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US Births Dip to 30-yr Low; Fertility Rate Sinks Further Below Replacement Level

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Re: US Births Dip to 30-yr Low; Fertility Rate Sinks Further Below Replacement Level

#41

Post by bmj »

craftyguy wrote: post #7
gregorymichael wrote: post #2

What are the economic ramifications of fertility rate being below the replacement level?

There will be a lot more older folks, who expected to retire and collect social security, still in the workforce as a result of diminishing payments by youngsters into that program. Demand for medical care will continue grow as the majority of the population gets older. I believe Japan is experiencing this right now at a large scale.

There are also ramifications with older people who have no one to care for them at the end of their lives.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/world/wp/2018/01/24/feat...

Re: US Births Dip to 30-yr Low; Fertility Rate Sinks Further Below Replacement Level

#42

Post by Karishma1234 »

vkou wrote: post #31
coldtea wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Student loans, housing costs, job prospects, healthcare, childcare. People are making a rational decision to avoid children they can’t afford. Well, people in the US made way more children when they made very few money, and lived 10 together in tiny houses and apartments. And they still do in the developing world. So it can't be just costs.

They also did so in an environment where childcare was free (Because grandma was doing it for you.) Most people don't live with grandma anymore, and the government will happily take your children away if you don't keep every second of their lives supervised by an adult, prior to the age of 13.

There are more grandmas alive than ever in past. What is stopping you from doing it now ? Go live with grandma.

Re: US Births Dip to 30-yr Low; Fertility Rate Sinks Further Below Replacement Level

#43

Post by Andre_Wanglin »

gregorymichael wrote: post #2

What are the economic ramifications of fertility rate being below the replacement level?

In a debt-based growth-dependent (to repay ever the increasing debts) economy, it crashes everything. Turns out assuming infinite growth does not produce a stable civilization. This is why there are concomitantly erstwhile calls for people to both reduce their "footprint" by not reproducing and also that immigration is crucial to every (western) society's survival.

Re: US Births Dip to 30-yr Low; Fertility Rate Sinks Further Below Replacement Level

#44

Post by vkou »

mhneu wrote: post #33
lisper wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can change our economic structures. We can't change the fact that exponential growth is unsustainable. So this way at least there is hope.

Replacement level fertility is by definition non-exponential (or if you prefer, has an exponent of 1.) A reasonable number of macroeconomists would be ok with replacement-level fertility. The economics get really bad when the birth rate falls below replacement though - you get fewer workers supporting more retirees, which has the bad consequences you can see now in Japan.

> you get fewer workers supporting more retirees, which has the bad consequences you can see now in Japan.

With the productivity gains of the last few decades this shouldn't be a problem. That is, if those productivity gains actually went into something useful, instead of appreciating my 401K.

Re: US Births Dip to 30-yr Low; Fertility Rate Sinks Further Below Replacement Level

#45

Post by Karawebnetwork »

reb wrote: post #32
confuseddesi wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In general, the richer someone is, the less likely they are to have as many children. See https://www.economist.com/node/21561112 .

Doesn’t that still track? Having children makes it harder to get/stay rich, not having children makes it easier.

When you have nothing in your life and none of your achievements will outlast you, the prospect of having children is more interesting.

There's also the whole "not being aware contraception exists because you couldn't go to school" thing.

Re: US Births Dip to 30-yr Low; Fertility Rate Sinks Further Below Replacement Level

#46

Post by jdavis703 »

coldtea wrote: post #24
0xB31B1B wrote: post #5

Student loans, housing costs, job prospects, healthcare, childcare. People are making a rational decision to avoid children they can’t afford. We as a society need to re-examine the causes of rising costs of essentials so reproduction is no longer financially infeasible.

> Student loans, housing costs, job prospects, healthcare, childcare. People are making a rational decision to avoid children they can’t afford. Well, people in the US made way more children when they made very few money, and lived 10 together in tiny houses and apartments. And they still do in the developing world. So it can't be just costs.

Unfortunately many areas have outlawed living 10 together in tiny houses and apartments.

