The Future Is Too Expensive – A New Theory on Collapsing Birth Rates

Have you tried asking them? In particular, asking the women who are making the career-or-children decision?

South Korea is invoked, but it seems like the population there has almost perfectly levelled out at just over 51m: https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/kor/sou... of which 20m live in Seoul.

This discussion comes up a lot on HN, and it seems to be one where there are answers, but people don't like the answers, so they go back to feigning ignorance.

My theory is that as a society becomes wealthier, the acceptable minimum standard for child rearing grows at an even faster rate, until it becomes unattainable for a growing number of people.

Raising kids is cheap. People who live in mud huts who have never heard of money can afford to raise kids. Avoiding negative social stigma is what people can't afford.

That's comparing apples to oranges. People living in rich first world countries with stagnating economies like Canada expect a better future and standard of living for their kids than those from impoverished third world countries who rose to be developing countries, no? Then there's also completely different cultural norms and expectations between India and western nations and how multi generational families interact.

I had a similar discussion with someone form Africa who was shocked to hear that in some rich European countries you could have a full time job and still be homeless due to scarce housing and crazy rents. And then he replied "what's the point of a country being rich if the people are poor?". Good question mate. It's because the point of rich countries is to be tax havens and economic zones where worldwide money is funneled to the top 1% and the workers who enable that have to fight for the scraps while those who can't, get left behind for the welfare state to pick up or fall through the holes in the safety net and end up on the street.

>People don't want kids for mysterious reasons that we have yet to discover.

The reasons have been written in this thread. If you don't like them or don't resonate with you, doesn't mean they're mysterious and undiscovered. Just go on the street and ask 100 random people, they'll tell you the same.

This happened depending on where you live in the course of 1-3 generations.

We are still grappling with how you incentivize and promote parenthood when the future costs of each child are 6 figues.

Skilled professions were likely to remain useful after the war. AI makes their future value seem uncertain.