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The global fertility rate is falling

bbc.com

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Re: The global fertility rate is falling

#501

Post by mjburgess »

tsimionescu wrote: post #482
mjburgess wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is care-jobs are incredibly low productivity. The reason a worker today is paid more than 100 years ago is, essentially, just that they can produce/transact with more people at once. A nurse "should" be paid what they were 100 years ago, as the number of transactions hasn't changed. The only reason they aren't is due to competition from productive sectors. But those productive sectors need to exist! In a…

How can you compare productivity across functions, nevermore industries? Does a nurse produce less than a director of marketing? By what possible metric? Profit comes to mind, but I am hoping no one is inhuman enough to judge the medical care sector by its profits...

Profit is a measure of productivity, other things being equal.

A director of marketing creates a campaign which affects millions of transactions... so it's a function which can dramatically increase economic production.

It's pretty easy to compare productivity across industries. Leave what "should" be aside, when you're planning for the success of nations you cannot rely on Moral Bonuses.

The rate of economic activity (ie., people transacting with one another such that each has more than before) is measurable: it's called growth.

And you cannot grow by replacing highly productive industries with deeply unproductive ones. To pay for things we need the ratio of workers:transactions to increase.

Human history was severely impoverished because this was always a low number. We are wealthy today only because it is a higher one.

Re: The global fertility rate is falling

#502

Post by blarg1 »

dragonwriter wrote: post #98
empath75 wrote: post #27

Why is immigration not the answer to this? Eventually developed countries are going to have to get over their bigotry and open the borders.

> Why is immigration not the answer to this? Because of the word “global”. Unless you are talking about interplanetary immigration. OTOH, the real solution is “this projection of current trends into the future is likely to be just as wrong as when people were projecting the rapid rate of global population growth in the 1960s to continue without bound, or even further accelerate”.

> Unless you are talking about interplanetary immigration.

Sure as long as they aren't chest bursters

Re: The global fertility rate is falling

#504

Post by raziel2p »

FourthProtocol wrote: post #493

So, massive article on how terrible a declining population is, but only four (supposedly, maybe) negative effects listed? - Who pays tax in a massively aged world? - Who pays for healthcare for the elderly? - Who looks after the elderly? - Will people still be able to retire from work? I welcome a declining population. Because the climate will benefit and the poor will be less so, and the threat of war would diminish…

Why do you think the climate will benefit? Smaller but richer populations have polluted more than large but poor populations in the past. Due to global trade and wealth accumulation, a declining population could easily just lead to more concentrated wealth and more luxury goods consumption (think private jet flights, yacht construction...) which leads to pollution not decreasing.

Similar with war - tons of wars are fought for wealth and resources, which seems unrelated to population, and even with a small population, drone attacks, assassinations and proxy wars are still entirely possible.

Re: The global fertility rate is falling

#505

Post by Blackstone4 »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #400
gregfjohnson wrote: post #357

The Hacker News comment section tends to be factual, rational, and logical. So - this may be out of place, but here goes. When making decisions about whether or not to have children, we operate in a state of partial information. (This is of course true of all decisions.) I would like to contribute a bit of information. I'm 66, and have three children and four grandchildren. My adult children are the most wonderful pe…

I'm not sure having children so you won't be lonely in old age is a good thing.

I’ve been thinking about this and I feel like society characterises some acts as selfless (I.e. having children, marrying your ‘soulmate’)....when really it’s all about people wanting something for themselves....

Re: The global fertility rate is falling

#506

Post by iso1631 »

scarmig wrote: post #494
jackcosgrove wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your retirement was predicated on a forever swelling population lifting your boat, then you actually didn't save enough to retire. Secure retirements shouldn't rely on paygo systems and infinite growth.

The issue is that large numbers of people, organizations, and governments have assumed a forever swelling population in their retirement plans. So, yes, like any time in history there will be individuals who haven't saved enough to retire. The issue is that a demographic contraction throws the large majority of retirees into crippling poverty, absent government intervention that allocates capital investment and worke…

Majority of working people live paycheck to paycheck, earning enough to pay for rent, food, and maybe a few beers on a friday night.

