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The Future Is Too Expensive – A New Theory on Collapsing Birth Rates

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Re: The Future Is Too Expensive – A New Theory on Collapsing Birth Rates

#91

Post by louthy »

kspacewalk2 wrote: post #70
drooopy wrote: post #21

Lack of affordable housing, job insecurity and the looming threat of AI and automation, unaffordable healthcare, unaffordable higher education, inflation, trade/culture/cold/proxy wars, societal unrest and thanks to social media the prospect of a global trend towards the collapse of democratic institutions and a march towards authoritarianism. Sure, let me just bring a couple of new humans into the world—people I’m l…

Your life, and the world around you, is objectively better than it would have been in the 1930s, when birth rates didn't fall. So while you may see this as a valid reason/excuse for yourself not to have kids, it doesn't explain broader fertility declines.

When people are considering having children, of course the first thing they think is “our lives are objectively better than the 1930s, let’s go for it!”

As the GP makes clear, most people think about the future, not the past. And many think the future is looking pretty bleak right now.

I do think there’s a tendency to overstate the potential future problems (humans are resourceful and will find ways to solve them), but the psychology of this seems fairly clear cut.

Re: The Future Is Too Expensive – A New Theory on Collapsing Birth Rates

#92

Post by pjc50 »

gwd wrote: post #65
pjc50 wrote: post #12

> Nobody knows Have you tried asking them? In particular, asking the women who are making the career-or-children decision? South Korea is invoked, but it seems like the population there has almost perfectly levelled out at just over 51m: https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/kor/sou... of which 20m live in Seoul. This discussion comes up a lot on HN, and it seems to be one where there are answers, but…

> population there has almost perfectly levelled out at just over 51m This video would beg to differ: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ufmu1WD2TSk&pp=ygUWa3Vyemdlc... That said, I am inclined to disagree with his take -- when women and men are both expected to work 996, when housing takes up a huge percentage of your income, when the only way you think you can assure a good life for your children is to pay exorbitant…

Why have two people linked the same youtube video as if that's some kind of response to a graph? The population has (past tense) levelled out. It is roughly flat over the past few years. It is not yet falling at a significant rate. It is a long time away from "the population is 5% off its peak", and my argument is that that is the real signal (in the control theory sense) which people might respond to, the rise in empty properties and unfilled jobs.

> find people who are good at child-rearing, give them training, and give them government support to raise 8 kids.

"Mother of the Soviet Union" or "welfare queen"?

It might work, but a lot of people get really, really mad at taxpayers money subsidizing other people's children.

Re: The Future Is Too Expensive – A New Theory on Collapsing Birth Rates

#93

Post by brokegrammer »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #32
brokegrammer wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Children in overpopulated countries like India have been living with their parents for generations. Now that children are leaving the house in those countries, the growth rate is decreasing. I doubt living with parents is affecting reproduction. People don't want kids for mysterious reasons that we have yet to discover.

>Children in overpopulated countries like India have been living with their parents for generations. which has a different culture than the West. Living with their parents may be a benefit for arranged marriages. Now they are moving out, arranged marriages maybe are dropping, but they don't have the culture to make non-arranged marriages (all the above is of course just assumption) Now in many Western cultures there…

> Living with their parents may be a benefit for arranged marriages

Yes, arranged marriages played a big role in getting people to form families. It has many disadvantages in terms of personal freedom, but it seems to be effective for population growth.

Couples also need to have children in such cultures unless they want to be ostracized from society.

The birth rate issue could very well be cultural instead of a financial one.

Re: The Future Is Too Expensive – A New Theory on Collapsing Birth Rates

#94

Post by steveBK123 »

alabastervlog wrote: post #29
steveBK123 wrote: post #18

I think we very rapidly went from a world with high child mortality rates, no access to birth control and children being at least moderately useful on the farm or doing some other work quite young to a world where having children is both a choice and very very expensive. This happened depending on where you live in the course of 1-3 generations. We are still grappling with how you incentivize and promote parenthood w…

Worse: the costs are front-loaded and (all but) must come early-ish in your life. The opportunity cost—the shadow, if you will, that the cost of children casts on your future retirement savings—is enormous . It’s way larger than the nominal cost. Big ouch.

I feel like the costs are U-shaped.. 0-5 childcare, then 18-22 college right?

Re: The Future Is Too Expensive – A New Theory on Collapsing Birth Rates

#95

Post by rdm_blackhole »

Tade0 wrote: post #85

I don't think it's that and it's more about how conscious a decision it is nowadays. It's not the future - it's the attitude towards it. Teen pregnancies are at an all time low everywhere in the developed world and it's not just thanks to the availability of contraception, but also a generational shift in attitudes towards risk taking. Overall people are having children later and therefore fewer because they feel tha…

I disagree with you.

It is good to be cautious when thinking about having kids.

Having a child is not like picking up a new hobby that you can give up the next month because you got bored of it, it's taking on the responsibility for another human being for the next 20 years.

