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US Births Dip to 30-yr Low; Fertility Rate Sinks Further Below Replacement Level
- gregorymichael 8y agoWhat are the economic ramifications of fertility rate being below the replacement level?
- mc32 8y agoSee Japan and Italy....
- Andre_Wanglin 8y agoJapan is a prosperous high HDI nation. They have clearly decided that making bankers happy is not worth sacrificing their national identity by inviting mass immigration. They may not appear to be "winning" to those who measure civilizational success by the quarter but I bet their way wins out in the long run.
- jacquesm 8y ago> They may not appear to be "winning" to those who measure civilizational success by the quarter but I bet their way wins out in the long run. I'll bet the opposite. The long run is really long and if your population is in decline then you either up the numbers or sooner or later it will be game over for your branch of the tree.
- Andre_Wanglin 8y agoPopulations can grow geometrically at any time. What matters to a particular "branch" is that it remains a cohesive and clearly demarcated appendage while it weathers hostile conditions. Grafting on another branch is what ensures its demise as a distinct entity.
- jacquesm 8y agoHehe, there is no society on earth right now that never incorporated substantial numbers of outsiders. The relatively placid world that we live in today is in no way the historical norm. Hostile conditions are the norm. Ask the Palestinians, the Iraqi, the Iranians, the Panamanians, the Native Americans and Native Canadians and lots of people living elsewhere in Europe and the world (or anybody else for that matter, but for first or second generation immigrants it is obvious) to see how far back their roots go. In most cases you won't have to go much further than three or four generations (assuming you can trace them back at all) before you land abroad and in many cases in wildly different cultures due to wars, colonialism, trade, famine or natural disasters. Japan is due to its state as an island an exception, not the rule and even Japan is subject to the maxim that you use it or you lose it.
- Andre_Wanglin 8y agoIt is interesting that you listed a number of peoples who have at various times been subjected to genocide because of their initial accommodation of outside populations in your rebuttal of my affirmation that Japan refusing to compromise its stance on immigration is vital to its survival as a cohesive and distinct nation. >you use it or you lose it Please explain in direct language the point your deployment of this aphorism was intended to convey as I find it wholly inapplicable.
- jacquesm 8y ago> It is interesting that you listed a number of peoples who have at various times been subjected to genocide because of their initial accommodation of outside populations in your rebuttal of my affirmation that Japan refusing to compromise its stance on immigration is vital to its survival as a cohesive and distinct nation. Exactly for that reason. Note how the Japanese have had their various wars of conquest in the past. At that time they had no problem with their 'stance on immigration'.
- magduf 8y ago
- jotm 8y agoClearly infinite growth is the only way. /s
- craftyguy 8y agoThere will be a lot more older folks, who expected to retire and collect social security, still in the workforce as a result of diminishing payments by youngsters into that program. Demand for medical care will continue grow as the majority of the population gets older. I believe Japan is experiencing this right now at a large scale.
- bmj 8y agoThere are also ramifications with older people who have no one to care for them at the end of their lives. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/world/wp/2018/01/24/feature/so-many-japanese-people-die-alone-theres-a-whole-industry-devoted-to-cleaning-up-after-them/?utm_term=.4489ca47a16d https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/world/wp/2018/01/24/feat...
- gowld 8y agoJapan is transitioning from traditional family-based care (which fails when children are absent or nonexistent) to government-funded social-safety-net care. USA has already made that transition (with Medicaid for nursing home care).
- magduf 8y agoYep, the Boomers are really going to suffer when they're elderly. But they kinda deserve it: they're the ones that screwed up this country so badly. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/may/17/generation-sociopaths-review-trump-baby-boomers-ruined-world https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/may/17/generation-soc... A generation full of sociopaths will be getting their just desserts when they're wasting away in poorly-run nursing homes with no one visiting them.
- Analemma_ 8y agoNot just social security: it's public pensions and health care too - every program that expects a pyramid population shape with many young workers supporting a few older ones is going to implode in the next few decades. It's gonna get ugly.
