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The U.S. birth rate has fallen by 20% since 2007

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Re: The U.S. birth rate has fallen by 20% since 2007

#81

Post by Aeolos »

t0mislav wrote: post #69
throwaw12 wrote: post #23

> This decline cannot be explained by demographic, economic, or policy changes. I disagree with this statement. Put yourself in the shoes of 25 years old and ask why don't you want to have kids? * (economic) difficult to manage finances * (economic) can't buy house, too expensive * (economic) to compete with others in the workplace, I need to work >12 hours/day, can't do with kids or will be laid off. * (sociologic)…

>12 hours/day I can't even imagine working a minute longer than 8 hours per day, and 12+ hours is woow. Is this common in US? I work 8 hours my whole career (IT). My wife works 6 hours per day. (central Europe)

I have worked 10-12 hours a day throughout all of my working career (from 19yo onwards). This is in central Europe, and I'm not even the hardest worker around.

Re: The U.S. birth rate has fallen by 20% since 2007

#82

Post by chx »

hardware2win wrote: post #58
red_admiral wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

* (sociologic) fear of climate change (will the world still be habitable in 20 years' time) or commitment to make a small positive impact on climate change by not having kids I'm not saying this is true or rational (there are actually blog posts in the rationalist community along the lines of "no, having kids does not cause climate change") but it's definitely a sentiment I've encountered.

>will the world still be habitable in 20 years' time I dont know anyone that is seriously worried about this in such a way And dont get me wrong - we arent climate change deniers, just... pick your battles Why waste your life worrying about something you have tiny impact on?

> I dont know anyone that is seriously worried about this in such a way

there's an entire Voluntary Human Extinction Movement...

Re: The U.S. birth rate has fallen by 20% since 2007

#83

Post by sprash »

exitb wrote: post #54
sprash wrote: post #24

[flagged]

So the lack of free life choices for women is the load bearing piece of our society?

Yes, the result is obvious. As soon as you introduce feminism birthrates are tanking. This can be observed observed across the globe. Couple this with the establishment of contraceptives and acceptance of abortion you get a recipe for annihilation.

Re: The U.S. birth rate has fallen by 20% since 2007

#84

Post by withinboredom »

batmansmk wrote: post #48

Had a job in SV, we moved to EU when my wife was pregnant. We would have loved to stay but as many of immigrant friends, we had difficulties figuring out how to be a happy family in USA. We couldn’t afford a house, education without becoming slaves to our career and not to feel threaten by the constantly changing immigration policy.

As an American who moved to the EU after having a child in the US, when I tell people we had to pay for our son on a payment plan, they cringe. Yes, we had insurance, but ironically, the calculated conception date was 2 days before we got insurance -- reality is that we got insurance when we decided to have a kid, so the calculated date is actually wrong. Thus, it was a pre-existing condition and insurance wouldn't cover it. True story.

Re: The U.S. birth rate has fallen by 20% since 2007

#85

Post by madaxe_again »

throwaw12 wrote: post #23

> This decline cannot be explained by demographic, economic, or policy changes. I disagree with this statement. Put yourself in the shoes of 25 years old and ask why don't you want to have kids? * (economic) difficult to manage finances * (economic) can't buy house, too expensive * (economic) to compete with others in the workplace, I need to work >12 hours/day, can't do with kids or will be laid off. * (sociologic)…

There’s a really fundamental socio-economic change that nobody has touched upon here yet, as it’s such a slow one with such inertia it’s barely noticeable from the ground.

Having children used to be a profitable enterprise. You’d get married, bang them out one after another, hope that a decent number survived, raised them cheaply, and put them to work as soon as they were able.

Once, and if, they were grown, they would then be part of your family enterprise, be it subsistence farming, cobbling, scrivening, or lording, and would add value.

Now, having a child is a definite cost centre for the individual, for the family.

