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Baby Boom or Bust?

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Re: Baby Boom or Bust?

#61

Post by Ericson2314 »

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.

Life's better when you put on your Keynesian hat. Productivity went up faster than population in the rich counties, and we all loss leverage with our employers as there wasn't enough work to go around.

Now, if populations fall, there will be enough work again, and there will be a need to automate (maintaining the same standard of living is nice and uncreative) which will make more meaningful work for us programmers (the "productivity industry").

Re: Baby Boom or Bust?

#62

Post by bsder »

Animats wrote: post #5
chronogram wrote: post #2

While the article mainly focuses on France, the world is mostly looking at China after its one-child-policy as the greatest example. France is a good example for other things though. Its extremely pro-pension policies makes it very hostile against the young. Both countries at either end of the world were spending their time breeding babies to try to feed them 50 years later.

World is mostly looking at China after its one-child-policy as the greatest example. China's one-child policy was a success. They were able to put on the brakes during the period between health care getting good and standard of living going up, which is when population goes way up. India didn't do that, and their population shot up beyond the country's water supply. France is just leveling off. Japan is in actual dec…

> China's one-child policy was a success.

Tell that to lots of unmarried men with no prospects.

Re: Baby Boom or Bust?

#63

Post by ant6n »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #29
ant6n wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US it really seems to be. I don’t even understand how my American friends can have kids - daycare is so expensive it makes more sense for one parent to just stay home. In Canada, children are already much more affordable (esp. in Quebec). In Europe even more so. Once education, health care and day care are affordable (or free), children are not astronomically exoensive.

If you compare the total fertility rates in Canada and Europe (~1.5), even with their pro natalist policies, America still has a higher fertility rate (~1.7) with abysmal support for parents. Likely attributable to families that opt out of paid formal child care, and Medicaid picks up the slack for those below middle class means.

I’d say the higher birth rates in US are due to religion and poverty. I also wonder how many immigrants continue living like in 2nd/3rd world country.

Re: Baby Boom or Bust?

#65

Post by toomuchtodo »

AlexTWithBeard wrote: post #49
steve_adams_86 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/1/23/18183091/t... (Elizabeth Warren’s book, The Two-Income Trap, explained)

> Warren’s central argument in the book is that this rise in household income was almost entirely driven by the increase in the number of two-earner families. And adding income by adding a second worker, she argues, has very different economic implications than rising pay for a single worker. In practice, the book says, the increasing ubiquity of two-earner households leaves families in more precarious financial circumstances with more brittle budgets that were more prone to tip over into insolvency if a problem cropped up.

> The “two-income trap,” as described by Warren, really consists of three partially separate phenomena that have arisen as families have come to rely on two working adults to make ends meet:

> The addition of a second earner means, in practice, a big increase in household fixed expenses for things like child care and commuting.

> Much of the money that American second earners bring in has been gobbled up, in practice, by zero-sum competition for educational opportunities expressed as either skyrocketed prices for houses in good school districts or escalating tuition at public universities.

> Last, while the addition of the second earner has not brought in much gain, it has created an increase in downside risk by eliminating an implicit insurance policy that families used to rely on.

Re: Baby Boom or Bust?

#66

Post by xnyan »

ant6n wrote: post #27
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.

In the US it really seems to be. I don’t even understand how my American friends can have kids - daycare is so expensive it makes more sense for one parent to just stay home. In Canada, children are already much more affordable (esp. in Quebec). In Europe even more so. Once education, health care and day care are affordable (or free), children are not astronomically exoensive.

It's not a good situation because they all require fairly large sacrifices, but there are alternatives to paid childcare. I work with a developer who's taking care of a 1 and 3-year-old during working hours because the pandemic caused his and many other daycares in in our area to close and there's simply no availability right now anywhere else. He's absent a lot during the day, but he makes it to all the important meetings and spends a significant amount of time working in the evening after his wife comes home from her job, so overall puts in the same amount of work as before. He has no life whatsoever outside of working and taking care of his kids, but no outside care involved.

They are looking really hard for available daycare.

Re: Baby Boom or Bust?

#67

Post by Ericson2314 »

AlexTWithBeard wrote: post #49
steve_adams_86 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"

I would say declining worker power drove women to the workplace, and elite strains of feminism were the cover not cause.

If it was just feminism we should have seen a 20 hour work week to compensate.

Re: Baby Boom or Bust?

#68

Post by toomuchtodo »

ant6n wrote: post #63
toomuchtodo wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you compare the total fertility rates in Canada and Europe (~1.5), even with their pro natalist policies, America still has a higher fertility rate (~1.7) with abysmal support for parents. Likely attributable to families that opt out of paid formal child care, and Medicaid picks up the slack for those below middle class means.

I’d say the higher birth rates in US are due to religion and poverty. I also wonder how many immigrants continue living like in 2nd/3rd world country.

The data concurs. When education goes up and religion goes down, fertility rates decline [1].

With regards to immigrants, children of immigrants rapidly align to fertility rates in their host country (at least in the US) [2].

[1] https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s...

[2] https://cis.org/Report/Immigrant-and-NativeBorn-Fertility-20...

Re: Baby Boom or Bust?

#69

Post by AlexTWithBeard »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #65
AlexTWithBeard wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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"

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/1/23/18183091/t... (Elizabeth Warren’s book, The Two-Income Trap, explained) > Warren’s central argument in the book is that this rise in household income was almost entirely driven by the increase in the number of two-earner families. And adding income by adding a second worker, she argues, has very different economic implications than rising pay for a single worker. In p…

Sounds almost like that if we (putting the hard hat on and hiding under the table) find a way to exclude one parent from workforce, things will get back to normal.

Re: Baby Boom or Bust?

#70

Post by toomuchtodo »

AlexTWithBeard wrote: post #69
toomuchtodo wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/1/23/18183091/t... (Elizabeth Warren’s book, The Two-Income Trap, explained) > Warren’s central argument in the book is that this rise in household income was almost entirely driven by the increase in the number of two-earner families. And adding income by adding a second worker, she argues, has very different economic implications than rising pay for a single worker. In p…

Sounds almost like that if we (putting the hard hat on and hiding under the table) find a way to exclude one parent from workforce, things will get back to normal.

Your reasoning is sound, but I believe it’s untenable in public discourse (for various reasons).
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