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Baby Boom or Bust?

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Re: Baby Boom or Bust?

#41

Post by handrous »

AlexTWithBeard wrote: post #30
chrisseaton wrote: post #25

Children are astronomically expensive. Most working class and middle class parents cannot envision affording a second child so they have just one.

Well, the only really expensive thing is daycare. I'm afraid there's no ready solution to that - unless we're willing to get back to the idea of extended family and village to raise a kid. PS. I have three kids, I know what I'm talking about.

Well, that and health care (in the US). And housing. And those two don't go away until they're out of the house.

But yes, next to those three things most other expenses aren't that bad, or are avoidable with little down-side. Only other notable one's probably consumables (diapers, food, that sort of thing) which doesn't come close to any of the other three. Toys and clothes are practically free, if you're not picky. People get all kinds of expensive crap at baby showers, but very little of it's actually of much use, and most of the rest could have been had used for next to nothing.

Re: Baby Boom or Bust?

#42

Post by lalaland1125 »

Economic incentives are never going to really work well in improving fertility rates.

If you look at the data in the US, the biggest predictor of fertility is religion, with religious people in the US having 2-3x more kids than non religious people.

Most of the decline in birthrate within both western Europe and the US can be traced to increasing drops in religion.

Re: Baby Boom or Bust?

#43

Post by Animats »

dirtyid wrote: post #33
barry-cotter wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> China's one-child policy was a success. None of Korea, Japan, Singapore, Taiwan or Hong Kong had forced abortions and they also have declining, aging populations after long periods of rapidly rising living standards. China got to very much the same place they would have anyway but with much more human suffering and barbarity.

>the same place Not even remotely. One Child Policy prevented 300M births. There are still 600M in PRC trapped in lower-middle income who would have traditionally hedged via more children without family planning. Industrialization + reforms + global demand was not enough to drag everyone in PRC out of middle income - simply too many people. The difference is managing state of 1.4B people with 600M poor as result of f…

India is still at 59% agricultural employment. China is at 25% and dropping. The US is below 2%. Attempts to commoditize agriculture in India have caused riots by poor farmers.[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020%E2%80%932021_Indian_farme...

Re: Baby Boom or Bust?

#44

Post by stephc_int13 »

yourapostasy wrote: post #38
stephc_int13 wrote: post #16

Declining birth rate was already an issue in large cities during antiquity. I even suspect that the pro-family policies we can observe in the religions that were created afterwards were a tentative to fix this problem. In my opinion, our species population is big enough already, and this is the main driving factor of ongoing ecological problems. I think we can adapt to a differently shaped age structure, we don't nee…

> ...we don't need a pyramid. The core financial architecture of the world is pinned upon an assumption of monotonically-increasing global population on a 3-7 generation moving average. So far, history has not been kind to those civilizations exhibiting declining populations over sustained multi-generational spans. We're into generation one or two depending upon your definition of a generation, so we have some time b…

I think that the risk of civilization collapse has been highly overrated and is mostly bullshit prediction.

Re: Baby Boom or Bust?

#45

Post by AlexTWithBeard »

handrous wrote: post #41
AlexTWithBeard wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the only really expensive thing is daycare. I'm afraid there's no ready solution to that - unless we're willing to get back to the idea of extended family and village to raise a kid. PS. I have three kids, I know what I'm talking about.

Well, that and health care (in the US). And housing. And those two don't go away until they're out of the house. But yes, next to those three things most other expenses aren't that bad, or are avoidable with little down-side. Only other notable one's probably consumables (diapers, food, that sort of thing) which doesn't come close to any of the other three. Toys and clothes are practically free, if you're not picky.…

Healthcare - yes.

Housing - we lived with the kids in a 2-bedroom for three years. One room for kids, one for us. Not super pleasant, but overall acceptable.

Re: Baby Boom or Bust?

#46

Post by stephc_int13 »

lalaland1125 wrote: post #42

Economic incentives are never going to really work well in improving fertility rates. If you look at the data in the US, the biggest predictor of fertility is religion, with religious people in the US having 2-3x more kids than non religious people. Most of the decline in birthrate within both western Europe and the US can be traced to increasing drops in religion.

From what I've read, the biggest predictor is girls education, but this is not incompatible.

Re: Baby Boom or Bust?

#47

Post by blue_potato »

xondono wrote: post #39
monkeybutton wrote: post #15

My country (Canada) is intent on making up for falling birth rates by increasing immigration. Sometimes I wonder if it is unethical for a rich country like Canada to effectively outsource (offload?) child rearing costs and to some extent education costs to the poorer countries that we are taking immigrants from.

How is that not a win-win scenario? Moving to Canada improves their standard of living.

We can say it's a win for Canada (gain people) and a win for the people coming (gain standard of living). But then, it's a loss for the place the people come from since that place loses the people that Canada gains.

Re: Baby Boom or Bust?

#48

Post by ReactiveJelly »

AlexTWithBeard wrote: post #31
TacticalCoder wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In my opinion, our species population is big enough already, and this is the main driving factor of ongoing ecological problems. That's the reason my wife and I decided to only have one kid. It's a statement. I don't care that future politicians shall have less future taxpayers. I don't believe eternal growth is the only model: I actually think it's unsustainable.

It's not only about gathering taxes. It's also about having someone to wipe your ass once you're too frail to do it yourself.

Conceiving a child so they can wipe my ass sounds selfish

Re: Baby Boom or Bust?

#49

Post by AlexTWithBeard »

steve_adams_86 wrote: post #40
AlexTWithBeard wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the only really expensive thing is daycare. I'm afraid there's no ready solution to that - unless we're willing to get back to the idea of extended family and village to raise a kid. PS. I have three kids, I know what I'm talking about.

I’d argue that in a nuclear family culture, kids are also expensive in indirect ways which are hard to account for. You sacrifice a lot of personal time and often health when you need to be there for kids virtually constantly, and while daycare is very expensive in some places ($1200 CAD/month for us) I feel like it’s one of the more manageable costs. During the pandemic, having no friends or family around to help an…

> both parents typically need to work

I think that's the key. I'm still trying to figure out for myself if it has something to do with "we need more women in workforce"

Re: Baby Boom or Bust?

#50

Post by jtbayly »

22c wrote: post #32

Macabre question, but a serious one. Has the birth rate dropped below the death rate? If not, then the naive approach to me, would be that this all works out in the wash. More specifically, does the years of life "lost" due to premature death outweigh the years of life "lost" due to declining birth rates? We won't really know until: a) premature deaths return to pre-pandemic levels b) birth rates recover to pre-pande…

France birth rate per 1000: 11 France death rate per 1000: 9.4

However, the fertility rate (total births per woman) was 1.87 before the pandemic, which is well below the replacement level of 2.1.

Fertility rate is really the number that matters, as an aging population eventually hits the years where larger generations die off, and then the death rate is much higher than the birth rate, and the population drops dramatically.

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