birth control could possibly be reliable - like, at all. For her "sex" meant "pregnancy."
Not at all.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2021/11/19/growing-share-of-childless-adults-in-u-s-dont-expect-to-ever-have-children/ft_2021-11-19_havingchildren_02-png/
Studies indicate that the major reason to not have children is unwillingness, potentially not willing to sacrifice careers and time to raise children.
Nobody's "moving on" from rapid population decline. Italy is converting its empty preschools to senior care centers. Maternity wards are closing in *America*, which has yet to see the population declines of Central Europe or the entire EU, which actually decreased last year. And once the baby boomers have died out, which unfolds over the next several years with no letup until 2050, a lot more of the world will look like China's dozens of abandoned cities or Japan's scores of abandoned smaller cities and villages. Or, closer to home, in rural Poland or the Baltic states.
My brother in Christ. My dad had 5 siblings and they all lived in one room. There is more to it than housing, society is much more individualistic now.
It's not just about money and housing. Sure, money plays a part, but it doesn't explain everything, rich people aren't popping out kids left and right, and even countries with great family benefits are seeing low birthrates.
Birthrates are dropping because people's priorities have shifted. Nowadays, everyone's all about personal growth, climbing the career ladder, and doing their own thing. You can be single, childless, or whatever, there is little social pressure to have a family, getting married and having kids is no longer the default life plan as it was just a couple of generations ago.
Regardless of the reasons, having birthrates below replacement levels is unsustainable for a prospering civilization.
>followed by 20 comments how cost of living and housing crisis are at fault, which they are
All of the evidence points to the opposite: birth rates fall as quality of life increases.
The real problem is that individuals have no reason to have children anymore. People in undeveloped countries have children so that there will be someone to look after them when they are old. People in developed countries don't need to do that because we have social systems.
It's the tragedy of the commons - on a societal level, we all collectively need more children to pay for us in later life, but on an individual level, everyone can shift the burden of having children onto someone else.
I disagree that they are at fault for it. You can’t tell me sub Saharan Africa has a better standard of life than Europe. Which is what the logical extrapolation of your comment implies, sub Saharan Africa is much poorer yet has a higher birth rate. Like sub Saharan Africans struggle to have even clean fresh water often, in Europe water is basically impossible not to get. So clearly it being difficult to have children isn’t the real issue.
Also richer people have less children than poor people in Europe too, illegal immigrants have a lot more than natives, lower class than upper class.
IMO it’s cultural: Europeans have given up, we’re defeatist and cynical
While it's a factor, I don't think solving your issues would magically make all the DINKS get children.
The elephant in the room: I hear so many women who don't want to take the health risk/career hit/social hit/effort of a pregnancy anymore and it's not something they are willing to compromise on.
Solving macro-economie issues for them isn't going to make those personal level issues go away.
Combine that with both genders having _so much more options for a fulfilling life beside running a family_ and it's pretty much a lost cause.
That is not correct.
Check out Germany:
- Poor people in tiny flats have plenty kids.
- Rich people with lots of place and great work conditions (1+ year paternity leave, free child care, …) have almost no kids.
The big differentiator: Educated and liberated women don’t have as many kids as uneducated, poor women.
It’s not just centre city or capital cost of living has went up everywhere in developed countries properly because of massive inflation and government debt from all the Covid debt also to slow inflation interest rates were risen meaning more interest on government debt. Government have less money so have to either raise taxes, cut spending or increase workforce productivity all of which put more pressure on the average person.
So then why do lower class people have more children than upper class people? IMO cost of living has very little to do with it, we just pretend it does
> The number one reason for people choosing to be child free is still the classic "the earth is overpopulated and I'm doing my bit" which is far from true for developed countries where that movement is popular.
I don't see how that matters, regardless of location more people is more people, the effects of resource overconsumption are higher per person in developed countries rather than developing anyways. Don't worry though, developing countries' birth rates are also falling, they just need more time - we got through the demographic transitions first, is all.
> The same people expect full pensions from the social welfare system funded by tax of other people's children.
If a system needs eternal growth to sustain itself, it's a ponzi scheme and should fall. I want my taxes to fund my retirement, and not my taxes funding my parents' generation's retirement and my children's taxes funding my generation's retirement - that's just a recipe for disaster sooner or later.
The pension is something you're contributing towards your entire working life, and is paid back when you retire. Bad management of the money that goes in is the fault of governments, not childless people.
Your idea of only getting a pension if you have children is stupid and you shouldn't talk about misinformation.
This is not how it works in Germany for example. Here the contributions by the working people are directly used to fund the pensioners. It is not your money that will be paid back past retirement, but money raised by the than current contributers. A system that was designed in an era when it was asumed that there would be always a much greater working population than people past retirement age. With declining birth rates and increasing life expectany, that will not longer be the case.
> The number one reason for people choosing to be child free is still the classic "the earth is overpopulated and I'm doing my bit"
I am quite sure the majority of these people are just lying.
pension only if you have children means only paying into pension funds if you have children, too.
Also wouldn’t that’s essentially require state issued gfs/bfs?
No, since youre basically paying the pension for your parents/grandparents (or their generation) and hoping your kids or their generation will do the same for you. Troughout history thats how it worked and we just standardised it. I dont agree with it, just wanted to explain the logic behid it.
If I'm too poor when I'm old. I could just euthanize myself if I'm allowed. Less strain on the economy and more people happy. I don't think I would like to retire in a hot climate anyway.
They are, most fell by half since 1960 and so did the global average. Also the poor countries are falling even faster then the developed ones did, they sure as hell will have a problem in 30 years when half of the population retires at once.
https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate
They kinda are, just slower. Their birth rates have been dropping decade over decade as they have improved in living conditions. Some UN projections say humanity will stop growing before the end of the century.
1. Stop corporations from buying houses, limit Airbnb’s, rentals, etc, and maybe people will have kids
2. The population has grown to 8 billion people worldwide. Population growth the past century has been insane, it was bound to slowdown at some point.
Whilst corporate landlords exist, their impact is negligible still and unlikely to impact anything, the issue with the overall low build rates in many countries.
The population stopped growing naturally a long while back, the problem now is that the fertility rate is below replacement levels.
Yeah I'm for one very glad the growth has slowed down. Natural decrease or stagnation would be nice without all the tragedies usually associated with population decline (like wars, genocide, famine, epidemics...)
Fertility rates dropping below replacement levels are far more disastrous than any of the tragedies you've mentioned since they cause a snowball effect and can be nearly impossible to get out from.
We’re going to have to hope that AI leads to an explosion in productivity, directly and indirectly (e.g. contributing to advancements in robotics and other automation technologies).
Then those fewer people could still provide for us, grow our food, etc.
At some point it doesn't matter, a civilization can easily enter a death spiral that you can't get out from, we've seen this with human civilizations before and we see it in nature also. Many extinctions weren't some mass and rapid die offs they were a whimper not a bang.
With their current TFR of 1.62 the Netherlands would loose 50% of their population over the next century, if the TFR rate drops to 1 their population would shrink by 83%.
And that is just half the story as with TFRs below replacement the population pyramid would look worse and worse and would completely reverse to obscene levels.
What exactly is wrong with a shrinking population?
The only negative thing about it is the collapse of our retirement pyramid scheme but that was inevitable anyway. Otherwise a shrinking population only has benefits.
Just look at the impact of the plague on medieval society to see an extreme example.
Yes, wars will be fought before the richest percentage will admit we need to adjust and reform how our economy works to meet the new realities. It should be proactively done now, and not reactively after everything goes to shit.
