91–100 of 172 posts
Every time this sort of news pops up, I think "why aren't they incentivising and subsidizing fertility treatment"? You want to raise the fertility rate, yes? You could convince an entire population to have more babies the hard way (social or economic pressure). Or literally just let the people who are already trying, but can't for some physiological reason, have one. They already want children, if they're pursuing fe…
It's an odd bunch. You have hardcore Jewish rabbis hanging with radical imams and dyed-in-the-wool Chinese communists and everyone in between. It's an issue, like climate change, that effects us all equally.
No one has any good ideas about the root causes nor the solutions. It's apartments, it's land use taxes, it's cost of living, it's governmental policy. Sure, some new study like this one, will come along and add in a new wrinkle. But it really seems, to me at least, that the fertility issue is a multi-faceted one with no clear causes nor clear solutions.
Now, once we discover whatever the recipe for fertility decline is, then all those partisans and religious nutters will scatter and then go right back to hating each other. But for now, they play nice. There's a lesson in there, but I'm not sure what it is.
Again, it's a weird little sub domain.
Every time this sort of news pops up, I think "why aren't they incentivising and subsidizing fertility treatment"? You want to raise the fertility rate, yes? You could convince an entire population to have more babies the hard way (social or economic pressure). Or literally just let the people who are already trying, but can't for some physiological reason, have one. They already want children, if they're pursuing fe…
Maybe I'm wrong, but it looks like the paper just has a misleading title, and this is about having children, not fertility.
I think the confusion is that “fertility” means different things in medicine vs demography
In medicine, fertility is about your ability to have biological offspring, not about whether you personally choose to make use of that ability
In demography, fertility is about how many children people actually have. The completed TFR (total fertility rate) of a population is the lifetime average number of children per a woman.
From a demographic perspective, the vast majority of differences in fertility are due to socioeconomic and cultural factors, medical infertility and the availability of treatments for it makes only a very small difference to overall birth rates
Every time this sort of news pops up, I think "why aren't they incentivising and subsidizing fertility treatment"? You want to raise the fertility rate, yes? You could convince an entire population to have more babies the hard way (social or economic pressure). Or literally just let the people who are already trying, but can't for some physiological reason, have one. They already want children, if they're pursuing fe…
It makes sense, but it's probably pretty far down on the list of "what could we put money towards in order to increase birthrate". Could probably get a lot more result for the money by funding efforts to pair people together, make them want to have kids, make them more financially equipped to have kids, etc.
Religion puts an incredible amount of social pressure on children, marriage and families. This is why most conservatives advocate for traditional gender roles, rally against abortion, etc.
My own personal experience of growing in a conservative Islamic country, then converting to Christianity after moving to the West is a testament of how social pressure has an impact on this.
My wife (from South America) was similarly raised in a conservative family. We have delayed having children but it has reached a boiling point where we have to absolutely discuss having kids now.
Yes, there are other factors like affordability that prevents left leaning people from having kids, but to me those are secondary reasons. This social dynamic is simply not there in Liberal circles.
I hang out on fertility related sites and on twitter. It's an odd bunch. You have hardcore Jewish rabbis hanging with radical imams and dyed-in-the-wool Chinese communists and everyone in between. It's an issue, like climate change, that effects us all equally. No one has any good ideas about the root causes nor the solutions. It's apartments, it's land use taxes, it's cost of living, it's governmental policy. Sure,…
I think if you look at ultra-Orthodox Jews and the Amish, the answer is obvious - the easiest way to maximise fertility is to convince people that God exists, has commanded them to reproduce, and to minimise engagement with cultures that don’t share that commitment; the root cause of low fertility is most people in the current population don’t believe that; the long-term solution is their demographic replacement by people who do.
Any population decline is likely to be temporary; by the 23rd century, I think people will be back to worrying about overpopulation
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This still runs contrary to national statistics, which would include these births unless there is a wave of children/births unregisted with the state. There is good public data on this, for example here: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr74/nvsr74-3.pdf That said, I think there is a perspective issue at play. It may seem like lots of people are having kids. A lot of our friends are too. However, I dint live thro…
This report is from 2.5 years ago. I am talking about within the past year to 2 years. So this might actual lend credit to my theory of a stealth baby boom happening. Perhaps I should have clarified "happening right now "
I didn't read the full paper only the abstract, but bc the political spectrum is correlated with education level or urban vs rural or multiple other factors that deeply impact what it is like to have kids. Of urban college educated professionals, do the conservatives still have more kids than the progressives? Or does the opportunity cost on careers plus the high cost of childcare plus the cost of living space impact…
Look at Amy Coney Barrett - Supreme Court justice, before that a constitutional law professor then federal appeals court judge, five biological children plus two adopted, and an ultraconservative Roman Catholic.
I think you’ll find the “women with successful professional careers and >=5 kids” demographic has a strong conservative skew.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Fertility treatment isn't a guarantee. My brother and his wife ended up adopting after treatment failed. The government paying for it also doesn't make it cheaper, it just moves the costs around. A fairer, more effective strategy would be subsidizing the first year or so of the child's care- diapers, food, clothes, cribs, vaccines and such. That would benefit a lot more people.
no one (I mean this, not one person on Earth) will be swayed to have a baby given your offer.
Such a program would be a good first step in stating that bearing and raising children is something we value as a society.
Coincidentally, I had a similar suspicion about the free/subsidized fertility treatments- the rate of people not having children due to needing medical intervention is small enough that subsidizing it would not meaningfully affect the birthrate of the country.
Unless, of course, you believe that being on the left politically makes people less fertile...