- avip 8y agoRetirement ponzi structure won't hold.
- tzahola 8y agoAnd the masses of childless elders will happily vote into office anyone who promises to take care of them.
- cjbprime 8y agoI wonder why this isn't causing a swing to the Dems in the US already. Republicans admit disliking both immigrants and entitlements.
- magduf 8y agoBecause these elders hate immigrants and foreigners. They'd rather starve to death in their trailers than have immigrants take care of them.
- aurailious 8y agoFor the time being, immigration is still causing the millennial generation to increase and is the reason why US population continues to grow. So for at least the US the result is that we may not face the same problems as other developed countries or the problem of an aging population may be reduced. It will cause the US to continue to be a nation of immigrants and the resentment that may cause.
- Andre_Wanglin 8y agoIt is disingenuous to assert that immigration de facto causes resentment instead of the source population of the immigration.
- aurailious 8y agoI am not sure how you are implying those two things can be seperate. All immigrants have a source. Throughout US history there has been waves of immigration. Where that source is has changed along with the resentment of that source. It is not from any particular source that resentment occurs, but that there is immigration from a source at all.
- Andre_Wanglin 8y agoThat view is ahistorical. Anti-immigrant sentiment has always been directed at the source of the immigration. When Chinese began immigrating in the mid-late 19th century, immigration was suddenly a problem and so we had the national origins formula which ruled until 1965.
- tabtab 8y agoThere are also military ramifications. If we get into a big skirmish with China, they will overwhelm us with soldiers and high-volume weapon manufacturing capability.
- jotm 8y agoI thought nukes solved that. What's the point of them if someone can overwhelm you with soldiers...
- martinpw 8y agoChina is perhaps not the best example. Given their one child policy that was in place for a long time, and the fact the fertility rate there is still well below that of the US, the relative size of the pool for soldiers will shrink faster than in the US.
- InTheTop2 8y agoNot to get too deep into the weeds but troops require logistics. Food, gear, etc. Aircraft Carriers are the great equalizer, as they provide mobile shears for cutting those lines. The USA still has the most and that's why we keep it that way.
- magduf 8y agoSoldiers can't march across an ocean.
- CamTin 8y agoThey should be mild, really, so long as immigration makes up for it, and the US is historically good at attracting and assimilating immigrants. Trump aside (which is indeed a big aside), it seems like that will probably continue. Politically, it probably means increased racial tensions as the majority white population finds itself on a more and more equal footing with other ethnic groups.
- throwawaymanbot 8y agoask Japan, they seem to be doing OK.
- Andre_Wanglin 8y agoIn a debt-based growth-dependent (to repay ever the increasing debts) economy, it crashes everything. Turns out assuming infinite growth does not produce a stable civilization. This is why there are concomitantly erstwhile calls for people to both reduce their "footprint" by not reproducing and also that immigration is crucial to every (western) society's survival.
- iandanforth 8y agoDo you know of any good example steady state economies for contrast?
- Andre_Wanglin 8y agoWhy does criticizing an impossible assumption put the onus on me to identify economies that do not make that assumption or to envision what such a state of things might look like? Is it not sufficient to refrain from obvious error?
- iandanforth 8y agoThat wasn't criticism, just curiosity. I'd like to have such an example to refer to and thought you might have one.
- magduf 8y agoIf there are any, they're probably in ancient societies, and as such are probably poorly understood now.
- InitialLastName 8y agoUnfortunately, the exponential-growth economies ate them all.
- CalRobert 8y agoSample of one (well, two) here but my wife and I decided it was now or never as we hit our mid thirties and decided to have a kid. She still has mountains of student debt precluding homeownership though which means it's unlikely we'll have two. We also waited until the kid could be something other than American though, so we're outliers.
