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

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

#41

Post by nisa »

I'm in my 40ies and in Germany and basically from my friends and surroundings I've realized the only people that have children are academics / people with established careers where both partners earn very well and have stable jobs or people on welfare where at least all necessities are covered. What's missing is people in-between, people with limited contracts, people without money in the family and people working a job that hardly pays more than what you would get with welfare.

If you look at birth rates in eastern europe after the fall of the soviet union and the establishment of neoliberal economics everwhere and the development of eastern europe economies as workbenches for western corporations with low wages the birth rates fell and are only slowly recovering now.

Before that - while circumstances where surely not better in a lot of ways - essentials like housing, childcare (kindergarden and so on) where provided and you could be assured to be fine no matter what is going on in your job.

Now you are only fine if you either on welfare and have nothing to loose anyway or earn so much that you can afford everything and risk having children. If you are in between (like most of the population around 20-40 here) it's perceived as a risky gamble.

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

#42

Post by silvestrov »

I would add another item:

Today you need to be "the perfect mother". Just "being a parent" isn't good enough anymore for the middleclass.

Today's grandparents spend their time and money on themselves instead of helping out.

So not only do you need to be perfect as a parent, there is also less support from the people who have done this once before.

If does not help much to consult the internet as you will mostly get told the world is about to fall apart if your kid gets as much as a skin rash.

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

#43

Post by Etheryte »

pjc50 wrote: post #12

> Nobody knows 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…

This is not what has happened in South Korea though. They've hit the top of the curve and pretty much every projection agrees that it's drastically downhill from here, the main disagreement is over how quickly. Kurzgesagt has a good video on this [0], they estimate that by 2060 the population of South Korea will have shrunk by 30% and will be heavily skewed towards the elderly.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ufmu1WD2TSk

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

#44

Post by echo-lot »

Its pretty related to the other article that was posted here yesterday (?) about the american dream. I dont think its the perception of the future, because people in the cold war / WWII surely didnt believe the future is going to be bright. Just read about the youth protests in America during 1940-1945.

Its the hyperinflation of "as standard" seen things one needs to be ready to have a family. Just in this thread many say its housing. Well guess what my grandma had 5 kids living with her parents. Its our culture that infected us with the idea we need a 100 sqm apartment and two cars etc. Put on top of that the need for our kids to be special, it should get at least get a masters degree , a high paying job etc. I dont think this idea was so cemented in generations before, because mobility was lower and therefore it was e.g. ok for a child to become a mechanic.

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

#45

Post by pjc50 »

blagie wrote: post #31
pjc50 wrote: post #12

> Nobody knows 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…

No, the population has not "levelled out" in Korea. These dynamics have a pretty long timeline. To give an extreme example, if you, for example, have a city with 10M old people who can't have kids anymore, you can reliably predict the population will be 0 once they pass. The demographic pyramid of South Korea is scary: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_South_Korea#/m... Learn how to read these plots and w…

> There are almost no kids in South Korea.

That page says 11% of the population is under 15.

Rather like global warming, the question is "what are the old people of today prepared to change in order to avert a problem that only becomes acute after they are dead?"

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

#47

Post by DoingIsLearning »

pjc50 wrote: post #12

> Nobody knows 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…

> 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.

A real interesting data point that made reconsider some of my assumptions on birth rates in developed nations is Israel.

There is a really interesting piece (albeit with a conservative bias) that can articulate this far better than I can. [0]

[0] https://nationalpost.com/opinion/danielle-kubes-the-truth-be...

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

#49

Post by cjfd »

robertlagrant wrote: post #13
hectorchu wrote: post #2

This post argues that collapsing birth rates aren’t just about housing or money — they’re a rational response to the sense that the future is unstable, meaningless, or even dangerous. It introduces the concept of “temporal inflation” — the idea that just like money loses value in hyperinflation, time loses value when people can’t trust the future. Would love to hear if this resonates with others.

I don't know. Did people do this in the midst of world war 2, for example?

I am not sure. I was not alive during world war 2. I would think, though, that during world war 2 it was relatively easy to think that we just need to wait until the bad guys are defeated. Now the rise of dictatorships and populism makes me wonder whether humanity as a whole is not just too stupid to survive.

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

#50

Post by jplrssn »

formerly_proven wrote: post #7
markus_zhang wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not surprised. Housing went up a lot in recent years and it is not affordable for most young people. And if you have to rent, why not rent your parent's?

Housing in the West was basically turned into another pillar of retiree funding. Old people extract tremendous financial gains from younger generations by either a) selling them decrepit real estate at extremely high prices or b) collecting very high rents on buildings that are even older than themselves (even in the US, which is the king of corporate landlording, they are a small minority; most landlords are natural…

Young people may be checking out of that system but BlackRock and others are doing the opposite.

Why wouldn’t they, when government policy has made it an asset class that can never fall in value?

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