Nothing in the article aims at explaining or moving the attention to why. Just a collection of statements, without looking back at why this is. Women have to pick a career, this has an effect on family building.
Cousins are disappearing. Is this reshaping the experience of childhood?
471–480 of 1001 posts
Re: Cousins are disappearing. Is this reshaping the experience of childhood?
#472Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're misconstruing what census.gov says. If you look into the "definitions" section it defines "Housing Unit. A housing unit is a house, an apartment, a group of rooms, or a single room occupied or intended for occupancy as separate living quarters." and "Householder. The householder refers to the person (or one of the persons) in whose name the housing unit is owned or rented [...]" 49% of people aged 30-34 aren't…
> 49% of people aged 30-34 aren't homeowners, 49% of us are homeowners or renters. Wait, this is saying less than 50% of people aged 30-34 live in a home that is owned or rented by them (or their spouse)? I can't imagine a region where this is close to true, since probably near 100% where I live either own or rent. Is there a regional breakdown for this? And where do these people live? With their parents or in a shel…
The distinction is between renting and being a leaseholder I think.
I live with roommates and I'm not on the lease here, so IIUC I would be considered neither a homeowner or a renter for these purposes.
Re: Cousins are disappearing. Is this reshaping the experience of childhood?
#473Earlier quoted context omitted.
> To a degree this resource can be stolen from other countries, via immigration. But this only works to a degree and at a larger scale it is still a zero sum game. It's going to increasingly become a challenge. China's population is contracting. India has hit replacement and will start to see decline barring immigration over the next 20-30 years. Only sub-Saharan Africa is left with above replacement birth rates. We'…
> We're about to hit increasingly aggressive competition both to hold on to people, and to attract immigrants as more and more countries start getting bitten by demographic shifts. This has an implied assumption that either more population is always better or that for all of the countries the current population is below the optimum level. What if for some countries the best population size - the one that provides the…
It has the implied assumption that a functioning economy is linked strongly to the number of people of working age relative to the number of people outside it, and part of the population decline comes with an inversion of the population pyramid where an increasing proportion of the population is retired.
As such, even if there is a "best" population size below the current population size, you will face massive upheaval if the decline toward that size isn't happening slowly enough that you can offset that either with technology, temporary workers, or just grit.
You also have no reason to assume the drop will stop at whatever level you want, and so you will see even countries where people do think some reduction is fine start to aggressively compete to hold on people or attract immigrants at whatever level they feel will give them a soft-enough landing and then stabilization.
E.g. you can look to Italy over the coming years. Italy is already in population decline, yet has a government many consider far-right and anti-immigrant - clearly, Italy is not ready to loosen up immigration to stem it yet, and is willing to accept even increasing the rate of its population decline while trying to address the underlying fertility rate.
Personally, I expect to see a major change in policy from Italy once this really starts to bite, but their current unemployment rate will still buffer them for a few more years (and once it drops, it might well create a slight rebound, but even if that happens, it's unlikely to do more than slow the decline slightly, and won't address the labour market for more than two decades).
If I'm right, you should start to see the tone change once the unemployment rate drops a bit further and pressure from businesses in need of labour starts affecting Italian politics more, followed first by increased attempts at appealing to European migrants first, with e.g. tax breaks and the like, before they eventually give in and start rolling back the restrictions on non-EU migration.
Re: Cousins are disappearing. Is this reshaping the experience of childhood?
#474[flagged]
Re: Cousins are disappearing. Is this reshaping the experience of childhood?
