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Falling fertility on the left as key driver of US birth decline

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Re: Falling fertility on the left as key driver of US birth decline

#151

Post by postflopclarity »

mike_hearn wrote: post #121
postflopclarity wrote: post #7

seems like an odd choice to so emphatically phrase this as a quality of "the left" when there are so clearly many plausible confounding factors (education, wealth, employment status, do you live in a small city apartment, etc.)

With academic social studies you can usually assume they've controlled for the basics like that, especially if the conclusions are unfortunate for the left which always means rigor gets ramped up significantly. They're working from large scale surveys and controlling for simple confounders is easy. Sure enough: > Arpino & Mogi explored mechanisms behind this reproductive pattern, finding that extreme right individual…

I don't know if I'd call this an "unfortunate" result or not. it's neither good nor bad, just a thing.

Arpino & Mogi are different authors that wrote a different paper that I didn't read. _This_ paper does not appear to have controlled for much at all in its primary contribution of analysis of US GSS data, and all the conclusions reached appear to me to be purely observational.

Another nuance is that since their analysis consists of filtering to people already over 40, and then asking about political leaning, there is no way to infer anything about causal association of left - vs - right ideology and fertility. For example, "having children makes you more right wing" is an equally plausible explanation for this data as "being right wing causes you to have more children" (or maybe neither of these statements are true at all, and it's caused by a variety of other confounding factors).

Re: Falling fertility on the left as key driver of US birth decline

#152

Post by abeppu »

mike_hearn wrote: post #127
abeppu wrote: post #87

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…

Yes they do. Just grep the paper for the word "control" and you can quickly find the answers to these questions. This isn't a new finding and they've controlled for all the obvious factors.

I did grep through the paper, and ... no not really.

"Urban" and "rural" never appear. Among uses of "control", for their own work they have controlled for sex and race. Their Table 2 and Figure 2 are the same data displayed different ways and from the same analysis. In their mentions of other work they note related work on Europe that controlled for religiosity, education and income, and socioeconomic and attitudinal factors.

Their table 1 actually shows that the p-value for religious attendance, education, two race variables , and birth year, were all tied with the politics variable, and showed that education, and both race variables had larger-magnitude estimates and z-values.

After reading some of the paper, while I still think there's a relationship between political beliefs and number of kids, I don't see that their methods are convincing that this is more important than other such correlations.

Re: Falling fertility on the left as key driver of US birth decline

#153

Post by skeledrew »

NietzscheanNull wrote: post #147
skeledrew wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is not even like they would be more emphatic toward disabled close ones. They dont extend empathy toward abused or sexually harassed female familly member or kid. Or to gay familly member. From a biological/evolutionary standpoint, that's the correct approach. Anything that reduces - chances at - reproduction or makes the population less fit is an issue that makes said population tend toward extinction.

> From a biological/evolutionary standpoint, that's the correct approach. I believe the science disagrees on this point. In the case of humans, adaptations that contributed most to our success as a species are a constellation of pro-social traits that enabled us to cooperate in organized fashion in relatively large numbers (which empathy plays a major role in mediating). Evolutionary fitness is not always meaningful…

Humans being social animals doesn't detract from the point at all. Here, it's particularly regarding the small subsets that aren't "fit" from a Darwinian perspective. For example a homosexual is unfit because they will almost never reproduce to pass on their genes (adoption doesn't count), and so it would be disadvantageous to the group (again, from a Darwinian perspective) to "waste" any resources (even empathy) on any unfit individuals. Conversely a serial rapist would be very fit as they aggressively seek to pass on their genes.

And we see it playing out globally: as groups become more socially conscious (aka "woke"), their TFR decreases. Just look at a world map showing TFR, and overlay that on one showing "wokeness" by nation. European nations are generally the most woke in the world, and have a generally low TFR. African nations are generally the least woke in the world, and have a comparatively high TFR.

Re: Falling fertility on the left as key driver of US birth decline

#154

Post by tomhow »

snapplebobapple wrote: post #91
julianlam wrote: post #19

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…

[flagged]

Please don't make comments wishing that people – or groups of people – could “die off faster”. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. We've asked you at least once before not to post abusive comments. We have to ban accounts that persist with this kind of participation.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

Re: Falling fertility on the left as key driver of US birth decline

#155

Post by xyzelement »

tavavex wrote: post #143
xyzelement wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the atheist experiment of the last century or so is starting to yield clear evidence of what is and isn't "fit" in the Darwinian sense. Exactly as you are saying.

