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More Americans say they’re not planning to have a child, U.S. birthrate declines

washingtonpost.com

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Re: More Americans say they’re not planning to have a child, U.S. birthrate declines

#41

Post by dionidium »

gruez wrote: post #36
jl2718 wrote: post #23

Anecdotally, the problem is much worse among those that contribute more in taxes than consume in public benefits. This is the real problem. Low-skill high-fertility immigration will not solve it. Child tax credits will not solve it. Welfare programs will not solve it. These problems all exacerbate the problem by growing the population below the net-income line. You may say that these people are more necessary or usef…

Your numbers do not check out. >Child support: The minimum guideline is 33% of income for a single child, non-deductible. Where are you getting the 33% figure from? Using the figures from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_raising_a_child , see that for the $59,410 to $102,870 before tax income group (Average = $79,940), the average spent per year is 13,050, or 16.3% pre-tax. The percentages for the Less than $59,…

Regarding your first rebuttal: you're agree with the person you're responding to that it costs far less than 33% of a middle- or upper-middle-class salary to raise a child. The argument is that the courts demand child support payments from non-custodial parents far in excess of the actual cost of raising the child.

Re: More Americans say they’re not planning to have a child, U.S. birthrate declines

#42

Post by 1270018080 »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #33
mercy_dude wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Declining birth rate is a symptom, not a disease. Immigration may be a workaround but not a fix. The key reason why young Americans don’t want to have children is because the cost of living including raising a child has been exploding for last 20yrs. Housing, healthcare, insurance, student loans and cost of education- all have gone up exponentially when the actual wages have not gone up. Immigration is a workaround b…

How do you square this with the fact that the birth rate is also low in European countries with reasonable cost of living and robust safety nets. https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php... Maybe people just don’t want kids when they’re educated. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/womens-educational-attain...

It's also still expensive to do have kids in Europe anyway. Safety nets aside. They purchasing power per capita is lower than in America.

Re: More Americans say they’re not planning to have a child, U.S. birthrate declines

#43

Post by 1270018080 »

I'm not having kids because kids suck and I'm doing my part to prevent climate change. I can look beyond the preprogrammed brain chemistry that tells you having kids was "the best thing that has happened to you in your life" as you lose 10 years off of your life in stress and all of your friends.

Re: More Americans say they’re not planning to have a child, U.S. birthrate declines

#44

Post by coolso »

diveanon wrote: post #21

Good, the world doesn't need more people. Adoption is always a great option if you want a child to raise.

This article isn't about the world, it's about America. If America has less people and the world has more, that's bad for Americans.

Re: More Americans say they’re not planning to have a child, U.S. birthrate declines

#45

Post by dionidium »

1270018080 wrote: post #43

I'm not having kids because kids suck and I'm doing my part to prevent climate change. I can look beyond the preprogrammed brain chemistry that tells you having kids was "the best thing that has happened to you in your life" as you lose 10 years off of your life in stress and all of your friends.

> as you lose 10 years off of your life in stress and all of your friends.

In fact, people with children live longer and have more social interactions, on average.

See: https://www.mpg.de/14064449/children-influence-parents-life-...

And: https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/have-kids-live-longer-20...

Re: More Americans say they’re not planning to have a child, U.S. birthrate declines

#46

Post by jl2718 »

uejfiweun wrote: post #30
jl2718 wrote: post #23

Anecdotally, the problem is much worse among those that contribute more in taxes than consume in public benefits. This is the real problem. Low-skill high-fertility immigration will not solve it. Child tax credits will not solve it. Welfare programs will not solve it. These problems all exacerbate the problem by growing the population below the net-income line. You may say that these people are more necessary or usef…

Yeah, there is simply just too much risk involved in marriage and children these days if you aren't above a certain financial line. In our current environment, where you can't afford a house and rent rapidly increases each year, the prospect of losing 50% or more of your income is simply too much to bear. I'd guess that in the next 10 years, these problems come to a head, and we end up with significant deregulation o…

Actually my point is the opposite. That the risk is greater if you are above that line. I know many many people that are quite happy raising very large families with no job at all.

Re: More Americans say they’re not planning to have a child, U.S. birthrate declines

#47

Post by klipt »

crateless wrote: post #29
jl2718 wrote: post #23

Anecdotally, the problem is much worse among those that contribute more in taxes than consume in public benefits. This is the real problem. Low-skill high-fertility immigration will not solve it. Child tax credits will not solve it. Welfare programs will not solve it. These problems all exacerbate the problem by growing the population below the net-income line. You may say that these people are more necessary or usef…

I have been recently picturing a dystopia (utopia?) wherein women sell their eggs to some kind of govt. agency which in turn hires women who are willing to carry babies to term. These babies are then raised in child group homes by state employees all the way from infancy. Meanwhile the state pays for their education until they either graduate or until some kind of arbitrary deadline. Thus the problem could become cos…

That would probably result in 99% of the population effectively being genocided. If the government is farming kids they'd probably only want eggs/sperm from the people most likely to produce high earners who can pay lots of tax. Healthy, tall, high IQ etc. 99% of men and women wouldn't qualify and their genes would go extinct.

Re: More Americans say they’re not planning to have a child, U.S. birthrate declines

#49

Post by toomuchtodo »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #17
thatcat wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Associated cost has a role in suppression of birth rate but even socialized countries have signifigant declines in birth rate

The value of children declines as a country develops and industrializes. China and the United States share a total fertility rate of 1.7.

Correction: China's fertility rate is 1.3 [1] [2].

[1] https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/11/04/china-one-child-policy-...

[2] https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202105/1223141.shtml

(replied to my own comment as the edit window timed out)

Re: More Americans say they’re not planning to have a child, U.S. birthrate declines

#50

Post by klipt »

dionidium wrote: post #45
1270018080 wrote: post #43

I'm not having kids because kids suck and I'm doing my part to prevent climate change. I can look beyond the preprogrammed brain chemistry that tells you having kids was "the best thing that has happened to you in your life" as you lose 10 years off of your life in stress and all of your friends.

> as you lose 10 years off of your life in stress and all of your friends. In fact, people with children live longer and have more social interactions, on average. See: https://www.mpg.de/14064449/children-influence-parents-life-... And: https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/have-kids-live-longer-20...

I think what we are witnessing is an evolutionary paradigm shift.

For most of human history, contraceptives didn't exist, so evolution just made us want sex and the reproduction part followed automatically.

Now that contraceptives stopped that trick from working, only the people who genuinely want kids will be selected for, while the people who merely want sex will die off.

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