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The US is flirting with its first-ever population decline

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Re: The US is flirting with its first-ever population decline

#411

Post by dan_mctree »

hackinthebochs wrote: post #359
cco wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't seem to be supported by the data, the "nicer" and richer a country becomes, birth rates drop. And basically the opposite is true for countries with a high birth rate. How do you square those facts with your view here?

The dimension of this issue that never gets air time is that we've made having kids almost completely intentional. The richer a country becomes, the more intentional having kids becomes. The dynamic we see with rich countries is that as having kids becomes more intentional, there's also the increase in reasons why people would choose to delay or forego having kids.

Yes, this absolutely appears to be the main reason. Both in practical terms through birth control, but also through cultural terms in that it's now seen as a choice rather than as an obvious thing you do. To change this course, we probably need to change the culture first so that a birth control ban will be supported. That's currently not looking likely, so population collapse it is

Re: The US is flirting with its first-ever population decline

#412

Post by flufluflufluffy »

scottious wrote: post #176
jdlyga wrote: post #68

Once you have a kid, it's obvious why even besides the costs involved. There's not much sense of community, particularly in the white middle class. People are very individualistic and distrusting of others. There's a good reason for some of this, but to have a community you need to be a community member. And that means letting people in, trusting others and being trustworthy, and being out for the group instead of ju…

Every morning I get to my son's school about 10 minutes before the doors open. We arrive by bike and we sit ALONE on the benches near the front door. Meanwhile, the curb is full of extra large SUVs idling with kids just waiting inside the cars. The long line of SUVs extends all through the neighborhood. My son and I are alone because people just won't leave their cars until the doors open. A vast majority of the kids…

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Re: The US is flirting with its first-ever population decline

#413

Post by arethuza »

kraig911 wrote: post #395
Balgair wrote: post #207

I like to hang out on fertility twitter. It's a strange place. Since the fertility problem is worldwide, you get a lot of ideologies mixing about. There's hardcore CCP folks, free market Mormons, radical Imams, universalist preachers, the whole lot of them. They're all trying to share ideas and jumping on the latest research findings from reputable and crackpot sources. They're all looking for the recipe to get peopl…

It's just hard now. Before I had kids I had a network of friends and had a great social life. Now it's just me and my wife. If I want more friends I'll have to have more kids I guess? I have 4 now. One (my first) is severely autistic. Financially the cost? I pay about 6,000 a month in daycare. 2k a month in healthcare expenses. Then community wise. Every time I've gone to take them to the movies, or to a restaurant o…

"people who have no idea how hard life is already for a kid who is disabled"

I have two disabled siblings out of the four kids my parents had - I didn't really appreciate what that meant for my parents until I had kids - I can only guess at the stress they must have gone through.

So yes, having kids sucks sometimes, but its also the most important thing that most of us do. And yes, as a dog-owning empty nester, I can confirm its not the same, not even close.

Re: The US is flirting with its first-ever population decline

#414

Post by BugsJustFindMe »

kraig911 wrote: post #395
Balgair wrote: post #207

I like to hang out on fertility twitter. It's a strange place. Since the fertility problem is worldwide, you get a lot of ideologies mixing about. There's hardcore CCP folks, free market Mormons, radical Imams, universalist preachers, the whole lot of them. They're all trying to share ideas and jumping on the latest research findings from reputable and crackpot sources. They're all looking for the recipe to get peopl…

It's just hard now. Before I had kids I had a network of friends and had a great social life. Now it's just me and my wife. If I want more friends I'll have to have more kids I guess? I have 4 now. One (my first) is severely autistic. Financially the cost? I pay about 6,000 a month in daycare. 2k a month in healthcare expenses. Then community wise. Every time I've gone to take them to the movies, or to a restaurant o…

> I pay about 6,000 a month in daycare.

My sister did this too until it got to be nearly as much as her entire salary so then she stopped working again and became the daycare. And that is super hard when your children have special needs. I think the worst may be that in-between area, where working and paying for daycare still seems to make sense financially because you take home more than you spend on not being at home but the net practical result is working for a very low effective salary to also spend less time with the children, which is its own kind of utterly draining.