- CalRobert 8y agoThen again, the lower the birthrate of wealthy high-emission folks, the greater the chance civilization survives another century,
- paulcole 8y agoI agree with you but this is a super controversial opinion on HN. People here seem to really like to ignore the environment cost of a child.
- gowld 8y agoMost of our parents didn't grow up in owned homes. A 2-child family in a 2-bedroom apartment was quite common in the post-WWII era.
- 0xB31B1B 8y agoStudent loans, housing costs, job prospects, healthcare, childcare. People are making a rational decision to avoid children they can’t afford. We as a society need to re-examine the causes of rising costs of essentials so reproduction is no longer financially infeasible.
- enraged_camel 8y agoExactly. If you think about it, most species reproduce when resources are abundant, and stop reproducing when resources become scarce. That's basically what is happening to young people here.
- OmarIsmail 8y agoIt's the opposite with humans. 3rd world/developing countries have extremely high birth rates. The best mechanism for "population control" in people is to improve a population's standard of living.
- SketchySeaBeast 8y agoI don't think that it's a matter of worldwide standard of living. I wonder if developing nations have an easier time with a young person reaching a comparable standard of living with their parents, and the developed ones have a much larger discrepancy. In a developing nation success might be somewhere to live, and a job. Before someone from north america is "doing well" you need a partner, a 5 bedroom house, two cars, two jobs, and a university education. We can't meet our "needs" until much later in our life.
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago>Before someone from north america is "doing well" you need a partner, a 5 bedroom house, two cars, two jobs, and a university education. We can't meet our "needs" until much later in our life. If it's what your priorities are you can have a home, cars, max out your 401k and be paying back student loans on a single entry level tech salary. This requires that you put up with a long commute, beater cars, an old house and DIYing a good chunk of skilled trade work that you could hire someone for. You'll be bringing your own lunch to work, drinking beer from a can and not building much cash savings at that stage. Nevertheless it's sustainable on a single entry level tech income in a major urban area and living a couple hours away. I think that increased spending on luxury things has by implication de-prioritized the "life milestone" things. Generations ago people bought a house and started a family first. Now people accumulate wealth first and settle down later (which is probably a reflection on the fact that the lifestyle needed to accumulate wealth is not very compatible with settling down).
- mhneu 8y agoFor decades, the US birth rate has been held up by immigration. American values have been to regard the country as a nation of immigrants, who not only act as a source of youthful workers, but also have more kids than Americans who have been here longer. So the US has avoided workforce aging, as has happened in parts of Europe and especially Japan, through immigration. With the recent reduction in immigration, accelerated by the party in power now, the US is going to face the same low birth rate problems as other advanced economies. And the people leading immigration suppression in the US know this. Paul Ryan in December: This is going to be the new economic challenge for America: people. Baby boomers are retiring—I did my part, but we need to have higher birth rates in this country,” Ryan told reporters on Thursday. Ryan, the Wisconsin Republican and current Speaker of the House, “did [his] part” by having three children. http://www.newsweek.com/paul-ryan-wants-you-have-more-kids-749328 http://www.newsweek.com/paul-ryan-wants-you-have-more-kids-7... It's also worth adding: the political environment in the US for decades means that one party wants to make it hard for two-parent working families to have more kids (because those two-parent families tend to vote for the other party, and one-earner families have kids that vote for their party). That's a big part of the reason the US has poor child care and maternity leave support -- because those policies are a political football in the US.
- 8note 8y agohe should have had seven. three is still a decline from the generation before.
- nostromo 8y agoI don't see the value in large numbers of unskilled workers entering the US every year. With a potentially large wave of automation coming, the US shouldn't straddled itself with lots of unemployable drivers, farm workers, etc. I hope we can move to a much more sensible immigration system, similar to Canada's, for example.
- cm2012 8y agoImmigrants to the US have the same level of college completion as natives: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/05/03/key-findings-about-u-s-immigrants/ft_17-05-03_immigrants_education_2/ http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/05/03/key-findings...
