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India's surprise baby bust

economist.com

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Re: India's surprise baby bust

#751

Post by pastage »

Ntrails wrote: post #738
dgoldstein0 wrote: post #732

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The economics almost certainly play a role, but I think the better way to think about it is how we economize time too. if you are chasing a career, putting in 40,50,60 hours a week - how can you take time off to have a kid? who is going to take care of the kid? Increasingly having kids has gotten more expensive - housing, childcare costs, and general expected investment/supervision of children. In agricultural societ…

> Cheaper / free childcare, better parental leave policies, and cheaper cost of living so that people who want to be stay at home parents can have that option. As GP states, heavily pushing subsidies has not been shown to work. The one thing we know works is restricting access to birth control - I'd bet good money that ups the birth rate in no time. Leave as an exercise for the reader whether it is a good idea xD

> heavily pushing subsidies has not been shown to work

Subsidies only come into affect after you have children. They can not work alone society has a much greater affect. They work wonders at making parenting possible while being part of the work force. You only get the subsidies when you have children, the question is how you are supposed to feel secure enough to have children.

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#752

Post by funofthegame »

BobbyTables2 wrote: post #680
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…

Unless one gets a large van, daily life becomes less convenient beyond 2 kids. Midsize sedan/SUV aren’t great at more than 2 parents + 2 kids (especially with car seats!) Vacations are also more expensive since a lot of hotel rooms don’t allow more than 2 adults + 2 kids. More is also harder on the parents !

Hotel + plane flights is too expensive for large families.

I try to drive and stay in Airbnbs, and then doesn't matter how many kids.

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#753

Post by jdthedisciple »

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…

> The economic costs of having children at a replacement rate are simply too high.

Interesting, guess our cavemen ancestors were much smarter and more capable than us since that seemed easy for them.

Hint: Imagine cutting defense budget and foreign meddling in favor of supporting families at home. Genius idea right?

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#754

Post by rekabis »

foobiekr wrote: post #344
rekabis wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What is your plan if, say, the food distribution infrastructure breaks down? 300 acres on the westward-facing slope of the interior cascade temperate rainforest. Even if the entire region sees extended drying over the next 50, there will still be sufficient rainfall for crops. All it will need are a few holding pools to reliably produce a year-round supply. It’s also reasonably remote, difficult to reach unless you…

Until you get cancer. Survivalist fantasies aren’t realistic.

It’s 30 minutes to the nearest town with a hospital. 2hrs from a moderate metro city with a large hospital. It’s isolated, not hundreds-of-km into the boonies.

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#755

Post by tikkabhuna »

matchbok3 wrote: post #602
toomuchtodo wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a call for community and durable systems that serve the human instead of traditional systems built to aggregate and funnel capital to a few. The fertility crisis is a capital crisis (taxpayers needed to pay back debt issued today decades into the future, workers for corporate profits), not a crisis for the individual. I see it as an exciting opportunity to maintain and improve quality of life for humans while…

Corporate profits are good, they help companies make new things. Do you think they should lose money? How would you be typing on a computer if that evil, evil company didn't make a profit? There is a reason every communist society has failed.

There is a huge gap between capitalism and communism.

Just like how pure communism doesn’t work, neither does pure capitalism.

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#756

Post by tikkabhuna »

rekabis wrote: post #754
foobiekr wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until you get cancer. Survivalist fantasies aren’t realistic.

It’s 30 minutes to the nearest town with a hospital. 2hrs from a moderate metro city with a large hospital. It’s isolated, not hundreds-of-km into the boonies.

I don’t think anyone is going to be working at the hospital if they have to start dedicating their time to survival?

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#757

Post by alangibson »

If you invert the question "why aren't people having kids" to "why did people want kids in the first place" then the fertility crisis makes more sense.

Kids were free labor and old age insurance.

Now they are extremely expensive pets. Materially they are a net negative in a modern society.

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#758

Post by willmarch »

Paradigm2020 wrote: post #743
willmarch wrote: post #676

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not having kids is choosing to be the change they want to see in the world, no?

Not religious at all but... "To those who is given much..." If all they do is not have kids and claim that we are a cancer the minimum they could do is that other classic Speaking is silver but silence is gold... And well I firmly believe the biggest problem is the pervasive desire to be weak and complain by those who have the possibility of actual impact. The battle is lost before it's fought and all. But yeah we ar…

You might not like it, but by choosing not to reproduce they ARE having an actual impact on the world (as this debate about their actions demonstrates).

Maybe we, as a species, would have better long term outcomes if we reflected more before blindly charging forward exactly as our parents did (and their parents before them).

Maybe they feel we should choose a different course and look for better/different ways of living and being as a species. There is no such thing as infinite growth, we should probably act accordingly.

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#759

Post by jiggunjer »

Ntrails wrote: post #738
dgoldstein0 wrote: post #732

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The economics almost certainly play a role, but I think the better way to think about it is how we economize time too. if you are chasing a career, putting in 40,50,60 hours a week - how can you take time off to have a kid? who is going to take care of the kid? Increasingly having kids has gotten more expensive - housing, childcare costs, and general expected investment/supervision of children. In agricultural societ…

> Cheaper / free childcare, better parental leave policies, and cheaper cost of living so that people who want to be stay at home parents can have that option. As GP states, heavily pushing subsidies has not been shown to work. The one thing we know works is restricting access to birth control - I'd bet good money that ups the birth rate in no time. Leave as an exercise for the reader whether it is a good idea xD

Literally what china is doing now

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#760

Post by imtringued »

alangibson wrote: post #757

If you invert the question "why aren't people having kids" to "why did people want kids in the first place" then the fertility crisis makes more sense. Kids were free labor and old age insurance. Now they are extremely expensive pets. Materially they are a net negative in a modern society.

This is almost correct.

The way the pension systems are set up, you're donating your children's labor to the pension system as a whole. This means any investment into your children is purely an expense. Meanwhile if you don't have children, you can save money for retirement and let other people's children work for you.

This means children are a net positive to society as a whole, but a net negative to the parents raising them.

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