As healthcare, industry, and the idea of the nuclear family and the individual have developed over the last several centuries, birth rates have declined rather precipitously - if you are 40, you probably have one child, one sibling, at least two uncles or aunts per family side, and your grandparents probably have six siblings each.

You can see this process happening at various stages, in various parts of the world. It’s universal.

This is a long term trend, and it has been on the trajectory to where we are now for a long while.

It isn’t terribly problematic, to my view, as it hasn’t been previously.

Yes, it leaves an eldercare labour and pension gap, but if other trends in industrialisation and the decoupling of human effort from realised value continue, this will fill said gap.

Re: The U.S. birth rate has fallen by 20% since 2007

#86

Post by jcfrei »

Here's another possible cause that I don't see mentioned: The spread of the internet removed a lot of the mysticism surrounding births and allowed any woman to look up how it's really going about. Some might simply not want to take the risk because potential complications during and after birth are manifold.

Re: The U.S. birth rate has fallen by 20% since 2007

#87

Post by raptorraver »

There was a funny diagram I sawed that presented the birth rate of my country and placed the launch of Tinder to the timeline. The same year Tinder was published the birth rate started going down. Most likely there are other better explanations for this but it made me think. How has the radical disruption of dating market affected the way people form relationships and start families?

Re: The U.S. birth rate has fallen by 20% since 2007

#88

Post by samwillis »

pjc50 wrote: post #56
samwillis wrote: post #29

Unsurprisingly the UK birth rate has done a similar roughly 20% drop of that period: https://www.statista.com/statistics/428262/birth-rate-in-the... Gone from 12.6 to 10.1 per 1k people. Anecdotal evidence, I'm in my mid 30s, a lot of our friends and family are stopping at one kid.

The UK's "no child benefit for children beyond the second" is a clear policy signal as to what the government wants.

I honestly don't get it, but I'm not an economist so I may be wrong.

Pensioners cost the state a lot, and in my naive understanding population growth - so more tax payers - has funded that for the last 100 years. Declining birth rates, and reducing immigration, reduces proportional tax income and therefor smaller pot for pensions and healthcare.

But as I said, not an economist.

Re: The U.S. birth rate has fallen by 20% since 2007

#89

Post by goodpoint »

albertgoeswoof wrote: post #37
pjc50 wrote: post #12

The other day someone was complaining about too many people in the housing thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35962521 The two are linked. Having children is at least partly an economic choice. People have spent decades working against "teen moms" and "single parents" and "welfare queens". Everyone is very clear that you must not have children unless you can comfortably afford to do so. And not just now, th…

> Are the people who want others to have more children prepared to pay for it? This implies that more people make society poorer. Which is false. People don’t consume a finite set of resources, they create more. As populations rise the net general standard of living goes up, not down. For source, check out all developed nations over the last 200 years, and human history to date. USA actually has an advantage here as…

> People don’t consume a finite set of resources, they create more.

Not at all, people don't create resources, we consume resources.

> As populations rise the net general standard of living goes up, not down.

As long as we believe in infinite exponential growth. Instead we are starting to hit the wall and it time to stop dreaming.

Re: The U.S. birth rate has fallen by 20% since 2007

#90

Post by hardware2win »

Aeolos wrote: post #75
hardware2win wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>will the world still be habitable in 20 years' time I dont know anyone that is seriously worried about this in such a way And dont get me wrong - we arent climate change deniers, just... pick your battles Why waste your life worrying about something you have tiny impact on?

A lot of people in the 18-35 demographic I am talking to are keenly aware of the environmental issues, and have taken steps to change their lifestyle to match. No cars, becoming vegetarian, buying second-hand, reducing travel, reducing consumption. Yes, I may be seeing a bubble - but that is across three different countries, and clearly reflected in car-ownership statistics (down dramatically in younger generations)…

We werent talking about consumption reduction and similar. Decision to not have kids because earth may be not livable is infinitly more drastic
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