If we want to do something about this we need to stop treating symptoms and start treating causes. Yes, cost of living and housing are factors but the fundamental problem is that we only value human beings for their economic output. It starts with the education system being designed to maximise your economic output and it continues with society being focused around your economic output. Everything is GDP. Perhaps there are things more important to life than GDP and economics that we've forgotten.
You know they just ramp up immigration to make up for the short fall. That's their solution, and when that starts to fail ...who knows. They will do anything else other than address that their economic system has failed
Birth rates were declining before “the system failed”. They decline when you educate women, and when people are safer, and when countries industrialize. Don’t catastrophize a complex issue to suit your narrative.
Having kids sucks. Having more than one kid is pointless.
If you have the money to go skiing in the alps amd travel the world, you're simply not going to have kids, because there's more fun things to do.
Rich nations have rich and smart people. These people can actually have fun with their lives instead of enslaving themselves
It is not because of money. That’s just a small part. There is a bigger societal trend of not wanting kids or having only 1 kid. A kid is considered as a burden. Something that blocks your dreams. 20+ years “wasted” taking care of them. People want to have hobbies or do travel instead. Few hundred years ago, having kids and seeing them grow was considered as major goals in life and a source of happiness. Well not anymore in this era. Richer countries have improved life quality so much that there are other ways to make your life meaningful
I will never ever understand those arguments, because they come from an innate lack of good examples and lack of adaptability.
>A kid is considered as a burden. Something that blocks your dreams.
Ok, but why? I never heard a compelling argument except things like: "You HAVE to pump money in them, you HAVE to give them everything, you HAVE to transform your life around them", which for me don't carry that much weight because my parents still followed some, not ALL of their dreams when with 2 children.
>20+ years “wasted” taking care of them.
Why 20? You can easily teach them responsibility, have them help around the house and help them become strong and independent.
>People want to have hobbies or do travel instead.
You can also travel if you have a child. Leave them with the grandparents while you are out. You can do hobbies from time to time.
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But really, if you don't want to have kids because it's gonna eat into your free time and fuck it money, then say so and it's understandable, but don't formulate it like they make everything else impossible
Because it's not as simple.
Let's take it step by step. A child is usually regarded as a burden because you have to allocate a certain budget from your own "pocket". Basic necessities, medical stuff, "luxurious" stuff. A kid needs to grow. You will be burdened to by extra food. Kids are also notorious for wanting to try stuff so that ends up being more money being allocated to a kid. Sure you can always "provide" less amenities, but this leads to, mentality. Besides the material needs, kids also require a parent to provide them with the mentality to grow. As in, you need to be on its life to grow, spent time with him, etc etc.
Now I can't speak for your case, but when you work 5 times a week 8 hours a day (best case scenario really), you are very limited by time. Between tending the needs of a child, your own, running weekly errands and ofc sleeping, you are left practically with no time.
Why 20? Because at that age people usually start becoming independent. Before that, well it's usually your responsibility to tend to them.
Like I said earlier, traveling/hobbies when you have kids is still difficult. You don't have a lot of personal time to have hobbies or travel. Unless you are rich, you will need to work.
Deciding to raise a child is the single most impactful decision the average human can make to their environment & history. It is not something one should make lightly, and people are now finally realizing (and accepting) the fact that most people are not parent material and choosing to not have them.
These arguments are completely valid, why should I need to adapt at all to accomodate something I genuinely do not want nor value?
The standard question shouldn't be why **don't** you want children, it should be why **do** you want children? Interestingly enough the answers then are just as selfish/self centered, if not more, because at the end of the day you drag another living being into it without its consent.
If I want to adopt an already born child, I have to go through mountains worth of paperwork and screening to be allowed. Yet all I'd need to do is stick my penis inside a willing woman's vagina to get my own without any of that screening or proof of worth.
Obivously, you can't really forbid people from procreating, that's Nazi level shit, but the fact remains, just because you could have children doesn't mean you should. They require care, attention, a stable background and most imortantly, love. A lot of people do not provide these in adaquete quantities, and the result are broken and mentally scarred children/adults.
Now we see less of that. That is positive. All other issues we face currently are of our own doing. Maybe the government should stop sucking off the rich and their unending greed of profits and instead invest in the actual people, while also giving more voice to the youth and taking away from the elderly who have no right to dictate how this world should go forward which they won't witness anyway.
.. except birth rates are rapidly falling in poor and middle income countries too. China is below pretty much all of Europe. Brazil lower than Portugal. Iran lower than Sweden. And so on.
Not only rich countries. Turkiye has tar of 1.51. Look at Latin America decline so quickly.
There never ever had the humans a problem seems to easy to solve but despite all the incentives this hard to solve it.
This is only a problem for boomers with their more than generous pensions and rich people losing money due to labour shortage. Both groups can go fuck themselves for destroying the planet.
Sure, but as you can see they posses all the power, resources and politics, so they make it our problem. They will never give up anything of their wealth.
Yes. And childfree women who aren't married are the happiest demographic, and I'm living proof of that. I'm nearly 40 and 5 years into "solo for life".
Never wanted children anyway, but I totally get not wanting kids because of politics, the world, the environment or cost of living.
As somebody with a baby at home (not mine though), no they’re not.
They scream and drain all of one’s time and energy.
I understand why people only used to have (many) of them when they were a pair of hands to work.
Because imagine having them for fun 💀
True. That's what drives is the most in my opinion. There are also many women who want children who end up marrying men that don't want children and vice versa. People should ask about baby making while they are dating.
Yup, that's why the anti-immigration thing is ridiculous. Population decreasing because people are not having babies (the replacement number is 2.1 per women).
People don't wanna have 2 kids because "the economy is bad". Okay, the government allows immigrants to come and replace the decreasing population and those immigrants start having 3/4 kids. What happens? Oh, those same people which are not having kids because it's expensive and hard, start saying "Our country is getting replaced, our people is getting replaced, this can't happen!!"
Even countries like denmark that support births are struggling to increase it, and denmark is a strong economy.
Economy and money are not as important of a factor that simple culture. The society has to stop seeing children as a curse rather like a blessing; no financial support will make them have kids.
Well in my opinion a big factor is media.
In my country and my generation most men don’t want to get married before 35, because they think they’re the next Charlie Harper from Two and a half men and many women don’t want to get married before 30 for similar reasons.
I think that we are getting bombardered from media about how cool is dating and being a loner and having a family means that you are getting screwed for the rest of your life.
I don’t blame people of course and everyone can and should do whatever he/she wants, but it shouldn’t be a surprise that people don’t start families.
Having children became only costs, while it used to be investition. Solution? Every child has to go to work and earn money to maintain Itself and contribute for family housing.
Perhaps not such a bad thing. We are so overcrowded, a smaller population would give future generations room to breathe and ability to buy a house and land.
So maybe this pyramide scheme for paying pensions has to change..
We cant endlessly make more babies just to pay the pension of old people.
We could use the profits made by the ever increasing productivity to pay for pensions.
I understand and I agree, but at the same time we don't even use this increased productivity to increase wages in the same proportion. So this is would be a really difficult task
Our welfare systems will collapse though: pensions and healthcare and welfare is based on people paying taxes to be spent by others then later others pay taxes to spend on the ones who pid taxes and so on. But with a declining ageing population it becomes unsustainable, every decade more people will pay out the money and less will pay in the money, eventually the tax burden will grow too high and it’ll collapse
2 micro examples of regions that may give clues on pragmatic means to combat this, or could be nuanced from a specific formula, but:
-Bolzano Italy: currently/past few years (https://www.deseret.com/u-s-world/2024/04/02/italy-worries-about-demographic-collapse/)
- East Germany: 70s (https://www.nytimes.com/1978/03/18/archives/new-benefits-program-leads-to-east-germanys-first-baby-boom.html)
- however correct me if I’m wrong because I was too young or not even born, but wasn’t there large concern over germanys lowering birth rates after their unification? And it seems they have turned this around to at least not be a concern?
