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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

#151

Post by Yizahi »

rdm_blackhole wrote: post #82
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…

The lower birthrates are also happening in countries like Sweden/Finland/Norway where higher education is "free" and healthcare is also "free" so those are not the reasons why women opt out of motherhood, or at least not the complete reasons anyway. The trend is global so the main reason is most likely something global. In this case couldn't it be simply that motherhood is no longer attractive to women and they want…

Cost of living in those countries is extremely expensive and so is buying any type of housing. New families who don't inherit an empty place to live must work a lot to afford anything, so both partners have to work and that leaves no or much less time for kids.

Second is universal education which rapidly advances, means that women are no longer content with being a nanny plus housemaid forever, and often want to have something more meaningful, leading to no or much less time for kids.

Basically kids require at minimum one adult taking care of them during most of the awake time. And due to various reasons gaps in that coverage can be a deal breaker. For example kids going to day care until 15:00, but parents busy until 19:00. 4 hours gap is not a lot but at early age can be a deal breaker. Etc.

In my opinion we won't reverse this trend until next world war (after such event humanity will partially reverse development and due to loss of life and work, many people would have time for kids). So in the mean time countries need to attract skilled educated immigrants while suppressing housing prices, and the most successful countries in that would win in the long run.

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

#152

Post by Kivern7 »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #124
Kivern7 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Children are an asset for net tax-recipients, but a liability for net tax-payers. I grew up in a very poor area and heard firsthand teenage girls excited over how much welfare money they can receive for babies. It's an inversion of the natural order. It's state-manipulated breeding incentives between different classes of people. It's literally eugenics.

Children are a massive asset for tax-payers. Money is a claim on the production of a country. Without that production, money is just a useless piece of paper or useless entry in a bank database. And for a country to produce, it needs people of working age. More concretely, let's suppose you're 92 and you need full time nursing care. You still have retirements savings so should be able to pay for it. Now let's say the…

Nobody thinks like this. Not a single intelligent, successful, prosperous woman is going to be even slightly motivated to have a baby over the long-term viability and credibility of fiat currency, whereas I personally know of two people who only exist because their welfare-dependent mother impulsively took advantage of a government cash bonus by getting knocked up by a man she barely knew, and then promptly did so again with a different one.

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

#153

Post by HDThoreaun »

Tade0 wrote: post #85

I don't think it's that and it's more about how conscious a decision it is nowadays. It's not the future - it's the attitude towards it. Teen pregnancies are at an all time low everywhere in the developed world and it's not just thanks to the availability of contraception, but also a generational shift in attitudes towards risk taking. Overall people are having children later and therefore fewer because they feel tha…

All these wild theories are complicating a simple issue. People arent having kids because they dont want kids. For some people maybe they need to see a psychotherapist like your comment almost implies, but for many others they just think kids would make their own lives worse in a way that past generations did not.

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

#154

Post by surgical_fire »

sanderjd wrote: post #102
le-mark wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Two points: 1. In rich countries (like the US, where I live), some of the cost of children is subsidized for poor people. 2. Middle class parents are very unlikely to raise their children at the same cost as poor parents. If they can afford better things for their kids, they will . There is enormous social (even moral) pressure on parents to make sacrifices for their kids. Note that I think both of these things are g…

My two cents as someone that had his only child past the age of 40:

More than low birth rates, I think that the problem is that people are postponing children until the last possible moment biology allows for it.

The reason is that people need to have their life in order before having children. I imagine it was easier in the past than nowadays.

You have Children and need to work? Daycare is extremely expensive. Want to buy a house? Well, Children weights against you when trying to get a mortgage. And I am not even getting into the actual costs of raising a child.

People say that low birthrates are a problem, but while raising children is a personal endeavor, nobody is willing to make a collective problem (it is fairly unpopular to direct taxpayer money to pay for it).

