7 ms·
declining fertility rate seems to be a universal characteristic of economic development. The elimination of poverty requires universal provision of education,
by hunglee2 5y ago
declining fertility rate seems to be a universal characteristic of economic development.
The elimination of poverty requires universal provision of education, women get educated, have less (no kids), birth rate drops and keeps dropping below the threshold of population stability.
I don't think there is any example of a society that has managed to reverse this trend. Maybe Ceaucescu Romania which at one point banned contraception and abortion, leading of course to the orphan crisis of the 1980's. Counter intuitively, devastating wars / famine also lead to post-crisis population boom, perhaps because education / career are entirely disrupted.
We probably need to think seriously about making people outside of the natural womb, can't see another way to reverse this trend outside of the above mentioned measures / circumstances
- morganslaw 5y agoI understand Israel has a booming population: https://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/israel-population https://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/israel-populatio... Israel is also booming economically as it is the 24th in terms of GDP per capita now and rising: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi... Israel has the 2nd largest per capita VC investment in the world: https://news.crunchbase.com/news/countries-most-startup-investment/ https://news.crunchbase.com/news/countries-most-startup-inve... What are they doing that others are not?
- throwaway6734 5y agoIirc Israel's large Orthodox community is responsible for most of the growth https://www.timesofisrael.com/haredi-population-growing-twice-as-fast-as-total-israeli-population-report/ https://www.timesofisrael.com/haredi-population-growing-twic...
- refurb 5y agoCombination of religious groups that favor big families plus immigration from low income countries where large families are still commmon?
- hunglee2 5y agotwo factors in Israel might explain 1) immigration - of course Israel grants the right of every Jewish person to live in Israel, in fact paid an incentive to relocate. Presumably there a constant inflow from the Jewish diaspora and their descendants which might supplement the population 2) orthodox families, I'm guessing, have outsized families. Where women do not participate in the market economy, they end up having lots of kids instead Again, no idea on the percentage contributions of either of these cases, but it might go some way toward explaining Israel's countervailing trend!
- unmole 5y ago> Where women do not participate in the market economy It's not just women. Somewhere around half of Haredi men do not work.
- User23 5y ago> Somewhere around half of Haredi men do not work. Or, stated less pejoratively, somewhere around half of Haredi men devote their lives to scholarship.
- satronaut 5y ago
- jtbayly 5y agoWhat in the world? They were in education jobs until Covid, and now they’re in commerce jobs, but they’re obviously not productive members of society because of their religion?!?
- unmole 5y ago> they’re obviously not productive members of society because of their religion? As shocking as it might sound, yes.
- jtbayly 5y agoWell when there are still workers in Israel because of them you can come back and apologize for claiming they weren’t being productive. It’s laughable to claim that people producing literal other people aren’t being productive.
- unmole 5y agoAgain over half of Haredi men choose to live off state handouts. Their women are anyways treated as second class citizens. If this remains the case, with their increasing numbers they will need more handouts which paid for by the rest of the population. It's not hard to see why this isn't sustainable. TFR amongst secular Jewish women in Israel is 2.5. That's comfortably above the replacement level.
- satronaut 5y agono, they're not productive because they live off of goverment handouts. ANYBODY who takes more than they give is unproductive. Middleschoolers are unproductive, incarcerated felons are unproductive, people living off government grants are unproductive
- 5y ago
- stu2010 5y agoIsrael has a large and growing ultra-Orthodox population, with an average of 7.1 children per woman among the ultra-Orthodox Jews: https://en.idi.org.il/articles/25385 https://en.idi.org.il/articles/25385 The US has a similar fertility-focused religious movement, but it's much more fringe and relatively smaller. Religious beliefs can drive super-high birth rates in pretty much any society, but aside from Israel, higher education has been associated with lower rates of religious belief. Declining religious participation and intensity of belief may well be contributing to the fall in global birth-rates.
- juskrey 5y agoPeople are quick suggesting it is Orthodox, but in reality non-religious women in Israel have a fertility rate of 2.5, and overall contribution mounts over time as generations pass.
- baybal2 5y ago
- FerociousTimes 5y agoAt the expense of growing and ultimately suffocating population density. Eventually, they will have to make adjustments to offset this problem.
- morganslaw 5y agoCouldn't they just expand into neighboring countries and push the others out? Israel has a super well equipped military.
- FerociousTimes 5y agoOh man, don't lure me into this political flamewars, esp. the most vicious of all the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
- throwaway5371 5y agoi guess its brave new world time, we should just make incubators and control the fetus oxygen according to the iq needs
- hunglee2 5y agoyes! we need to embrace this, probably only way to keep population numbers stable
- snarf21 5y agoSerious question: Why do we need population numbers to be stable? Declining doesn't mean extinction. 8 billion people are doing a lot of damage to this planet that wasn't being done when we had 1 billion. A lot of people have publicly said they won't bring a child in a world that is dying.