This is a very important decision that will change your life and should not be taken it lightly. The fact that the previous generation were "yoloing" is not a great argument. The previous generations used to drink a drive a lot more too, should we go back to that as well?

Re: The Future Is Too Expensive – A New Theory on Collapsing Birth Rates

#96

Post by FirmwareBurner »

brokegrammer wrote: post #88
FirmwareBurner wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Children in overpopulated countries like India have been living with their parents for generations. That's comparing apples to oranges. People living in rich first world countries with stagnating economies like Canada expect a better future and standard of living for their kids than those from impoverished third world countries who rose to be developing countries, no? Then there's also completely different cultural…

> People living in rich first world countries with stagnating economies like Canada expect a better future and standard of living for their kids than those from impoverished third world countries Most parents want their children to live a good life, whether they're from poor country or not. Besides, people used to have more sex in the past when life seemed much more hopeless than it is now. Granted, condoms didn't ex…

>Most parents want their children to live a good life, whether they're from poor country or not.

And if the country is not providing a better future for the kids than the parents, why are you surprised they're not breeding? You're also ignoring the differences in standards. For some countries, a good future might be not dying of dysentery, for others is having a single family home.

>If we knew the reasons, we'd solve the problem.

You're talking like a true politician here. "Ah geez, if only we knew why people are getting depressed, poorer and not breeding, we'd totally fix it, but as we have no clue, I guess our hands are tied, oh geez. It's totally not our immigration, zoning and financial policies that have made wages stagnate and housing more expensive and of poorer quality for your kids, no, it's the fault of video games, dating apps, avocado toast and hookup culture."

Re: The Future Is Too Expensive – A New Theory on Collapsing Birth Rates

#97

Post by pjc50 »

Tade0 wrote: post #85

I don't think it's that and it's more about how conscious a decision it is nowadays. It's not the future - it's the attitude towards it. Teen pregnancies are at an all time low everywhere in the developed world and it's not just thanks to the availability of contraception, but also a generational shift in attitudes towards risk taking. Overall people are having children later and therefore fewer because they feel tha…

> Teen pregnancies are at an all time low everywhere in the developed world and it's not just thanks to the availability of contraception, but also a generational shift in attitudes towards risk taking.

Yes - and this was a policy objective! People hated teenage pregnancy. Religious organisations condemned it from the pulpit. The Catholic Church in Ireland had a little gulag for teenage mothers: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/03/mass-grave-of-...

We (the West, generally) have successfully put the fear of god (including metaphorically, for atheists) into people that they MUST NOT HAVE CHILDREN THEY CANNOT SUPPORT. We have provided them with means for not having children. Now everyone is surprised?

Re: The Future Is Too Expensive – A New Theory on Collapsing Birth Rates

#98

Post by sseagull »

steveBK123 wrote: post #81
pjc50 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also from a world where the ability of women to access decently paying jobs outside the home was heavily restricted to one approaching equality. Motherhood is one choice of many, with negative pay.

Right, the numbers can be a real mess / rich people problems if you have two relatively high paying earners in a household. My parents baby boomer generation maybe the wife was college educated and worked, but the pay wasn't necessarily great AND the cost of childcare wasn't as insane as it is today. In many HCOL/VHCOL areas, people tend to not live near parents anymore so they lose free childcare, and then between t…

Spot on, but this in particular

> people tend to not live near parents anymore so they lose free childcare

For some reason I don't see this mentioned as often, but I've always felt it a significant root cause (among many of course).

Childcare is really expensive, but it used to be "free". I grew up with grandparents/aunts/uncles/older cousins available to baby sit me. But now very much of my cohort have moved away from our home region for better jobs. My nearest family is a 4 hour drive away.

Combine this with a strong individuality streak (less reliance on neighbors and community) and you have to turn to very expensive childcare.

Raising children without that support is very daunting, at least to me.

Re: The Future Is Too Expensive – A New Theory on Collapsing Birth Rates

#99

Post by tsimionescu »

Isn't Korea, one of the countries that they use explicitly as a counter-example to prosperity or monetary incentives helping with fertility, also a country where people still tend to expect the same job for their entire life?

If so, then much of this idea fails on the same arguments it uses against other possible explanations.

Re: The Future Is Too Expensive – A New Theory on Collapsing Birth Rates

#100

Post by pjc50 »

brokegrammer wrote: post #88
FirmwareBurner wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Children in overpopulated countries like India have been living with their parents for generations. That's comparing apples to oranges. People living in rich first world countries with stagnating economies like Canada expect a better future and standard of living for their kids than those from impoverished third world countries who rose to be developing countries, no? Then there's also completely different cultural…

> People living in rich first world countries with stagnating economies like Canada expect a better future and standard of living for their kids than those from impoverished third world countries Most parents want their children to live a good life, whether they're from poor country or not. Besides, people used to have more sex in the past when life seemed much more hopeless than it is now. Granted, condoms didn't ex…

You can just ask people! You can ask women why they're not having children!

Well, not on HN, but in general.

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