Atheists have existed for basically forever. I think you're referring to the 'not murdering, ostracizing and repressing them' experiment. If, like some in this thread, you think that violence, ignorance and removal of freedoms are acceptable means to getting an outcome some find preferable (or "fit", or "natural"), please state so directly.

I think atheism works great as a minority view. It seems to not work well as the dominant philosophy-as per the article.

Re: Falling fertility on the left as key driver of US birth decline

#156

Post by snapplebobapple »

tomhow wrote: post #154
snapplebobapple wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Please don't make comments wishing that people – or groups of people – could “die off faster”. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. We've asked you at least once before not to post abusive comments. We have to ban accounts that persist with this kind of participation. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more…

I shouldnt have said useless, whether it is accurate or not, i apologize for that. I take issue with the rest of your criticism though. My comment is on a policy discussion about people who have chosen a set of ideas having less kids. Its not about a people with some innate characteristic that they did not choose having less kids. Their less kids is a direct consequence of their poor policy preferences and as such it is a self correcting mechanism that we shouldnt be breaking and certainly should not be spending my tax dollars on. Suggesting other bad policy choices they could take up was perhaps in bad taste as well so i apologize for that as well. the spirit of my comment is still desperately needed in the discussion because it is utterly missing and it is the correct one. When people who choose a set of ideas make moremoney and have way less kids the problem that needs solving is their ideas, not their birthrate

Re: Falling fertility on the left as key driver of US birth decline

#157

Post by watwut »

OutOfHere wrote: post #145
watwut wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having kid with the wrong person is even shittier experience then marrying them. You can divorce and never see the guy again, ut you cant get rid of baby daddy. > meeting a partner in one's teen years, and getting it done by age 20 is best because one is the least picky then among all of one's fertile years Considering staggering rates of violence, domestic abuse and even rape in such circles, this not the best indiv…

> Considering staggering rates of violence, domestic abuse and even rape in such circles That's a nonsense argument since it's completely orthogonal to what I noted. Whatever you mean by "such circles" and "those circles" has no relation to what I noted. If women seek out partners with bad character, they will have to live with the consequences. At any age that's 18 or above, it is the woman's responsibility to ensur…

Not orthogonal at all. Having a kid as teenager makes you more vulnerable and vulnerable people are abused more. Simple.

Respectable men from respectable families beat their wives.

> At any age that's 18 or above, it is the woman's responsibility to ensure the partner is a respectable person from a respectable family before having a child with them. It doesn't take more than a few months of being together to determine it. Abusers can and do act nice for a few months when dating.

It takes a lot more then that. And you are ALREADY blaming hypothetical woman for mens violence.

You are blaming women for keeping themselves safe and also for violence done to them when they so what you want them to do.

Re: Falling fertility on the left as key driver of US birth decline

#158

Post by OutOfHere »

watwut wrote: post #157
OutOfHere wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Considering staggering rates of violence, domestic abuse and even rape in such circles That's a nonsense argument since it's completely orthogonal to what I noted. Whatever you mean by "such circles" and "those circles" has no relation to what I noted. If women seek out partners with bad character, they will have to live with the consequences. At any age that's 18 or above, it is the woman's responsibility to ensur…

Not orthogonal at all. Having a kid as teenager makes you more vulnerable and vulnerable people are abused more. Simple. Respectable men from respectable families beat their wives. > At any age that's 18 or above, it is the woman's responsibility to ensure the partner is a respectable person from a respectable family before having a child with them. It doesn't take more than a few months of being together to determin…

You are confusing risk reduction with receiving blame. For example, engaging in defensive driving while on the road is for risk reduction. It doesn't mean I blame such a safe driver if a collision happens anyway.

Re: Falling fertility on the left as key driver of US birth decline

#159

Post by M95D »

pfannkuchen wrote: post #15
novia wrote: post #3

Captain Planet literally told children who cared about environmentalism to "keep families small" to save our planet. https://youtu.be/tZCg9HsDntY It's not difficult to take that to the next logical conclusion, no children means less resources used.

Okay but if other groups aren’t doing it, the planet is still doomed and now your group is worse off. Congratulations, you have accomplished nothing!

To hell with the group. I won't feel sorry for my children and the state of the world they'll need to live in.

Re: Falling fertility on the left as key driver of US birth decline

#160

Post by M95D »

snapplebobapple wrote: post #108
zdragnar wrote: post #31

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.

Nah just bump every tax bracket of people over 25 with no children 10% and use the money to care for the vat grown replacement children they didnt have. Cut the taxes back when they hit their 2 kid quota and cut them further for additiinal kids

What about freedom?
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