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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

#641

Post by MetaWhirledPeas »

tfehring wrote: post #437
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 is surely part of the story historically, but not recently. Women’s labor force participation rate peaked in the late 90s in the US, while total fertility rate is down ~20% since then. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300002

There could be a rubber band effect, where it takes time to get a feel for things like paying for childcare. The reaction is going to come from those who are observing what's happening to the "early adopters".

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

#642

Post by ziml77 »

JPKab wrote: post #264
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…

"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?

Because having kids then was a way to increase quality of life. The kids could be put to work from a young age and help make money. Now, with so much modern tech doing physical tasks efficiently, a kid isn't going to add much value and instead is going to be a money sink.

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

#643

Post by outside1234 »

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 all of it. We need cheaper housing, we need cheaper childcare, and cheaper food.

Basically all of the things the current administration is sabotaging. Not going to end well.

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

#644

Post by samus »

mattmaroon wrote: post #364
matthewkayin wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't be ridiculous, talking about "partisan fear". They have taken away documented, American citizens without due process. When armed men can take you out of your home or your car and whisk you away without a judicial warrant and without due process, it is very reasonable to be afraid.

It’s really not. Define taken away. They’ve absolutely detained some citizens, then let them go. And again, not defending what they are doing, they are awful,but you are probably more likely to be hit by lightning than you are to have any of your family planning go wrong because of them if you are a full citizen. (If you are undocumented here right now, yeah, totally.) Hysterical people think they are being rational…

Do you really think you have a holographic sign floating above you that tells them you are a citizen? How are you sure you are above suspicion to be an undocumented immigrant? Could you prove you aren't if some goons decided to pick you off the street right now or next time you go for a walk?

All this is about expanding the reach and normalizing abuse of the power of law enforcement, just like back then after 9/11.

It's like Germany in the 1930s again when Jews were required to wear a yellow star on their clothes, but the other way round.

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

#645

Post by knuckleheads »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #571
knuckleheads wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every since the start of the industrial revolution, children became an economic burden instead of a benefit. Once man power was replaced by machines, it stopped making sense to have so many kids and the total fertility rate started to decline. The data is sparse prior to 1950, which is coincidentally when there was a huge global post war baby boom, but visit https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate and scroll down t…

> TFR was higher when people felt like they had to have kids to survive a harsh world. Coincidentally, TFR was higher when women had to be paired up with a man and have sex without the use of birth control.

It was declining before the introduction of modern birth control! As well, there were other versions of birth control prior to hormonal birth control, less effective of course, but still practiced with that intent.

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

#646

Post by eightysixfour »

_bohm wrote: post #438
eightysixfour wrote: post #394

I tend to think people who argue about the economics or community issues tend to miss the forest for the trees. For the most part, other than biological drive , having kids is stupid. The systems that most people complain about failing - mostly around the community or economic costs of childcare - exist to make having children less stupid. We dramatically reduced teen and early 20s pregnancy rates, when hormones are…

I think it's clear that the reduction in teen pregnancy is indeed a big contributor to the decreasing fertility rate. I would guess the reason this doesn't get brought up in discussions about how to _increase_ the fertility rate is that reversing the trend on teen pregnancy is just really not a palatable solution to many people. Although there are some, usually on the religious right, who advocate for banning contrac…

I think not talking about it skews the conversation towards incorrect remedies - the discourse is about what has changed about the economy, communities, family life, etc, that makes people want fewer kids and then trying to derive solutions from those things as the assumed problem. It makes too much of the discourse a question of “how do we go back to the previous conditions?”

If instead we say this is a biological imperative that we have interrupted and many people don’t rationally want children no matter how perfect those conditions are, then instead of looking back to previous states, we can ask what new conditions must occur to change this behavior.

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

#647

Post by jbeam »

andrewla wrote: post #267
epistasis wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ICE threatens everyone, regardless of citizenship. They daily detain citizens without even bothering to ask "papers please". They menace and threaten and intimidate people just out and about in the neighborhood. The ICE raids have little to do with immigration, they are a secret police force meant to cause terror in communities with their lawless violence. It is a politically driven attack on a state that had the aud…

[flagged]

> They menace and threaten "people just out and about in the neighborhood"? It is hard to engage in good faith when you are baldly making statements that are completely unsupported.

There are no shortage of videos showing ICE agents on roaming patrols in Minnesota -- and elsewhere -- menacing anyone they come across who appears undesirable. All you have to do is not look away.

https://www.thisamericanlife.org/880/what-is-your-emergency

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

#648

Post by jujube3 »

crystal_revenge wrote: post #463
WhompingWindows wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not alone, Kraig911. It's very hard to be a parent in modern society. My wife and I's friends have basically vanished from our lives, they have zero initiative or interest in coming over to see the kids or help in any way. They say they do, but they rely on us to take the initiative and make social things happen. After dozens of rejections or silence from dozens of them, it's rejection fatigue with the friends…

> Many of our child-free friends are going to go through a lot of loneliness when they're old I've seen this "kids are insurance against loneliness" logic repeated often, but I don't believe this bares out in reality. I personally know plenty of child-free older couples who remain quite happy and social. I also know plenty of parents whose kids don't speak to them anymore or whose children have lives on the other sid…

Being able to hook up with random strangers on apps might be fun in your 20s and 30s. When you're old and wrinkly, it's not going to be the same. I hate to say it, but this is especially true for women entering their twilight years. A lot of childless people in our generation are headed to a very sad and lonely future.

COVID was exceptionally hard on these people. A lot of the weirdness of the COVID years was just people going crazy in isolation. Trading random stocks, or ordering crazy nonsense off of Amazon. Being alone is literally psychological abuse and a lot of them were subjected to it for months at a time.

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

#650

Post by bombcar »

xeromal wrote: post #617
compounding_it wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Real people are annoying They are actually not. In fact once you work on your mental health, you'll find real people the only kind you'd want to talk to. But the real people actually working on their mental health (part of it is reducing device usage to bare necessities) are quite small unfortunately. But I am hoping that will change.

I wouldn't take what they said as an actual insult. They're saying reality is dirty and social media is making us want to live in bubbles rather than deal with it. Thinking that was is to our detriment which I understand OP agrees with.

Exactly - the rough and tumble of life is a hassle, but it's a necessary one and without it we literally seem to go crazy.
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