- nostromo 8y agoThis makes me super happy and super scared. Happy because we have plenty of people on Earth and in the US. We don't need more people. Scared because so many of our economic structures assume infinite population growth.
- lisper 8y agoWe can change our economic structures. We can't change the fact that exponential growth is unsustainable. So this way at least there is hope.
- mhneu 8y agoReplacement level fertility is by definition non-exponential (or if you prefer, has an exponent of 1.) A reasonable number of macroeconomists would be ok with replacement-level fertility. The economics get really bad when the birth rate falls below replacement though - you get fewer workers supporting more retirees, which has the bad consequences you can see now in Japan.
- vkou 8y ago> you get fewer workers supporting more retirees, which has the bad consequences you can see now in Japan. With the productivity gains of the last few decades this shouldn't be a problem. That is, if those productivity gains actually went into something useful, instead of appreciating my 401K.
- tonyedgecombe 8y agoWhat are the bad consequences in Japan besides flat growth?
- ddebernardy 8y agoDidn't flat growth in Japan happen much earlier than this problem? My memory might not serve me well, but my own understanding is their flat growth is a hangover related to their debt bubble popping in the late 1980s - with the bad debt still getting purged out of the system nowadays.
- Viker 8y agoInteresting... How many people here would say that they have actively decided not to have children? I am just curious.
- nerflad 8y agoMe (25 y.o east coast male, long-term relationship, no debt but decided due to other factors)
- tzahola 8y agoAt 25 such a decision can hardly be considered permanent...
- kuroguro 8y agoAlso the number of people living alone seems to be rising. I wonder what % of that are active choices.
- notheguyouthink 8y agoWife and I decided ages ago to not have children. I had a vascetomy when I was ~25. I think our reasons differ, and mine are confused, but it's very clear to both of us that we never want children. Oddly, she liked being an aunt though, so there is that.
- matte_black 8y agoWhen you are an aunt or an uncle caring for nephews and nieces is super cheap, and once you no longer get the same joy of spending time with them as they grow older you can back off without guilt. Similar to grandparents. At the end of the day, the kids go home with their own parents.
- drspacemonkey 8y ago38yo Canadian male. Made a conscious decision to never have kids when I was 30. Haven't changed my mind.
- 8y ago
- jurassic 8y agoAs half of a thirty somethings couple that wants children but can’t afford the financial implications in the Bay Area, it seems pretty clear to me why fertility is down.
- jacquesm 8y agoWell, you could of course move but in the end it is mostly about priorities.
- wetpaws 8y agoGoing from expensive area with good job market to slightly less expensive area with little to no job market. Rrright.
- urda 8y agoThe Bay is not the be-all and end-all for jobs. Full stop. In fact, it's likely going to be on the downturn if they can't get the housing situation and the growing income gap under control. If a couple wants kids, and they can't pull it off in the Bay Area and it's a high priority item, you can bet they are on the way out.
- jacquesm 8y agoYou could move to a much less expensive area with a reasonable job market. It's not all black-and-white, people stare themselves blind on what their take home pay is but quality of life is at least as important. I would not move to the valley for any kind of money given that it would stop me from having the life that I would like to live. It's not as if SV is the only place in the world with a job market. Though if you're early 20's and have nothing to lose in the world then it might be a good spot to start simply because what you make there in a couple of years can buy you a home cash somewhere else if you play it smart and keep your costs way down.
- Teknoman117 8y agoThis is what I did (as far as a job goes). While southern California is still really expensive by national standards, the cost of living is half that of the bay area while the pay isn't that much less.
- xevb3k 8y agoThis is something that seems to happen in most countries when they reach a certain stage of development (see Japan, Korea). I think it related to the general availability of contraception and that the work involved in caring for children has increased, while the number of carers has decreased. The trend toward migration means grandparents are often not nearby to help care for kids. This coupled with the fact that in most cases both parents need to work increases the difficulty in raising kids dramatically. I’ve also noticed that, while grandparents are not around to help, fathers often still don’t involve themselves in childcare. All this coupled with how expensive kids are means that if you can satisfy yourself with one child, people often do. Enough that it depresses the birth rate significantly in any case.