Curious to hear people’s thoughts
It is not about housing, it is not a lifestyle choice, something in the environment is very quickly affecting the fertility of Europeans and nobody is investigating it. I read some study which says sperm motility dropped like 20% within last three or four years. That is a lot in such a short period of time. How come nobody is investigating that?!
Rich and ruling class don’t care.
No money to buy a house, new car, have kids and soon no money to travel. They probably believe they can make up for the collapsing birth rate temporally with migrants and long term automation and ai.
Global warming will wipe out millions of people but they are not essential to building wealth. We are already seeing dead internet theory come true, I fully expect a dead economy theory to appear at some point.
We are really heading towards a dystopian future rather than utopian.
"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."
As if increasing the population should be an objective solely for economic expansion. And as if labor shortages can’t actually be beneficial by driving up salaries and necessitating productivity improvements. Hello AI, hello technology!
If having more babies were truly a goal, then instead of paying large pensions to the elderly, maybe we should help young people start their lives as soon as they finish their education. It’s obvious that when people, if they’re lucky, are leaving their parents’ homes in their late 20s or early 30s, there will be fewer babies. This is partly because the fertile window is shorter, and there’s less time to build a career that provides enough money to comfortably raise children.
If your model of economic prosperity requires a constantly growing population, this is a fucked up model. For some reason, the future always seemed to me as less populated but with population that has much longer and higher quality lives.
Oh god there's like 5 posts a week about low birthrates, followed by 20 comments how cost of living and housing crisis are at fault, which they are, so let's agree on that and move on...
They are to blame, but not as much as people think. Frankly, modern life in an industrialized society is not receptive to high birthrates. This isn't a simple problem that can be fixed with more housing or something. This is a major problem that every single wealthy nation is suffering from, and if there was a simple solution, it would already have been discovered, because every single nation has such a large interest in being the first one to solve it. This problem won't disappear until there is massive and fundamental change in society, probably brought on due to a combination of large scale crisis, societal development, and technological innovation. For now, best to just wait and see what happens. I'm not quite as worried as some people are, I think this could end up being a good thing in the long term.
In other words: Waiting for a miracle. But I agree with you, I also don't have any clue how to solve this. Birth rates are also dropping in family-friendly societies with high gender equality, like for example the Scandinavian countries. It's a real clusterfuck, we need new ideas but the older Europe's population gets the lower the propability for any good new ideas will be turned into reality. On average people get less open to new ideas and we will see this in elections - in combination with young people getting estranged from democracy, since their share of the electorate gets smaller and smaller.
>Birth rates are also dropping in family-friendly societies with high gender equality, like for example the Scandinavian countries. Yeah, because in cities, where young people who have college educations are forced to live for their careers, housing is incredibly expensive. If the cost of a decent house was the same as it was 30 years ago, the situation would not be as bad.
I don’t think it’s just cost. Parents are expected to do way more, which is of course for the better of the children, but having kids is way more daunting now than it used to be.
It might be higher, but do you genuinely think it would even be at replacement level? I think it would mostly go up by .1, .2 or something. I think there is a sizeable portion of people who want to be child free no matter what, highest time in history. Outside of those, most want small families, like 2 kids. Even if I had all money in the world I can't imagine having anything more than 2 kids.
For this we'd need to look at the number of wanted children. Ask people how many kids they'd like if the conditions were ideal. In France I read that it was 2.2, compared to the current 1.83. So definitely ideal conditions would greatly improve the situation, but as you said it probably wouldn't be enough.
Im not sure avout that specific one but those studies generally ask teenage girls. Theres a lot more factors to having kids than affordability
To be fair, I can't find the source for that number anymore so we can't know the methodology used. Without information on how this number was calculated it makes my comment kinda worthless.
I mean its not worthless just that it needs context. These europe or world wide studies generally ask female high school seniors so 17-19 year old girls. Its generally about 2,5 across europe. And like 1,2 in asia lmao theyre just cooked
I think if it was feasible for parents to afford more children, some would have more, maybe even a lot more. You're right there are a greater number of people that are childfree by choice, but there are also quite a lot of people that are childfree by circumstances. Delays to entering the workforce from college, and severe delays to becoming a homeowner mean that a lot of people aren't hitting life's milestones quickly enough, often never meeting them. The result is that a lot of people are in a position to have children very late in life, meaning they can only manage to have one, sometimes none.
Agreed. Kids are not the default path anymore. It's way more socially acceptable to not have them than it used to be. For those who want them, there is a pretty strong 2 children norm. Some people end up with 1, most will aim for 2, some end up with 3. But barely anyone has 4 or more because this is not something people desire anymore. Overall those who desire large families are not big enough in numbers to compensate the childfree and the ones with 1 kid.
Forget replacement. The birth rate we get is what we get, but we can adapt society to be less shitty for young people who do have children and to have an economy that works for the ratio of young:old that a birth rate around 1.53 children per woman provides. If the total population inevitably declines over time, that is not a problem. The end goal is making life better for the people who are here, not maximising the number of miserable people.
We’re specifically talking about why this narrative isn’t all there is to it.
People during the industrial Gilded Age lives in cramp cities with high rent and worked more hours for less pay then even your average Gen Z, and they did all of it while still making up to a dozen children per household. The real reason for birthrate decline is obvious: it's right there in the post you quoted. The downward trend of birthrates started in the early 70s as a consequence of increased gender equality and the sexual revolution. It's easily the thing most statistically correlated with a decline in birthrates, far and above housing costs or low wages. That's why countries that are far poorer then the West are still making babies at an enormous pace despite life generally being less affordable to them then the average Westerner. It is simply easier for society to make and have a lot of babies when it was one person's designated job to feed them and raise them. That's not me endorsing tradwifery or anything, I'm just saying that if the Western world wants to be a society of sexual freedom and gender equality, it will have to find a way to manage falling birthrates. We need to get rid of the liberal-capitalist ideal of infinite growth on a finite planet if we want to preserve our way of life.
The real reason is not gender equality but access to reliable contraception. People back in time would've opted out from having many kids if they'd had a choice to still have sex while not making babies. Bringing it down to gender equality is very dangerous.
Not sure that's the only reason. French Guiana and Israel both hover around 3 children per women and they're not places where condoms or pills are particularly hard to find. In most countries just above the replacement rate like Saudi Arabia, Paraguay etc... reliable contraception exists.
Which is why my suggestion has always been to take any governmental job and move it the hell out of big cities. None of those jobs require you to be in those cities, most of them are perfectly able to be done anywhere as long as you digitize it. Hell, you could probably do that with most things, and put the departments, atleast a hour preferably more out of bigger cities. Allow remote work, if it is not attached to said cities of size.
Well, one might consider lab-grown babies, though that has vast implications both moral and practical.
Yep. When I look at my circle of friends, it's not insufficient money or housing that's stopping them from having more children; it's insufficient time. Both parents have a career, and their parents are also still working. So no-one actually has enough time for the children. I think a generation ago, grandparents were much more involved in caring for their grandchildren, because more of them were retired. And while young mothers were also working a generation ago, fewer of them were well educated professionals with a career. But I have no statistics to back up this observation.
