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India's surprise baby bust

economist.com

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Re: India's surprise baby bust

#521

Post by mullingitover »

scoofy wrote: post #457
jrmg wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is really the message of Abundance . I both liked Abundance and think there’s truth to what you’re saying. But it wasn’t what I took away from the book (perhaps it was in there - but what I really got was ‘for a better future we need to stop shooting ourselves in the foot, and be prepared to enthusiastically think of and promote the greater good rather than protecting every single valuable individual thing’)

I mean, I agree with what you're saying, but it misses that abundance means abundance . Consumer staples should cost near the price of production, and where margins are out of control, the government should step in and end the rent-seeking... that is what abundance is. If we live in a society where there is no price appreciation in owning an apartment to rent because another apartment can be build next door, then we…

> we have the rich investing in existing housing because we have effectively stopped production

In my quite affluent city, the most affluent neighborhood has yard signs up every fifty feet expressing that they are furious that the city might develop city-owned parking lots (which are nowhere near their neighborhood) to be high density housing.

One-bedroom apartments in the city center are going for over $3,000 per month.

The rich aren't simply locking up existing housing, their principal concern is preventing any housing from being created, even if it has no effect on them.

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#522

Post by dyauspitr »

MontyCarloHall wrote: post #69

This has happened to every single society [*] as it industrializes [0], and offering extensive support and incentives to parents (e.g. as has been tried in Scandinavian countries) does very little to reverse this trend [1, 2]. 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. So many people I know put of…

It’s not that complicated. As soon as women are educated and have a choice of supporting themselves the birth rate drops. If you want a higher birth rate, stop educating women and disempower them. This is something republicans in the US intimately understand.

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#523

Post by gradstudent »

jiggawatts wrote: post #487
scoofy wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is really the message of Abundance . If you want people to have kids, you need to make sure they are economically secure by the time they are of childbearing age... which means before they are 30. To do that, you cannot have supply constrained zero-sum shortage anywhere in society. It means that the cost of an apartment needs to be at-or-below the cost to build that apartment so people can just save up and buy o…

I’m in my fourties’ unable to afford a three bedroom apartment in my city with an income in the top two or three percentile. I’ve had boomers tell me with a straight face that “they did it” so it can’t be that hard despite a 5x increase in housing costs relative to income. I’d have to spend every single post tax dollar for two decades to afford an actual house. Not counting interest and other taxes and council rates.…

> nice house in a nice suburb!

There's your problem. Everyone wants to live in the same set of well established well resourced neighbourhoods. But there's too many of us. Go out in the 'burbs and accept that owning a house implies a commute you will dislike (among a host of other compromises).

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#524

Post by dyauspitr »

i_idiot wrote: post #8

What's the strong case against population dwindling other than supporting aging population? Given the AI armageddon, it just makes sense to reduce the population. If there's less population, we need less production and less workers. Of course, countries have to deal with oldest population for a brief period of time.

Yeah but logically unless people start matching the replacement rate at some point it’s a lot of pain until you go extinct. Isn’t South Korea supposed to be functionally extinct in less than 100 years at this rate?

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#525

Post by dyauspitr »

guyzero wrote: post #244
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.

Japan, a country famous for no one knowing what its culture is.

Reading about it in books and watching anime won’t prevent them from going functionally extinct in less than 200 years.

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#526

Post by jbxntuehineoh »

voiceofchoice wrote: post #351
happytoexplain wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The implication of "and it turns out..." is that all else is equal, but clearly it's not. Would women still choose to have babies if they didn't have to work also ? I admit that it's basically moot - we can't seem to figure out how to have a society where both members of a couple are free to choose whether or not to work. I'm only pointing out that this trend doesn't mean what you're implying about women's desires.

If you don't think child rearing is work then you won't understand why women choose not to have kids in the first place. You cannot be a parent and choose not to work, period. Just because you're not getting paid and ordered around by an adult boss doesn't mean being a trad wife is magically somehow not work. In fact, at least with a regular 9-5 you get PTO and time off. If you scoff at the idea of flipping burgers y…

_obviously_ they meant "work" as in "employment", stop being obtuse

> your whole life

pretty sure the diaper changing part only lasts a couple years

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#527

Post by scoofy »

broken-kebab wrote: post #517
scoofy wrote: post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Economic stimulus does nothing about affordability of goods in a shortage. Quite the opposite, economic stimulus just causes inflation for goods in a shortage. Which is exactly what we’ve seen for 15 years.

It's a bit of evasion. If you support the claim that it's housing which keeps Western societies birthrate low, you building your theory on the same sand of "economy prevents youth from having kids".

Income is not wealth. The crisis is caused by the inability for the median income here to build wealth. That people can’t separate the two is a large part of the problem.

As long as your saving is being eaten by asset inflation, no matter how fast you’re running, you’re still on a treadmill.

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#528

Post by 05 »

trumpdong wrote: post #469
MontyCarloHall wrote: post #69

This has happened to every single society [*] as it industrializes [0], and offering extensive support and incentives to parents (e.g. as has been tried in Scandinavian countries) does very little to reverse this trend [1, 2]. 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. So many people I know put of…

People who have children often report it being the most fulfilling thing they ever did, while other pleasures are temporary. So I don't know if I can buy this argument.

Or: boring people who have nothing fulfilling in their lives often report having children is the most fulfilling?

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#530

Post by b0rtb0rt »

pjc50 wrote: post #420
Veserv wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except in [0] the birth rate is relatively flat between 1950-1970 and then suddenly starts a rapid reduction. Developed countries have already been industrialized for 100 years by that point. The modern work day and access to many modern fun and rewarding activitys have been available for literal decades. Mass urbanization already occurred. Many of the modern household appliances have been in use for decades. Antibio…

This is table stakes obvious, though? Again we see the weirdness of having an almost exclusively male conversation about the subject. Women are choosing not to have children, and you need to ask them why and take the answers seriously.

because they are on a medication that makes their body think they are pregnant already

women have sex drives too, if they arent on birth control they are more likely to engage in behavior that can get them pregnant

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