- tathougies 8y ago> fathers often still don’t involve themselves in childcare. Are people really living in marriages where the husband does nothing? This is a genuine question. My family is Indian, and I grew up in America, but from what I remember, my mom and dad spent most of their time taking care of my brother and I, whether that be by cooking, paying bills, cleaning the house, taking care of the car, driving us around, etc. Our grandparents lived in India, and only immigrated permanently in our teenage years, and both my parents worked (my mother even went to college). Indian culture is not known for an equal sharing of responsibilities, but that was my experience in my family. What are these husbands doing, if not taking care of their families? Watching TV? What? How is doing nothing productive for your family considered societally acceptable for men? As a man, I've always felt it was a societal imperative that everything I do directly benefit my wife and children.
- annywhey 8y agoThe stereotypical American setup is: Man helps by going to job, paying bills, doing "male-coded" household work(handyman, auto maintenance, etc.). Woman does "female-coded" equivalents(cooking, cleaning, shopping). In my own family the actual way it worked out was that both of them indulged their fixations and muddled through the rest without much discipline or mutual encouragement. This was imperfect but mostly worked for me up until my teen years, at that point I was neither something to indulge in or make plans with, unless one of them had concocted a story involving me - and then I was obliged to go along with it. That was not great for my psyche. And I presume in more dysfunctional families they end up getting into an argument about everything, or one is an abuser and gets away with doing less.
- throwawaymanbot 8y agoIn their zeal to make us all live in the 1950s socially, the GOP have created a nightmare situation, whereby the large businesses lobby them to make changes in their favor thus creating pollutions, that in turn destroys the sperm count of young males, so theres less children to teach about creationism. Ya have to laugh!
- Symmetry 8y agoHuh, I did a blog post about this just last night. Basically, people's personality has an impact on whether they have kids, personality is heritable, fertility won't be low forever given current conditions but who knows how conditions will change. http://hopefullyintersting.blogspot.com/2018/05/falling-fertility-rates-shouldnt-be.html http://hopefullyintersting.blogspot.com/2018/05/falling-fert...
- Analemma_ 8y ago> Basically, people's personality has an impact on whether they have kids, Maybe you address in your post, but as stated this doesn't make a lot of sense. Fertility is falling across all demographics and in all developed countries and has been for decades – are you saying everybody everywhere has experienced a personality shift over that time? And while fertility probably does have some genetic component, I think that's a small piece of it compared to prevailing economic conditions (having kids is friggin expensive and this generation is deeply in debt) and social mores (whether there's powerful religions pressure to have kids). Genetics neither explains this nor provides a way out of it.
- rossdavidh 8y agoWell presumably until you get to a certain level of development, the only personality trait that matters is whether you want to have sex or not, but after that point (relatively recently in generational terms) other factors matter. Kind of like how height is mostly determined by food availability, until you get to a point when sufficient food is available for everyone, and then genetic factors matter more.
- Symmetry 8y agoNo, I'm saying that both personality and material conditions have an effect on who has children. Or it might be that the personality traits that cause people to have children in 21st century America are different than those that caused people to have children in 19th century America. But in any event the traits that seem to cause people to have more children in current US conditions are substantially heritable. How many generations will it take? Quite possibly a lot but it'll happen eventually baring further external shocks. And there are lots of other factors involved as well. I think the differences in fertility between Germany and France are particularly illustrative.
- Karishma1234 8y agoNot true at all. Turns out that the poor people who actually cant afford to have kids are having more kids. Hispanic and Black growth is much higher than whites and asians. Asians with the highest income level have lowest birth rate. Given that it is mostly whites who have been leading in STEM there is a high chance that US will lose its competitive advantage in these fields.