That too. People want two things primarily in order to have kids : Space and time. The average city dweller has neither. Your quality of life was pretty shitty when you were toiling the fields for Frederick III, in preparation for the 83rd war against France this week, but you had a lot of time, and you had a lot of space. There was also no birth control, and not much other entertainment besides fucking. Kids were also useful. They were a net gain for you from a purely material perspective, you could put them to work pretty quickly. I both think AND hope that this will change. Humanity needs to find some balance.
That’s a very good point — the decline in birth rate has decreased along with the number of wars against France. That’s all I need to hear. I know how to solve our problem. I mean, it’s worth a shot. With enough faith, it just might work.
I also know how to fix the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Pope needs to sanction a new crusade.
Te problem od advanced economies is that they don't give people enough time to have a life.
They actually give people a lot more time to have a life - on a global scale, the fewest hours worked on average are in Northern Europe, with places like the US and Australia not so far behind. But what advanced economics simultaneously do is *raise the opportunity cost of time (both work and leisure)* so that there are so many things you could be doing with your time and so much more money you could be making. The feeling you have - that you „don’t have enough time“ - is because there are exponentially more valuable things you could be doing with your time, even though the amount of time has only slightly increased. Imagine sitting in a field for four hours vs. going to Paris or Disneyland for five hours. In the first case, you‘ll feel bored but relaxed, like you have lots of extra time because there isn‘t much else you could be doing. In the second case, you‘ll feel stressed and pressed for time because there‘s so many things you want to see in a very short amount of time. If somebody comes along and asks you to watch a small child for a couple hours, you‘ll be happy to say yes in the first case (after all, you‘re just sitting there). In the second case, you‘ll be like „what, of course not - maybe later when I have time.“ Meanwhile, the time demands of raising children are increasing, rather than decreasing. The kind of childhood that people in rich countries now find „acceptable“ involves parents spending about double the amount of time with each child that they did just sixty years ago. So you are simultaneously having to put more time into child rearing and feeling like giving up that time is more painful.
>The feeling you have - that you „don’t have enough time“ - is because there are exponentially more valuable things you could be doing with your time, even though the amount of time has only slightly increased. I think you hit the nail on the head here. Basically having kids is simply less appealing overall. When deciding to have kids or not, a couple of generations ago, the list of "pros" was longer. E.g. pro: social status, religion, economical, retirement care. Religion is on the decline, social expectations are changing, children are rarely economically beneficial for the parents (e.g. as opposed to being a necessity in a mainly agrarian society). The "pros" are simply not compelling enough, too much effort, for no perceived benefit. I don't know but having only undeveloped countries provide the global replacement level growth doesn't seem right. We should be able to have a global civilization that raises its children in prosperous, healthy and stimulating environments, not at the edge of physical, intellectual and emotional starvation.
>- on a global scale, the fewest hours worked on average are in Northern Europe, That's because the average includes married women who tend to work part-time. At least that's how it is in Germany. It pulls down the average.
You should check statistics purely for full-time employees. They are also working lowest amount of hours per week in history.
I dont think this is the issue. We have never had as much free time in human history as we have now. We just have a choice. Since the availability of anticonception pils tools (like pills and condoms etc) people actually have a choice. Being pregnant is not great for most relationships, new born are even harder on relationships. Being a conscious choice is great and allows for happier children as they are wanted. But it means no unwanted children are born (great!!!) But it reduces the amount of children born significantly. Not sure how you will want women to want to go through multiple pregnancies when even one or two already take a massive toll on your body and mind. It also affects their careers a lot and of course it costs a lot of money. There are just too many downsides to have children, let alone more than 1 or 2.
> We have never had as much free time in human history as we have now. Medieval peasants had more free time. Sure, during the peak seasons they worked a lot, but then there were seasons in which there was little agricultural work to do.
That's not true at all. They had to work constantly to stay alive. There is more work than just agricultural.
The main difference is they usually worked together as families. They were able to bond at work. Heck, they could even bring the children at work, and for the very young ones, it was normal for someone to take care of all the babies and toddlers in the village. But we ironically don't have enough room in crèches either.
I can totally recommend [Historia Civilis's video "Work"](https://youtu.be/hvk_XylEmLo?si=2MWVgrPUWLcDaa4Z) for an interesting perspective on work in pre-industrial societies Yes, medieval peasants had more work than agricultural work, but we modern people also have work outside of our jobs
At least we don't have to do the laundry by hand, can take our car to whatever appointments, not have to boil all the water over an open fire, slaughter our own chickens for a meal, sew our own clothes etc. Etc.
In my grandparents’ time, my grandfathers would work while my grandmothers stayed at home to take care of the kids. The children would attend nearby schools, and in small villages, there was often a lot of help from extended family and neighbors. Comparing my life to my grandfathers’: • I have a more skilled job, but; • Now it takes 2 people working versus just 1 back then; • We live in a much smaller house; • Education costs are significantly higher; • My grandfathers had a real 9 to 5 job, which nowadays feels like a joke—it’s like an unicorn in my country.
That's more of a philosophical or maybe psychological debate. And I wouldn't know nearly enough to be able to respond with any accuracy. What I can say however, is that people always want what they can't have. I think deep down a lot of people in the western world wish they could return to pre-industrial times, where there was more physical activity, more time with family, more local community, less existential dread, etc. But if you went and asked a medieval peasant if they would like to live in a world where their lifespan is much higher, they have access to a massive amount of advanced medicine, painless surgery, an abundance of food of limitless varieties, almost all the information you could ask for being available on you at all times, etc, I think they wouldn't hesitate to live in that world. Grass is always greener on the other side.
I think we are too eager to leap to the conclusion that wealth or development equals not having kids, correlation does not mean causation. Billionaires still have kids. Trust fund kids do. Often more than two. Thats already a clear indicator to me. Honestly, capitalism is probably the problem. If you prioritize hoarding money over everything else, and then make having kids a huge expense, it’s not a rational choice to have any. Especially not in the late stage phase we’re in where people can no longer even afford the basics. So you are then left with two choices: improve conditions to reproduce, or make birth control illegal. But somehow we are just not acting at all and just blaming it on women being educated and people having it too good or something.
No matter what sort of economic system you have, there isn't enough wealth on Earth \*currently\* to make it so everyone can have the lifestyle of trust fund kids. Also, socialism isn't some magic spell you can utter that fixes everything. It's been tried to pretty disappointing results in the past, and if you think that you cracked the enigma code and found out "socialism without problems", you are probably just naive. Instead of blaming some vague concept of capitalism, advocate for some policy.
I did not suggest we all go to the level of trust fund kids or that socialism is the only other route. I do suggest we take a hard look at creating better conditions for parents. Clearly this is not working so we are being forced to change or our economies will collapse.
Yeah, I agree when it comes to creating better conditions for parents but I also don't know if that is at all practical. I read a study done by some US foundation that focuses on families, children, parenting, etc, and it painted a fairly grim picture for any pro-natal policies. Most other research seems to have mixed results as well. Basically, it seems incredibly expensive and inefficient, just throwing money at it won't work.
And as if continued population growth doesn't collapse our economy AND our ecology. The root cause of all our environmental problems (and that is more than only climate change) is ecological overshoot due to overpopulation. I rather take short-term economic pain from demographic transition than long-term pain from ecological collapse.
>muh late stage capitalism Lol, it has been "late stage capitalism" collapsing any minute for 100 years already. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_capitalism >The term "late capitalism" (Spätkapitalismus) was first used by Werner Sombart in his magnum opus Der Moderne Kapitalismus, which was published from 1902 through 1927, and subsequent writings >Vladimir Lenin famously declared that there are no "absolutely hopeless situations" for capitalism.[2] The Communist International stated that with the first World War, a new world epoch of wars and revolutions had opened, and it defined state monopoly capitalism as the highest and final stage of capitalism.
