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India's surprise baby bust

economist.com

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Re: India's surprise baby bust

#861

Post by trumpdong »

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 are using so many words to tell a person they should just kill themselves without directly saying it. I flagged your comment anyway. I hope the moderator understands the context.

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#862

Post by lurking_swe »

Voultapher wrote: post #729
sirwhinesalot wrote: post #721

The real reason why nobody is having kids can be summarized by the sentence: "It takes a village to raise a kid". Look up how much time a mother actually used to spend holding their own child vs other people holding that same child. It was something like 40%. When you lived surrounded by your tribe, you had an extremely strong support network that no longer exists in industrialized society. Add to that all the other…

Honestly that resonates with me. I haven't made up my mind 100% about the topic, but I can say it would be an easier decision if there was a stronger support network. Watching single children be bored and play with their semi-enthusiastic parents makes me sad. But it's not all doom and gloom, there are plenty of areas where families live and you see gangs of kids of various age-groups roam the streets and parks.

feeling sorry for single children is just weird, not going to lie. I was a single child. Yes i had many boring days as a toddler. I’m not a sad adult because of that, i’m happily married and expecting my 1st soon. One of my parents passed lately, that had a much more profound impact on me than any boredom during toddlerhood. Playing by myself as a toddler fostered a lot of creativity and imagination… you need that to play by yourself after all.

Eventually my mom set up a “play date” up the street with a neighbor around my age, and that was the start of proper friendship and fun. And when i learned how to socialize and share better.

It sounds like you see many “semi-enthusiastic” parents. Children should ideally live near other children so they can make friends. Or be enrolled in some type of pre-k so they can make friends. That’s a (parent) life decision problem, not a “i have no siblings problem”. There’s also plenty of siblings who don’t get along anyway so that’s a poor reason to have a 2nd.

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#863

Post by trumpdong »

illiac786 wrote: post #770
kubb wrote: post #768

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But they’ll be able to live in a recovering environment that doesn’t bear the overpopulation strain.

LOL. The environment will be destroyed but it won’t be getting any worse anymore. They will be delighted. Just a couple thousand years, maybe a million, to wait out – doable.

Probably less than a hundred. We're not talking about a nuclear winter scenario. Look at the Chernobyl exclusion zone (most of which is not radioactive and is closed off as a precaution)

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#864

Post by somenameforme »

chr1 wrote: post #583
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…

Cost of a great apartment by 1920 standards is affordable to anyone before they are 30, the problem is that they want to add lots of nice but non-essential things to that house driving the price up. If you subsidize building houses, you merely will drive up standard of living without moving childbearing age. The problem is about priorities not resource constraints. And solution will be either enough people/countries…

This is definitely not true. As recently as the 50s the cost of a 2/2 house was about 14% of a single median personal income per month. [1] In contemporary times median personal income is about $45k, so that'd be about $525 per month. And they paid lower taxes as well. In contemporary times people pay dramatically more for housing without getting much of anything more in return. People often claim overall housing size has increased which is true, but lot sizes have slightly decreased. So all that means is in the 1950s you also had a much bigger yard instead of walk-in closets or whatever.

[1] - https://www.huduser.gov/portal/sites/default/files/pdf/Housi...

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#865

Post by trumpdong »

b65e8bee43c2ed0 wrote: post #554
mrguyorama wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It just has to be a "Job" you get paid to do. People will absolutely sign up. The problem is that there will be far too many people wanting that job, so you have to filter somehow, and that's basically eugenics which isn't the most fun, so I guess you'd have to have a lottery and deal with the fact that like 10% of the population will constantly riot about someone who "doesn't deserve it" getting paid to raise kids.

the state hates, hates, HATES paying for children, to the point of occasionally forcing victims of rape, infidelity, or fraud to pay child support. https://www.nycourts.gov/reporter/3dseries/2006/2006_05238.h... >In October 2000, however, when appearing before a Family Court hearing examiner to answer Shondel's petition, Mark{*7 NY3d at 325} requested DNA testing. The hearing examiner ordered genetic marker tests, wh…

That one's about someone who acted as the father for almost five years before suddenly questioning it. It's not about paying for children, it's about seeing a responsibility you took on through to the end.

Mandatory DNA testing at birth would solve a lot of these, and bring in new problems.

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#866

Post by trumpdong »

imtringued wrote: post #760
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 rai…

I'm sorry your kids hate you so much they wouldn't support you if you needed it?

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#867

Post by trumpdong »

jdthedisciple wrote: post #753
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?

There's a certain other country that has free education, free healthcare, free childcare, heavy tax subsidies for having children, has the highest birthrates in the region, and it's all paid for with American tax dollars.

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#868

Post by trumpdong »

b65e8bee43c2ed0 wrote: post #467
dividefuel wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree it's primarily cultural. I wonder whether there's anything that a non-totalitarian government can do that would significantly change the cultural side of it.

I don't think even totalitarian governments can do anything about it now. with few exceptions, the only places on Earth with TFR above replacement are undeveloped countries or underdeveloped areas within developed countries. what could China or Russia even do, undeveloped themselves? dismantle their cities and uneducate their people?

Communist Romania did it simply by outlawing all forms of contraception. TFR jumped from 1.9 to 3.7, nurseries were very busy, and the rivers were full of dead unwanted babies (as that is the thing humans seem to be hardwired to want to do with unwanted babies). It didn't last as people found ways to get contraception anyway within a few years.

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#869

Post by somenameforme »

vasac wrote: post #805
koolba wrote: post #786

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even the ones that really want kids simply cannot afford to have one, because the price of living is simply absurd. Perhaps the price of living to which you are accustomed to is absurd. > I'm extremely fortunate to be working at a large tech company and I have good money, but even with my income having a kid would be financially ruinous for us. Would it though? Couples having been raising children with much less fo…

> If one spouse stays home to watch them, that covers as many kids as you have. That's debatable ;) I have two kids, and taking care of both during the day is vastly harder - both mentally and physically - than working two jobs. As they say, it takes a village to raise a child, and I don't think many people have that village anymore. As a result, a lot of kids are being raised by TV or the internet, and if you don't…

This varies majorly by child, parent/caretaker, and environment. For instance with my children if we go outside, then they are on full auto mode. They could play in the yard by themselves pretty much all day long as long as at least one parent's nearby watching them. But if we're indoors then they demand full attention. On the other hand somehow our nanny has got them to be able to happily play indoors while she mostly just chills out doing stuff on her phone or whatever - and I have no complaints since it works out great for everybody.

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#870

Post by trumpdong »

thelastgallon wrote: post #659

In a farming culture, children are a profit center: 1) Production of children costs nothing. People married young and children just happen, there are no expensive fertility treatments, etc. 2) children are free labor for decades, helping their dad (family?) expand the acreage. More land = high status for dad. Even today, children can work in the family business without any pay. A child can be free labor, but only for…

Maybe I'm crazy but I think I'd be fine paying a tax to raise all kids - if that's what it costs to keep society alive, so be it. It would probably work out in the neighborhood of child support i.e. pretty high. The problem you're talking about with child support is how it punishes the one individual man and so the rational decision for each individual is to not have kids. A collectivised tax wouldn't have the same problem.
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