The U.S. birth rate has fallen by 20% since 2007 • Hacker News Board

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

#41

Post by furyg3 » Wed, May 17, 2023, 9:26 AM UTC

wunderland wrote: post #4

dpflan wrote: post #2

“”” If the recent decline in annual birth rates simply reflects women pushing off having children from their 20s to their 30s, then annual birth rates will eventually rebound and the total number of children the average U.S. woman has over her lifetime will not change. But the decline in annual birth rates since 2007 is consistent with more recent cohorts of women having fewer births. Those cohorts have not completed…

If women push back childbirth to their 30s, fewer births with happen overall because quite simply fewer women will be able to conceive.

> in the United States during 2018-2020 (average), the highest fertility rates per 1,000 women were to women ages 20-29 (80.1), followed by women ages 30-39 (75.3) [...]

Source: https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=birth+r...

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

#42

Post by echelon » Wed, May 17, 2023, 9:27 AM UTC

throwaw12 wrote: post #23

> This decline cannot be explained by demographic, economic, or policy changes. I disagree with this statement. Put yourself in the shoes of 25 years old and ask why don't you want to have kids? * (economic) difficult to manage finances * (economic) can't buy house, too expensive * (economic) to compete with others in the workplace, I need to work >12 hours/day, can't do with kids or will be laid off. * (sociologic)…

To quote Peter Zeihan, kids are no longer free labor for the farm, they're expensive furniture for your tiny condo that often break things.

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

#43

Post by j33zusjuice » Wed, May 17, 2023, 9:27 AM UTC

bboygravity wrote: post #11

dumpsterdiver wrote: post #8

> But something changed around the time of the Great Recession; the birth rate fell precipitously, and it did not recover when the economy improved. I'm going to guess that this is generational shock. That generation got burned hard, and now they are weary. I suspect when another generation passes they will forget.

Also "the economy improved" doesn't mean that people could afford a house or kids. It could just as well mean that companies and the 1 percent got way richer.

Could? Look around, that’s what it means.

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

#44

Post by louwrentius » Wed, May 17, 2023, 9:27 AM UTC

sprash wrote: post #24

[flagged]

Feminism is about equal rights for women and men (and everything in between). If you are against that, you are indeed a sexist / misogynist.

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

#45

Post by scotty79 » Wed, May 17, 2023, 9:27 AM UTC

NalNezumi wrote: post #22

atemerev wrote: post #5

I don't understand why this is a problem. We are moving through demographic transition, as the world reaches its carrying capacity for human populations. So, we are safe from overpopulation crisis, from future unemployment crises, etc.

It's considered a problem because the entire system, for most developed nations, implicitly relies on a specific demographic distribution . Pension system in most world assumed steady supply of productive populace when it was set up. (=assumes certain young / old people ratio). A lot of asset backed valuation (real estate etc) assumes certain consumption level, demand, and steady grow. So does inflation / investment…

Our systems need revision anyways. Nothing ever happens voluntarily. So we should be kind a glad that there is outside factor that will eventually force us to revise out systems. Because laziest approach to the problem, like letting more immigrants in didn't work out that well.

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

#46

Post by red_admiral » Wed, May 17, 2023, 9:27 AM UTC

throwaw12 wrote: post #23

> This decline cannot be explained by demographic, economic, or policy changes. I disagree with this statement. Put yourself in the shoes of 25 years old and ask why don't you want to have kids? * (economic) difficult to manage finances * (economic) can't buy house, too expensive * (economic) to compete with others in the workplace, I need to work >12 hours/day, can't do with kids or will be laid off. * (sociologic)…

* (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.

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

#47

Post by pjc50 » Wed, May 17, 2023, 9:28 AM UTC

albertgoeswoof wrote: post #37

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…

> Are the people who want others to have more children prepared to pay for it? This implies that more people make society poorer. Which is false. People don’t consume a finite set of resources, they create more. As populations rise the net general standard of living goes up, not down. For source, check out all developed nations over the last 200 years, and human history to date. USA actually has an advantage here as…

> This implies that more people make society poorer. Which is false.

Me having a child would make me poorer. Which is true. Because I'd have to pay for the child's food and living expenses. That's what I meant. It's an individual decision.

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

#48

Post by batmansmk » Wed, May 17, 2023, 9:28 AM UTC

Had a job in SV, we moved to EU when my wife was pregnant. We would have loved to stay but as many of immigrant friends, we had difficulties figuring out how to be a happy family in USA. We couldn’t afford a house, education without becoming slaves to our career and not to feel threaten by the constantly changing immigration policy.

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

#49

Post by mschuster91 » Wed, May 17, 2023, 9:28 AM UTC

> The U.S. birth rate has fallen by 20% since 2007. This decline cannot be explained by demographic, economic, or policy changes.

What a load of bull. Obviously, there is no single one explanation - the entire point of such articles is that they don't get just how bad the combination of causes actually is.

To explain: my generation (i.e. 1990 and onwards) have experienced multiple and, to make it worse, overlapping devastating crises with long term impact. We graduated right in the midst of a multi-year recession (first the banking crisis, then the euro crisis), as soon as that was over Europe had the refugee influx and America still reeled with the aftereffects of the banking crisis, then COVID came along, and directly afterwards Russia invaded Ukraine, leading to exploding costs of living - at the moment about 2/3rds of the population struggle to make rent and bills, forget about "luxury" purchases.

The worst problem is rents are sucking us dry. We want to offer our children a better perspective than we had while growing up - but we can't even do that as housing is barely affordable for us with our partners, if we don't have to live at our parents' or in shared housing (=roommates). Also, both parents have to work to make rent, but that makes childcare a necessity - but childcare itself eats up a lot of money. And children themselves cost a lot of money as well - clothing, food, diapers, insurance, all that easily adds up to hundreds of euros a month.

Americans, additionally, have to fight with political changes - if I were living in the US, I would do everything to not make my s/o pregnant, simply because women have literally died or gotten permanently infertile because they were denied abortions for non-viable pregnancies, and even if that were not the case I would not risk getting stuck with a 50.000$ bill for the birth.

Oh, and on top of that those of my generation who think about ethics have yet another problem... can it be ethical to birth a child into a world firmly heeded towards environmental destruction? With politicians in power actively denying climate change?

The US has to fix access to healthcare, and we all have to fix rents - the primary cause of people not having kids is because they literally cannot afford them.

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

#50

Post by throwbadubadu » Wed, May 17, 2023, 9:28 AM UTC

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…

Housing and infrastructure? We even have bigger problems, and even if economists claim endless growth it is clear that our population, unless we grow into space, cannot grow forever.

To me it feels we have already passed the sustainable level at maybe 4 billion world population..

Another perspective, lower birthrates in western economies have strongly correlated with prosperity... and our prosperity is also endangered if we don't stop.

Biggest issue is (same with the whole ecological disaster) that this is a world and not a countries problem, and how do you approach that.. no clue. But to begin with, lower birth rates are a good thing imo, we just need to get into a sustainable balance and make sure swings one or the other way don't get too big..