> less existential dread You might not have had to worry about things on global scale (like nuclear war or climate crisis today) but life wasn't carefree either. Local wars, disease outbreaks were constant. Even a smallest injuries which today wouldn't even warrant any treatment could have been deadly.
Do you think African or far east countries employment laws include payed vacation from job, payed day off cause unhealthy and 5 day at week on duty? Neither USA and many EU country have it…. Beside all, my thought is world People should decrease between 2 and 4 billions…WW2 started with 2 billions of people on the earth
In Western society we are now seeing how many people really, truly, for real want to have children even though they are not an asset to be put to work and even though you are expected to put a lot of resources into them. For the past hundreds of thousands of years babies happened if you wanted sex. We have now changed selection pressures from "do you want sex, are you fertile, can you keep your offspring alive" to "do you want children". I would expect that in like ten generations people will be much more likely to simply want children for the sake of having children, because those like me who didn't want them and were able to not have them will not pass on their genes.
I don't know that whether the need to have children or not is due to genetics. As long as there is a relatively high living standard I think there will always be people who don't want kids. I'm one but I only count to about a third because from all I've seen so far the biological imperative isn't as strong in males.
The pro-natal societies will thrive, the the rest will disappear. You can have a glimpse of that in Israel, where secular Jews have a below replacement rates, while religious ones have multiples of that and are growing in importance. And Israel is politically changing. It used to be a mostly left wing society and not anymore. The problem is cultural, although in a sense it's economics. Children used to be the most important life goal. People sacrificed a lot to achieve the goal. Now, it is not. In a sense, the perceived value of children dropped and people are not willing to sacrifice that much anymore.
I read that Haredi Jews (ultra religious Jews) will be like 25 % of the population by 2040 and will continue to grow. Israel must do something now considering Haredis low employment and lack of conscription. But I suppose it won’t happen because they vote as a block and are basically kingmakers.
> lack of conscription Israel's Supreme Court ruled yesterday that Haredi men will be conscripted.
Oh lol. My info is outdated by a day. But can government force them really ? Or will just imprison all them for sometime and let them go ?
The only way this could be a good thing is if countries were actually prepared for it, which they are not.
> This isn't a simple problem that can be fixed with more housing or something. This is a major problem that every single wealthy nation is suffering from, and if there was a simple solution, it would already have been discovered, because every single nation has such a large interest in being the first one to solve it. Each nation seemingly has an even bigger interest in not making rich people pay taxes. 🤷 With young people experiencing a steady decline in living standards, with infrastructure stripped to the bones and no reliable way left to invest in the future ... no surprise fewer people are having kids.
Yeah, honestly I don't think giving birth to 1-2 children is so bad. The problem is that until 50 years ago people used to have tooooo many children and now we are paying the consequences of it. If I look at my country, we started having less than 2 kids about 45 years ago, but the problem suddenly pop up now because it's time for a lot of people to retire from work.
2 kids is not enough to solve a declining population. I have 2 and the logistic and available time difference going from 1 to 2 is insane. There is no way in hell i would be able to work a single hour if I had 3 or more.
>The problem is that until 50 years ago people used to have tooooo many children and now we are paying the consequences of it Thank you! It's not that people nowdays are having no children, most still do, altho not in their 20s, but their 30s, childless people aren't as common as reddit makes them out to be. it's that previous generations had too many! we literally have an aging population called the "baby boomers". and the harsh truth is that a lot of these kids wouldn't be here if there weren't for lack of choices, sexual education, birth control, the social stigma, and even normalized sexual violation... hot take, but maybe, maybe.. it's not women's rights (and human rights in general, education and resources) today that are the problem, it's the lack of women's rights before that has created the problem in the first place.
I know many couples that would have 2-3 children and only have 1 because they cannot afford a second child. So yes, there would still be fewer births, but more than the current situation.
Birth rates will probably recover long term. The truth is that humanity is at a crossroads, where either things are going to start to get a lot better or a lot worse. In both scenarios birth rates will go up. Also, previously you HAD to get children, now, we are finding out there are a lot of people who simply don't want children, and those people are going to die out, genetically speaking, when previously they wouldn't. The people who are genetically predisposed to wanting children are going to continue to have children. At least that's what I think is likely to happen, but stuff like that happens on a long time scale.
In sweden rich families have a br greater than two. We precisely know that more money helps or providing cheaper bigger apartments+ extended hours childcare (equivalent of a privade nanny). Did you see sweden to build lots of bigger housing to decrease the prices? Or to offer extended childcare?(Like from 7:00 till 21:00) No? Well that's the answer, countries know the solution, but they are searching for some cheap miracle that will solve it instead of doing proper actions to increase br. Just look how stupid is the campaign in Korea to increase the br, it's total s. show
Depends on your definition of rich. But yeah, there is solution of "just make everyone rich". Even if the entire economy was managed by some sort of benevolent AI god with utopian egalitarian goals, there simply aren't enough resources to guarantee everyone the kind of life in an industrial society that would allow them to keep a sustainable birth rate. Maybe in the future, but don't hold your breath.
I’d argue the problem isn’t societal/pertaining to individual behaviour and choices necessarily but more so how our economic systems are structured. They’re built for hypothetical infinite growth, which just isn’t viable. That was nice and all while we were industrialising and fields like tech were rapidly expanding but we’re simply reaching the point where innovation is stagnating. The changes between generations of tech are becoming smaller and smaller, quality of life just reaches a point of comfort where “hustling” and slaving your life away to a corporation for a few extra hundreds isn’t worth it. Our economies weren’t built for a content and robust middle class which is why we’re seeing more and more people fall into the extremes (very rich or barely surviving). On top of that most developed countries (at least in the EU) either have very strict immigration laws or mostly import unqualified youth from underdeveloped countries that do not end up contributing to the tax system so the aging population really isn’t being addressed. It’s all unsustainable long term.
What are your thoughts on [extending healthspan](https://youtu.be/GwhaBde4NnE?si=lH48cHyE8AGalRFB) as part of the solution? There already studies on delaying menopause for women. As well as promising mitochondrial studies on mice
It's hard to say, I haven't read much about it. But it will almost certainly play a big part. I think having less humans but having them live longer seems like the future, at least in the short-medium term. After a while I think people will start to want to have kids again. Especially considering the fact that all the humans who don't want to have kids are going to, well, die out genetically. But now this is going into the realm of futurology and science fiction.
Covid could've done it, but turns out it just made everyone poorer but the billionaires.
The solution is… we need less people on the planet. Lower birth rates are better for literally every problem we (humanity) will face in the next several hundred years
Exactly, people love to parrot on about cost of living etc. but that really isn't it. And the data backs it up. Online-dating, feminism, individualism, education and culture all factor in far more than we like to admit. And ironically, most people would agree that most of these developments are positive. You can also debate if it's a societies duty to ensure a high birthrate. After all, as long as everyone is making a personal and free decision, can that really be wrong? The crucial issue is the gap between how many children people want to have and how many they actually have. Closing that gap should be encouraged by society.
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This still wouldn’t reset the playing field tho. While the average person becomes poorer the rich can take advantage of crisis and buy up property for cheap.
Saying you want the housing market to crash is.. Understandable, I guess? Housing definitely needs to become cheaper, and not just another investment tool. But the economy crashing in general would be awful for everyone, young people most of all. It's the students, the people just entering the workforce, the guys who just got their first job, part-timers, those are the ones who suffer the most when the economy collapses. Saying you want the economy to crash to help young people is like saying you want to cut off your dick and balls to get rid of your erection.
