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The U.S. birth rate has fallen by 20% since 2007

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Re: The U.S. birth rate has fallen by 20% since 2007

#121

Post by usui »

j7ake wrote: post #120
usui wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Once, and if, they were grown, they would then be part of your family enterprise, be it subsistence farming, cobbling, scrivening, or lording, and would add value. > Now, having a child is a definite cost centre for the individual, for the family. I get what you're saying, but I mean nowadays it's not like they grow up as a purely sunk cost... A fairly-average-in-all-industrious-matters child will get a job and mak…

That kid though will want to have their own family, and on goes the cycle.

But then what about the golden example the OP mentions? What was going to happen in that case? Were most children just born into indentured servitude and everything they produced was pure profit for the elders? Surely a good percentage of them wanted to have their own family and leave, or wanted some kind of compensation. The set of possible outcomes seems the same.

Re: The U.S. birth rate has fallen by 20% since 2007

#122

Post by marginalia_nu »

albertgoeswoof wrote: post #37
pjc50 wrote: post #12

The other day someone was complaining about too many people in the housing thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35962521 The two are linked. Having children is at least partly an economic choice. People have spent decades working against "teen moms" and "single parents" and "welfare queens". Everyone is very clear that you must not have children unless you can comfortably afford to do so. And not just now, th…

> Are the people who want others to have more children prepared to pay for it? This implies that more people make society poorer. Which is false. People don’t consume a finite set of resources, they create more. As populations rise the net general standard of living goes up, not down. For source, check out all developed nations over the last 200 years, and human history to date. USA actually has an advantage here as…

> People don’t consume a finite set of resources, they create more

This is true only in some regards. There's a finite amount of natural resources that can be extracted from the planet, perhaps most tangible in terms of food. There's only so much more land that can be made into farmland, and it will only produce so much in terms of crop yields. We're already sort of pushing it in this regard. This food needs to be divided among the world population, somehow. Adding more workers won't miraculously double the amount of arable land.

There's only so much food that can be produced before we all need to lower our standard of living to feed everyone. Like yeah we can feed more people that way, but we'd all be eating insect gruel. I don't think that can be regarded as increasing the standard of living.

Re: The U.S. birth rate has fallen by 20% since 2007

#123

Post by pjc50 »

throwaway346434 wrote: post #73
throwaw12 wrote: post #23

> This decline cannot be explained by demographic, economic, or policy changes. I disagree with this statement. Put yourself in the shoes of 25 years old and ask why don't you want to have kids? * (economic) difficult to manage finances * (economic) can't buy house, too expensive * (economic) to compete with others in the workplace, I need to work >12 hours/day, can't do with kids or will be laid off. * (sociologic)…

Yeah that statement is whacky. Over the past 40 years, was has been rate and efficacy of formal and informal sexual health education? Pretty sure 80s kids got a lot of reasonable knowledge their parents lacked, and then went on to raise the next generation who are now much more aware of gender, sexual preference, etc concepts and increasingly so via informal means (Tiktok, etc). No explanation! Just dont look at educ…

> Just dont look at education policy!

Indeed. There's been decades of "TEENAGERS: DO NOT HAVE SEX AND IF YOU DO ESPECIALLY DO NOT GET PREGNANT, PREGNANCY AND LABOUR ARE DANGEROUS AND UNCOMFORTABLE" messaging, and now we're surprised that it's working?

Re: The U.S. birth rate has fallen by 20% since 2007

#124

Post by pjc50 »

dumpsterdiver wrote: post #63
exitb wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a factor that would make it stabilise at some equilibrium, rather than fall indefinitely?

I believe so, yes. If birth rates continue to decline then the pool of available workers will decline, and their work will become much more valuable. At that point, workers will be making enough money to feel comfortable enough to have children again.

Exactly. I'm boggling at all these people who think that a dip is an inevitable decline and that civilisation will evaporate in a straight line without anyone ever thinking to change anything.

Re: The U.S. birth rate has fallen by 20% since 2007

#125

Post by X0Refraction »

red_admiral wrote: post #46
throwaw12 wrote: post #23

> This decline cannot be explained by demographic, economic, or policy changes. I disagree with this statement. Put yourself in the shoes of 25 years old and ask why don't you want to have kids? * (economic) difficult to manage finances * (economic) can't buy house, too expensive * (economic) to compete with others in the workplace, I need to work >12 hours/day, can't do with kids or will be laid off. * (sociologic)…

* (sociologic) fear of climate change (will the world still be habitable in 20 years' time) or commitment to make a small positive impact on climate change by not having kids I'm not saying this is true or rational (there are actually blog posts in the rationalist community along the lines of "no, having kids does not cause climate change") but it's definitely a sentiment I've encountered.

