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Student loans, housing costs, job prospects, healthcare, childcare. People are making a rational decision to avoid children they can’t afford. We as a society n

Student 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 ago
Exactly. 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 ago
  It'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 ago
    I 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).
      - SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
        That's exactly what I'm saying - the goalpost for what "doing well" is has moved, we now expect more of ourselves because of the visible relative affluence of our immediately previous generations. We don't see how the baby boomers started, but we see how they are ending, and that's set the goal for our own success.
  - wetpaws 8y ago
    >3rd world/developing countries have extremely high birth rates Their birth rates are also declining and doing it with increasing speed.
  - enraged_camel 8y ago
    3rd world has high birth rates because: - lack of birth control and related education - desire for “free” manual labor to work stuff such as farm fields - desire to ensure continuity of one’s family tree (i.e. high mortality rates for infants and children due dangerous conditions and/or lack of healthcare)
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    More precisely, it seems to be to improve the strength of social safety nets (that correlates with standard of living, but also explains places in the developed world where the average standard of living is high by developed world standards but the birthrate is also high for the developed world.) The reason for this may be that, in the absence of public social safety net, family (and particularly close family) serve as a safety net, and particularly children, once they are able to be productive, can be a kind of safety net against infirmity for their parents.
- avip 8y ago
  That does not correlate well with the facts.
- Alex3917 8y ago
  > most species reproduce when resources are abundant I dunno, fungi usually don't produce mushrooms until right before their host is about to die or their substrate is about to be depleted. Reproducing takes a lot of energy, so individuals usually wait until they have no other choice. Humans seem to be the same way. E.g. low-income kids go through puberty sooner, presumably due to having poorer health. And usually if someone starts drinking a lot or otherwise abusing drugs, they get really hot for a year or two before they start looking sickly and terrible. At the population level species keep reproducing until they use up all the available resources, and then the populations collapse, but on the level of individuals the dynamics seem to work in almost the opposite way.
- clairity 8y ago
  but the scarcity here is artificial, induced by unfairness in economic opportunity in spite of more than abundant resources economy-wide. if we had a more fair economic system, more families would feel economically secure enough to have children. the minimum level of economical security required rises proportionally with wealth and income disparity, because our economic outcomes are inextricably tied to each other through inflation and the like.
zerostar07 8y ago
Then why is Germany, Sweden, Spain, Japan, Finland etc significantly below the US?
- freyir 8y ago
  Historically, children generated profit. These days, in developed countries, children are expensive. They cost money and time (e.g., years that you would otherwise spend going to school, building a career).
  - gowld 8y ago
    Historically, parents were far less productive than we are now. People now just enjoy more material things than historically.
  - dagw 8y ago
    These days, in developed countries, children are expensive. Sure, but they're far cheaper in both Sweden and Finland than in the US, yet people are still having fewer children there, so it can't simply be a cost issue.
    - freyir 8y ago
      The monetary cost of a Swedish child might be lower (though to some extent, the cost is just distributed across the population in the form of taxes), but the opportunity cost is not. Scandinavian countries have high rates of post-secondary education, which delays parenthood, and even with progressive workforce policies, having children can slow career advancement [1]. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2004/sep/22/books.familyandrelationships https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2004/sep/22/books.famil...
- mhneu 8y ago
  Fewer low-skilled immigrants in those countries compared to the US, is the usual explanation given. The Economist loves to talk about this topic. One recent example: https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2017/08/30/immigrants-boost-americas-birth-rate https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2017/08/30/immigran...
rashomon 8y ago
Right in that bucket and don't think I'll ever afford being able to rear a child from a financial position of "comfort". Savings to the hilt but it's a cash flow problem. I also don't want to leave my wife and I without a child but all I envision are bars of my own making.
- jacquesm 8y ago
  There's a really nice scene in the movie Idiocracy about that sort of phenomenon.
confuseddesi 8y ago
In general, the richer someone is, the less likely they are to have as many children. See https://www.economist.com/node/21561112 https://www.economist.com/node/21561112.
- shredprez 8y ago
  Doesn’t that still track? Having children makes it harder to get/stay rich, not having children makes it easier.
  - Raphmedia 8y ago
    When you have nothing in your life and none of your achievements will outlast you, the prospect of having children is more interesting. There's also the whole "not being aware contraception exists because you couldn't go to school" thing.
    - jotm 8y ago
      "not being aware contraception exists even if you went to school" haha
      - Raphmedia 8y ago
        "going to school but not paying attention because you work two jobs and take care of your siblings"
        otakucode 8y ago
        "going to school and paying attention but being taught that abstinence is the only effective form of birth control and that condoms fail regularly so why bother" All so parents don't have to deal with the horror-movie scenario of their adolescent kids having a responsible, happy sex life.