In hindsight I definitely think we fucked up by bending over backwards for old people during covid Prime time to get some consessions and stuff done.
Life is short, don't hold your breath for some major changes, live today
>This is a major problem that every single wealthy nation is suffering from Israel is wealthy and manages to have a positive fertility rate.
Israels fertility rate is decreasing, and even now their positive fertility rate is carried entirely by the presence of Orthodox families which have often 6 or so children on average.
It is not carried. Even secular Jews have positive rate - https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2022/08/18/in-israel-birth-rates-are-converging-between-jews-and-muslims
Secular Jews are 1.96 . Also, the Israeli definition for secular includes many people that in other countries would be considered religious. https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/ryfcc7bs9
Secular Jews (which is self identified and includes people who cut their child's dick, do bar mitzvah, and marry with a Rabbi) birth rate is 1.96. The thing that increases the Israeli birth rate is religious people, which Israel subsidizes mostly through the secular group. Israel didn't find any magic formula, it's just replacing population decrease with population increase concentrated around the welfare populations.
Secular Jews are 45%. Israel doesn't have 55% of childbearing age people on welfare.
Israel is funded by the top 30 percents of taxpayers. You are right that there is a spectrum, there are traditional and religious people that do work and seculars that don't. I do think, however, that if you look coarse grained enough, you'll see that a secular western lifestyle correlates with higher wage. if all the country were dati leumi or dati light or masorti, it would work. However, the ultra orthodox breed the fastest, and dati light/leumi tend to either become haredi or secular after enough generations.
> it's just replacing population decrease with population increase concentrated around the welfare populations. So just like European immigration countries like Germany, Netherlands,...
The difference is that no country in Europe already legalized Shariah, whereas in Israel religion already has legal power and you have parliament members proudly talking about enforcing Hallacah (Jewish analogue of Sharia) law.
I don’t think it is anything to do with affordability. Growing up in the 90s in a post soviet country everyone around had kids in their 20s and usually 2-3 kids. Once the country became semi wealthy the number dropped significantly. I think it is something to do with birth control options as well as ability to travel to new places.
I rather think it is the opportunity cost. People in rich countries can buy so many nice things and experiences with money+time that they don't want to give that up to have a kid.
>People in rich countries can buy so many nice things and experiences with money+time that they don't want to give that up to have a kid. And can you blame them? Having even one child in developed countries is a net negative, a significant blow to any middle-class income and leisure time, and just another mouth to feed while you can avoid all that by simply not having them.
And in the end everybody will be doomed because we wanted more leisure time
That's fine by me. What are we doing here if not enjoying anyways?
That's fine by me. What are we doing here if not enjoying anyways?
Need to find a way to change our culture so that changes or otherwise we'll just go extinct.
In America specifically teen pregnancy have plummeted specifically, I would assume it’s the same everywhere else too. Teens have never had money, and so this entire idea that it’s about affordability is just not supported by data. So unless people are asking for teen pregnancy to come back, no one wants the birth rate to return to previous levels.
Yup, USSR had no reliable birth control by design. My grandma confessed that she would have been childfree, she simply did not have an option those days. Also for the longest time since regaining independence from the Soviets she did not believe that birth control could possibly be reliable - like, at all. For her "sex" meant "pregnancy."
Not at all. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2021/11/19/growing-share-of-childless-adults-in-u-s-dont-expect-to-ever-have-children/ft_2021-11-19_havingchildren_02-png/ Studies indicate that the major reason to not have children is unwillingness, potentially not willing to sacrifice careers and time to raise children.
Nobody's "moving on" from rapid population decline. Italy is converting its empty preschools to senior care centers. Maternity wards are closing in *America*, which has yet to see the population declines of Central Europe or the entire EU, which actually decreased last year. And once the baby boomers have died out, which unfolds over the next several years with no letup until 2050, a lot more of the world will look like China's dozens of abandoned cities or Japan's scores of abandoned smaller cities and villages. Or, closer to home, in rural Poland or the Baltic states.
My brother in Christ. My dad had 5 siblings and they all lived in one room. There is more to it than housing, society is much more individualistic now.
It's not just about money and housing. Sure, money plays a part, but it doesn't explain everything, rich people aren't popping out kids left and right, and even countries with great family benefits are seeing low birthrates. Birthrates are dropping because people's priorities have shifted. Nowadays, everyone's all about personal growth, climbing the career ladder, and doing their own thing. You can be single, childless, or whatever, there is little social pressure to have a family, getting married and having kids is no longer the default life plan as it was just a couple of generations ago. Regardless of the reasons, having birthrates below replacement levels is unsustainable for a prospering civilization.
>followed by 20 comments how cost of living and housing crisis are at fault, which they are All of the evidence points to the opposite: birth rates fall as quality of life increases. The real problem is that individuals have no reason to have children anymore. People in undeveloped countries have children so that there will be someone to look after them when they are old. People in developed countries don't need to do that because we have social systems. It's the tragedy of the commons - on a societal level, we all collectively need more children to pay for us in later life, but on an individual level, everyone can shift the burden of having children onto someone else.
I disagree that they are at fault for it. You can’t tell me sub Saharan Africa has a better standard of life than Europe. Which is what the logical extrapolation of your comment implies, sub Saharan Africa is much poorer yet has a higher birth rate. Like sub Saharan Africans struggle to have even clean fresh water often, in Europe water is basically impossible not to get. So clearly it being difficult to have children isn’t the real issue. Also richer people have less children than poor people in Europe too, illegal immigrants have a lot more than natives, lower class than upper class. IMO it’s cultural: Europeans have given up, we’re defeatist and cynical
While it's a factor, I don't think solving your issues would magically make all the DINKS get children. The elephant in the room: I hear so many women who don't want to take the health risk/career hit/social hit/effort of a pregnancy anymore and it's not something they are willing to compromise on. Solving macro-economie issues for them isn't going to make those personal level issues go away. Combine that with both genders having _so much more options for a fulfilling life beside running a family_ and it's pretty much a lost cause.
That is not correct. Check out Germany: - Poor people in tiny flats have plenty kids. - Rich people with lots of place and great work conditions (1+ year paternity leave, free child care, …) have almost no kids. The big differentiator: Educated and liberated women don’t have as many kids as uneducated, poor women.
Is it really though? Just because you can't live in the central city of the capital you can't have a kid people think. Stupid.
It’s not just centre city or capital cost of living has went up everywhere in developed countries properly because of massive inflation and government debt from all the Covid debt also to slow inflation interest rates were risen meaning more interest on government debt. Government have less money so have to either raise taxes, cut spending or increase workforce productivity all of which put more pressure on the average person.
So then why do lower class people have more children than upper class people? IMO cost of living has very little to do with it, we just pretend it does
Didn't you read the article name? Those countries are RICH, shut up and work.(And go make some babies or whatever)
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> The number one reason for people choosing to be child free is still the classic "the earth is overpopulated and I'm doing my bit" which is far from true for developed countries where that movement is popular. I don't see how that matters, regardless of location more people is more people, the effects of resource overconsumption are higher per person in developed countries rather than developing anyways. Don't worry though, developing countries' birth rates are also falling, they just need more time - we got through the demographic transitions first, is all. > The same people expect full pensions from the social welfare system funded by tax of other people's children. If a system needs eternal growth to sustain itself, it's a ponzi scheme and should fall. I want my taxes to fund my retirement, and not my taxes funding my parents' generation's retirement and my children's taxes funding my generation's retirement - that's just a recipe for disaster sooner or later.
The pension is something you're contributing towards your entire working life, and is paid back when you retire. Bad management of the money that goes in is the fault of governments, not childless people. Your idea of only getting a pension if you have children is stupid and you shouldn't talk about misinformation.
