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France's baby bust

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Re: France's baby bust

#251

Post by twelve40 »

shakow wrote: post #184
ookdatnog wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Muslims account for about 6% of the general population in France, so I doubt that explains the difference. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_France

I'm not saying it's the one and only factor (not even sure how much it actually count, numerically), I'm just saying that automatically equating “births in religious families in France” to “traditional catholic families” is too much of a shortcut.

France has ~9mil, Germany has ~6mil, the UK has ~6mil, all comparable. France percentage-wise is also about the same as Bulgaria or Sweden. That doesn't sound like a massive differentiator, with all these other countries hovering around 1.5

Re: France's baby bust

#252

Post by kubb »

jefftk wrote: post #61
kubb wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Economies of scale can happen with a billion people just as well as with 8 billion. The food production grew because of the invention of synthetic fertilizer, not because the more people we have, the cheaper the food can be.

By "just as well" do you mean "still happen some" or "still happen at least as much"? Because the former seems clearly true while there are many counterexamples to the latter (ex: anything with zero marginal cost).

I mean enough to sustain the population, and with a surplus.

Re: France's baby bust

#253

Post by Wildgoose »

WastingMyTime89 wrote: post #121
inawarminister wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And tbh the European demographics expansion between 1500-1800, before industrialization properly spread out from Britain [0], was the Columbian Exchange. Potatoes unlocked lots of land in the northern part. And the other unsung botany, too. And the ability to send surplus men (and women) to an empty (because of disease) continent instead of having them warring against each other like pre-Columbian Europe and East Asi…

Britain was mostly able to fight because the French fleet was sunk which shielded them from a massive invasion and Russia weakened France. By themselves they wouldn’t have done much.

Britain sank the French fleet. How is that "not doing much?" Britain expelled France from Egypt. Britain powered the Pensinsular War. By themselves.

Re: France's baby bust

#254

Post by PestoDiRucola »

woodruffw wrote: post #20
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.

There are a handful of modern religious and fundamentalist groups that sociologists study for this purpose: Mormons, ultra-orthodox Jews, evangelicals, etc. The interesting thing about these groups is that they exhibit “carrying limits”: they get to particular community sizes and begin to experience attrition through secularization.

> The interesting thing about these groups is that they exhibit “carrying limits”: they get to particular community sizes and begin to experience attrition through secularization

I feel like this is true for religious groups in christian-majority countries (or at least traditionally christian countries). I believe that secularization is a christian phenomenon (yes I know it sounds counter-productive), and as such it can only exist in countries with a strong christian tradition.

Re: France's baby bust

#255

Post by jtbayly »

pharke wrote: post #228
jtbayly wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He never says the high birth rate is because of the Roman Catholic Church. Every place in Europe was deeply religious and had high birth rates at that time, regardless of the religion. He only blames secularization for the decline in birth rate. It just happens that the rapid secularization happened fastest where the Roman Catholic Church was strongest.

> I argue that the diminished sway of the Catholic Church, nearly 30 years before the French Revolution, was the key driver of the fertility decline > ...the Catholic Church, threatened by the spread of the Protestant Reformation, took ‘be fruitful and multiply’ seriously and the purpose of marriage became explicitly multiplicative > The decline of Catholicism, and fertility, in eighteenth-century France turned it fr…

The first and third quotes only say that the birth rate diminished as Catholicism declined, which in a Roman Catholic area means secularization is occurring. Again, this is logically not the same thing as saying that Catholicism itself is the cause of the high birth rate. A birthrate can be high because of one thing and decrease because of something else.

The second quote still doesn’t show that the birth rate was high because of Catholicism. It doesn’t even say what the effect of that position was.

Could catholicism have been the cause of the high birth rate in France before it dropped? Sure. But the article never makes that claim. And it implies otherwise, because it mentions high birth rates around Europe including places that weren’t catholic.

Re: France's baby bust

#256

Post by Convolutional »

klipt wrote: post #215
Convolutional wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Marshall Sahlins studied hunter gatherer bands, and many work less than forty hours a week. Programmers I know can't figure out how to get down to a forty hour a week workweek to survive, but these hunter gather bands in sub-Saharan Africa and the Amazon seem to have figured it out.

I assume those groups are now protected and effectively have some government granted monopoly on their hunting and gathering land. Always easier to have a good life with extra help from the government :)

Not really, they're being killed off by mining companies.

Re: France's baby bust

#257

Post by projektfu »

eternalban wrote: post #153

> Malthus’s prediction proved false due to two paradigm shifts working together So this guy makes a prediction, and his entire argument is proven false, but he apparently had an amazing PR firm so to this day his name is used in serious conversation.

In the article he points to the malthusian dynamic operating in England during the same period-more productivity, more babies. Paradigms can be true in some time periods and locations while being false in others.

Re: France's baby bust

#258

Post by AbrahamParangi »

nathan_compton wrote: post #70
koheripbal wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Poverty generates more conservatism, not less.

Poverty does, but not a small decline in standard of living. France isn't a third world country, its just not an imperial power. Seems great to me. On balance, I'd like to live in a modestly successful country without imperial ambitions. Lot of Glaucons at Hackernews, I guess.

One wonders if that’s stable long-term. The US is a relatively benign hegemon, but that’s just luck. The next one isn’t likely to be very nice at all, going by the standards of history.

Re: France's baby bust

#259

Post by bumby »

t-3 wrote: post #242
bumby wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> having lots of siblings can help you later on True, but that’s not a benefit to the people making the decision to have more children. It’s a beneficial second order effect that won’t negate the cost to the parent.

It's a benefit for agricultural households. 10+ kids are common in my family tree until the latest few generations for that reason.

That was the point I was drawing in the comparison between agrarian and industrialized societies.

Re: France's baby bust

#260

Post by klipt »

Convolutional wrote: post #256
klipt wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume those groups are now protected and effectively have some government granted monopoly on their hunting and gathering land. Always easier to have a good life with extra help from the government :)

Not really, they're being killed off by mining companies.

That's sad to hear.

Suggests they don't really have it all figured out though. Being able to defend yourself from invaders is an important thing to figure out, too.

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