Boarding houses have become illegal, and their modern equivalent of micro apartments are in danger of becoming illegal [0].

To add a personal story, when I was college we had about 20-30 people living in a medium sized single family home. We were mostly students, but there were a couple of kids, and a grandmother too. Our neighbors hated us, and constantly tried to report us for overcrowding. However in our locality there was no cap on the number of residents, so long as conditions are sanitary and safe. But we'd have the zoning person come through frequently to ensure we didn't have things like too many ovens or broken bathrooms.

0: http://www.sightline.org/2016/09/06/how-seattle-killed-micro...

Re: US Births Dip to 30-yr Low; Fertility Rate Sinks Further Below Replacement Level

#47

Post by toomuchtodo »

Karishma1234 wrote: post #36

Not true at all. Turns out that the poor people who actually cant afford to have kids are having more kids. Hispanic and Black growth is much higher than whites and asians. Asians with the highest income level have lowest birth rate. Given that it is mostly whites who have been leading in STEM there is a high chance that US will lose its competitive advantage in these fields.

> Not true at all. Turns out that the poor people who actually cant afford to have kids are having more kids. Hispanic and Black growth is much higher than whites and asians.

You're technically correct, but minorities are only slightly higher (birth rate wise) than whites.

"It’s official: Minority babies are the majority among the nation’s infants, but only just"

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/06/23/its-official...

I would argue, based on historical data, that if wealth inequality was reduced in conjunction with higher education levels of minority women, their birth rates would dip again (higher income levels and higher education obtained by women are prime drivers of lower birth rates). This discounts cultural drivers, but my hunch is those decline with each passing generation (ie catholicism and its disdain for contraception/family planning).

Re: US Births Dip to 30-yr Low; Fertility Rate Sinks Further Below Replacement Level

#48

Post by avip »

enraged_camel wrote: post #12
0xB31B1B wrote: post #5

Student loans, housing costs, job prospects, healthcare, childcare. People are making a rational decision to avoid children they can’t afford. We as a society need to re-examine the causes of rising costs of essentials so reproduction is no longer financially infeasible.

Exactly. If you think about it, most species reproduce when resources are abundant, and stop reproducing when resources become scarce. That's basically what is happening to young people here.

That does not correlate well with the facts.

Re: US Births Dip to 30-yr Low; Fertility Rate Sinks Further Below Replacement Level

#49

Post by Alex3917 »

enraged_camel wrote: post #12
0xB31B1B wrote: post #5

Student loans, housing costs, job prospects, healthcare, childcare. People are making a rational decision to avoid children they can’t afford. We as a society need to re-examine the causes of rising costs of essentials so reproduction is no longer financially infeasible.

Exactly. If you think about it, most species reproduce when resources are abundant, and stop reproducing when resources become scarce. That's basically what is happening to young people here.

> most species reproduce when resources are abundant

I dunno, fungi usually don't produce mushrooms until right before their host is about to die or their substrate is about to be depleted. Reproducing takes a lot of energy, so individuals usually wait until they have no other choice.

Humans seem to be the same way. E.g. low-income kids go through puberty sooner, presumably due to having poorer health. And usually if someone starts drinking a lot or otherwise abusing drugs, they get really hot for a year or two before they start looking sickly and terrible.

At the population level species keep reproducing until they use up all the available resources, and then the populations collapse, but on the level of individuals the dynamics seem to work in almost the opposite way.

Re: US Births Dip to 30-yr Low; Fertility Rate Sinks Further Below Replacement Level

#50

Post by Andre_Wanglin »

aurailious wrote: post #16
gregorymichael wrote: post #2

What are the economic ramifications of fertility rate being below the replacement level?

For the time being, immigration is still causing the millennial generation to increase and is the reason why US population continues to grow. So for at least the US the result is that we may not face the same problems as other developed countries or the problem of an aging population may be reduced. It will cause the US to continue to be a nation of immigrants and the resentment that may cause.

It is disingenuous to assert that immigration de facto causes resentment instead of the source population of the immigration.
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