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India defuses its population bomb: fertility falls to two children per woman

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Re: India defuses its population bomb: fertility falls to two children per woman

#361

Post by tsol »

mistrial9 wrote: post #303
bhouston wrote: post #47

This is good to a degree. But it does mean India joins much of the rest of the world with sub-replacement fertility with just a few outliers. The challenge now switches to how to move from sub-replacement to sustainable fertility. Japan and South Korea are leaders in sub-replacement fertility with not that much success in finding a path towards sustainable population. Both I believe are still dropping. This is the gr…

why did my dental technician (low paid service job with minimal requirements) happily tell me she has five children? their father "lost his green card" and left.. she was happy, it was one of the first things she told me.. I did not ask about that.. meanwhile, people from my own similar background are not getting married, not having children, and even more extreme things like that.. yet the average education in my gr…

It's cultural. For a lot of people having children is happiness. My mother would say about as much-- "children are happiness in life". She came from the previous generation in India, incidentally. Compared to many from the current generation(in America where I live) where children are just seen as a choice some people make. A very difficult choice at that-- so many people pick the most "logical" decision and just run DINK households. We love our freedom, and children significantly diminish that for at least 18-25 years

Re: India defuses its population bomb: fertility falls to two children per woman

#362

Post by tsol »

Retric wrote: post #7
Callmenorm wrote: post #2

Isn't this going to create another problem. Where the country gets old before it gets rich?

Depends on what you mean by rich. India’s per capita income is more than 3 times what it was 30 years ago. So it can easily support significant social programs for the elderly, though not to western standards. On top of this western productivity is linked to low birth rates enabling a larger percentage of the population to work. So low birth rates may be required for a wealthy country rather than being just the resul…

But what was the actual per capita income 30 years ago? 3 times not much is still not very much. So I don't see how is a given that they can institute suitable social programs. It's still a question whether or not that'll be the case even for first world western countries

Re: India defuses its population bomb: fertility falls to two children per woman

#363

Post by JamesBarney »

rayiner wrote: post #152
gizmo686 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a need to a sustainable population rate? There are about 8 billion humans on the planet. We can sustain a sub replacement birthrate for generations. There is a good chance we can sustain it for long enough to solve aging; or at least significantly push back the ~100 year limit to human life. Once we do that, we will need generations of sub replacement fertility just to compensate for having more generations…

Only if humans in different places are fungible, which they are not, and only if young people are willing to shoulder increasingly high burdens to take care of old people, which is debatable. And the “solution to aging” stuff is pretty optimistic. Modern medical technology has barely pushed the boundaries of healthy life at the top end. The first five American presidents died at 67, 83, 90, 85, and 73. The two that d…

Sure, but how hard has modern medicine tried to cure aging?

Re: India defuses its population bomb: fertility falls to two children per woman

#364

Post by prionassembly »

pradn wrote: post #144
bhouston wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is there a need to a sustainable population rate? At some point yes we do. > There are about 8 billion humans on the planet. We can sustain a sub replacement birthrate for generations. For sure. But at some point there won't be enough humans to run an advanced society. > here is a good chance we can sustain it for long enough to solve aging; or at least significantly push back the ~100 year limit to human life. Onc…

If more people are able to have healthier lives and be productive in their chosen niche (if they choose to), there might be other benefits, too. For example, many fields benefit from long expertise, like mathematics.

On the contrary, it's widely acknowledge that mathematical ability and productivity decreases rapidly with age.

(There are other fields benefiting from long expertise, like project management...)

Re: India defuses its population bomb: fertility falls to two children per woman

#365

Post by post_from_work »

ativzzz wrote: post #171
bhouston wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Hungary, if you do it four times you are exempt from paying taxes for the rest of your life: "Hungarian women with four children or more will be exempted for life from paying income tax, the prime minister has said, unveiling plans designed to boost the number of babies being born." https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-47192612

Women with four children will most likely be full time moms for the majority of their productive lives so that's a pointless benefit, unless this policy manages to somehow reverse gender roles as well.

Start a company, set yourself as COO, Board Chairman, majority shareholder, etc...but with a minimum wage salary. Set your wife as the CEO. Pop out 4 kids. Pay her an 8 figure salary.

Your wife can be a full-time mom and print money at the same time, with no practical change in gender roles.

