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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

#241

Post by revelio »

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.

Or the ones having kids are actually more rational. Consider:

1. There is no scientific reason to believe the world is doomed. Go read some serious climatology papers and see for yourself. They're unreliable and exaggerated but even so, no doom.

2. State pensions and benefits might actually be doomed though given demographics. If the state can't take care of you in old age, you'd better hope you have kids who will.

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

#242

Post by revelio »

CalRobert wrote: post #195
fileeditview wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The collapse of civilization is happening since the dawn of civilization. Jokes aside, I have heard both points made. Yours and the one from the parent poster.

We had pretty stable temperatures from the dawn of civilization (the end of the last ice age) until about 30 years ago.

We did not, that's the famously debunked hockey-stick graph claim.

Temperature has varied drastically throughout time. There were Vikings growing barley in Greenland, something completely impossible today. The reason you believe otherwise is because climate doomers lie a lot.

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

#243

Post by frumper »

DonsDiscountGas wrote: post #181
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…

It's not necessary to pay for other peoples housing, all that is necessary is to repeal absurd zoning laws and ridiculous bureaucracy that makes building such things 100x more expensive (if it's even possible) than they need to be.

That's land owners "paying for it" in a decrease to the price of their assets. I'm all for that, but it involves one group of people benefiting from the loss to another group of people.

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

#244

Post by revelio »

X0Refraction wrote: post #214
orionsbelt wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you grew up with $50M+ and lived a luxurious life, but lost it all, would you not have children over worries they may not have the same standard of living that you did? If you could be born in America in 1925 and live until 2015, would you? Or would you decline because the standard of living dropped right away with a Great Depression followed by a world war? I agree with you that if I knew, with certainty, that my…

> If you grew up with $50M+ and lived a luxurious life, but lost it all, would you not have children over worries they may not have the same standard of living that you did? I'd agree there's nuance to this. For your cherry picked scenario, no, that wouldn't affect my decision. I can accept a single person having a reduction in living standards. However, when most of Western society (I'm British, not American) is str…

You realize the house price obsession is rather uniquely British, right? It's a bit of a national stereotype to people outside the UK. In many countries it's considered normal to rent, including rich countries.

https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/land-of-lessees_swiss-continue-...

Weirdly, the dominance of renting in Switzerland doesn't stop the Swiss having children. So this is really very much a media induced anxiety disorder of some sort. It's not rational to decide whether or not to have children based on whether you can get a mortgage.

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

#245

Post by revelio »

lynx23 wrote: post #76
loxs wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

* (policy) - If things don't work out, your wife will divorce you, take half of what you have and enslave you to pay her support for the next 15 years. Actually, she might do that just because she needs more passion while you are hard at work.

Whenever I hear "wedding" I wonder why the male is going for that risk. The obvious unfairness and non-equality during a divorce is the main reason why I never would get married. Its just illogical to put yourself that much at risk.

In some countries divorce only leads to splitting assets acquired since marriage, not all assets. It's a lot more rational to do it then.

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

#246

Post by revelio »

erfgh wrote: post #200
kypro wrote: post #31

> No obvious policy or economic factor can explain much of the decline. I mean, if people literally can't afford to have kids what do we expect to happen to the birthrate? I want kids more than anyone I know yet realistically I'm never going to have them. I'm 33 now and like most people in their early 30s I'm no where near in a stable enough position to raise kids. I mean who the hell even owns a home Here in the UK…

I don't understand this mentality. Who told you that you need to own a home to have kids? I don't understand this connection that everyone seems to be making. To me it sounds like an excuse.

It's a slightly bizarre and under-discussed aspect of British culture. There's a widespread cultural belief that you have to own a house and "get on the property ladder" before you start a family or really consider yourself a proper adult. The ladder is a reference to the assumption that house prices only ever go up so it's free money to own one, which you can then invest in another more expensive house and so on.

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

#247

Post by revelio »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #118
samwillis wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly don't get it, but I'm not an economist so I may be wrong. Pensioners cost the state a lot, and in my naive understanding population growth - so more tax payers - has funded that for the last 100 years. Declining birth rates, and reducing immigration, reduces proportional tax income and therefor smaller pot for pensions and healthcare. But as I said, not an economist.

This is why the UK is talking about getting retired people back into work. And is well on its way to ending pensions altogether. The age at which pensions are paid out has been creeping upwards and is now heading towards 70. What should have happened is that pension payments were ring-fenced, but of course government finances don't work like that. Most pensioners vote Tory, so the government is literally robbing its…

You can't ringfence pension payments if by ringfence you mean just store them in a savings account. Inflation would destroy the saved money completely, so the funds have to be invested. In turn those investments have to yield enough to cover both inflation and expected investment losses, whilst still yielding enough to pay out reliably over the average expected lifespan post retirement.

Unfortunately if you do the numbers it doesn't work, financially. The number of years you have to pay out to people is so large that you need a very high ROI to keep the fund stable, but ROI sometimes wasn't high enough and the funds fall behind.

This isn't a Tory or UK or even a government problem. It affects pension funds around the world and private funds too.

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

#248

Post by taylodl »

david38 wrote: post #238
taylodl wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then why do these same people complain so much about being "invaded" from the Southern border? Seeing as how I see them as both xenophobic and racist I see their real fear is the precipitous drop in white women having children. They want labor, and they want it to be white. American, at a minimum.

Because people want to do many of these jobs, but at a livable wage?

My term "same people" was referring to the oligarchs. They complain about the invasion from the Southern border, yet they also complain about people "not wanting to work." It's pretty clear they want to keep America white. I think alarm bells are going off for them with the slipping of the white majority in America.

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

#249

Post by revelio »

throwbadubadu wrote: post #138
consp wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 :))

The climate crisis isn't true, these panics never are. Look at the data. If there was a crisis people would be dying but deaths from weather are massively down over the last 100 years. You can't actually perceive climate change with your senses because the changes are far too small and slow, so you have to rely on news media and academics who aren't exactly reliable.

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

#250

Post by meowfly »

willis936 wrote: post #188
carlmr wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Number one is very true. My generation has so many children of divorced parents that I don't see these trust issues ever being fixed. I'm not sure if it's attributable to porn though. I think it's rather our individualistic, bordering on narcissistic, culture that is driving this. As the old saying goes, it takes a village to raise a child. The next best thing after the village is the family. But in a society where t…

Divorce rates are going down and have been for generations.

The rates don't matter here because the overhanging threat of divorce is what sways someone from having children.

I'm a DINK myself; I've watched the complexity of my friend's divorce with children and I perceive it as more evidence I've made a good decision.

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