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France's baby bust

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Re: France's baby bust

#171

Post by RockyMcNuts »

makeitdouble wrote: post #58

> France appeared to be a stagnant society before the French Revolution. If culture was not changing, then how could it be responsible for such a climactic shift in such an important social outcome? > Using this genealogical data, I estimate that the decline in fertility took hold in France in the 1760s 1760s don’t look far from the French Revolution to me. Ending a regime that lasted more than a dozen centuries does…

In the 1700s France had John Law, wars, famines, and bad kings.

Geopolitically France is an interesting place with one foot in Mediterranean civilization and one foot in Northern Europe, good natural barriers, and a fairly unified culture.

After the religious wars of the Reformation, there was a period of pretty good kings and increasingly strong state, prosperity importing tech from Muslim world via Italy, and liberalization. During this period, Italy, Germany, UK, low countries had their own problems and France was pretty dominant.

Before the French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution, France had 4x the population of Great Britain. After Napoleon's defeat, was never that dominant again. Mediocre kings and Napoleon III, played second fiddle to UK in industrial revolution, political unrest, and Germany unified under Prussia and Rhine industrialists and defeated France in 1870.

Re: France's baby bust

#172

Post by 0xcafefood »

lordnacho wrote: post #100
zwirbl wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With so many orthodox jews there will also be barely any workforce left

Do they not work? How is that possible with such large families?

Welfare.

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israeli-government...

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2018-12-07/ty-article/.p...

Re: France's baby bust

#173

Post by rayiner »

b800h wrote: post #44
dmurray wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see American presidents making religion "a major part of their platform" either. They get some photo ops in church just like British leaders, and they side with their voters on things like abortion, which breaks down roughly along religious lines without being explicitly so. But a major policy decision directly targeting religion? The closest I can think of in the US is Trump banning immigration from majority…

US political debates are being driven by religion all the time - abortion for example. That's a much bigger deal in the US. That said I'd argue the culture war is quasi-religious, and it's being fought equally across the Anglosphere and beyond.

And what, if not religion, is driving abortion law in Germany, which has a 12-week limit and restrictions such as waiting periods which were illegal in the US under Roe?

It seems to me like the reason Germany doesn’t have a religiously charged debate on abortion is that no major party is pushing for abortion to 24 weeks or even later like in America.

Re: France's baby bust

#174

Post by mkoubaa »

langsoul-com wrote: post #6

The book, "shall the religious inherit the world" is relevant. I'd be interested what happens when general birthrate declines and a religious group, that massively encourages tons of children, take larger voting percentages.

Because only adults vote, you have to factor in the rate of religious retention for these communities. If 60% of the offspring in a religious community are areligious, the opposite effect will occur.

And this belief/concern presupposes that in democratic societies the political power is held by voters, which I feel is highly reductive even for the most effective democracies

Re: France's baby bust

#175

Post by __bjoernd »

rayiner wrote: post #132
WastingMyTime89 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one in France talks about western culture. The main parties which have made Islam a theme are staunchly anti-American. France has had a strong separation between the state and religion for a century. It’s one of the less religious country in the world and a significant part of the population is still strongly against any kind of religion especially the Catholic Church.

Remind me which country is the one with the hijab ban in schools? Is it america or is it France? And you want to tell me you’re not having a religious conflict over there?

It's called Laicism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laicism

Re: France's baby bust

#176

Post by ookdatnog »

4gotunameagain wrote: post #74
badcppdev wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol. I was hoping the OP had some definition of success that wasn't literally population growth.

I thought we were discussing the article, sorry, my bad.

You literally kicked off this thread with the statement

> It more and more seems like "traditional", conservative societies are more successful on aggregate.

Which is a much broader claim than just stating that traditional values increase fertility rate.

After being pressed to provide examples by multiple commenters, and failing to produce even one, you can't just sarcastically pretend that we were talking only about fertility rate all along.

Re: France's baby bust

#177

Post by mkoubaa »

rayiner wrote: post #96
swarnie wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand this is an America-centric forum but does religion play a major role in politics in the rest of the western world? I'm counting back though prime ministers and i can't recall one who made religion a major part of their platform in my lifetime.

Religion can play a major role without becoming a point of conflict if everyone agrees. For example, many European countries still have established Christian churches and (possibly opt-out) religious education in schools. If Muslims in Sweden were filing lawsuits to prevent public money from being used to support religious education, or to force Denmark to disestablish the Lutheran Church, I suspect you would see rel…

I think the self branding of this particular movement as a secular one is a triumph of marketing.

Re: France's baby bust

#178

Post by rayiner »

AlchemistCamp wrote: post #144
mtts wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Most people would call that a culture. One were most people do not go to church on Sunday and politicians, even if they’re from a religious background, like Angela Merkel, don’t ever talk about God. And one that is very different from the one across the…

This sounds like a very outdated or caricatured view of the US (where I lived for half of 2022 and also 2012-2015). In those four years I didn't hear the phrase "in God we trust" even one time and the vast majority people I met were either athiest, agnostic or identified as Christian but hadn't been to church in years didn't seem to hold many religious beliefs but had some family background or cultural connection. If…

It’s not inaccurate. Soon as you step outside a major city, the majority of Americans go to church weekly. The percentage of Americans who pray daily is comparable to Iran: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/05/01/with-high-l...

Re: France's baby bust

#179

Post by eternalban »

jackcosgrove wrote: post #159
barry-cotter wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This is the traditional view, but opinions have shifted recently. European colonization was driven mostly by the population boom accompanying the industrial revolution. The military advantage was real in the late 18th and 19th centuries, but that was brief compared to the timeline of the traditional explanation of Europe always being at war. For example Ming China was the first gunpowder empire and was militarily com…

Strong disagree with this. Merely increasing population doesn't mandate colonialist response. [It could have ended in internal revolts of hungry dispossesed mouths.] There was a socio-economic pathway open to these new people not available to their forefathers: participation in the capitalist economy and possibility for upward social mobility.

It was capitalism and accompanying political restructuring (from feudalism) that released and focused that demographic, intellectual, and technical 'potential'. Would a tiny "aristocratic" minority be able to scale up empire without making emerging (secular, technical including finance) social classes partners in the fruits of empire?

(Convince yourself: Consider demographic and socio-economic trends in China 1990 to 2010. Was it population growth or the socio-political change that catapulted its economic power?)

Re: France's baby bust

#180

Post by AdrianB1 »

nwatson wrote: post #115
AdrianB1 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought the same, but real life experience shows that in my country (Romania) there is an increase of religion with age, especially for women; in other words, most women start being religious when they age and these days most of the religious traditions are maintained and transmitted by old women. I know many women that were secular in their 20-30, become religious at 50 and are regular churchgoers at 70. My mother…

Weren't churches a huge factor in deposing Ceausescu and an end to the Soviet influence, as well as the support of populace in hard times before the regime's fall? I'd imagine that would put religion in some favorable light in Romania in particular. https://www.hungarianconservative.com/articles/politics/chur... Edit: capitalization

No, top priests were actually collaborationists. The anti-Ceausescu coup d'etat was done by a hard-left, atheist group (public face being Ion Iliescu).
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