Global fertility has collapsed, with profound economic consequences

So those millions of young people in developed wealthy countries who can't afford their own place to live are rich?

Please explain

What motivates people to provide sources that refute their own argument? The Bedouin (Muslim), Google says, make up 200,000-250,000 out of Israel's 9,3 million people. Or as your source puts it:

> Of Israel’s population of 9.5m, Israeli Arabs, mostly Muslim, make up about 21% of the total, while Jews account for roughly 74%.

> Though Haredim are just 13% of the population, their offspring make up 19% of Israeli children under the age of 14, and 24% of those under the age of four.

So the majority of modern Israeli population are Jews, mainly secular and moderately religious (61%). It seems most children there also belong to those categories, although somewhat less than their parents' population share. And as stated in the headline, Muslims are in decline and have already converged to the average national rate. So there is strictly no way for Israel's fertility rate to be driven only by traditionalist minorities. They explain the increase.

> Look at the graph here of the fertility rates of different types of Jews:

I did. For convenience: https://archive.is/8FAsi/4ca20b298a776c0318c24337c475fa4dce0...

As can be seen, secular Jews are roughly at 2 children per woman and "religious" (but not Haredi) are at 4. Once again, other OECD countries are roughly between 1.0 and 1.7 and falling. And they, too, have a share of religious traditionalists.

All that said, a good article. Some interesting bits:

> If an Israeli woman has fewer than three children, she feels as if she owes everyone an explanation—or an apology.” That, at any rate, is the view of a leading Israeli demographer. When she visits London she is struck by its dearth of toy shops.

> …But it is harder to explain why secular Jewish Israelis also have more children than the norm. Most work; paid leave for Israeli parents is not especially generous. Nor is child care cheaper than in other rich places. Some argue that Jewish Israelis make more babies because they foresee a rosier future: Israel ranks among the world’s top ten countries in happiness.

> Another reason may be that the state encourages baby-making by, for instance, bankrolling fertility treatment. It subsidises in-vitro fertilisation to the tune of $150m a year. Tiny Israel has about the same number of frozen embryos as America. This may have only a slight effect on Israel’s birth rate, but it signals that the government wants its citizens to procreate.

> One more explanation may be that Israeli grandparents tend to help out more than their peers in many other rich countries. Since Israel is small and densely populated, grandma is never far away. In one survey 83% of secular Jewish mothers aged 25-39 said they were supported by their child’s grandparents, whereas only 30% of German mothers said the same. In Israel the traditional family structure is still strong. In France and Britain more than half of babies are born out of wedlock. In Israel it is under 10%.

So, no, this isn't about "tribes" restricting financial independence. This is about a modern secular society that isn't blatantly antinatalist, plus coexists with sizable non-modern groups. Perhaps we could learn something from them, on both accounts.

For more in-depth research: https://www.taubcenter.org.il/en/research/israels-exceptiona...

It's free to walk to warmer weather.

More likely - dried out husks of small cities that shrivel up and die. Look to the US rust belt as a historical indicator.

For modern times, climate change has made it impossible to insure some areas of the US (Norther CA fire country, Florida hurricane corridor, etc). Insurers are going out of business or just not paying claims.

> note that it is not much higher

1,5 (or 1,2) vs 2 is a lot. It is close to 3 so confidently above replacement for the whole secular+non-Haredim religious group (reminder that nominally the US is nearly completely "religious") and very close to replacement rate for secular Jews only; they will not experience significant population contraction in the next 100 years even if left on their own. This is important in that it means they also will never run into dependency ratio problems and necessity of mass immigration to prop up the failing economy, at the current rate; they will also never experience the cultural impact of extreme geriatrization of the society (some European nations are at average age 45 and higher now). Trends are also completely different, there is no precipitous decline (in fact it looks like a slow wobble and their TFR may return to 2+). If secular Jews were their own country they'd have been doing fine, arguably better than now and clearly unlike the rest of OECD TFR-wise.

> the biological costs of having children, which are immutable, and the "economic" costs of having children, which are mutable.

While the biological costs are not trivially mutable, there is a world of difference between having a child at 21, 27 or 35. The toll childcare takes on the body ramps up rapidly with age, while the ability to provide care declines. Older people fail to function well in a sleep-deprived state. We are doing everyone and especially women a disservice by suggesting that this decision is most wise to postpone.