Re: India defuses its population bomb: fertility falls to two children per woman

#366

Post by [deleted] »

coding123 wrote: post #96
dotnet00 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not talking about mortgages though... Consider healthcare, usually older people need it more than younger people. If you have a higher proportion of older people in a population compared to younger people, you have a larger proportion of the associated costs being carried by a smaller proportion of the population, this means decreasing healthcare quality, increasing the pool of people paying in by increasing reti…

Mortgages are the number one cost associated with "working til you are very old". By far in poor countries healthcare is much more affordable than in rich countries. I think one of the main outcomes of rich countries is just increased costs for everything.

[deleted]

Re: India defuses its population bomb: fertility falls to two children per woman

#367

Post by Barrin92 »

closeparen wrote: post #335
tsycho wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other side, unfettered population growth for the purposes of maintaining a sufficiently large proportion of young people (in a world where people are living longer as well) is basically a Ponzi scheme. We’ll have to eventually stabilize to a sustainable demographic distribution; the earlier the better.

The distinguishing feature of a Ponzi scheme is the lack of any real productive activity. The growth on paper is fake. We care about working-age population because working-age people are actually out there fighting entropy to provision the stuff we like, and there's more or less of it to go around depending on how much of that is happening. That's reflected on paper but it's also true in the world, in our standard of…

>"We can't be infinitely rich, therefore we should be as poor as possible."

Very obviously not OPs point. What they're saying is that if you're living in a system that basically runs on a sort of 'lipstick on a pig' mentality being confronted with your problems directly and being forced to solve them is preferable to dragging it out, and there's a lot of truth to that.

You may be familiar with the old startup and systems design mantra 'fail fast', which is the same thing. If you want a long term sustainable system it is good to act in such a way as to bring systemic faults to the surface.

Re: India defuses its population bomb: fertility falls to two children per woman

#368

Post by frosted-flakes »

tsol wrote: post #356
frosted-flakes wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? This policy should incentivize stay-at-home mothers to re-enter the workforce after their children are grown, because no income tax is essentially a pay raise compared to people who aren't eligible.

That's what makes it an incentive. They don't have to work and they get a pay raise for having children. Am I misunderstanding something?

I think you agree with me? It's an incentive that makes it easier for child-bearing women to escape traditional gender roles that they might otherwise be stuck in due to lack of career prospects.

Re: India defuses its population bomb: fertility falls to two children per woman

#369

Post by headmelted »

Barrin92 wrote: post #367
closeparen wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The distinguishing feature of a Ponzi scheme is the lack of any real productive activity. The growth on paper is fake. We care about working-age population because working-age people are actually out there fighting entropy to provision the stuff we like, and there's more or less of it to go around depending on how much of that is happening. That's reflected on paper but it's also true in the world, in our standard of…

>"We can't be infinitely rich, therefore we should be as poor as possible." Very obviously not OPs point. What they're saying is that if you're living in a system that basically runs on a sort of 'lipstick on a pig' mentality being confronted with your problems directly and being forced to solve them is preferable to dragging it out, and there's a lot of truth to that. You may be familiar with the old startup and sys…

This.

An entire generation will be demanding their golden years be subsidized by the young like they had to subsidize their parents’ generation, who had to subsidize their parents before them.

The world is not ready to be told “No” on this. That’s a time bomb.

Re: India defuses its population bomb: fertility falls to two children per woman

#370

Post by pyuser583 »

akudha wrote: post #211
mastax wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many European countries have extremely generous benefits for raising children, but it has been broadly ineffective at raising birth rates - with the possible exception of the Czech Republic. I agree though that governments are going to try, and they may find a way to do it. There was a good episode of The Weeds podcast, "Baby making vibes," which talked about this. Some of it is focused on the American political lens…

Today we are at over 7 Billion. Suppose the population falls to say, 2 Billion or something like that. Is that a big problem? Like, what is the optimal number of people that this planet can support, without wreaking havoc on other species that also live here? 2 Billion is still a very large number... This might sound cruel, but the less humans the better.

The problem isn’t just absolute population, but relative population.

How many working people are there and how many dependents? What’s the ratio? And how many of the dependents will “graduate” to productivity (children v elderly)?

A geriatric society with a large number of elderly is very different from a society with a demographic dividend from fewer children.

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