    - smileysteve 8y ago
      "contraception is expensive and pulling out will work"
coldtea 8y ago
>Student loans, housing costs, job prospects, healthcare, childcare. People are making a rational decision to avoid children they can’t afford. Well, people in the US made way more children when they made very few money, and lived 10 together in tiny houses and apartments. And they still do in the developing world. So it can't be just costs.
- vkou 8y ago
  They also did so in an environment where childcare was free (Because grandma was doing it for you.) Most people don't live with grandma anymore, and the government will happily take your children away if you don't keep every second of their lives supervised by an adult, prior to the age of 13.
  - Karishma1234 8y ago
    There are more grandmas alive than ever in past. What is stopping you from doing it now ? Go live with grandma.
    - dagw 8y ago
      Grandma is either still working or far too busy living her own healthy and active life to want to be an unpaid full time nanny.
      - gowld 8y ago
        Why would she be unpaid, and why isn't family part of an active life, and why is grandma so much wealthier than her children?
        kaitai 8y ago
        Because Grandma had her mom watch her kids so didn't spend $14,400/year on infant care, and her mom had time because she got fired from her school teacher job the day she got married! Today's mom, on the other hand, moved to San Francisco to get her data scientist/devops/whatever job (there were not any in her area of northern Minnesota and she kind of liked CA after going to Stanford) and Grandma doesn't want to move to CA because it's going to fall into the ocean, you know.
prostoalex 8y ago
This is interpreting previous decades as "normal" and current status quo as "abnormal". Hypothetically, though, if previous generations (a) did not need as many farm hands, (b) did not need as many factory workers, (c) had access to cheap birth control and (d) enjoyed low child mortality rates, do you think their high birth rates would've stayed as high?
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
ghostcluster 8y ago
It's not just a US issue. Fertility drops below replacement rate all across the world in urban settings with modern economies, from Germany to Japan to China, even trending in sub saharan Africa https://www.ageing.ox.ac.uk/blog/Is-fertility-stalling-in-sub-saharan-africa https://www.ageing.ox.ac.uk/blog/Is-fertility-stalling-in-su...
- martinpw 8y ago
  That article is not particularly reassuring. Although the rate is declining in sub-saharan africa, it is very slow and seems to be stalling out. The example of Niger is particularly concerning: [...] the shrinking arable land beset by frequent drought, is supporting a rapidly expanding population. [...] expected to grow from some 16 million today to 55 million in 2050, reaching 140 million by the end of the century A 10x increase in population, decreasing farmland, and then add the effects of climate change on top...
  - ghostcluster 8y ago
    It will mean a big problem for Europe as the level of outflow is likely set to accelerate over the coming decades. Who knows what the political consequences will be..
coliveira 8y ago
The reason is that the US doesn't provide support for families. Childcare, maternity leave, health care support, these are things that could make it possible for working parents to have more kids. The US is doing just the opposite.
- a_tractor 8y ago
  Not true, you just need to be in poverty and keep the man out of the house and you get all of those things with welfare. The people not having kids and not receiving support are the ones paying the taxes which support a system that does not benefit them.
- tropo 8y ago
  The US didn't have that stuff a century ago either, and the birth rate was higher. You may wish for those things, but they aren't required. Some EU countries have those things, and their birth rates are even lower than the US birth rate. Those things actually contribute to the problem. They drive up taxes, causing more families to feel that they need two incomes and overtime and a bit more waiting.
  - thex10 8y ago
    > The US didn't have that stuff a century ago either, and the birth rate was higher. Ah yes, back when one (1) unexceptional salary could actually support a few humans, shelter, etc. > They drive up taxes, causing more families to feel they need two incomes... I’m pretty sure the stagnation of wages while costs of living kept increasing played a way bigger part of this than a few percentage points of tax changes.
  - downrightmike 8y ago
    1917 US infant mortality was 14.1%, 2011 was 5.9. more kids are surviving overall. https://www.jstor.org/stable/4575212?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents https://www.jstor.org/stable/4575212?seq=1#page_scan_tab_con... https://www.statista.com/statistics/252064/us-infant-mortality-rate-by-ethnicity-2011/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/252064/us-infant-mortali...
randyrand 8y ago
low reproductive rates are good for global quality of life and the environment. High reproductive rates should not be encouraged.
Eridrus 8y ago
Interestingly the US fertility rate started declining in 2008, and Canada's hit a peak in 2008 and went down from there. Also interesting: China's fertility rate is apparently lower than the US's. https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&met_y=sp_dyn_tfrt_in&hl=en&dl=en#!ctype=l&strail=false&bcs=d&nselm=h&met_y=sp_dyn_tfrt_in&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&rdim=country&idim=country:USA:IND:CHN:CAN&ifdim=country&hl=en_US&dl=en&ind=false https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&...
- chillacy 8y ago
  Not surprising if you know about the One Child policy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-child_policy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-child_policy
  - Eridrus 8y ago
    That's what I thought originally, but if you look at the data it doesn't actually line up, chinese fertility rates were already well off their peak by 1979. Of course, who knows if the chinese data is even accurate.

