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India's surprise baby bust

economist.com

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Re: India's surprise baby bust

#621

Post by rr808 »

onesociety2022 wrote: post #361

Naive question- why does the human population need to keep growing? Why can’t we let it shrink? If AI and robotics are going to come to fruition in the next 50 years, why do we need so many people?

One issue is that the wealthiest most advanced countries are having the fewest people, while the poorest countries have a the fastest growing populations. Pakistan or Nigeria alone will have more people than the whole of Europe. They may become wealthier but more realistically there will be an even tiny minority of people living well with most of the world in slums.

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#622

Post by int_19h »

bluescrn wrote: post #293
submain wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that enough though? Women change their entire bodies, sacrifice years of their lives, and go through considerable stress to have a baby. And at the end, the benefits of that ordeal are not clear. Society would need to offer something to offset all those costs.

'The benefits of continuing the existence of the species are not clear'

To the individual here it now, they are not.

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#623

Post by causal »

voiceofchoice wrote: post #374

I encourage anyone surprised that people would opt out of babies and raising kids actually spend time with kids. Not just like for the holidays and pass them back when they start crying, but an actual extended period of time dealing with all the issues that they bring. You've got to be a special kind of idealistic romantic to still see the appeal afterwards. Which is great for you of course if you do. But there's a r…

Complete opposite experience for me. I wish I'd had kids sooner- I was too influenced by popular negativity about kids: the expenses, the loss of freedom, etc.

Most of that is bullshit. Having kids has made literally every aspect of my life more fun.

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#624

Post by rr808 »

I know its not an acceptable view in 2026, but if women had to leave school at 16 and thus couldn't have a professional career I'd think many more women would have multiple children, like 5+ would be normal.

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#625

Post by Qem »

SamPatt wrote: post #192
MSFT_Edging wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know the "bring them into this world" thing is overdone, but a big part of me feels it to my core. I haven't seen a firefly in a couple years. If I had a child today, describing this bug to a child would be almost mythical. How many things that we've taken for granted will a child born today never get to experience? Not shallow things like iPods, but genuine miracles of nature we're wiping out at an accelerating pa…

>I can't in good conscious bring a child into a world that so many are focused on absolutely destroying. Who is focused on destroying the world? I don't think hardly any super villains exist. People might have a different assessment of what destroying the world means than you do.

> I don't think hardly any super villains exist.

We have billionaries and LLCs, supervillains whose superpowers are based on being rich, don't worrying about the future much beyond the next quarter, and pretending personhood to hold rights like people, but without the possibility of getting arrested.

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#627

Post by jandrewrogers »

accurrent wrote: post #553
scoofy wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is really the message of Abundance . If you want people to have kids, you need to make sure they are economically secure by the time they are of childbearing age... which means before they are 30. To do that, you cannot have supply constrained zero-sum shortage anywhere in society. It means that the cost of an apartment needs to be at-or-below the cost to build that apartment so people can just save up and buy o…

I agree that affordable housing is crucial, but the idea that this is 'impossible in a democratic society' ignores global realities. Several democracies heavily subsidize housing—look at Vienna's social housing model or Singapore's HDB system. Yet, this has not solved the birthrate problem; Singapore’s fertility rate recently hit a record low of 0.87. Ironically, the highest birth rates globally occur where economic…

Vienna massively depopulated in the mid-20th century, so it had a large excess of underused real estate. Vienna is only now starting to come back to its former population. It is like making the observation that housing is cheap in Detroit.

We need to make cheap housing work in places that have not experienced large-scale depopulation.

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#628

Post by matchbok3 »

thewhitetulip wrote: post #615
matchbok3 wrote: post #582

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Extended period? How about 5 years? 15? 25? There is literally nothing in the world that compares to the joy of having a large, loving, family that you helped create. The day-by-day crying or trivial complaints that you are so short-sighted about simply don't matter. I encourage you to talk to some happy families.

Basic statistics, common sense and dire poverty would dictate that there will be a sizable number of unhappy families. If you're surrounded by only happy families then you're privileged. I've seen families where husbands come home drunk and best the wives (in 2026)

You are in the family you help create. It is not just thrust upon you. The existence of despair need not discourage others to thrive.

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#630

Post by [deleted] »

chr1 wrote: post #583
scoofy wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is really the message of Abundance . If you want people to have kids, you need to make sure they are economically secure by the time they are of childbearing age... which means before they are 30. To do that, you cannot have supply constrained zero-sum shortage anywhere in society. It means that the cost of an apartment needs to be at-or-below the cost to build that apartment so people can just save up and buy o…

Cost of a great apartment by 1920 standards is affordable to anyone before they are 30, the problem is that they want to add lots of nice but non-essential things to that house driving the price up. If you subsidize building houses, you merely will drive up standard of living without moving childbearing age. The problem is about priorities not resource constraints. And solution will be either enough people/countries…

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