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India's surprise baby bust

economist.com

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Re: India's surprise baby bust

#641

Post by toomuchtodo »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #627
accurrent wrote: post #553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

This will require incredible subsidies both to build and maintain, which I fully support, but I think is politically untenable due to everyone’s unwillingness for taxes to go up while the developed world already carries enormous sovereign debt loads (>100% GDP).

We ate the seed corn, broadly speaking, to maximize the gains for some at the expense of the young and the future. Hopefully I’m wrong, and both taxes go up and the bond market will support more borrowing in the near term for spending that actually delivers value.

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#642

Post by echelon »

keerthiko wrote: post #589
broken-kebab wrote: post #494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's 2026 now and we know for sure that applying purely economic stimuli did nothing substantial to birthrate anywhere. FWIW kids of rich parents do not procreate somehow better even if they are not constrained by housing market.

> FWIW kids of rich parents do not procreate somehow better even if they are not constrained by housing market. I don't think this assertion holds true at all: https://i.redd.it/5wy659956rsc1.png

Every economic bracket got smartphones and internet.

The men are playing Fortnite. The women are on TikTok and Instagram.

Babies went off trend so we could collectively do dopamine maxxing as a species.

Evolution didn't anticipate this.

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#643

Post by Barrin92 »

niemandhier wrote: post #349
m_fayer wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a different pet explanation from the other replies here, and I honestly don't get why it's not talked about more. Basically, our economic reality and expectations have come into conflict with biology and human lifespan. If you want a secured dignified life and basic prerequisites to starting a family, every year that takes a little longer. And these days, almost everyone wants that dignified middle class life…

There is the idea floating around in Europe, to nullify people’s student debts if they have children. So two kids during university would mean even the measly amount you have to pay back for an European subsided degree would be gone. I do hope that will be put into effect. I also believe that this will be better for gender equality than all the other measures taken so far. I was in too many meetings, where the CV of…

Hungary spent 5%(!) of its GDP on direct child benefits and instituted a lifelong tax exemption for women with 3 or more children and the birth rate rose by... ~0.15 for a few years and then dropped again.

For comparison I assume you're German given the username, here this would amount to 300 billion per year, which is about 100x what the government spends on BAföG (the mentioned federal student aid). I genuinely wonder how much countries will have to spend until people realize that this has quite literally nothing to do with money.

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#644

Post by defrost »

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #592
sethammons wrote: post #576

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is NOT human extinction. Just the collapse of global modernity. Why would the last group of N people not subsistence farm? "Guess we wont try to live like people have for the last x million years, here is a good place to lay down and die."

>Why would the last group of N people not subsistence farm? Why would they be able to reinvent that, when none of their ancestors for how many generations did so? Is that something a person can do well, do you think, with no prior experience or expertise? What if they get it wrong, they'll starve? We could ask why they could reinvent all the technologies that people from prior eras of agriculture could manage? Will t…

You should realise (apparently not?) that many people alive today still farm with minimal technology .. moreover there are people alive still hunting and gathering.

They've not lost their skill to survive sans tech - unlike, say, yourself.

Still, if it helps you - take notes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gmCX7R-W4c

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#645

Post by jiggawatts »

gradstudent wrote: post #523
jiggawatts wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m in my fourties’ unable to afford a three bedroom apartment in my city with an income in the top two or three percentile. I’ve had boomers tell me with a straight face that “they did it” so it can’t be that hard despite a 5x increase in housing costs relative to income. I’d have to spend every single post tax dollar for two decades to afford an actual house. Not counting interest and other taxes and council rates.…

> nice house in a nice suburb! There's your problem. Everyone wants to live in the same set of well established well resourced neighbourhoods. But there's too many of us. Go out in the 'burbs and accept that owning a house implies a commute you will dislike (among a host of other compromises).

Are you joking right now?

I’d have to move a thousand kilometres to some shit hole country town to afford a house on a salary I earn by working as a principal consultant in the central business district!

Now imagine the same scenario but with a school teacher, nanny, gardener, or inset job title here that is tied to a specific location.

When “existence here with the rest of us who have pulled the ladder up after us” becomes untenable for entire generations then you don’t get to complain when nobody is around to clean your gutters or wiper your arse when you’re too old to it for yourself.

Our children our are our future and they’re being told to jump through flaming hoops… that aren’t even in the same city as their parents!

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#646

Post by echelon »

HaloZero wrote: post #614
accurrent wrote: post #553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

My understanding of Singapore work culture though is it's intense and competitive. Yes the housing is cheaper and more accessible but it's the same age to get there (maybe a bit earlier). You aren't "economically secure" earlier in life than in Western countries. I don't know enough Vienna's system to speak for it.

This has nothing to do with economic security.

Everyone is now dopamine maxxing on smartphones and internet. There's no desire to have kids because kids were a pre-internet and pre-modernity phenomena.

Now that we're fully entertained, there's little need for having children. The FYP has enough entertainment to overcome the biological itch.

Evolution did not anticipate social media and hyper addictive algorithms.

We're microdosing on pleasure and that's desensitized every biological urge to raise children.

Technology did this.

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#647

Post by Qem »

tzs wrote: post #150
btilly wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is what it actually means. When the economy is growing, investment makes sense. Why put your money under the mattress when it could be out there, working for you? When the reverse happens, investment stops making sense. Why risk your money when it becomes worth more while it is sitting under your mattress? But stopping investment does not just mean stopping speculative investment. It means stopping investment in…

> When the economy is growing, investment makes sense. Why put your money under the mattress when it could be out there, working for you? > When the reverse happens, investment stops making sense. Why risk your money when it becomes worth more while it is sitting under your mattress? Is it necessary to have a growing population in order to have a growing economy? For much of human history I'd guess the answer was yes…

> Is it necessary to have a growing population in order to have a growing economy?

Soon we will discover. I suspect the answer will be no, at least not for long. Markets are made of people. Can the economy grow despite a shrinking market losing economies of scale everywhere? I hope, but I don't count on it.

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#649

Post by triceratops »

dyauspitr wrote: post #525
guyzero wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Japan, a country famous for no one knowing what its culture is.

Reading about it in books and watching anime won’t prevent them from going functionally extinct in less than 200 years.

I don't believe that will happen.

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#650

Post by triceratops »

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #592
sethammons wrote: post #576

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is NOT human extinction. Just the collapse of global modernity. Why would the last group of N people not subsistence farm? "Guess we wont try to live like people have for the last x million years, here is a good place to lay down and die."

>Why would the last group of N people not subsistence farm? Why would they be able to reinvent that, when none of their ancestors for how many generations did so? Is that something a person can do well, do you think, with no prior experience or expertise? What if they get it wrong, they'll starve? We could ask why they could reinvent all the technologies that people from prior eras of agriculture could manage? Will t…

> when none of their ancestors for how many generations [farmed]

Because they'd still have books and seeds and farming implements lying around? And maybe some actual farmers to learn from?

> What if they get it wrong, they'll starve?

Probably, yeah many will starve. Early English settlers in North America had very little farming experience and many died. Enough survived to build colonies.

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