- toomuchtodo 8y ago> Not true at all. Turns out that the poor people who actually cant afford to have kids are having more kids. Hispanic and Black growth is much higher than whites and asians. You're technically correct, but minorities are only slightly higher (birth rate wise) than whites. "It’s official: Minority babies are the majority among the nation’s infants, but only just" http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/06/23/its-official-minority-babies-are-the-majority-among-the-nations-infants-but-only-just/ http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/06/23/its-official... I would argue, based on historical data, that if wealth inequality was reduced in conjunction with higher education levels of minority women, their birth rates would dip again (higher income levels and higher education obtained by women are prime drivers of lower birth rates). This discounts cultural drivers, but my hunch is those decline with each passing generation (ie catholicism and its disdain for contraception/family planning).
- newfriend 8y agoThat article doesn't show birth rate, it shows total number of births. Considering the total population difference, that suggests minority birth rate is much higher as the parent said.
- bluedino 8y ago>> You're technically correct, but minorities are only slightly higher (birth rate wise) than whites. I'd bet the ones that have closer incomes to the black/hispanic population have closer birthrates
- Karishma1234 8y agoBirth rates work like compound interest. Even they are marginally higher it can mean they will grow at much rapid rate in next 20 years. Also what matters truly for a nation is working age population. New hires for Google in 20 years will represent far less whites. (If blacks and hispanics do not take to STEM in large numbers the total pool of candidates will be so less) Programs that apparently target wealth inequality such as subsidising fathering bastard children have actually hurt minority women as they tend to have more and more fatherless children who eventually end up in the world of abuse, drugs and crime.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- hateful 8y agoUnder His Eye
- vibrant 8y agoThis is driven by a very simple thing - pension funds and insurance. Back in the day (and in poor countries with no pension funds) people knew that they had to have children because otherwise nobody would support them when they were old and they'd die. Right now people are confident that they will get a pension when they are old, so there is no reason for them to have kids. They consider children as an inconvenience, miss out on the marvel of parenthood, and basically make the nation die off gradually. Plus of course - lowering wages and women having to work, thus making having a child a huge problem.
- wetpaws 8y agoPeople are driven by daycare costing between $1000-$2500 a month to start with.
- stevenwoo 8y agoWhat workers are you thinking of that have a pension besides certain federal/state/municipal employees. The average or median worker in the United States cannot depend on a pension, it is impractical for the vast majority of Americans to consider what we commonly think of as retirement and stopping work. http://time.com/money/4258451/retirement-savings-survey/ http://time.com/money/4258451/retirement-savings-survey/
- casefields 8y agoI work in film and television. We have pensions.
- aglavine 8y agoPeople blame capitalism, Trump...It might be mysterious forces are working here...World doesn't need more humans, and Nature seems to be adjusting to that.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- sixdimensional 8y agoAnybody have the statistics on infertility rates to compare? I'm specifically interested in biological infertility, excluding people who choose not to have children.
- pasbesoin 8y agoMy personal, anecdotal observation. This is the continuing legacy of the baby boomers. A counter-point, opposite of their parents, the so-named greatest generation. Come to the height of their careers in the 70's through the 90's. The decades of self. With Michael Douglas's character's "Greed is good!" as a centerpoint. They're where the wealth has gone. Leaving following generations without the security to settle down and raise families. Everyone wanted something for nothing. Well, you turned something into nothing. Sold your own kids and grandkids out. Speaking generally.
- tzahola 8y agoSo, what’s the plan when the boomer menace is over in 15-20 years? Where will their wealth go when they die?
- pasbesoin 8y agoA lot of it appears to be going to chronic, late, and end-stage medical care. And it's not the aides providing 24/7 coverage, who are getting rich. (Having been dealing increasingly with this, recently with some friends. Most of the aides are immigrants who are making relatively low hourly wages. The bills, however, can (well) exceed the full household expenses for a staunchly middle-class family of four. And many eventual estates have to pay those until they're more or less broke, when the government picks up.) I need to reduce my commenting. This here is anecdote. And I'm pretty steamed about what I've been watching happen in the U.S., for the past 3+ decades.
