Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

econofact.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 286 posts

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

#131

Post by consp »

raptorraver wrote: post #87

There was a funny diagram I sawed that presented the birth rate of my country and placed the launch of Tinder to the timeline. The same year Tinder was published the birth rate started going down. Most likely there are other better explanations for this but it made me think. How has the radical disruption of dating market affected the way people form relationships and start families?

Tinder was launched late in 2012, just after the housing market crash. Maybe it's just plain old correlation, not cause.

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

#132

Post by blackoil »

withinboredom wrote: post #84
batmansmk wrote: post #48

Had a job in SV, we moved to EU when my wife was pregnant. We would have loved to stay but as many of immigrant friends, we had difficulties figuring out how to be a happy family in USA. We couldn’t afford a house, education without becoming slaves to our career and not to feel threaten by the constantly changing immigration policy.

As an American who moved to the EU after having a child in the US, when I tell people we had to pay for our son on a payment plan, they cringe. Yes, we had insurance, but ironically, the calculated conception date was 2 days before we got insurance -- reality is that we got insurance when we decided to have a kid, so the calculated date is actually wrong. Thus, it was a pre-existing condition and insurance wouldn't c…

May sound cruel, but I don't find that outrageous. Purpose of insurance is to pool the risk. 100 people pay 1$, one unlucky fellow meets an accident gets 98.

In case of pregnancy/delivery it is not a truly random event so society will have to pool for a planned event. For such events we need government support proxying for society not some insurance company.

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

#133

Post by advael »

That this analysis tries to claim this doesn't correlate to economic conditions only demonstrates that economics has failed. When we say "the economy recovered" we don't mean anything that's meaningful to people on the ground, making decisions like whether they can have a child, because for a long time it has been the policy of basically any official macroeconomic analysis to ignore distinctions between the "real economy" and the increasingly unwieldy labyrinth of financial instruments, from stocks to commodities futures to real estate prices - which dwarf it completely - and to ignore "distributional outcomes" and favor analysis of dry gestalts that, again, can be skewed by extreme levels of quantifiable prosperity for a vanishingly small number of people and firms. This approach means that as inequality increases, a "recovery" or really even "the economy" has less and less to do with the majority of people's real fortunes and stability improving - the economic conditions that actually affect birth rates

As the long con of neoliberal policy drags on, more and more phenomena in our society can be attributed to the interplay between Goodhart's law and the utter willful ignorance of it on the part of the people and institutions that measure outcomes and get to make policy decisions

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

#134

Post by em500 »

withinboredom wrote: post #84
batmansmk wrote: post #48

Had a job in SV, we moved to EU when my wife was pregnant. We would have loved to stay but as many of immigrant friends, we had difficulties figuring out how to be a happy family in USA. We couldn’t afford a house, education without becoming slaves to our career and not to feel threaten by the constantly changing immigration policy.

As an American who moved to the EU after having a child in the US, when I tell people we had to pay for our son on a payment plan, they cringe. Yes, we had insurance, but ironically, the calculated conception date was 2 days before we got insurance -- reality is that we got insurance when we decided to have a kid, so the calculated date is actually wrong. Thus, it was a pre-existing condition and insurance wouldn't c…

Yet every EU country has either the same or lower fertility rate than in the US.

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

#136

Post by generic92034 »

hardware2win wrote: post #94
crooked-v wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's anecdotal, of course, but I've definitely seen a number of posts online that amount to 'my spouse and I have decided not to have children, because we don't want to inflict them with the terrible state of the planet in 30 or 40 or 50 years'.

Ive seen crazy stuff on the internet too! But until I or you manage to meet at least one person with such approach, then I do recommend to do not take it seriously

I have met several people with that idea in "real life". And now?

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

#137

Post by thiht »

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)…

> This decline cannot be explained by demographic, economic, or policy changes

Yeah what the hell, of course it can. How blind do you have to be to write something like that?

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

#138

Post by throwbadubadu »

consp wrote: post #126
throwbadubadu wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 bu…

Agreed, but what about a balance between bottom heavy and top heavy, wouldn't that be best?

(And on economic arguments, I have been hearing the top-heavy-we-are-all-screwed slogans as long the climate crisis thing for what, 40 years (I think belly curve panic even longer)... however it seems only climate crisis turns out to be true (just observational :))

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

#139

Post by withinboredom »

blackoil wrote: post #132
withinboredom wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an American who moved to the EU after having a child in the US, when I tell people we had to pay for our son on a payment plan, they cringe. Yes, we had insurance, but ironically, the calculated conception date was 2 days before we got insurance -- reality is that we got insurance when we decided to have a kid, so the calculated date is actually wrong. Thus, it was a pre-existing condition and insurance wouldn't c…

May sound cruel, but I don't find that outrageous. Purpose of insurance is to pool the risk. 100 people pay 1$, one unlucky fellow meets an accident gets 98. In case of pregnancy/delivery it is not a truly random event so society will have to pool for a planned event. For such events we need government support proxying for society not some insurance company.

Yes, the purpose is to pool risk, but nobody expects to need insurance within days of purchasing it. An insurance company worming out of it due to 'technicalities' is kind-of shitty when the cost of having a child is >30k USD and they can negotiate it down to 10k -- but as a regular Joe, you have no negotiation powers.

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

#140

Post by CogitoCogito »

mihaic wrote: post #72
red_admiral wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

* (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.

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.

> 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.

If your goal is to pass your life outlook to more people in the next generation, I believe you're probably likely to be successful without kids than with them. Without kids you have much more time to reach more people.

Post reply on HN