Total Fertility Rate (births per woman) un US: 2015 | 1.83 2016 | 1.80 2017 | 1.75 2018 | 1.71 2019 | 1.68 2020 | 1.62 2021 | 1.63 2022 | 1.67 2023 | 1.62 2024 | 1.62 2025 | 1.62 2026 | 1.61 Politizacion of long term trend wont help here.
And yet, birthrates jacked up for 2 decades after communism collapsed, stayed high until the bank crisis, tanked both times Trump came into office, recovered a couple years into Covid.
Meanwhile in Niger, fertility rate per woman is 6.3. It's not about politics.
I personally think we over urbanised. If i look at my friends circle, most of the urban ones are childless and the rural ones have 2~4 kids. Super anecdotal and totally non scientific observation.
There might be a confounder though, with the causality working backwards. Rural housing is way cheaper than urban housing. Urban cultural offering is way more lively than rural cultural offering. If you want kids you need space, and have no time for fun, so you optimize. You stop paying for cultural offering you don't need, and opt for cheaping housing you do need. Doesn't mean that urban/rural life makes you have ch…
From my observations, its more the friends that never left rural village we grew up in that have children. My urban friends don't really have children maybe because urban life i stressed but you also have so much stuff to do so maybe kids isn't really a thing one think about, it's more about building up a network.
Living in a city that this administration has constantly been attacking forced me and my wife, as well as many of our neighbors, to put off our family growth plans. Not only did many of my neighbors lose their jobs, but others are simply fearful of living their lives. We're fine financially, have housing, etc, but at this point why would we go through the stress of raising a child when a masked federal agent might ju…
Not to mention fear of a school shooting that would leave your kid traumatized at best and dead at worst.
Living in a city that this administration has constantly been attacking forced me and my wife, as well as many of our neighbors, to put off our family growth plans. Not only did many of my neighbors lose their jobs, but others are simply fearful of living their lives. We're fine financially, have housing, etc, but at this point why would we go through the stress of raising a child when a masked federal agent might ju…
Many of our family's friends have already left back to their home countries (bringing their own families with them). Risk/reward calculation has abruptly changed. The risk to your life and livelihood is not worth it, and the reward of living in the US has been steadily declining.
We're now heading in the same direction -- will take more time than I would like to work it out, for various reasons, but this is no longer a country where I want to raise my kids (despite us being citizens and having the "right" color skin), and as much as I want to be hopeful for change it's really hard to see the damage being undone any time soon.
Anecdotally my experience is dramatically different. Last week I arrived by car right near the beginning of dropoff time. Pulling in right in front of me was the mom of one of my kid's classmates, carpooling with another kid who lives in the same apartment complex. The three of them met up as soon as they got out of the car, and then another one of their friends (who lives across the street from the school and usuall…
How do you find communities like that? It’s not exactly a Redfin search.
Word of mouth and on-the-ground sleuthing.
The community in question was put on our radar screen when we attended a party that one of my wife's business school friends threw. It's not well-known; even in our metro area, most people probably wouldn't recognize the name or be able to place it on a map.
But then when we were house-hunting, I just drove through all the residential neighborhoods within commuting distance of our jobs. And took note of where I saw people a.) out walking and b.) talking to their neighbors. Reported to my wife (who thought this was a nutty waste of time, but really values community) "I think you'll like it here", then paid the exorbitant home value to actually buy a home in the area. Indeed, we did like it here.
Anecdotally my experience is dramatically different. Last week I arrived by car right near the beginning of dropoff time. Pulling in right in front of me was the mom of one of my kid's classmates, carpooling with another kid who lives in the same apartment complex. The three of them met up as soon as they got out of the car, and then another one of their friends (who lives across the street from the school and usuall…
I think it is crazy that you have gates to get into the school grounds (buildings should be locked, I get that). Like my BIL in Sydney suburbs, he lives right next to a school with super nice basketball court etc, but can kids use those on weekends? Sadly no.
The gates here are open when school is not in session, and we (and other families) do in fact use the school grounds for playdates on weekends.
But yes, it sucks that they have to exist, and that my kids have active shooter drills and the school has a plan for what to do in a mass-casualty event. Though so far, every time they've triggered the secure campus protocols, it's because a baby coyote likes to hang out on the stairs.
I guess you don't live in Minneapolis, or another targeted metro area. It is hard to imagine what it is like to live in a city where 3000 masked and poorly trained people cos-playing special forces are specifically tasked with arresting as many people as they can and told that they have full immunity. you haven't seen the effect on schools when federal agents enter school grounds and take kids away. you haven't seen…
There have been several raids in my city, but it is definitely nothing like what is going on in Minneapolis.
For me, it's not just that -- I don't live in Minneapolis -- but it's the sinking realization that half the country literally voted for this and is either ok or indifferent, so long as we are maintaining our "true (WASP) American culture". Call me naive, but it has come as a pretty big shock to me that Trump has exposed just how rotten a good fraction of Americans are -- and that's before even getting into the removal of climate change action (something I care very deeply about because it concerns my children's future), cuts to science, healthcare and higher education, foreign policy (admittedly, the US has always been a bully, but it's even worse now), clear attempts to rig the upcoming elections, etc. etc.
> It seems like all my single friends around 30 talk about how the dating pool is terrible Let's call it out specifically - few women want to have kids. I'm using an app right now and for every 1 woman who has "wants kids" in their profile, there's probably 2-3 women who say they don't want kids or "aren't sure". And these aren't young women either, the age range is roughly 29-35, so even on the older side of optimal…
> Few women want to have kids. I'm using an app right now I'm on an app where you can discuss wedding dresses and most women are interested in having children! I'm joking of course. But a dating app embedded in hookup culture isn't a representative sample of women.
Not all dating apps are focused on hookup culture.
Besides, that's how people match these days. If you say the culprit is hookup culture, then most people are into that culture and don't want kids.
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…
That's gonna be hard to do if massive industries in every country pump out fear as a business plan.
> In the U.S., the peak of non-productive populace is only the next decade or so. for a contrast, look at South Korea - https://www.populationpyramid.net/republic-of-korea/2025/ That tells a quite grim story, with an outcome thats totally inevitable but will take 20 years to play out. the die is already cast, and I cant see how the country survives.
What does it mean for a country to not survive? There will be people there. There will be a system of governance. Sure, there will be hardship and suffering, but I don't see how this equates to extinction.
Yes, probably not people extinction. But economic extinction - the tiny amount of young supporting 10x the amount of elderly will lead to economic collapse. On top of the collapse in raw productivity. It’s not hard to imagine that level of disruption leading to a failed state scenario.