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India's surprise baby bust

economist.com

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Re: India's surprise baby bust

#321

Post by nemomarx »

autoexec wrote: post #313
nemomarx wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why did people want to have them in the past, and what shifts do you think could undo industrialization enough to return to that? The economic value of kids and the relative surety that kids will provide for you in your old age are I think very hard to reclaim now, and that was a pretty strong motivator for most of history. You could end all retirement funds and pension systems and so on, maybe?

> Why did people want to have them in the past Most people are biologically wired to want children. "Survive and reproduce" is pretty much the driving motivation of all living things. Most children weren't conceived as a carefully planned retirement strategy. No cost/benefit calculation is required to convince most people to have children, but you can certainly force them into a position where they have to start thin…

I don't mean it as a cost benefit thing, but people thinking that family is important, that they want and need family there for them in their old age, and so on.

The need for all of that is considerably different in modernity and more people choose to live without their family close by, and certainly don't depend on them for housing and care as often?

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#322

Post by aerodexis »

MontyCarloHall wrote: post #115
mekdoonggi wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And do you think this is bad?

I never made any value judgment on whether it’s bad or good. “Hedonism” is simply the focus of individual pleasure and happiness above all else, and everything I listed is an example of things that lead to individual happiness that are antithetical to having many children.

Having children is profoundly more fulfilling and pleasurable than the surface-level pleasures you listed. "hedonism" doesn't create a lack of children, if anything people are not hedonistic enough, but for economic reasons pursue cheap low-quality pleasure over high-quality pleasure.

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#323

Post by guyzero »

throwyawayyyy wrote: post #281
FuriouslyAdrift wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We only have one modern example of demographic crash to study... Japan. Total economic stagnation, spiraling population numbers, loss of anything anchored to manual labor, and an aging population. So far, it looks to be a way for slow extinction of a culture.

I mean, if Japan is the world's future, isn't that kind of... good? It's not the first place I think of when I think of a failing country.

Japan is not without problems related to a shrinking population i.e. https://eastasiaforum.org/2026/05/21/japans-immigration-poli...

but it's a problem easily solved by just letting in more immigrants.

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#324

Post by belval »

everdrive wrote: post #312
FuriouslyAdrift wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We only have one modern example of demographic crash to study... Japan. Total economic stagnation, spiraling population numbers, loss of anything anchored to manual labor, and an aging population. So far, it looks to be a way for slow extinction of a culture.

Ah yes, the hellscape that is Japan. The Japanese are currently fleeing to South Sudan and Darfur in hopes of a better life.

The 42.7M tourists that went there in 2025 just enjoyed seeing the incredible decay of a dying country, a morbid fascination or sorts. /s (obviously)

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#325

Post by aidenn0 »

9cb14c1ec0 wrote: post #31
staminade wrote: post #11

Unless they roll-back women's rights and improvements in child mortality, societies will need to radically overhaul their entire relationship to supporting parenthood in order to reverse this trend. The economic costs of having children at a replacement rate are simply too high. We need universal childcare services, provided by the state and available to all, and other childcare-enabling reforms like automatic right…

> We need universal childcare services Birth rates have been falling worldwide, regardless of the level of government support. It's much more a matter of attitudes about having children. > The economic costs of having children at a replacement rate are simply too high Nope. My wife and I have 4 children, on a lower-middle-class income in the US. Your lifestyle choices matter a lot. If you want to have children, you c…

The worse the primary-caregiver's job prospects are, the cheaper the opportunity costs are to have kids. My wife quickly realized she didn't want to be an English teacher, and couldn't do a whole lot of other things with that degree, so her staying home to raise our 4 kids was very affordable for us. If she had been a software developer, the opportunity costs would have been higher.

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#326

Post by forlorn_mammoth »

happytoexplain wrote: post #292
everdrive wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nearly every metric gets worse - likelihood to get pregnant - likelihood to bring child to term - health risk to mother during pregnancy and child birth - health risk to baby during pregnancy and child birth - increased likelihood of multiple birth defects - increased likelihood of genetic abnormalities I'm not casting aspersions. My wife and I had kids when she was 38 and 40 respectively. But, the numbers for the ri…

So even if it takes a year instead of one night to get pregnant, which wouldn't really affect long-scale statistics that much, more pregnancies fail, and more people may choose not to try at all because of the risks. That makes sense.

Yes it would, because if you don't start until you are 30, you've "lost" a decade of childbearing. That's a pretty serious reduction in the maximum number of children you are likely to produce.

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#327

Post by throwaway85825 »

em-bee wrote: post #269
xeonmc wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So support should be provided for incentivizing younger parenthood then, like guaranteed tuition assistance per children born?

in germany education is free, and some places also offer free childcare. parents get $300 per child per month in financial support regardless of income. and yet all that is still not enough.

Costs more than that.

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#328

Post by em-bee »

thijson wrote: post #301
xeonmc wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So support should be provided for incentivizing younger parenthood then, like guaranteed tuition assistance per children born?

Giving birth to future tax payers should confer sizable tax deductions for the parents. I'm not sure that's enough to reverse the demographic slide though, it's been tried. For our ancestors, they married young, and didn't have access to birth control. Babies weren't really planned, they just happened.

they didn't just happen, they were expected and demanded. there was social pressure to have children. that's still true in china today. some not yet grandparents put a lot of pressure on their children to give them grandchildren (sometimes very violently too), and i remember a comment in an earlier thread where someone told about the experience of their parents or grandparents where the local pastor was having a concerned talk with a childless couple.

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#329

Post by seinvak »

John7878781 wrote: post #184
eudamoniac wrote: post #136

The desire to procreate above replacement levels is probably heritable, so it will all work itself out naturally.

Given that intelligence is ~60% genetic, if well-educated people are having kids less, then are we going to start getting dumber?

Education doesn't imply intelligence. 90% of humanity that has ever lived has probably never read a word.

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#330

Post by VirusNewbie »

em-bee wrote: post #291
VirusNewbie wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>My hypothesis is that as societies industrialize, they afford their population more and more activities that are simply more fun and rewarding than having children. But this is by and large not true. I've traveled, eaten at expensive restaurants, enjoyed a child free existence into my mid thirties and having kids is a blast [*] My wife was adamantly against having kids when we got together in our twenties, and she c…

having kids is a blast true, but you didn't know until you had them, and society keeps telling us otherwise. we need to change the message and educate youth about becoming parents. but also create a culture where having children is welcome. in the west we complain about kids running around, making noise, being not under control. and most importantly we blame the parents. in china every child is treated like a treasur…

>in china every child is treated like a treasure. sometimes even to a fault. but at least parents are not being blamed for having children,

huh, I didn't know this. Thank you for sharing about your culture :)

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