enraged_camel 8y ago

Exactly. 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 ago
It'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 ago
  I 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).
    - SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
      That's exactly what I'm saying - the goalpost for what "doing well" is has moved, we now expect more of ourselves because of the visible relative affluence of our immediately previous generations. We don't see how the baby boomers started, but we see how they are ending, and that's set the goal for our own success.
- wetpaws 8y ago
  >3rd world/developing countries have extremely high birth rates Their birth rates are also declining and doing it with increasing speed.
- enraged_camel 8y ago
  3rd world has high birth rates because: - lack of birth control and related education - desire for “free” manual labor to work stuff such as farm fields - desire to ensure continuity of one’s family tree (i.e. high mortality rates for infants and children due dangerous conditions and/or lack of healthcare)
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  More precisely, it seems to be to improve the strength of social safety nets (that correlates with standard of living, but also explains places in the developed world where the average standard of living is high by developed world standards but the birthrate is also high for the developed world.) The reason for this may be that, in the absence of public social safety net, family (and particularly close family) serve as a safety net, and particularly children, once they are able to be productive, can be a kind of safety net against infirmity for their parents.
avip 8y ago
That does not correlate well with the facts.
Alex3917 8y ago
> most species reproduce when resources are abundant I dunno, fungi usually don't produce mushrooms until right before their host is about to die or their substrate is about to be depleted. Reproducing takes a lot of energy, so individuals usually wait until they have no other choice. Humans seem to be the same way. E.g. low-income kids go through puberty sooner, presumably due to having poorer health. And usually if someone starts drinking a lot or otherwise abusing drugs, they get really hot for a year or two before they start looking sickly and terrible. At the population level species keep reproducing until they use up all the available resources, and then the populations collapse, but on the level of individuals the dynamics seem to work in almost the opposite way.
clairity 8y ago
but the scarcity here is artificial, induced by unfairness in economic opportunity in spite of more than abundant resources economy-wide. if we had a more fair economic system, more families would feel economically secure enough to have children. the minimum level of economical security required rises proportionally with wealth and income disparity, because our economic outcomes are inextricably tied to each other through inflation and the like.