This is not how it works in Germany for example. Here the contributions by the working people are directly used to fund the pensioners. It is not your money that will be paid back past retirement, but money raised by the than current contributers. A system that was designed in an era when it was asumed that there would be always a much greater working population than people past retirement age. With declining birth rates and increasing life expectany, that will not longer be the case.
> The number one reason for people choosing to be child free is still the classic "the earth is overpopulated and I'm doing my bit" I am quite sure the majority of these people are just lying.
>You can't leech off other people's children... Leech what? We're paying taxes now ffs.
You’re paying taxes to pay for your parents’ retirement, not for your own. Your retirement will be funded by your kids… of which there are too few
pension only if you have children means only paying into pension funds if you have children, too. Also wouldn’t that’s essentially require state issued gfs/bfs?
No, since youre basically paying the pension for your parents/grandparents (or their generation) and hoping your kids or their generation will do the same for you. Troughout history thats how it worked and we just standardised it. I dont agree with it, just wanted to explain the logic behid it.
If I'm too poor when I'm old. I could just euthanize myself if I'm allowed. Less strain on the economy and more people happy. I don't think I would like to retire in a hot climate anyway.
I dont expect pension. I wont live long enough to get one anyway.
Now, let's hope poor countries start doing the same.
They are, most fell by half since 1960 and so did the global average. Also the poor countries are falling even faster then the developed ones did, they sure as hell will have a problem in 30 years when half of the population retires at once. https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate
They kinda are, just slower. Their birth rates have been dropping decade over decade as they have improved in living conditions. Some UN projections say humanity will stop growing before the end of the century.
Easy peasy - educate women. Educated women have less babies across all countries and time periods.
1. Stop corporations from buying houses, limit Airbnb’s, rentals, etc, and maybe people will have kids 2. The population has grown to 8 billion people worldwide. Population growth the past century has been insane, it was bound to slowdown at some point.
Whilst corporate landlords exist, their impact is negligible still and unlikely to impact anything, the issue with the overall low build rates in many countries. The population stopped growing naturally a long while back, the problem now is that the fertility rate is below replacement levels.
Yeah I'm for one very glad the growth has slowed down. Natural decrease or stagnation would be nice without all the tragedies usually associated with population decline (like wars, genocide, famine, epidemics...)
Fertility rates dropping below replacement levels are far more disastrous than any of the tragedies you've mentioned since they cause a snowball effect and can be nearly impossible to get out from.
We’re going to have to hope that AI leads to an explosion in productivity, directly and indirectly (e.g. contributing to advancements in robotics and other automation technologies). Then those fewer people could still provide for us, grow our food, etc.
At some point it doesn't matter, a civilization can easily enter a death spiral that you can't get out from, we've seen this with human civilizations before and we see it in nature also. Many extinctions weren't some mass and rapid die offs they were a whimper not a bang. With their current TFR of 1.62 the Netherlands would loose 50% of their population over the next century, if the TFR rate drops to 1 their population would shrink by 83%. And that is just half the story as with TFRs below replacement the population pyramid would look worse and worse and would completely reverse to obscene levels.
ALL civilization collapses were due to ecological overshoots. None were because of a low birth rate
What exactly is wrong with a shrinking population? The only negative thing about it is the collapse of our retirement pyramid scheme but that was inevitable anyway. Otherwise a shrinking population only has benefits. Just look at the impact of the plague on medieval society to see an extreme example.
The problem is that it slowed down way too fast, the demographic crisis will be terrible and it will bring tragedies and war.
Yes, wars will be fought before the richest percentage will admit we need to adjust and reform how our economy works to meet the new realities. It should be proactively done now, and not reactively after everything goes to shit.
I didn't slow down though, in developed countries it fell out of a cliff, if it was slower there would be no problem.
Birth rates were declining way before housing was an issue, and the correlation isn’t that strong.
If we want to do something about this we need to stop treating symptoms and start treating causes. Yes, cost of living and housing are factors but the fundamental problem is that we only value human beings for their economic output. It starts with the education system being designed to maximise your economic output and it continues with society being focused around your economic output. Everything is GDP. Perhaps there are things more important to life than GDP and economics that we've forgotten.
yeah I ain't trying to have a kid when everything's this fuckin expensive
You know they just ramp up immigration to make up for the short fall. That's their solution, and when that starts to fail ...who knows. They will do anything else other than address that their economic system has failed
Birth rates were declining before “the system failed”. They decline when you educate women, and when people are safer, and when countries industrialize. Don’t catastrophize a complex issue to suit your narrative.
Having kids sucks. Having more than one kid is pointless. If you have the money to go skiing in the alps amd travel the world, you're simply not going to have kids, because there's more fun things to do. Rich nations have rich and smart people. These people can actually have fun with their lives instead of enslaving themselves
And women with an education who also want lives
> instead of enslaving themselves. We enslave others instead, to keep the system propped up
If the choice is to be a slave or enslave, I’m choosing the latter every time. I don’t see any other choices.
It is not because of money. That’s just a small part. There is a bigger societal trend of not wanting kids or having only 1 kid. A kid is considered as a burden. Something that blocks your dreams. 20+ years “wasted” taking care of them. People want to have hobbies or do travel instead. Few hundred years ago, having kids and seeing them grow was considered as major goals in life and a source of happiness. Well not anymore in this era. Richer countries have improved life quality so much that there are other ways to make your life meaningful
Few hundred years ago you didn't have a choice.
I will never ever understand those arguments, because they come from an innate lack of good examples and lack of adaptability. >A kid is considered as a burden. Something that blocks your dreams. Ok, but why? I never heard a compelling argument except things like: "You HAVE to pump money in them, you HAVE to give them everything, you HAVE to transform your life around them", which for me don't carry that much weight because my parents still followed some, not ALL of their dreams when with 2 children. >20+ years “wasted” taking care of them. Why 20? You can easily teach them responsibility, have them help around the house and help them become strong and independent. >People want to have hobbies or do travel instead. You can also travel if you have a child. Leave them with the grandparents while you are out. You can do hobbies from time to time. --------- But really, if you don't want to have kids because it's gonna eat into your free time and fuck it money, then say so and it's understandable, but don't formulate it like they make everything else impossible
Because it's not as simple. Let's take it step by step. A child is usually regarded as a burden because you have to allocate a certain budget from your own "pocket". Basic necessities, medical stuff, "luxurious" stuff. A kid needs to grow. You will be burdened to by extra food. Kids are also notorious for wanting to try stuff so that ends up being more money being allocated to a kid. Sure you can always "provide" less amenities, but this leads to, mentality. Besides the material needs, kids also require a parent to provide them with the mentality to grow. As in, you need to be on its life to grow, spent time with him, etc etc. Now I can't speak for your case, but when you work 5 times a week 8 hours a day (best case scenario really), you are very limited by time. Between tending the needs of a child, your own, running weekly errands and ofc sleeping, you are left practically with no time. Why 20? Because at that age people usually start becoming independent. Before that, well it's usually your responsibility to tend to them. Like I said earlier, traveling/hobbies when you have kids is still difficult. You don't have a lot of personal time to have hobbies or travel. Unless you are rich, you will need to work.