Re: The US is flirting with its first-ever population decline

#415

Post by epistasis »

throwawayohio wrote: post #393
andrewla wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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> If you claim to be changing your life in any way in response to this then you're just putting a fig leaf on decisions that you've already made. How insulting. Bad faith arguments have become way too prevalent on this site.

Agreed. You are not alone, all of us see what's going on, and it only takes a few bad actors that are highly motivated to cause the craziness you see on display here.

Regular, normal people are still in the majority, we just need to acknowledge each other and not let the propagandists flood the zone.

Re: The US is flirting with its first-ever population decline

#416

Post by tshaddox »

Bratmon wrote: post #353
Balgair wrote: post #207

I like to hang out on fertility twitter. It's a strange place. Since the fertility problem is worldwide, you get a lot of ideologies mixing about. There's hardcore CCP folks, free market Mormons, radical Imams, universalist preachers, the whole lot of them. They're all trying to share ideas and jumping on the latest research findings from reputable and crackpot sources. They're all looking for the recipe to get peopl…

> My take on it is: you have to make your country/society a place where people will want to have children and feel/know that their children's lives will be good ones. It's funny to me that of all the crazy crackpot theories on fertility Twitter, you picked the craziest and crackpotiest. I'm actually really eager to hear why you think Chad, Somalia, and DR Congo are the countries where people feel the most optimistic…

Are you truly so confident that people in those countries don’t feel optimistic that their children will have better opportunities than their parents did?

I’d be shocked if they didn’t feel that, and even more shocked if it didn’t end up being the case.

Re: The US is flirting with its first-ever population decline

#417

Post by [deleted] »

tcmart14 wrote: post #275
pydry wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Theyre probably all correct. Nobody is exactly in a position to test their ideas though are they?

Yup and thats part of the issue. Too many people want to simplify it down to, "if we just did x, then we will see y." Nah, this is a complicated problem. Its probably gonna take the whole alphabet of solutions, but there is no political will or too much squabbling to since people want their idea why we have population decline to be right. But the bottom line is, having kids is expensive. You can make it less expensiv…

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Re: The US is flirting with its first-ever population decline

#418

Post by bitmasher9 »

exodys wrote: post #362

This may offend some, but I think the large amount of women joining the labor force may be a factor. American society, pre-WWII, usually had only one member of the household at work. More often than not it was the man who went to work, and the women stayed home to take care of the children. American society, pre-1930s (the Great Depression saw the rise of the female workers) was build on a one-income household. And y…

This seems like the type of argument that is possible to perform a data analysis to defend or refute. Lot of countries collect data on female participation in the workforce and birth rates. Many countries also collect data that could determine if this has an impact on the individual household level.

Re: The US is flirting with its first-ever population decline

#419

Post by b0rtb0rt »

throwawayohio wrote: post #85

Living in a city that this administration has constantly been attacking forced me and my wife, as well as many of our neighbors, to put off our family growth plans. Not only did many of my neighbors lose their jobs, but others are simply fearful of living their lives. We're fine financially, have housing, etc, but at this point why would we go through the stress of raising a child when a masked federal agent might ju…

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Re: The US is flirting with its first-ever population decline

#420

Post by dmm »

BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #308
JPKab wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Only if the mothers in aggregate truly believe that their children will have good lives, then will they have them." Then please explain why birth rates throughout human history, when life was vastly more difficult and dangerous than it is now, were so much higher? Nobody had to meet this bar you set before. Let's just be honest here. There were three recent developments, all of which were, by themselves, good things…

> Then please explain why birth rates throughout human history, when life was vastly more difficult and dangerous than it is now, were so much higher? > The birth control pill decoupling sex from pregnancy. Boom. Done. You had the answer already and just didn't reconcile your own thoughts. You really need to interpret the comment you're replying to in the context of here and now, not 100 years ago before people had a…

> Boom. Done. You had the answer already and just didn't reconcile your own thoughts.

TFR has been falling in the US since the 1800s, long before birth control.

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