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The US is flirting with its first-ever population decline

bloomberg.com

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

#651

Post by reliabilityguy »

throwawayohio wrote: post #147
reliabilityguy wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With all due respect, but this extremely biased and US-centric view. IT was not easier to have kids in 2024 or 2023, both in the EU or US. Childcare is expensive, pace of life today (and the past 20 years at least) implicitly treats kids as a liability and a detriment to career progression and financial security.

Yes, this article is about the US. And I live in a place single digit blocks from multiple places where ICE agent behavior has made national headlines. I have no financial reservations.

Sure, and I understand that. My point was that it was hard financially to have kids even before Trump was elected. Moreover, there are plenty of places in the US with no/little ICE activity, and it is still hard to afford kids today, a year, or three years ago.

It has/had nothing to do with ICE.

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

#652

Post by ziml77 »

SoftTalker wrote: post #531
margalabargala wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that perfectly aligns with their take. People in their 30s, married, tend to have more stable lives. They are in a position where they feel they are able to give that child a good life.

Peak fertility though is early 20s. By the time people are in their 30s, having trouble getting pregnant is a more common problem.

Are people who want to have kids really struggling to have them though? Keep in mind that fertility rate is not actually about fertility (not directly at least). It's a measure of the kids being had rather than a measure of the capability that the name would lead people to think.

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

#653

Post by bombcar »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #115
bombcar wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> expectations around having and raising a child are very, very different from someone sixty years ago This is at the root of "it's too expensive" - what are in the "needs" column has vastly changed. It is very likely that if you want a large family, one spouse (usually the mother) is going to have to stay at home, or at most work very part time - at least until all kids are into school. The costs otherwise simply do…

I suspect few women are willing to give up all their other options to stay home and make babies their whole life.

What is happening is what you'd expect if that is true, and it seems to be.

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

#655

Post by arjie »

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…

If I'm being honest, this is the same as other times I've encountered people talk about community. I've noticed that a lot of people talk about this in a very "other people are like this" sense. I have noticed the opposite. Other people are not like this. In fact, the normies are out there living normie life in a way that is perfectly community oriented and not at all problematic.

https://wiki.roshangeorge.dev/w/Blog/2025-10-09/Community

I think the explanation for lack of children is much simpler, but one that most cannot really admit: there is an opportunity cost to having children. An entire class of lifestyle will no longer be available to you realistically. Children are not expensive for the value they provide, but there are things you cannot spend a large amount of your time on.

https://wiki.roshangeorge.dev/w/Blog/2025-02-14/Fertility_Ra...

My experience having kids is that we walk around with our baby and people love her. Random people will look over and say "oh my goodness, what a cute baby"[0], people will hold doors for us, airlines let us transport car seats for free and discount a seat for the child. In fact, I'd say the actual reason for a lot of things is more structural.

e.g. home regulations like double-staircases, or height restrictions, and so on constrain the form factors of homes that can be built; car regulations and market demand in a few-child world emphasize form factors that constrain family size; things like that.

Besides there is a great deal of social contagion in this subject. A friend of my wife's texted her saying (paraphrased) "to be honest, after seeing how cute your baby is I changed my mind on wanting kids"[0].

0: And as the father, I definitely think my baby is exceptionally cute, but in reality this is likely everyone else's experience.

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

#657

Post by smileysteve »

tcoff91 wrote: post #190
bombcar wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say (and this is painful for many) that it really depends on who you are and how you act - if you're outgoing, or force yourself to pretend to be, and you talk, and you listen, and you don't immediately judge people (by whatever metric you come up with) - you can build community anywhere Is it easier if you're in a group of tightly-knit people all nearly identical to you? Sure! But it's possible with work anywher…

It was a lot easier to get along with people who voted differently when it was about differences in fiscal policy and taxation. It's hard to respect people who support mass racial profiling by unidentified masked secret police. My American friends of mexican descent have to go about every day knowing that they might get harassed or detained for the way they look. In my book white supremacy is outside the bounds of le…

> when it was about differences in fiscal policy and taxation.

It was never only about that. But they weren't saying the quiet part out loud.

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

#658

Post by ryandrake »

CoastalCoder wrote: post #386
mattmaroon wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is almost certainly the reason why they are making such a spectacle of it. Self deportation is the goal.

> Self deportation is the goal. Perhaps. GP didn't say whether or not there were any legal clouds over the persons he's describing. The answer to that makes a big difference to his point.

Every one of them are legal permanent residents who don't feel welcome here anymore. Some are afraid they're one mistaken identity away from ending up black bagged and sent to El Salvador.

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

#659

Post by everdrive »

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…

No one used to have money, there used to be few-to-no public services, and people didn't even used to have indoor plumbing, and populations were huge? What changed?

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

#660

Post by pertymcpert »

somenameforme wrote: post #476
dh2022 wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$6,000 / month in daycare for 4 kids? You have a sweet deal my friend. At the daycare in my neighborhood this does not cover even 2 kids : https://www.kidspaceseattle.org/enrollment - click on Tuition link at the bottom and weep.

Those prices are weird. Why would somebody ever pay that much rather than just hire a private nanny?

A private nanny isn't realistic for 4 kids. You need 2.
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