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Baby Boom or Bust?

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Re: Baby Boom or Bust?

#81

Post by ant6n »

jjeaff wrote: post #79
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.

It is definitely a heavy burden for low income families. But I don't think it is as expensive as some people make it out to be. I just checked at the daycare we send our kid to part time. And it looks like all day, 5 days a week, including breakfast, lunch, and afternoon snack is $875/mo. And I live in an expensive California suburb. Now, that will certainly get expensive if you have multiple kids under 5 all going a…

900$ is rent for many ppl. It’s half a full time minimum wage job.

In Quebec daycare is more like 150$/month, in Berlin 50$. That’s a huge difference.

Btw, parental leave is another item that makes kids cheaper in social democratic countries. Thats paid leave on one hand (e.g. 12 months), or unpaid leave allowing you to return to your job after an extended absence (e.g. 36 months).

Re: Baby Boom or Bust?

#82

Post by boomboomsubban »

AlexTWithBeard wrote: post #77
boomboomsubban wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With a working mother, going 100% breast milk can be a very difficult task. And that's not even considering the scenarios where breast milk may not be an option.

Scenarios when breast milk is not an option do exist, but they're extremely rare. Story time: when we were expecting our first one, me and my wife went to the hospital for their maternity facilities tour. Hospitals have these monthly, so that expecting mothers know what to expect (a pun?). In the end of the tour the nurse asked who's gonna breastfeed and who's using formula. 7 out of 10 went with formula. FUCKIN 7 OU…

My main argument was that working mothers struggle to breastfeed exclusively, and your source backs that up multiple times.

Beyond that, I'm from a dark blue state, so we may have different experiences to draw on

Re: Baby Boom or Bust?

#83

Post by flukus »

AlexTWithBeard wrote: post #54
ReactiveJelly wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conceiving a child so they can wipe my ass sounds selfish

Wiping ass is just another job which someone has to do. And that someone has to be someone's kid.

We can automate this with bidets. For a less literal interpretation, euthanasia (legal or otherwise) is how I'd like to avoid this stage of life entirely, it's now a legal possibility where I live if there's a terminal condition preventing me from wiping my own ass.

Many people get to skip this stage in life entirely though, either through good health or misfortune.

Re: Baby Boom or Bust?

#84

Post by 22c »

jtbayly wrote: post #50
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 dramat…

Yes. I agree, birth rates have been lower in many places before the pandemic, probably in gradual decline over the last 60 years.

Perhaps I should've clarified that I fully expect that we'll be dealing with an ageing population in the future. The question here is whether or not the pandemic played any significant role. It's possible that it may have even slightly "helped" the problem of an ageing population.

Re: Baby Boom or Bust?

#85

Post by imtringued »

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.

Partial Sentence: Countries can increase their population through immigration without increasing domestic birth rates. Countries can decrease their domestic birth rates without decreasing immigration.

Global Sentence: Global Population = People born.

Once every country is pro immigration without being pro birth there will not be enough births to maintain the current population. The can is being kicked down the road.

The problem isn't the shrinking population though. It's the aging of the entire world. Someone has to take care of these people or they die alone with nobody to attend their funeral.

The truth is letting people die by the millions in a war tends to take care of problems like this.

Re: Baby Boom or Bust?

#86

Post by BelenusMordred »

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…

> So far, history has not been kind to those civilizations exhibiting declining populations over sustained multi-generational spans.

And yet Japan has some of the highest quality of life, a huge economy despite very few natural resources, some of the most innovative companies in the world and the longest lived people on the planet. It's been the poster-child for westerners as a failed economy with a lost decade and yet they keep on doing fine despite 30+ years of this narrative.

Try moving somewhere with rampant population growth and tell me it's great. The underlying general trend for the vast majority of people on Earth is to get the fuck away from other people and move to low density countries where the mineral and agricultural wealth is spread much thicker. GDP growth means nothing for the average person and most realise this.

Re: Baby Boom or Bust?

#87

Post by jtbayly »

22c wrote: post #84
jtbayly wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 dramat…

Yes. I agree, birth rates have been lower in many places before the pandemic, probably in gradual decline over the last 60 years. Perhaps I should've clarified that I fully expect that we'll be dealing with an ageing population in the future. The question here is whether or not the pandemic played any significant role. It's possible that it may have even slightly "helped" the problem of an ageing population.

Ah. I see what you’re getting at now.

Re: Baby Boom or Bust?

#88

Post by sumedh »

bsder wrote: post #62
Animats wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

India has the same problem too although that is because people voluntarily kill baby girls because they prefer boys.

Re: Baby Boom or Bust?

#89

Post by alexlesuper »

monkeybutton wrote: post #26
sokoloff wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s the solution though? If Canadians don’t want to have more children, you can’t force them and you probably can’t influence them much, so your other choice is to close down the immigration, which seems like it’s less ethical than the present condition.

I don't know! The cost of living and high cost of raising children here are popular scape goats for why Canadians are having less children. There's already baby bonuses, nationalized child care (in QC) but they do not have enough effect? One thing that isn't addressed is housing. Couples aren't going to want to have kids when all they can afford in a major city is a shoebox condo.

Child care costs are a false excuse. If raising children was entirely free, I think the birthrate would barely nudge higher.

Re: Baby Boom or Bust?

#90

Post by mensetmanusman »

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…

This is analogous to saying a car that crashed into a tree has successfully stopped.
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