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The demographic future of humanity: facts and consequences [pdf]

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221–230 of 409 posts

Re: The demographic future of humanity: facts and consequences [pdf]

#221
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The drop in fertility rate is directly liked to migration into dense cities. They are just not a good place to have children. The US resisted the fertility drop for much longer, because of higher suburban population.

> The US resisted the fertility drop for much longer, because of higher suburban population. It was immigration, but next generation of all immigrants (native born) adopts host country total fertility rate in this context. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2019/08/08/hispanic-... https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2016/10/26/5-facts-a... https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/FT_19... visua…

In 2003 the average fertility rate was around 2.03

It started falling to 1.6 around 2008 ( https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/usa/uni... ) which coincided with the millennials getting into the child-bearing age. And the millennials are much more likely to live in cities, even though they don't want that: https://news.gallup.com/poll/245249/americans-big-idea-livin...

Re: The demographic future of humanity: facts and consequences [pdf]

#222
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The drop in fertility rate is directly liked to migration into dense cities. They are just not a good place to have children. The US resisted the fertility drop for much longer, because of higher suburban population.

I read some unsubstantiated claim about cities being bad for fertility because there’s an abundance of things to do that aren’t popping out children

And you'll be doing them, whether you like it or not.

Re: The demographic future of humanity: facts and consequences [pdf]

#223
post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is fertility so low in Iran then? Or very Catholic Poland? It does not seem to correlate strongly with religion or belief systems. The strongest correlation I see is urbanization. People in cities don’t have kids as much.

Anecdotal observation / hypothesis: - there's an inverse relationship between quality of life and density, even within individual households - there's a higher premium on space in urbanized areas than in rural areas - there's been a move towards urbanization across the world, high HDI, low HDI, high religion, low religion I propose something similar to Parkinson's Law: Average family size expands (or contracts) to fi…

I think it matters in how you define quality of life, for one.

Take a family of five kids and give them a bedroom for each kid when young and they’ll end up clustering in one or two.

I think space and other pressures may have their place as causes, but are mostly downstream from whatever the root issues are.

Re: The demographic future of humanity: facts and consequences [pdf]

#224
post #33

The point on p. 39 about immigration is important for everyone to understand: > Most immigrants worsen the fiscal position of the government. According to an Economist article addressing data collected by Denmark, each non-western immigrants produce a negative financial benefit over their lifetimes, and immigrants from the Middle East, North Africa, Pakistan, are a net cost on the government at every age: https://inq…

> each non-western immigrants produce a negative financial benefit over their lifetimes

I'm not familiar with the writer but their definition of "non-western" is a bit weird to me. I don't know what criteria were used or whether these are Denmark's classifications or the author's own.

The chart captioned "Violent crime conviction rates for immigrants in 2010–2021 by nation of origin expressed in multiples of the Danish conviction rate" says, for example, that Greece is Western but its neighbor North Macedonia is "other". Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Romania - all Western, but Czechoslovakia is "other". Croatia? Western, but curiously not Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia and Montenegro, or Yugoslavia. There's no rhyme or reason here.

People originating from these debatably Western (or non-Western, I literally don't know but it's inconsistent either way) countries all have conviction rates above the Danish rate. Which would muddle the narrative of that particular chart a fair bit. Maybe it makes no difference to the fiscal question though.

Re: The demographic future of humanity: facts and consequences [pdf]

#225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think perhaps you are discussing too many threads simultaneously. I'm fully onboard with Maccas and Artists creating something thus creating wealth. Also, yes, transaction are exchanges. Nobody is arguing that. You pay rent and in exchange you may use the land (productively or not) My argument is that people are forced to pay rent to people who didn't create anything, but because they hold a piece of paper that say…

The person who owns it bought it from person who created it. The person who bought it then manages it, maintains it, organizes it, advertises it, pays taxes on it, etc. And there's nothing wrong with that. If rentable places were not allowed to be sold, very very few would exist. This is because people specialize - some build rentals, some manage them. Both are productive enterprises. You can become a landlord if you…

>The person who owns it bought it from person who created it.

The land was not created, it existed long before humans. It was taken by force and the strong began extracting rent from the weak.

Re: The demographic future of humanity: facts and consequences [pdf]

#226
post #176
post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the average number of years a woman spends being educated; Have you a recent reference for that? I think even that correlation has broken down, but I do not know

I don’t have any structured references saved, sorry. My understanding is that the only real correlation is years in education, but this is at the national level; the very rich and very poor (which imperfectly correlates with level of education attained) tend to have more children than the middle class, but fertility rates are down across every income level. What this means is that if you look at two countries and see…

At some point years of education crimps into childbearing years - I know two women who could easily have obtained their degree even after having a child, but quickly got to a “fuck this shit I’m a mom” and left the program never to return.

I don’t even know if things like FMLA apply to college classes.

Re: The demographic future of humanity: facts and consequences [pdf]

#227
post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm guessing you literally don't know anyone in Europe.

shrug I don't have personal friends on a different continent, but I read what they write all the time on HN and say on YouTube. Feel free to illuminate us with your first-hand counterpoints instead of a contentless ad-hominem attack.

You make lot of claims, I will address only one of them.

> Europe is post-religion

Some anecdata for illustration:

- Pope is based in Italy.

- my nice went to the first grade in Germany last year, that is a big deal there. Part of celebration was going to local church.

- it feels that US population is a lot more zealous with religion

- I’m not religious, but on average I do go inside of some church several times a year, because of “social occasions” e.g. when friends get married, when people die, and to my somewhat recent surprise when they start school. (Add several more, for tourist motivation to observe interesting architecture)

- based on reddit and HN posts, Americans atheists will never ever set foot into , because bridges had to be burnt.

Re: The demographic future of humanity: facts and consequences [pdf]

#229
post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes, but the economic rationale of immigration is to have younger workers who can pay into the system to buffer the growing older population Is it though? Not passing judgement either way, but the most common economic rationale for immigration generally seems to be that it's a source of cheap labor . > That can’t happen if the immigrants never pay in more than they take out at any point in their life. If the surplu…

> Is it though? Not passing judgement either way, but the most common economic rationale for immigration generally seems to be that it's a source of cheap labor. If you have cheap labor who draw more in public services than they pay in taxes, then you're using tax dollars to effectively subsidize private profits. Maybe that's the unstated rationale, but few proponents of immigration would say that out loud.

> using tax dollars to effectively subsidize private profits.

Yeah thats the entire point lmao.

Re: The demographic future of humanity: facts and consequences [pdf]

#230
post #160
post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because we have an expectation for more space. Pretty simple, no one wants to go backwards to when we lived in single room tenements with a wife pumping out babies for a decade in a row. Also, no one can afford a four bedroom home with twelve occupants on a single income like in the 50s.

You couldn't in the 50s either. You just made do.

That’s the real key to all this - if you want it, you make do, and learn to grab what you can.

Much worse than housing is the vehicle when you cross the 5 or 6 kid boundary, your available vehicles begin to rapidly plummet.

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