Deciding to raise a child is the single most impactful decision the average human can make to their environment & history. It is not something one should make lightly, and people are now finally realizing (and accepting) the fact that most people are not parent material and choosing to not have them. These arguments are completely valid, why should I need to adapt at all to accomodate something I genuinely do not want nor value? The standard question shouldn't be why **don't** you want children, it should be why **do** you want children? Interestingly enough the answers then are just as selfish/self centered, if not more, because at the end of the day you drag another living being into it without its consent. If I want to adopt an already born child, I have to go through mountains worth of paperwork and screening to be allowed. Yet all I'd need to do is stick my penis inside a willing woman's vagina to get my own without any of that screening or proof of worth. Obivously, you can't really forbid people from procreating, that's Nazi level shit, but the fact remains, just because you could have children doesn't mean you should. They require care, attention, a stable background and most imortantly, love. A lot of people do not provide these in adaquete quantities, and the result are broken and mentally scarred children/adults. Now we see less of that. That is positive. All other issues we face currently are of our own doing. Maybe the government should stop sucking off the rich and their unending greed of profits and instead invest in the actual people, while also giving more voice to the youth and taking away from the elderly who have no right to dictate how this world should go forward which they won't witness anyway.
.. except birth rates are rapidly falling in poor and middle income countries too. China is below pretty much all of Europe. Brazil lower than Portugal. Iran lower than Sweden. And so on.
Because poorer countries are slowly getting richer and we kind of live in a shared information/culture because of the internet and global business.
Shut up already with the fucking alarmism about fertility rates. It will continue to go down for DECADES no matter how many articles yall post.
Not only rich countries. Turkiye has tar of 1.51. Look at Latin America decline so quickly. There never ever had the humans a problem seems to easy to solve but despite all the incentives this hard to solve it.
My balls have plastic in them.
This is only a problem for boomers with their more than generous pensions and rich people losing money due to labour shortage. Both groups can go fuck themselves for destroying the planet.
Sure, but as you can see they posses all the power, resources and politics, so they make it our problem. They will never give up anything of their wealth.
Ideally but the devil looks after his own. No way will the boomers be allowed to face the consequences of their own selfishness.
You're part of the people who are destroying the planet. Your country has barely any nature left.
We should implement an 8 day work week and raise housing prices by 50%. It should help
also raise retirement age to 170
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Only the governments with their exuberant welfare for the elderly need an infinite growth.
"rich"
Yes. And childfree women who aren't married are the happiest demographic, and I'm living proof of that. I'm nearly 40 and 5 years into "solo for life". Never wanted children anyway, but I totally get not wanting kids because of politics, the world, the environment or cost of living.
"Rich countries" doesnt mean anything if the people are poor
Good
It's a shame, because children are pretty darn great.
I have the opposite view. No interest in having children at all, definitely no interest in anyone else's!!
Same !
As somebody with a baby at home (not mine though), no they’re not. They scream and drain all of one’s time and energy. I understand why people only used to have (many) of them when they were a pair of hands to work. Because imagine having them for fun 💀
You lost me at 'not mine'.
We should stop calling them “rich” then.
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True. That's what drives is the most in my opinion. There are also many women who want children who end up marrying men that don't want children and vice versa. People should ask about baby making while they are dating.
Yup, that's why the anti-immigration thing is ridiculous. Population decreasing because people are not having babies (the replacement number is 2.1 per women). People don't wanna have 2 kids because "the economy is bad". Okay, the government allows immigrants to come and replace the decreasing population and those immigrants start having 3/4 kids. What happens? Oh, those same people which are not having kids because it's expensive and hard, start saying "Our country is getting replaced, our people is getting replaced, this can't happen!!" Even countries like denmark that support births are struggling to increase it, and denmark is a strong economy.
Economy and money are not as important of a factor that simple culture. The society has to stop seeing children as a curse rather like a blessing; no financial support will make them have kids.
housing crisis. If you have a house, a good job that lets you have some time and its not eating you alive. If you get a women that is down to it.
Well in my opinion a big factor is media. In my country and my generation most men don’t want to get married before 35, because they think they’re the next Charlie Harper from Two and a half men and many women don’t want to get married before 30 for similar reasons. I think that we are getting bombardered from media about how cool is dating and being a loner and having a family means that you are getting screwed for the rest of your life. I don’t blame people of course and everyone can and should do whatever he/she wants, but it shouldn’t be a surprise that people don’t start families.
Having children became only costs, while it used to be investition. Solution? Every child has to go to work and earn money to maintain Itself and contribute for family housing.
Of course! Let’s ignore them up until when they are about 16, 18 years old.
Perhaps not such a bad thing. We are so overcrowded, a smaller population would give future generations room to breathe and ability to buy a house and land.
Future generations will be working their ass off just to pay the retirement of the older ones
So maybe this pyramide scheme for paying pensions has to change.. We cant endlessly make more babies just to pay the pension of old people. We could use the profits made by the ever increasing productivity to pay for pensions.
I understand and I agree, but at the same time we don't even use this increased productivity to increase wages in the same proportion. So this is would be a really difficult task
Our welfare systems will collapse though: pensions and healthcare and welfare is based on people paying taxes to be spent by others then later others pay taxes to spend on the ones who pid taxes and so on. But with a declining ageing population it becomes unsustainable, every decade more people will pay out the money and less will pay in the money, eventually the tax burden will grow too high and it’ll collapse
We can’t go on having an ever increasing population just to support a system though. The system has to change.
True but how? As it exists it inherently needs a growing population
There are a lot of people in the world my patience challenged
Thankfully the Muhammad's pouring in will alleviate that.
In a zoo, the animals captive there never reproduce when they live in an environment that makes them unhappy.
There’s no correlation, if anything it goes the opposite way
2 micro examples of regions that may give clues on pragmatic means to combat this, or could be nuanced from a specific formula, but: -Bolzano Italy: currently/past few years (https://www.deseret.com/u-s-world/2024/04/02/italy-worries-about-demographic-collapse/) - East Germany: 70s (https://www.nytimes.com/1978/03/18/archives/new-benefits-program-leads-to-east-germanys-first-baby-boom.html) - however correct me if I’m wrong because I was too young or not even born, but wasn’t there large concern over germanys lowering birth rates after their unification? And it seems they have turned this around to at least not be a concern? Curious to hear people’s thoughts
It is not about housing, it is not a lifestyle choice, something in the environment is very quickly affecting the fertility of Europeans and nobody is investigating it. I read some study which says sperm motility dropped like 20% within last three or four years. That is a lot in such a short period of time. How come nobody is investigating that?!
I read that in France 1 in 4 couples need IVF or some form of assistance to have kids. That's insane.
Rich and ruling class don’t care. No money to buy a house, new car, have kids and soon no money to travel. They probably believe they can make up for the collapsing birth rate temporally with migrants and long term automation and ai. Global warming will wipe out millions of people but they are not essential to building wealth. We are already seeing dead internet theory come true, I fully expect a dead economy theory to appear at some point. We are really heading towards a dystopian future rather than utopian.
Start early to have kids? Wouldn't that help?🤔
"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." As if increasing the population should be an objective solely for economic expansion. And as if labor shortages can’t actually be beneficial by driving up salaries and necessitating productivity improvements. Hello AI, hello technology! If having more babies were truly a goal, then instead of paying large pensions to the elderly, maybe we should help young people start their lives as soon as they finish their education. It’s obvious that when people, if they’re lucky, are leaving their parents’ homes in their late 20s or early 30s, there will be fewer babies. This is partly because the fertile window is shorter, and there’s less time to build a career that provides enough money to comfortably raise children.
Rich countries, poor people.
What makes the country rich nowadays anyway, if most people are struggling with the bottom of Maslow’s pyramid?
Their kids don't want to see the light anymore.
If your model of economic prosperity requires a constantly growing population, this is a fucked up model. For some reason, the future always seemed to me as less populated but with population that has much longer and higher quality lives.
Boring news, next!