zerostar07 8y ago

Then why is Germany, Sweden, Spain, Japan, Finland etc significantly below the US?

freyir 8y ago
Historically, children generated profit. These days, in developed countries, children are expensive. They cost money and time (e.g., years that you would otherwise spend going to school, building a career).
- gowld 8y ago
  Historically, parents were far less productive than we are now. People now just enjoy more material things than historically.
- dagw 8y ago
  These days, in developed countries, children are expensive. Sure, but they're far cheaper in both Sweden and Finland than in the US, yet people are still having fewer children there, so it can't simply be a cost issue.
  - freyir 8y ago
    The monetary cost of a Swedish child might be lower (though to some extent, the cost is just distributed across the population in the form of taxes), but the opportunity cost is not. Scandinavian countries have high rates of post-secondary education, which delays parenthood, and even with progressive workforce policies, having children can slow career advancement [1]. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2004/sep/22/books.familyandrelationships https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2004/sep/22/books.famil...
mhneu 8y ago
Fewer low-skilled immigrants in those countries compared to the US, is the usual explanation given. The Economist loves to talk about this topic. One recent example: https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2017/08/30/immigrants-boost-americas-birth-rate https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2017/08/30/immigran...

rashomon 8y ago

Right in that bucket and don't think I'll ever afford being able to rear a child from a financial position of "comfort". Savings to the hilt but it's a cash flow problem. I also don't want to leave my wife and I without a child but all I envision are bars of my own making.

jacquesm 8y ago
There's a really nice scene in the movie Idiocracy about that sort of phenomenon.

confuseddesi 8y ago

In general, the richer someone is, the less likely they are to have as many children. See https://www.economist.com/node/21561112 https://www.economist.com/node/21561112.

shredprez 8y ago
Doesn’t that still track? Having children makes it harder to get/stay rich, not having children makes it easier.
- Raphmedia 8y ago
  When you have nothing in your life and none of your achievements will outlast you, the prospect of having children is more interesting. There's also the whole "not being aware contraception exists because you couldn't go to school" thing.
  - jotm 8y ago
    "not being aware contraception exists even if you went to school" haha
    - Raphmedia 8y ago
      "going to school but not paying attention because you work two jobs and take care of your siblings"
      - otakucode 8y ago
        "going to school and paying attention but being taught that abstinence is the only effective form of birth control and that condoms fail regularly so why bother" All so parents don't have to deal with the horror-movie scenario of their adolescent kids having a responsible, happy sex life.
  - smileysteve 8y ago
    "contraception is expensive and pulling out will work"

coldtea 8y ago

>Student loans, housing costs, job prospects, healthcare, childcare. People are making a rational decision to avoid children they can’t afford. Well, people in the US made way more children when they made very few money, and lived 10 together in tiny houses and apartments. And they still do in the developing world. So it can't be just costs.

vkou 8y ago
They also did so in an environment where childcare was free (Because grandma was doing it for you.) Most people don't live with grandma anymore, and the government will happily take your children away if you don't keep every second of their lives supervised by an adult, prior to the age of 13.
- Karishma1234 8y ago
  There are more grandmas alive than ever in past. What is stopping you from doing it now ? Go live with grandma.
  - dagw 8y ago
    Grandma is either still working or far too busy living her own healthy and active life to want to be an unpaid full time nanny.
    - gowld 8y ago
      Why would she be unpaid, and why isn't family part of an active life, and why is grandma so much wealthier than her children?
      - kaitai 8y ago
        Because Grandma had her mom watch her kids so didn't spend $14,400/year on infant care, and her mom had time because she got fired from her school teacher job the day she got married! Today's mom, on the other hand, moved to San Francisco to get her data scientist/devops/whatever job (there were not any in her area of northern Minnesota and she kind of liked CA after going to Stanford) and Grandma doesn't want to move to CA because it's going to fall into the ocean, you know.

prostoalex 8y ago

This is interpreting previous decades as "normal" and current status quo as "abnormal". Hypothetically, though, if previous generations (a) did not need as many farm hands, (b) did not need as many factory workers, (c) had access to cheap birth control and (d) enjoyed low child mortality rates, do you think their high birth rates would've stayed as high?