#475Anecdata: I am 31 and have 3 young kids. They have 0 cousins and, on top of that, 0... second cousins? Cousins-once-removed? Whatever the one is for my cousin's kids. My kids are my grandma's only great-grandkids. And I have... 6 cousins. On top of that, at my last job, on my team of 15, I was the only one with kids, and only 1 of those 15 engineers were under the age of 30. At my current job, my team is 8, and again…
Might be due to some of us growing up really poor. I’m from a third world and I remember lack of water and electricity, five plus people crammed into a home the size of my current apartments living room. We used to use kerosene lamps and heat water and I grew up in the 90s. Even today my parents don’t own a home yet and they have rented their whole lives. They still work. It’s really up to me to resolve all our issue…
fwiw every 40yo I know who had kids at that age wish they did it earlier when they had more energy. Wealth building is easier in your 40s however for most
Re: Cousins are disappearing. Is this reshaping the experience of childhood?
#476Earlier quoted context omitted.
One could argue that women being part of the formal economy is also out of an exploitative playbook.
It is - in the generation of my grandparents one income could feed an entire family AND lead to a house (no vacations though, and not much luxury) Nowadays even if you have good jobs it really depends on a lot of circumstances if you can afford such a life (albeit mostly with more luxury and vacations) with two incomes. Effectively the worth of income nearly halved.
Same here. To be sure, those women (i.e. my grandmothers) were definitely hard working. Raising lots of children, without "modern" appliances like dishwashers etc. in the household. But the money that came from one income was enough.
> Effectively the worth of income nearly halved.
At least the worth that reaches the worker after taxes etc.
Re: Cousins are disappearing. Is this reshaping the experience of childhood?
#477Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are also people who pretend like problems highlighted in the Bay Area and other metropolitan cities are unique to them. Yet every time it looks like those are just the first wave of the changes that are heading to other regions first. Like the wave of homelessness. People made fun of SF, then it spread to the broader Bay Area, then LA, then other parts of the country. Turns out the effects of income inequality…
> ”Certainly home ownership is rarer even for millennials and Genz is likely going to have even lower rates” Looking at the data, certainly not: https://x.com/noahpinion/status/1649492485968891904?s=46&t=C...
25 is too young to start making those predictions I think. We won’t for a while
Re: Cousins are disappearing. Is this reshaping the experience of childhood?
#478Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have you noticed that much, much poorer places often have a much higher birth rate? I think there is something else going on. And I mean poorer in terms of actual living conditions on the ground.
Poorer places have worse education. Worse education corresponds with having more babies. Smart people are more likely to know not to have babies.
More like educated people are more likely to know how to not have babies, and to plan for them, and plan to have them on their schedule.
Certainly that does sometimes translate into not having babies at all.
Re: Cousins are disappearing. Is this reshaping the experience of childhood?
#479Earlier quoted context omitted.
I just don't have any interest in kids. They're expensive and they require a ton of sacrifice. I'd rather travel, golf, do hobbies and generally enjoy my life. The only people that seem to want me to have babies are my parents so they can have grand kids... too which I've told them "Thank you for having me, but that's not a valid reason for me to sacrifice my life". I don't really care about the preservation of the h…
You’re benefiting from other people’s sacrifice. Your end of life care is entirely dependent on other people having and raising functional children. And these are all pretty weak reasons — people with kids do all of the things you’ve mentioned.
The funniest bits about this sort of argument is that I often see people become completely estranged from their parents because the attitude of 'I need my children to take care of me when I'm older' is like a package deal for a whole host of other shitty behaviors.
Re: Cousins are disappearing. Is this reshaping the experience of childhood?
#480Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 49% of people aged 30-34 aren't homeowners, 49% of us are homeowners or renters. Wait, this is saying less than 50% of people aged 30-34 live in a home that is owned or rented by them (or their spouse)? I can't imagine a region where this is close to true, since probably near 100% where I live either own or rent. Is there a regional breakdown for this? And where do these people live? With their parents or in a shel…
If two or more people rent the same "household" (house, apartment, couple of rooms) they are only counted a single time. 1 homeowner and 1 renter = 50% 1 homeowner and 2 renters in the same apartment = 50% 1 homeowner and 200,000 renters in the same apartment = 50% 1 homeowner and 2 renters in 2 different apartments = 33% It's a ratio of homeowners to the number of buildings the rest of us rent out.
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