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You can't deny that there is a reduction in birth rates. Many policies combine to make this the case: 1. Supplementing housing prices or guaranteeing mortgages
by cheez 8y ago
You can't deny that there is a reduction in birth rates. Many policies combine to make this the case:
1. Supplementing housing prices or guaranteeing mortgages makes them unaffordable. People cannot afford to have kids
2. The severity of the divorce process makes people unlikely to want to marry. Marriage rates have declined. Less marriages, less kids.
3. Helicopter money keeps real wages down. Cannot afford to have kids.
You may say these are not explicitly "anti-natalist" but in effect they are.
- ecwilson 8y agoI don't think it's a bad thing that the birthrate in the US has gone down. In general, it means women have more opportunities, and that's a good thing. More access to birth control. More women choosing to start a career. They didn't used to have that choice -- they were dependent on marrying a man for financial security.
- DoreenMichele 8y agoSomeone who was some years older than me and had been a hippy once told me something like "TV went off at 9pm. There wasn't much to do after 9pm other than sex and drugs." We now have the internet available 24/7. You can have live conversation with people around the world at any time of the day or night. You can get a lot of your sexual and emotional needs met through some means other than a relationship in meat space. Historically, the default assumption was you got married and presumably the result would be children. We had a lot of cultural norms, like shot gun weddings, to deal with the reality that birth control mostly wasn't a thing and there were consequences to getting your needs met. This was part of why we generally insisted on standards like no sex before marriage. A lot has changed over the years. For good and for bad.
- cheez 8y agoSure, the above are not the only reasons.