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France's baby bust

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Re: France's baby bust

#101

Post by RcouF1uZ4gsC »

barry-cotter wrote: post #75
MakeUsersWant wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So this is why Europeans were able to colonize the entire world roughly in the 1700s.

The Industrial Revolution was why they were able to colonise the world. Being much, much more productive means you can afford a lot more bullets/cannon/artillery/small arms and you need less of your population as a share growing food. Europeans were better at war than anyone else because Europe was always at war somewhere. It was geographically fragmented enough that any one power becoming hegemonic never happened ag…

The timing is wrong though. Industrial Revolution started in 1760. By that time the British had already laid the foundation for their rule of India, and the other powers also were well on their way to colonization.

In fact, looking at the timing, one could almost make the argument that the Industrial Revolution was the effect of colonization and exploitation of the rest of the world and not the cause.

Re: France's baby bust

#102

Post by everdrive »

jstanley wrote: post #27
eastbound wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, why would we want to overpopulate? The whole premise is wrong. We need to weigh less on the environment, and currently farmers are receding in France, and it’s the first profession for suicide; All tells us that the next generation will be full-urban, which is an extremely bad thing. Of course, empires with more dense populations have more ability to dominate others, at least thanks to the variety of skills and…

> why would we want to overpopulate? Half the reason we got out of the Malthusian trap is that we finally got enough people that specialisation and economies of scale start to pay off. Wanting to reduce the global population is like saying you want to eliminate economies of scale, which would make life harder for those who remain, not easier.

There's also just quality of life. My life would be significantly worse if 100 million extra people lived in my state. I wouldn't care very much about escaping the Malthusian trap if it meant I had to live in a sprawl of constant density. Broadly speaking, higher and higher density does lead to an overall worse quality of life, which is something of a repugnant conclusion.

Re: France's baby bust

#103

Post by AdrianB1 »

amriksohata wrote: post #56

The changing male and female roles in society also has a part to play in any society where women are needed to work

Fully agree with the first part, disagree with the second: women elected to work, they did not needed to work. Single income family was in a way better than dual income family, the world was in a great shape in the '60-'70 when women started to move to paid jobs. Now you have a lot more workers, more leverage to employers and a lot less time spent in the family and less time to have kids when you want to build a career at the same time (and that career is just a regular job in 90% of the cases).

Re: France's baby bust

#104

Post by inawarminister »

inglor_cz wrote: post #21
4gotunameagain wrote: post #4

So, the demographic transition took place exceptionally early in France, but why? In my research, I argue that the diminished sway of the Catholic Church, nearly 30 years before the French Revolution, was the key driver of the fertility decline. It more and more seems like "traditional", conservative societies are more successful on aggregate. If they are beneficial to the individuals comprising them, this is a matte…

"It more and more seems like "traditional", conservative societies are more successful on aggregate." Weren't pretty much all societies on the planet in the 1700s and 1800s "traditional and conservative"? Yet most of them weren't particularly successful against the British, who, on aggregate, weren't that much traditional (superficially, yes, but behind the visible old-school clergy and nobility, ruthless modernizati…

Well Germany with it's much more conservative population and petty kings and nobles were able to outgrew liberal Britain and republican France between 1870-1918, and so did Archconservative Russia post-1900 or so.

Of course both fell in WW1 but the period just before it was quite interesting to ponder about.

Re: France's baby bust

#105

Post by bluGill »

immibis wrote: post #38
notyourday wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happens in the next 100 years?

We increase the human population by another 100x in the never-ending quest to increase GDP, then we run out of resources and die. Dolphins become the most intelligent life on the planet.

Population is on track to peak and start declining around 2050

Re: France's baby bust

#106

Post by makeitdouble »

ciphol wrote: post #93
makeitdouble wrote: post #67

The more I read this, the less I get his point on the religious influence. > It is unclear why the Catholic Church’s influence waned so quickly and why France was the first country to secularize. But then, if he doesn’t know enough about what’s happening in France during that period, how can he pin down the demographic decline as caused by the Catholic Church’s decline ? What if it was a completely different reason t…

> how can he pin down the demographic decline as caused by the Catholic Church’s decline ? He gives several data points for secularization, such as the language people chose to use in their wills. Since there is a strong general correlation between low fertility and low religion, it seems likely that these are causally linked in 18th century France, rather than coincidentally happening at the same time. It's a harder…

> Since there is a strong general correlation between low fertility and low religion

The article isn’t proving that point, and I’d argue other conditions, in particular mortality rates or living conditions in general have more of a widely accepted impact on fertility than religion.

I’d be open to see religion playing a role in this narrative, but IMHO it needs be more than an opinion or a hunch.

> “French decline"

I meant by that the decline in population

Re: France's baby bust

#107

Post by inawarminister »

nathan_compton wrote: post #70
koheripbal wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Poverty generates more conservatism, not less.

Poverty does, but not a small decline in standard of living. France isn't a third world country, its just not an imperial power. Seems great to me. On balance, I'd like to live in a modestly successful country without imperial ambitions. Lot of Glaucons at Hackernews, I guess.

France is still an imperial power in West Africa, though certainly in the last few months it's changing.

Re: France's baby bust

#108

Post by rayiner »

mtts wrote: post #83
AlchemistCamp wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> does religion play a major rile in politics in the rest of the western world? Hasn’t the growth of Islam in Europe been a large and growing political issue for the past decade? France in particular has had lot of debates about religious clothing at schools, what kind of criticism of religious ideas is and isn’t acceptable, etc. From my POV, it looks like religion is a bigger deal in European than American politics.…

> Hasn’t the growth of Islam in Europe been a large and growing political issue for the past decade? Probably more like two decades by now :-) The political parties in Europe that pride themselves on anti-Islamism are themselves not religious all. And no one (of any significance) in Western Europe is arguing for a return to Christianity. Some parties advocate “Judeo-Christian values” but the various incarnations of t…

Those political parties in France talk about “western culture” instead of “Christianity,” but western culture is fundamentally an outgrowth of Christianity. Even if you strip out the supernatural parts, a religion provides all sorts of notions about fairness, justice, forgiveness, family life, the rules and order, etc. People in Europe are still socialized into all that, even if they stop going to church.

This is apparent if you come from a different religious background. I know people who are nominally atheist but you can tell their family is German Protestant a mile away.

Re: France's baby bust

#109

Post by ciphol »

yobbo wrote: post #42

GDP in "real dollars" is irrelevant here. Any such measurement can't correspond to something meaningful. Rather "annual calories from agriculture per capita" would reveal much more of the reasons behind this and other upheavals in Europe during the period. There were climate/weather changes (not well understood or appropriate to research in light of current climate changes) in Europe during 1500-1850, which caused st…

Why would the climate/weather changes stop right at the French border?

Re: France's baby bust

#110

Post by makeitdouble »

arrozconcosas wrote: post #85
makeitdouble wrote: post #67

The more I read this, the less I get his point on the religious influence. > It is unclear why the Catholic Church’s influence waned so quickly and why France was the first country to secularize. But then, if he doesn’t know enough about what’s happening in France during that period, how can he pin down the demographic decline as caused by the Catholic Church’s decline ? What if it was a completely different reason t…

Catholic families tend to be very large. They tend to use contraception less and also have greater number of children per family. It’s still true today: https://ifstudies.org/blog/americas-growing-religious-secula...

Sure, but for contrast Italia is a largely more catholic country than France [0], yet France has a higher fertility rate [1]

So religion can be a factor, but there are so many other factors than can weight in the balance.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_by_country

[1] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/-/d...

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