- user5994461 8y agoI believe you described the US case. In Europe with the free healthcare, the elderly can be kept on care for a very long time, all covered by the taxes of the younger workers. This is gonna become a huge hole in the budget.
- magduf 8y ago>So, what’s the plan when the boomer menace is over in 15-20 years? Where will their wealth go when they die? China, that's where. China will become the new world superpower, filling the vacuum left by the US in its decline. That's the legacy that the Boomers have left behind.
- matte_black 8y agoCan’t say I don’t see this as a good thing. Given how some people won’t be able to survive in the post-automation future 50-100 years from now, the best thing for them is probably to never be born.
- jotm 8y agoDurr Durr but the next Einstein
- matte_black 8y agoIf we were serious about finding the next Einstein we would be attempting to maximize the pairing of individuals who could produce such a person. This may someday be feasible, as genetic testing and online dating begin to intersect, but the time is not yet.
- lalos 8y agoPlease watch Gattaca, very relevant to your comment.
- dayofthedaleks 8y agoSo... the Bene Gesserit breeding program to produce the Kwizatz Haderach, then.
- magduf 8y agoAFAIK, Einstein was not the product of a pair of super-geniuses. It doesn't work that way. Of course, you're not likely to get an Einstein if a bunch of uneducated idiots breed either, but most really remarkable people like that come from pretty "normal" parents, though admittedly usually from family backgrounds that are at least middle-class, and not impoverished, and where they had good opportunities and education. If you want to increase your chances of making more Einsteins, there's two things you have to do as a society: 1) minimize poverty, illiteracy, poor education, etc., and 2) increase the birthrate (while making sure as many of those kids as possible grow up in economically and emotionally stable homes). You're not going to get Einsteins from a bunch of dirt-poor subsistence farmers, nor from a tiny cabal of wealthy people.
- smaddox 8y ago> "The rate has generally been below replacement since 1971" And yet population has grown by 120 million [1]. There are a lot of problems in the world, but I don't think low fertility rates is one of them. http://www.multpl.com/united-states-population/table http://www.multpl.com/united-states-population/table
- gxs 8y agoI think that's due to immigration - not birthrates.
- cjbprime 8y agoThere's also a lag associated with fertility rate decreases. Even if the children-per-woman rate has decreased sharply, the population can still be increasing for decades afterwards, because there are still a sharply higher absolute number of women in the relatively-lower-rate birthing generation, thanks to the rate having been higher in the past when they were born. Not caring about lower fertility rates because you don't realize that there's a temporary lag keeping the population increase high seems very careless.
- smaddox 8y agoFar better for the population to decrease naturally by choice, than due to wars over limited resources.
- circa 8y agoThe beginning of "The Handmaid's Tale"
- Knufen 8y agoBoth the American government and the rest of the western world should strive toward policies rewarding birth instead of limiting it.
- FlyingSideKick 8y agoI see this as a good thing. Hopefully by helping other countries implement plans that engender educational and employment opportunities for women we can finally hit “peak child” and begin to slowly shrink our global population over time.
- otakucode 8y agoAlmost like a rabidly anti-sex society resulting in people having significantly less sex than at any point historically known might have some sort of negative consequences, huh? I'm sure the rampant depression, anxiety, and other things known to be a consequence of reduced sexual activity are all caused by something else though. The fact you could start up the Youth Anti-Sex League from Orwell's 1984 and no one would even bat an eye is probably just a fluke. Carry on.
