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The correlation with wealth is much more consistent. Human beings have less children as they and their societies become wealthier (up to a certain point). In a
by api 7y ago
The correlation with wealth is much more consistent. Human beings have less children as they and their societies become wealthier (up to a certain point).
In any case to make this argument work one must also argue that increased fertility is always good for fitness. If we all had children like we did in the 1800s today we probably would face some kind of Malthusian catastrophe fairly soon, an event that could easily lead to the deaths of far more people than the current more restricted population and the extinction of far more genetic lineages. It may be extremely adaptive to reduce population growth during times of abundance so as to escape the Malthusian treadmill and instead leverage that abundance for longer term investments in the future.
If we're indulging in evolutionary psychology just so stories it seems reasonable to hypothesize that human beings might have some kind of built in population regulation valve. When abundance is high we have less children and invest more in them and when abundance is low we have more to try to brute force our genes into the future. All evolutionary lineages have suffered multiple bottleneck events, so it seems logical to at least consider that such mechanisms may have evolved to cushion and dampen out these fluctuations.
But of course that may not be true. Correlation does not equal causation. The difference between pop evolutionary psychologizing and actual evolutionary biology is that the latter is built on physical evidence in the form of the fossil record and genomics. The former can only look at the present and concoct stories that might perhaps explain it if true.
- bordercases 7y agoChildren and wealth form a U-curve in the USA. Poor people: lots. Rich people: lots. Middle class: few to none. The middle class is in the unique position of craving upward mobility while being given the majority of the tax pressure and increasingly narrow means of differentiating a child among other children in a global market for an educated class. They also form the bulwark of conspicuous consumption dollars even if tastes have become more refined over time to not plainly state it as such. These are all factors which may correlate overall with societal wealth but are nonetheless not necessary to it, nor may it be necessary to abide to these incentives. I can see a conservative middle class producing many children but mitigating these expenses through greater social cohesion – which could mean more connected networks to take advantage of for labor placement rather than costly degrees to signal to HR departments that can't afford to put faces to names; or maybe having more people to rely on if you need to alleviate the time-pressures of raising a child – as well a different sense of what makes life worth living beyond one's toys or "experiences" which are passive engagements with scenery or momentary exhilarations.
- api 7y agoI can't find any data backing up this U curve. Fertility declines with household income and levels off about about $100k, at least in the USA. It's hard to find data on the very rich but I'm not aware of people like Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, or Jeff Bezos having abnormally large numbers of children. Elon Musk has four AFAIK but even that seems like an outlier on the high end. The last point is possible but speculative. Where I live conservatives tend to be solidly in the suburbanite camp. They want their own house, their own yard, their own family, etc. and would never opt into some kind of commune even with very like-minded people. I've seen people living as you describe in more granola circles. The best example of what you describe in more religious-conservative circles is the classical Israeli Kibbutz. Look it up. It's pretty interesting. They've changed a bit though in modern times and apparently are less egalitarian and commune-like and more like Zaibatsus.