This is one the factors as to why my partner and I have decided against having children. Not because we think it'll make the situation worse, but because we believe they shouldn't have to deal with the significant fallout from resource contention, climate migration etc. that is more than likely on the horizon when they had no hand in creating the problem

Re: The U.S. birth rate has fallen by 20% since 2007

#126

Post by consp »

throwbadubadu wrote: post #50
pjc50 wrote: post #12

The other day someone was complaining about too many people in the housing thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35962521 The two are linked. Having children is at least partly an economic choice. People have spent decades working against "teen moms" and "single parents" and "welfare queens". Everyone is very clear that you must not have children unless you can comfortably afford to do so. And not just now, th…

Housing and infrastructure? We even have bigger problems, and even if economists claim endless growth it is clear that our population, unless we grow into space, cannot grow forever. To me it feels we have already passed the sustainable level at maybe 4 billion world population.. Another perspective, lower birthrates in western economies have strongly correlated with prosperity... and our prosperity is also endangere…

> Another perspective, lower birthrates in western economies have strongly correlated with prosperity

As soon as you switch from the pyramid to the fat belly curve (of population vs age) you gain workforce with respect to burden and thus productivity as a country, as soon as it becomes top heavy you're screwed. Maybe it's something else but the baby boom after ww2 and impulses in the 50's 60's will become the baby burden quite soon (and has already started to be).

Re: The U.S. birth rate has fallen by 20% since 2007

#127

Post by than3 »

throwaw12 wrote: post #23

> This decline cannot be explained by demographic, economic, or policy changes. I disagree with this statement. Put yourself in the shoes of 25 years old and ask why don't you want to have kids? * (economic) difficult to manage finances * (economic) can't buy house, too expensive * (economic) to compete with others in the workplace, I need to work >12 hours/day, can't do with kids or will be laid off. * (sociologic)…

don't forget education is expensive, and quite a few have received funding in predatory lending ways where the debt cannot be discharged in bankruptcy without even receiving the degree.

you need to marry, be debt free, and have a down payment (20% of 700k is 140k down) for a house to have kids. Kids need to happen before 35 for your wife; mortality increases greatly after that. You need 2 with modern medicine, or 4 children without for one to make it to 18. These are all very known quantities.

If you can't make enough to cover your expenses and enough for 2 others you can't have kids.

Couple that with the job market, education, debt, and all the other unlivable things the silent generation didn't have to deal with and that's why we are where we are. A lot of people aren't having kids because there are no incentives; you bear the cost. Its stupid, but that is the world we all have created over the past two generations. Through inaction or action.

Personally I'd like to have kids but just like everyone else, the economics just isn't there. There's also the general unlivable coercion that's everywhere nowadays. So a lot of people are choosing to be the last generation of their family line.

That's not even touching things that will never likely pay out a benefit by the time I get to the age where I can use those programs. It has no funding after 2032 or something like that.

Re: The U.S. birth rate has fallen by 20% since 2007

#128

Post by fwlr »

exitb wrote: post #54
sprash wrote: post #24

[flagged]

So the lack of free life choices for women is the load bearing piece of our society?

It’s become popular knowledge that the way ducks mate is almost all non-consensual. Less well known is that something like 90% of all orangutan mating involves violence by the male against the female. If we ended rape among ducks, or ended sexual violence among orangutans, that would probably be the end of their species. It’s extraordinarily sad and disturbing, but for some incredibly unfortunate animals, rape and sexual violence are load-bearing pieces of their existence.

Obviously such is not the case for literal human existence, but we aren’t that far removed from orangutans; it does seem possible to me that human society (mostly invented hundreds or thousands of years ago, mostly by men with dim views on women) could have oppression of women as a load-bearing component. Some of the radical feminist thinkers in earlier waves certainly believed this was true, it was part of their argument that society needs to be completely rebuilt.

Re: The U.S. birth rate has fallen by 20% since 2007

#129

Post by qball »

madaxe_again wrote: post #85
throwaw12 wrote: post #23

> This decline cannot be explained by demographic, economic, or policy changes. I disagree with this statement. Put yourself in the shoes of 25 years old and ask why don't you want to have kids? * (economic) difficult to manage finances * (economic) can't buy house, too expensive * (economic) to compete with others in the workplace, I need to work >12 hours/day, can't do with kids or will be laid off. * (sociologic)…

There’s a really fundamental socio-economic change that nobody has touched upon here yet, as it’s such a slow one with such inertia it’s barely noticeable from the ground. Having children used to be a profitable enterprise. You’d get married, bang them out one after another, hope that a decent number survived, raised them cheaply, and put them to work as soon as they were able. Once, and if, they were grown, they wou…

>This is a long term trend, and it has been on the trajectory to where we are now for a long while.

Economic conditions (real and imagined) in urban and suburban areas not unlike those seen in 1920 (automation resulted in massive economic gains capture) have caused total replacement fertility to drop in those areas to rates similar to 1920 (total TFR 2.3 at 50% rural -> likely urban TFR much lower).

This isn't so much as "long term trend" as it is "returning to the post-industrial baseline"; doomerism doesn't help, but their choice to not reproduce will improve the climate and resources available to my children so I find it rather difficult to see this as a problem.

Re: The U.S. birth rate has fallen by 20% since 2007

#130

Post by mihaic »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #95
mihaic wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That feels actually anti-rational, since if the people that care about the environment stop having children that means the people that are passing on their life outlook are mostly ignorant of the environment. It must be a US thing more though, as I haven't personally heard people say fear of environmental damage to keep them from having kids.

>if the people that care about the environment stop having children that means the people that are passing on their life outlook are mostly ignorant of the environment. That argument seems rather doubtful to me.

It's not a perfect correlation, but I'd find it hard to believe that children don't share on average more of their outlook on life with their parents than with a random member of society.
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