Any extra money from pay rises goes into spiraling rent costs cause by extra money from pay rises, which goes to those who own the rentable assets.

There is more than enough housing to go round. There is more than enough food to go round. There's more than enough beer to go round. Yet there are people working 100 hours a week sweeping floors that can barely pay for it.

There have to be better ways to distribute what's being generated (which is almost entirely from those ages 20-65) among the population without disenfranchising increasing numbers of those that actually do the work

Re: The global fertility rate is falling

#507

Post by mahaganapati »

gregfjohnson wrote: post #357

The Hacker News comment section tends to be factual, rational, and logical. So - this may be out of place, but here goes. When making decisions about whether or not to have children, we operate in a state of partial information. (This is of course true of all decisions.) I would like to contribute a bit of information. I'm 66, and have three children and four grandchildren. My adult children are the most wonderful pe…

> The Hacker News comment section tends to be factual, rational, and logical.

Have we been reading the same version of Hacker News?

Re: The global fertility rate is falling

#508

Post by kamaal »

saithound wrote: post #500
kamaal wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>This means there are 100 million girls less today in these countries alone Actual numbers are way off the real numbers. In my kids school you can see a very noticeably difference in the count of boys and girls in any standard and section. It's noticeable to a point, if you walk in to a classroom you can see at least visually boys outnumber girls by a good enough difference. I also refuse to believe this due to infa…

Your proposed (not illegal, not unethical) explanation does not work out mathematically. Even in the extreme scenario where all families stopped would stop having kids after the birth of a daughter, the expected number of male children would equal the expected number of female children. And even if say 52 percent of babies born are boys, you won't ever get a male excess of the discussed magnitude (1100 men for every…

Mine was just an anecdotal evidence. Also that 52% boy babies count itself is too low. The real scenario for my comparison is 3 boys for every 1 girl born. It's also way more complicated than your simulation. Say the first kid was a boy and the second kid was a girl, people don't stop. They think their risk(Having a boy to provide in old age) is hedged and are likely to try for one more kid.

If you have families where 3 boys are born in a series, and a family on the other hand stops at the first daughter. Or a family that has 2 boys + 1 girl - Compared to a family having just one girl. Do this for a billion people, and you will the see things start going real bad soon.

Also note, just a small imbalance is not enough to cover for marriages. In India getting married is a long series of AND conditions you have to pass through. Religion, Caste, Language, Skin Color, Dowry affordability, Age, Social Standing etc etc. You are likely to end up a section of society that just doesn't get any girls.

India is a society where a daughter means a huge wedding expense, plus dowry. All this a drain to your retirement savings, plus now not having a provider in old age(which you would have one if you had a boy instead of a girl). That's how screwed up the society is. It's really one of the worst places on earth for a woman to be born in.

You are dealing with a society that's ridiculously good at not having daughters. A practice perfected for decades.

Re: The global fertility rate is falling

#509

Post by raziel2p »

thehappypm wrote: post #206

Give it a few generations. In the past, having a family was status quo and basically required. Now, it’s a choice. Natural selection will heavily favor those with the “I want kids!” gene.

I think the point here is that the people who don't want kids are still a useful part of our gene pool, and we should look critically at what factors in to the decision not to have any kids - I don't think it's genetic at all.

It's impossible for me not to think of Idiocracy while writing this - which was extremely exaggerated, but still...

Re: The global fertility rate is falling

#510

Post by zeepzeep »

gregfjohnson wrote: post #357

The Hacker News comment section tends to be factual, rational, and logical. So - this may be out of place, but here goes. When making decisions about whether or not to have children, we operate in a state of partial information. (This is of course true of all decisions.) I would like to contribute a bit of information. I'm 66, and have three children and four grandchildren. My adult children are the most wonderful pe…

> whether to start trying to have a family is a BIG-ASS decision, with life-long consequences

It especially has life-long consequences for the children! I wouldn't want to put children in this world. I don't think the future world is a nice place to grow up in, even the current world isn't. IMO it's selfish to make kids just to feel fulfilled and not be lonely.

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