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

ghostcluster 8y ago

It's not just a US issue. Fertility drops below replacement rate all across the world in urban settings with modern economies, from Germany to Japan to China, even trending in sub saharan Africa https://www.ageing.ox.ac.uk/blog/Is-fertility-stalling-in-sub-saharan-africa https://www.ageing.ox.ac.uk/blog/Is-fertility-stalling-in-su...

martinpw 8y ago
That article is not particularly reassuring. Although the rate is declining in sub-saharan africa, it is very slow and seems to be stalling out. The example of Niger is particularly concerning: [...] the shrinking arable land beset by frequent drought, is supporting a rapidly expanding population. [...] expected to grow from some 16 million today to 55 million in 2050, reaching 140 million by the end of the century A 10x increase in population, decreasing farmland, and then add the effects of climate change on top...
- ghostcluster 8y ago
  It will mean a big problem for Europe as the level of outflow is likely set to accelerate over the coming decades. Who knows what the political consequences will be..

coliveira 8y ago

The reason is that the US doesn't provide support for families. Childcare, maternity leave, health care support, these are things that could make it possible for working parents to have more kids. The US is doing just the opposite.

a_tractor 8y ago
Not true, you just need to be in poverty and keep the man out of the house and you get all of those things with welfare. The people not having kids and not receiving support are the ones paying the taxes which support a system that does not benefit them.
tropo 8y ago
The US didn't have that stuff a century ago either, and the birth rate was higher. You may wish for those things, but they aren't required. Some EU countries have those things, and their birth rates are even lower than the US birth rate. Those things actually contribute to the problem. They drive up taxes, causing more families to feel that they need two incomes and overtime and a bit more waiting.
- thex10 8y ago
  > The US didn't have that stuff a century ago either, and the birth rate was higher. Ah yes, back when one (1) unexceptional salary could actually support a few humans, shelter, etc. > They drive up taxes, causing more families to feel they need two incomes... I’m pretty sure the stagnation of wages while costs of living kept increasing played a way bigger part of this than a few percentage points of tax changes.
- downrightmike 8y ago
  1917 US infant mortality was 14.1%, 2011 was 5.9. more kids are surviving overall. https://www.jstor.org/stable/4575212?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents https://www.jstor.org/stable/4575212?seq=1#page_scan_tab_con... https://www.statista.com/statistics/252064/us-infant-mortality-rate-by-ethnicity-2011/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/252064/us-infant-mortali...

randyrand 8y ago

low reproductive rates are good for global quality of life and the environment. High reproductive rates should not be encouraged.

Eridrus 8y ago

Interestingly the US fertility rate started declining in 2008, and Canada's hit a peak in 2008 and went down from there. Also interesting: China's fertility rate is apparently lower than the US's. https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&met_y=sp_dyn_tfrt_in&hl=en&dl=en#!ctype=l&strail=false&bcs=d&nselm=h&met_y=sp_dyn_tfrt_in&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&rdim=country&idim=country:USA:IND:CHN:CAN&ifdim=country&hl=en_US&dl=en&ind=false https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&...

chillacy 8y ago
Not surprising if you know about the One Child policy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-child_policy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-child_policy
- Eridrus 8y ago
  That's what I thought originally, but if you look at the data it doesn't actually line up, chinese fertility rates were already well off their peak by 1979. Of course, who knows if the chinese data is even accurate.