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

#155

Post by HDThoreaun »

ryandrake wrote: post #135
gilbetron wrote: post #121

Two things I think are the main drivers, one is easy access to effective birth control (I consider this a great thing) and that is often mentioned. I think the other thing, though, is it is much easier to be entertained these days. People don't understand how boring it was 30+ years ago. I'll go back and play games with my son from when I was young and the games almost always are much more dull than I remember. There…

The college prep rat race is insane today compared to when I was a kid. It’s become a 10+ year effort to check all the checkboxes. 1995: Have > 3.8 GPA, take the SAT, get a good enough score, write some decent sounding bullshit on an application essay, and bam: you have a shot at a top school. 2025: Start taking AP courses in middle school. Take and excel at advanced science and math classes for 4 years. Take 3 years…

Colleges have refused to expand enrollment as our society/world becomes wealthier = more competition for spots. Either you subscribe to the overproduction of elites theory which means we need to return dignity to jobs that dont require education or colleges need to massively expand enrollment.

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

#156

Post by brokegrammer »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #96
brokegrammer wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 Most parents want their children to live a good life, whether they're from poor country or not. Besides, people used to have more sex in the past when life seemed much more hopeless than it is now. Granted, condoms didn't ex…

>Most parents want their children to live a good life, whether they're from poor country or not. And if the country is not providing a better future for the kids than the parents, why are you surprised they're not breeding? You're also ignoring the differences in standards. For some countries, a good future might be not dying of dysentery, for others is having a single family home. >If we knew the reasons, we'd solve…

What about countries like Japan then? It's a great country where any children born would live a long and healthy life. Sure beats being born in Mogadishu. But forget about having children, Japanese people aren't even dating.

More money can't solve the problem. People could live in cardboard boxes and still reproduce if they want. The reason is multifaceted.

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

#157

Post by brokegrammer »

pjc50 wrote: post #100
brokegrammer wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 Most parents want their children to live a good life, whether they're from poor country or not. Besides, people used to have more sex in the past when life seemed much more hopeless than it is now. Granted, condoms didn't ex…

You can just ask people! You can ask women why they're not having children! Well, not on HN, but in general.

Asking people will give you a "faster horses" kind of answer.

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

#158

Post by card_zero »

DoingIsLearning wrote: post #64
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…

> If your parents were to make the same argument towards you, as an adult

"Hey, it was unfair of us to bring you into this situation, so we were thinking maybe we should kill you."

This does not follow. A person's resistance to having their shitty life terminated doesn't mean it was a good idea to begin it.

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

#159

Post by FirmwareBurner »

brokegrammer wrote: post #156
FirmwareBurner wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Most parents want their children to live a good life, whether they're from poor country or not. And if the country is not providing a better future for the kids than the parents, why are you surprised they're not breeding? You're also ignoring the differences in standards. For some countries, a good future might be not dying of dysentery, for others is having a single family home. >If we knew the reasons, we'd solve…

What about countries like Japan then? It's a great country where any children born would live a long and healthy life. Sure beats being born in Mogadishu. But forget about having children, Japanese people aren't even dating. More money can't solve the problem. People could live in cardboard boxes and still reproduce if they want. The reason is multifaceted.

>Japanese people aren't even dating.

Why would you bother with the extra effort of dating if your life sucks? Just sit at home or in an internet cafe and watch streamers and play videogames. Much easier.

There's a lot of effort in dating. You gotta groom, you gotta stay fit, and you gotta go out and mingle. But when are you gonna do all that if you finish work at 9pm and need to wake up at 7am as do a lot of japanese?

>More money can't solve the problem.

More money means needling less time spent working and more time for dating/hobbies.

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

#160

Post by FirmwareBurner »

brokegrammer wrote: post #157
pjc50 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can just ask people! You can ask women why they're not having children! Well, not on HN, but in general.

Asking people will give you a "faster horses" kind of answer.

I don't think "what you want from a horse" and "what you want from life" are comparable questions.
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