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France's baby bust

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Re: France's baby bust

#201

Post by lotsofpulp »

makeitdouble wrote: post #168
shakow wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Italia is a largely more catholic country than France [0], yet France has a higher fertility rate France fertility rate are boosted by its Muslim population https://mythdetector.ge/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/inline-im... .

Immigration is a strong part of it yes. Looking deeper into your source numbers, it’s interesting that they’re not consistent across countries for populations that are all “muslim”. From 1.5 in Greece to 3.1 in Finland, it still shows to me that religion is not the main factor in this.

I presume this is because the causal factor is women’s independence, specifically financial independence. Perhaps Muslim immigrants in some countries have women with more independence resulting in lower fertility rates, whereas Muslim immigrants in other countries have women with less independence, resulting in higher fertility rates.

Re: France's baby bust

#202

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: France's baby bust

#203

Post by LawTalkingGuy »

rayiner wrote: post #173
b800h wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm an atheist and I think that murder is bad despite not believing in the religious sanctity of life. I'd have trouble with full-term abortions of healthy, viable babies.

It doesn't seem unreasonable that other people would have a lower comfort limit, again even without religion.

Re: France's baby bust

#204

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

thriftwy wrote: post #135
maelito wrote: post #22

> she declined over the next 250 years to be just another European power. Why would we want 300 millions inhabitants in France ? That's what we would have with the density of the Netherlands. Why couldn't France be on top of leisure, urban transports, ecology, natural ecosystems, technology, political innovation, and even military defense, with 70 million inhabitants ? Worlwide politics are biased, always considering…

The USA or Brazil could have been speaking French today if France had higher fertility rate and thus could export its culture via people. That would obviously benefit its reach.

I and most people my age in Eastern Europe learned English in the '90s only from American video games and movies instead of French despite us being culturally and geographically closer to France that the US.

If France wanted to export its culture abroad then it should invest in making some kick-ass games and movies, not breed more.

US successfully exported its culture here because it made the best entertainment in the world and we couldn't get enough of it, not because it was a numerous population.

Re: France's baby bust

#205

Post by TMWNN »

vitus wrote: post #130
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…

> The closest I can think of in the US is Trump banning immigration from majority-Muslim countries under the pretext of links to terror. The Trump travel ban is weird in its various iterations. On one hand Trump was on the record during his campaign as wanting to ban Muslims from entering the country entirely, but on the other hand the ban completely omitted the largest predominantly-Muslim countries (Indonesia, Paki…

>Ostensibly the first amendment's establishment cause prevents Congress from passing laws that are overly religious, although that doesn't entirely stop them from, say, passing the Defense of Marriage Act

No, it does not. The first amendment establishes freedom of religion, and prohibits state-sponsored religion. (The phrase "separation of church and state" is found nowhere in the Constitution.) As the Constitution was originally interpreted, it only applied to the federal government; individual US states had state-sponsored churches into the 19th century.

>or attempting to explicitly opt out churches from COVID restrictions.

This is based on the first amendment's guarantee of freedom of religion. This is why churches, for example, don't pay taxes.

In any case, this is immaterial to the Trump immigration bans. The US president has enormous latitude over who is admitted into the country. https://np.reddit.com/r/bestof/comments/4vv1rc/utmwnn_explai...>

Re: France's baby bust

#206

Post by ameister14 »

qwytw wrote: post #197
ameister14 wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UK did not acquire territories because of religious issues and to push out Puritans. It was economics. Your explanation in general is a massive oversimplification - most of the time, governments weren't intentionally driving colonization. England favored economic growth with corporations running the show. Jamestown, for example, was not founded by the government of England but instead by an investment company in…

For quite a while the North American colonies weren't really that valuable economically compared to the ones in the Caribbean or Asia. British colonies were somehow able to attract massive amounts of settlers and eventually became self sustainable. The Dutch, French and others could never achieve that and mainly relied on the fur trade with the Native populations.

I wouldn't say "massive" amounts of settlers, certainly not for the first hundred years or so. The huge migration was in the 18th century.

For example, Virginia, the most populous colony at the time, had about 58k people in 1700 but over 530,000 by 1780.

The colonies as a whole grew by about 245,000 people in the 17th century and 2,550,000 in the subsequent 80 years, before the American Revolution. I should mention, however, that these numbers include the number of enslaved persons, about 575,000 people in 1780. That's a growth from around 6% of the total population in 1700 to over 1/5 of the total population of the colonies and around 40% of the population of Virginia in 1780.

It's not that much of a mystery how the British colonies became financially successful; most of it was due to location and slavery. It's the same reason that, while the French and Dutch were not as much of an economic success in their North American colonial holdings, they (and the Brits) were a huge financial success in the Caribbean. By importing people enslaved in Africa to work sugar plantations and not worrying about the death rates, the investors and colonial powers were able to make a substantial profit.

edit - obviously there are a lot more layers to that.

Re: France's baby bust

#207

Post by ameister14 »

qwytw wrote: post #198
ameister14 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The British absolutely had not engaged in a 'radical period of industrialization' from 1500 on. That's just not correct. The major corporate movement didn't even start until the 17th century.

The Dutch did though and they later kickstarted the industrial revolution in Britain.

That's arguable, but sure. Even there it was more in the late 16th century, which makes sense given Spanish priorities prior to independence. Britain absolutely copied the hell out of it.

Re: France's baby bust

#208

Post by anovikov »

ameister14 wrote: post #192
anovikov wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conquest went in 3 main stages. Spain and Portugal did it first, long before Industrial revolution (which Spain had much much later and only halfway, and Portugal never had at all). They did it because they could: finishing reconquest of their territories from Arabs in the late XV century, they only saw foreign expansion as continuation of the same trend: Christendom acquires more land from the infidels, with divine…

The UK did not acquire territories because of religious issues and to push out Puritans. It was economics. Your explanation in general is a massive oversimplification - most of the time, governments weren't intentionally driving colonization. England favored economic growth with corporations running the show. Jamestown, for example, was not founded by the government of England but instead by an investment company in…

Right: the government of England had a problem with religious sects and needed to push them out somewhere. That created demand on the part of Puritans who didn't want to get hanged at home, to emigrate, and King happily approved it because it meant good riddance.

Re: France's baby bust

#209

Post by thriftwy »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #204
thriftwy wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The USA or Brazil could have been speaking French today if France had higher fertility rate and thus could export its culture via people. That would obviously benefit its reach.

I and most people my age in Eastern Europe learned English in the '90s only from American video games and movies instead of French despite us being culturally and geographically closer to France that the US. If France wanted to export its culture abroad then it should invest in making some kick-ass games and movies, not breed more. US successfully exported its culture here because it made the best entertainment in th…

I believe that population and entertainment are connected directly. If you have 4x the population you will be swimming downstream when trying to influence others culturally.

Larger domestic market, more money, more eyeballs, more creators.

Re: France's baby bust

#210

Post by slaw »

rayiner wrote: post #178
AlchemistCamp wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Study from 8 years ago. No longer true.
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