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We Expect 300k Fewer Births Than Usual This Year in the US

nytimes.com

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Re: We Expect 300k Fewer Births Than Usual This Year in the US

#191

Post by r3drock »

shortandsweet wrote: post #170
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve been thinking about this lately. Similar to you, the house I grew up in is much more less affordable now than it was when my parents bought it. However, in my case it’s not really the same house any more. At the time, the location was thought to be on the outskirts of town, away from the desirable areas. As the city grew, this location became the desirable area. If I look to what is now considered the outskirts,…

That's what I don't understand, if population growth is stagnant or declining, how is it these housing prices are reaching such heights?

One explanation is rising amounts of space per person, the apartments are just getting bigger.

Re: We Expect 300k Fewer Births Than Usual This Year in the US

#192

Post by gryn »

missedthecue wrote: post #132
afavour wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know that isolating the cost of raising kids is necessary when you can see the drop in overall wealth by generation. Millenials (who are the prime "kid having" generation right now) own far less wealth than any generation that came before them. Is it really in any way surprising that fewer are having kids?

Don't poorer people have more kids on average?

because historicaly wealth was correlated with levels of education, but in this case people are more educated so they nope out of it.

Re: We Expect 300k Fewer Births Than Usual This Year in the US

#193

Post by antattack »

Deviation, up or down, from the mean will cause inefficiencies and extra costs to our society. Still, 300k less births, however, is less than 10% of total number, and is not significant enough to be of big concern. 10% is going from 1:16 teacher to student ratio to 1:14.

Re: We Expect 300k Fewer Births Than Usual This Year in the US

#194

Post by rgrieselhuber »

whatshisface wrote: post #174
shortandsweet wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what I don't understand, if population growth is stagnant or declining, how is it these housing prices are reaching such heights?

Because nobody wants to hold currency for extended periods of time.

Bingo

Re: We Expect 300k Fewer Births Than Usual This Year in the US

#195

Post by usefulcat »

shortandsweet wrote: post #170
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve been thinking about this lately. Similar to you, the house I grew up in is much more less affordable now than it was when my parents bought it. However, in my case it’s not really the same house any more. At the time, the location was thought to be on the outskirts of town, away from the desirable areas. As the city grew, this location became the desirable area. If I look to what is now considered the outskirts,…

That's what I don't understand, if population growth is stagnant or declining, how is it these housing prices are reaching such heights?

You can find cheap housing, the problem is it's all in places where most people don't want to live. For example, Detroit, or any of thousands of small towns all over the US.

Not picking on Detroit, it's just an obvious example of a large city that used to have a much larger population.

Re: We Expect 300k Fewer Births Than Usual This Year in the US

#196

Post by whatshisface »

r3drock wrote: post #191
shortandsweet wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what I don't understand, if population growth is stagnant or declining, how is it these housing prices are reaching such heights?

One explanation is rising amounts of space per person, the apartments are just getting bigger.

When you watch the price of the same unit grow over time, it's not usually because the owners are building more. :)

Re: We Expect 300k Fewer Births Than Usual This Year in the US

#197

Post by solosoyokaze »

bradleyjg wrote: post #157
wcarss wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is precisely that neither of them is an outlier within their respective time -- they are normal people who want "normal" housing: i.e. just enough to raise a family in. The parents born in the 30s-50s could largely afford to purchase homes large enough to raise a family in, but far fewer people born in the 70s-90s will be able to do the same.

My point is that, at least in the US, the post World War II economy was unusual and the factors that lead to it are unlikely to ever be repeated. We are reverting to the status quo ante about what middle class means.

I agree with the first part of your comment but there wasn’t really a middle class prior to the 20th century.

The petite bourgeoisie would probably be considered upper-middle class today. Even the industrial revolution was only a small period of humanity.

Re: We Expect 300k Fewer Births Than Usual This Year in the US

#198

Post by amanaplanacanal »

laurent92 wrote: post #159
motohagiography wrote: post #64

Birthrates are a powerful, but lagging/post-hoc indicator of public policy effects. It's worth noting that we tend to associate high birthrates with poverty and negative social outcomes. Except, when rates are low we (western countries) use immigration from high-birthrate societies to shore up the population replacement rate, as the article notes. When you look at who is having kids in the US and Canada, the families…

> when birthrates are low we use immigration This is why I don’t believe in ecology. Every 5% we save on water, is being used by our leaders to stuff more population on the same land. It defeats the purpose of saving: Public policies cancel individual efforts, such as my friends who chose to have no kids for ecology. Capitalism is a way of forwarding global constraints to individuals, and exponential house prices com…

The only solution is having fewer babies worldwide. National borders don’t stop people from moving where opportunity is.

Re: We Expect 300k Fewer Births Than Usual This Year in the US

#199

Post by keiferski »

carapace wrote: post #189
keiferski wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty much every single generation other than your parents (assuming you’re 25-40) had a tougher time and lived in a world with a more uncertain future. Every generation, going back millions of years.

That's not even remotely true. The vast majority of humans had very very stable futures. Like tens of thousands of years stable. Civilization as we know it is very very recent and unstable.

The Cold War seems to have evaporated entirely from the collective imagination. For nearly half a century, people had a not unreasonable expectation that a nuke might end the world at any moment.

Prior to that, you had WW2, the Depression, WW1, slums and brutal industrial factory jobs and before that mostly subsistence farming. The idea that life today is so precarious and difficult is absurd. We just aren’t used to difficulty.

Re: We Expect 300k Fewer Births Than Usual This Year in the US

#200

Post by lcc »

beaconstudios wrote: post #23
Scandiravian wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> should be treated as a reason to not make assumptions about others That's what checking ones privilege is. I'm in a position where my financial security, mental well-being, and future prospects would make it a good time for me to start a family if that was what I wanted. Same goes for many of my friends and colleagues, who have in many cases done exactly that I think this article shows that this security does not e…

But my point is that such a misunderstanding of other people is not a symptom of privilege, its a symptom of being human. You probably don't know how billionaires as a class (and generalising people by a demographic is overgeneralising too) are experiencing covid either, but that isn't a question of privilege. I guess I just don't like the idea of taking a universal human experience and casting it in terms of privile…

David Graeber made a really good argument for why misunderstanding others is exactly a symptom of privilege. The whole article is worth reading (as is the whole book I originally read it in, "The Utopia of Rules"), but here's the argument in a nutshell:

"Those born to working-class families invariably score far better at tests of gauging others' feelings than scions of the rich, or professional classes. In a way it's hardly surprising. After all, this is what being "powerful" is largely about: not having to pay a lot of attention to what those around one are thinking and feeling. The powerful employ others to do that for them." https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/26/caring...

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