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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

#61

Post by kspacewalk2 »

Like any single-cause explanations of the fertility collapse, it's fairly easy to poke holes in it. Usually, you just name countries as a counter-argument.

For example, North Korea. Better life now than in the 90s, lower fertility.

What hope for the future was there in the 1930s Ukraine, in the middle of an artificial famine that killed millions? Higher fertility than mid-2010s Ukraine (nowadays you can blame the war for an additional drop).

Eritrea and Ethiopia are right next door to each other, they have high birth rates dropping completely in lock-step, despite Eritrea being essentially shut off from the outside world in terms of disruptive tech - no Internet for most, no social media or whatever other bogey man you can come up with and blame for "disrupting the culture".

Countries that are essentially ignoring climate change have falling birth rates too, as do countries where people aren't into Western-style contemplative existential dread.

I haven't come up with an alternative answer, mind you. So far, I've just been noting how easy it is to poke holes in all available single-cause explanations.

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

#62

Post by JKCalhoun »

pearlsontheroad wrote: post #48
maxglute wrote: post #26

Not having kids is too inexpensive.

I disagree. Even though I'm childless, taxes I've paid my whole life help finance public schools which I'll never use.

Maybe you used the public schools when you were growing up? A generation often pays for the previous one, or up and coming one.

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

#63

Post by pjc50 »

harshreality wrote: post #54
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…

Sometimes asking people will give you true insight, and sometimes it will give you false insight because the people themselves don't consciously know and make things up that seem right but are not; or, a behavior or decision is the product of a chain of other things that's too complex to reason about or communicate easily even if each link in the chain is consciously known. On South Korea, you might want to consider…

I deliberately chose the population number graph rather than the birth rate graph because that's the one that actually affects resource usage (housing etc), rather than its first derivative.

If the numbers start dropping to the extent that opportunities open up, I believe that people's views might start changing.

We see localized depopulation of e.g. small Italian or Japanese villages as the local economy dries up. But Korea still has a real and growing economy! It's just perhaps not evenly distributed.

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

#64

Post by DoingIsLearning »

aetherspawn wrote: post #46

If someone had asked me I would have probably struggled to find words to explain this exact thing, but the article explains it well. And in the words of my wife, “It seems like a bad idea to bring a kid into this world”

I hope not to sound like some sort of birth evangelist but could we not flip that statement?

That portraits a child as someone that you need to protect from suffering at all costs. If your parents were to make the same argument towards you, as an adult, you would argue that it is perhaps condescending and removes somewhat your own agency.

There is a _chance_ that any children that you bring into this world become not only an adult but an agent for (positive) change.

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

#65

Post by gwd »

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…

> population there has almost perfectly levelled out at just over 51m

This video would beg to differ:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ufmu1WD2TSk&pp=ygUWa3Vyemdlc...

That said, I am inclined to disagree with his take -- when women and men are both expected to work 996, when housing takes up a huge percentage of your income, when the only way you think you can assure a good life for your children is to pay exorbitant amounts for private tutoring, then yeah, 0 or 1 seems like the best option.

This may be a bit of a weird take, but I wonder if it might make sense to just explicitly make "rearing the next generation" a "public good" career choice. Some people are far more cut out, by personality and character, to raise children. Rather than trying to exhort every single family to have 2.1, find people who are good at child-rearing, give them training, and give them government support to raise 8 kids.

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

#66

Post by isodev »

The post definitely highlights some of the reasons a person would (rightfully) choose not to start a family. I would add that addressing those reasons should absolutely not be "just to increase the birth rate". There are currently a little over 8 billion humans on Earth - the survival of the species is not even remotely at stake.

It's possible we're nearing a moment when we have to re-evaluate what it means to be human. Do we live just to procreate? Just to work to support 'the system'? I don't know the answer, but I can't stop thinking about that line from Star Trek First Contact: "... The acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force in our lives. We work to better ourselves..."

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

#67

Post by raymondgh »

_dark_matter_ wrote: post #15
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.

Is this AI generated?

Summary of original post written in ChatGPT style with no original substance… my guess is yes!

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

#68

Post by gwd »

spicyusername wrote: post #59

Everyone is going to want to reach for their favorite modern problem, but every point in history is fraught with sociopolitical and economic challenges. Today is not special, in that regard. My personal favorite reason is just that this is the outcome of birth control. At no other point in history could people decide how many kids they want, and when you give people the choice, they just aren't going to choose very m…

Birth control was available to the Baby Boomers's parents, and the result was... a baby boom. My two grandmothers had 7 and 5 children respectively in spite of the availability of birth control.

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

#69

Post by steveBK123 »

le-mark wrote: post #56
steveBK123 wrote: post #18

I think we very rapidly went from a world with high child mortality rates, no access to birth control and children being at least moderately useful on the farm or doing some other work quite young to a world where having children is both a choice and very very expensive. 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 w…

> We are still grappling with how you incentivize and promote parenthood when the future costs of each child are 6 figues. Six figures? False because poor people have been having children forever and continue too.

It's all relative to your own status.

Everyone wants their kids to do better than they did. But, if you are poor enough in a rich country, you have lower absolute aspirations for your own children / you probably get child related government benefits that approach your costs / etc.

If you went to college and want your kids to do the same.. the costs are enormous.

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

#70

Post by kspacewalk2 »

drooopy wrote: post #21

Lack of affordable housing, job insecurity and the looming threat of AI and automation, unaffordable healthcare, unaffordable higher education, inflation, trade/culture/cold/proxy wars, societal unrest and thanks to social media the prospect of a global trend towards the collapse of democratic institutions and a march towards authoritarianism. Sure, let me just bring a couple of new humans into the world—people I’m l…

Your life, and the world around you, is objectively better than it would have been in the 1930s, when birth rates didn't fall. So while you may see this as a valid reason/excuse for yourself not to have kids, it doesn't explain broader fertility declines.
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