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Fewer Births Than Deaths Among Whites in Majority of U.S. States

nytimes.com

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Re: Fewer Births Than Deaths Among Whites in Majority of U.S. States

#21

Post by Alex3917 »

I'm 33 and my spouse is 31, we just had our first child. Of our 20 or so closest white friends, there are exactly two couples with babies. Most aren't even married yet.

This is in NYC so I expect that we're outliers, but given that fertility starts declining significantly around 35, I've got to imagine our friend group won't even be close to the replacement rate. So unless we're not just outliers but extreme outliers, I've got to imagine that fertility will decline even more over the next five years or so. We're just now getting to the point where it's time for the folks who graduated during the great recession and/or who work in the gig economy to start having kids, so to whatever extent economics play a role I don't think we've hit the bottom of the trough yet.

Re: Fewer Births Than Deaths Among Whites in Majority of U.S. States

#22

Post by ElectricalPast »

jefurii wrote: post #9

I'm white. As I watch the news I can't help but think maybe this isn't such a bad thing. All I see are white people bashing people of color, and other white people standing on the sidelines doing nothing concrete to stop it. [edited for clarity]

Whites don't have to be in a majority to cause misery :)

Exhibit A: South Africa.

More specifically - even if whites continue to constitute a smaller and smaller portion of the US population, it is likely that whites will continue to have an outsized influence on the nations politics and economy through entrenched power structures.

Re: Fewer Births Than Deaths Among Whites in Majority of U.S. States

#23

Post by moomin »

ElectricalPast wrote: post #15
AFNobody wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are blaming the GOP (whose economic policies are the primary driver of low birth rates) for electing Trump. Good job!

I'm sorry but I strongly disagree that political policies generally lead to higher or lower birth rates. Birth rates are largely correlated to the developmental level of a country at a more macro-level.

On that basis we’d be expecting to see birth-rates go up.

Re: Fewer Births Than Deaths Among Whites in Majority of U.S. States

#24

Post by thrill »

mullingitover wrote: post #8
smithmayowa wrote: post #2

This phenomenon and a host of other's happening in U.S currently are the reasons why trump was elected. Edit: relax people I'm black not racist what I mean to say is that the rise of China's economy and the dwindling influence of whites in the sphere of things globally is what brought trump to power

I thought he was elected due to a peculiarity in the US election system that sometimes allows the person who got fewer votes to seize power.

If by "peculiarity" you mean "intentional design" to prevent tyranny of the majority, and by "seize power", you mean peaceful formal transfer of authority, then yes, you're correct.

Re: Fewer Births Than Deaths Among Whites in Majority of U.S. States

#25

Post by derping_hacker »

txsh wrote: post #20
ElectricalPast wrote: post #6

This is simple mathematics. If your birthrate is below replacement rate, pretty soon your population's births will outnumber its deaths. The only reason the United States hasn't seen a shrinking population (and stagnating economy) like much of Europe and Japan is due to immigration: https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/11/10/16631980/fertili...

Exactly. Population deceleration is a global crisis and virtually nobody is talking about it. It could mean the end of Western civilization. Our governments are built upon the assumption that the population will continue to increase, that there will be more taxpayers tomorrow to shoulder the burden of today’s spending. When the population begins to decrease in a few decades, every successive generation will have a lo…

You're implying that technology won't be able to increase productivity. One of the biggest topics people are talking about is automation taking jobs, so why do we need to worry about population size?

Human population grows exponentially, earth has finite resources. Constant population growth is suicidal.

Re: Fewer Births Than Deaths Among Whites in Majority of U.S. States

#26

Post by mr_tristan »

The political implications are pretty interesting. It doesn't seem like rural areas are "replenishing" at all, thus, getting older, which seems to coincide with being generally more conservative and typically more "protective".

Also, rural areas don't seem to see much positive economic development these days. Thus, it's likely that the rural vote will become even more distrusting of central authority and extreme in general.

It sure seems like the political divide in the US will only deepen further, and be susceptible to even more external manipulation.

What I didn't consider previously is that the opiate epidemic may also be adding fuel to the fire.

Re: Fewer Births Than Deaths Among Whites in Majority of U.S. States

#27

Post by ElectricalPast »

moomin wrote: post #23
ElectricalPast wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry but I strongly disagree that political policies generally lead to higher or lower birth rates. Birth rates are largely correlated to the developmental level of a country at a more macro-level.

On that basis we’d be expecting to see birth-rates go up.

How so?

Re: Fewer Births Than Deaths Among Whites in Majority of U.S. States

#28

Post by moufestaphio »

jefurii wrote: post #9

I'm white. As I watch the news I can't help but think maybe this isn't such a bad thing. All I see are white people bashing people of color, and other white people standing on the sidelines doing nothing concrete to stop it. [edited for clarity]

>As I watch the news I can't help but think maybe this isn't such a bad thing.

Is this a round about way of saying 'if all the white people died it would fix our problems'?

I personally don't think it's a very helpful sentiment to say things like "If this group of people didn't exist, we wouldn't have a problem".

Re: Fewer Births Than Deaths Among Whites in Majority of U.S. States

#29

Post by moomin »

This could just be written “The baby boom are dying”. The baby boom was always a one-off event, not a sustained change in behaviour. And given the ridiculously poor choice they’ve made, whilst we’ll undoubtedly miss those we love, collectively they will not be mourned.

The Baby Boom was not the greatest generation.

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