- parentanonymous 8y agoFor what it's worth, I've got two kids and live in a 2bd. apartment in SF. I'll never be able to afford a house in the city, but I like my job and I'm not willing to commute from the outermost burbs I could afford. And it's totally worth it. Yes, having kids brings some limitations with it, but it's also one of the very best experiences that one can have. I hear a lot of young professionals express fear that they can't afford "a big enough house" or that "the city isn't good for kids." Here's the thing, the kids do not care. They don't think they they live in a small apartment. They just think their home is next door to the bakery that sells their favorite oatmeal cookies. That they can walk to beautiful parks and libraries and schools. It's just normal to them, they're happy, and they aren't comparing themselves to the 50's era stereotypes of what "lifestyle" is "healthy" for kids. SF is a great place for kids. All the parks and rec programs are so much fun and so cheap, the kids here have access to the abundant cultural and educational resources that aren't available at any price in most of the world. I say this not because anyone should be convinced to have a kid. But, if you want to have children and the thing that is holding you back is a materialistic fear that you won't be able to "provide a good enough life" for them, or that the city "won't be a good place for them," just know that isn't necessarily true. The best way I know how to express this for young urban professionals is to compare it to world travel. You probably know people from your home town who have never left, and how their world view is kind of small. It's not that they need to move away from home, but you know from experience how much traveling has opened your mind and enriched your life, and you wish they would choose to have that experience too. If they say to you "oh, but travel is so expensive," you know that isn't necessarily true, you can have an amazing travel experience on a dime if you want to. Parenting is a lot like that. What kids care about is having parents that love them and care about them. If you can do that part, they won't care too much about the rest.
- jarjoura 8y agoI think city living in SF is super great for people who can afford the extra cost. Right now you have 2 kids in a 2 bedroom, and at some point that is going to be pretty cramped for everyone. Also the number of families that put a strain on the system is pretty stressful. For example, getting a slot into the school lottery for Lowell High is crazy competitive. Yet, I agree, nothing beats walking them to day care and then to work and having a dog to play with in a park a few blocks away. Having access to some of the best food in the world and lots of evening family friendly events is quite a perk and a dream. Another thing though that I hear a lot, people who choose to live in the subburbs here also find the "unique" culture of SF a bit much for a kid to get exposed to so early. A bit too gritty and real lol, but I applaud you for being so open.
- rolandog 8y agoI'm no economist, but I've been mulling over some of the common problems the majority of citizens of modern countries are all facing. I think that most of them (low purchasing power, high cost of living, high house prices) seem to stem from the effects of our collective activity and lack of large-scale and long-term organization and planning; it doesn't help that we've been lately -- as a society -- focused on optimizing for GDP, which is as an indicator of how well a country's economy is faring. I'd like to say my opinion, and would welcome any educated response, but I fear a backlash or repercussion. This is something I've been thinking about in terms of game theory, and though they may seem a bit crazy, I would invite everyone to consider them before disregarding them as conspiracy theories. I believe there is an interest in keeping the majority of people uneducated, busy and plentiful: in essence almost everyone is easily replaceable, and the majority of the population have to settle for meager wages. However, in a scenario where people were to be educated and scarce, I posit that inequality would tend to disappear as people would have a higher bargaining power, a likelier scenario to organize or respond, and a higher quality of life. So, even if this hurts housing, healthcare and industries indirectly (less infrastructure to be built, babies to be delivered and products to be sold), I'm glad that fertility rates are below replacement level because this indicates -- in my opinion -- that average quality of life will increase.
- techsin101 8y agoCouldn't agree more
- wokky 8y ago"The decline in the rate from 2016 to 2017 was the largest single-year decline since 2010," the CDC said ... Historically, the number of babies born in the U.S. has gradually risen since a sharp decline in the early 1970s. Particularly given the parallels, I'm surprised there's so little talk of the political climate in connection with these episodes. I expected this to happen.
- swyx 8y agohow much is attributable to a declining marriage rate? is there a well studied ratio of marriage rate to fertility rate? maybe by breaking down the "funnel" we can have a better discussion of causes.
- eric24234 8y agoUBI is the only way forward .