- hunglee2 5y agoextinction is indeed the risk. Population collapse is slow decline, steep fall, then exponential decrease. Agree with you on danger to the carrying capacity of the earth, but moderating population size seems instead to set an irreversible trend
- FpUser 5y agoThere is no proof it is irreversible as we have ever better means of control.
- FerociousTimes 5y ago> Population collapse is slow decline, steep fall, then exponential decrease. You make it sound like this progression is inevitable like every slow decline is followed by a steep fall and then finally exponential bust which seems not very convincing.
- fundad 5y agoFunny thing is impacts of austerity often constrains economic growth. People have their reasons for or against economic growth so it’s not an unadorned good. Someone like me with retirement savings wants economic growth so I support pro-natal and pro- immigration policy.
- blagie 5y agoI'm not sure it's quite universal, and I'm not quite sure it's related to women being educated. From where I sit, the relative cost of kids goes up. In major cities: - Kids are expected to have their own bedrooms - The cost of a 3-bedroom apartment is beyond the means of most families of child-bearing age - For most people, life is debt-driven. Mortgage. Credit card. College. Etc. - Work is out-of-the-house, so kids need child care, which is a major expense. With schools, kids still need child care after school. This is different from kids hanging out on a farm. I'd like a big family, but I can't afford a big family. Ironically, my (poor) ancestors could. A lot of this has to do with issues like zoning and building codes as well. Homes are /expensive/ to build in the US.
- rdtwo 5y agoChild care 0-5 is like a second mortgage. I paid more for one kid than I did for mortgage- in Seattle of all places. If you have 2 it’s like having 3 houses. That’s not affordable or sustainable in Major cities
- sJ646U9k6c6gME9 5y ago
- patentatt 5y agoSame here. My nanny makes more than I did at my first job out of college as an electrical engineer (wasn't long enough ago for inflation to have that large of an impact either). Childcare is our highest monthly expense, more so than housing (mortgage). I consider myself fairly fortunate, I don't know how other people do it. Once the kids are both in full time school, that same monthly budget will have to be diverted to college savings too, so it's not like it's even a temporary thing (if you want your children to get an education and not be saddled with lifelong debt, that is).
- jeffbee 5y ago2 kids in an urban pre-school was way more than my mortgage.
- 5y ago
- mensetmanusman 5y agoWe don’t even understand the placebo effect, I’m not sure we should put our hopes into engineering biology.
- mjh2539 5y agoGeorgia and Israel. In Georgia's case, in 2007 the patriarch of the Georgian Orthodox Church offered to personally baptize and become the godfather to every third, fourth, fifth, etc. child born to married Georgian Orthodox couples. Birth rates subsequently went from ~1.5 to ~2.1, and have remained above replacement since then. https://ifstudies.org/blog/in-georgia-a-religiously-inspired-baby-boom https://ifstudies.org/blog/in-georgia-a-religiously-inspired...
- hunglee2 5y agohow very interesting. Religiosity definitely seems to be a common factor in high birth rate groups. Does not bode well for the atheists!
- FerociousTimes 5y agoAtheists are made not born.
- rayiner 5y agoWorldwide, religiosity is increasing despite declines in the west because of birth rates in Africa and Latin America and robust growth of Christianity in China: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/aug/27/religion-why-is-faith-growing-and-what-happens-next https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/aug/27/religion-why-is.... There are now more Christians in China than there are people in Germany and Spain combined.
- tsol 5y agoThere's a reason these major religions have lasted thousands of years, making the history of a country like America look short in comparison. Say what you will about them, but they obviously have value in that many of the most prosperous civilizations in the world today came from these traditions and still follow their general moral guidelines.
- tenebrisalietum 5y agoIf a society wants to fix a population decline so badly, it should make having and raising children free or as low-cost as possible. I suspect most people avoid having kids due to the economic impact of their own lives, which shows that the wider society could really give a damn.
- varajelle 5y ago> If a society wants to fix a population decline so badly But is it something that needs to be "fixed"?
- toomuchtodo 5y agoIt’s not a problem to be fixed. It’s a success story.
- Verdex 5y agoEach of my children have required some extra medical attention. As well as my wife's pregnancies. Total cost per child hovers around $100k so far. But obviously no one can pay that so either it's insurance or it goes to collections. In my case it's insurance. Only I've got a high deductible plan. 5k deductible. And because pregnancies go 9 months there's a chance that any given pregnancy costs 10k. Meanwhile I asked my mom how much her pregnancies cost (all three c sections). Apparently insurance basically picked up all costs such that only trivial amounts were left over. We've been extremely lucky to have ways to afford our children's births so far. Nothing we planned for just things that happened that saved us a ton of money. I honestly am not sure how most people handle this financially.
- watwut 5y ago> devastating wars / famine These lead to people postponing kids for years, so they all have them at the same time after. People in general don't want to have babies in high risk high danger situations.
- theandrewbailey 5y ago> We probably need to think seriously about making people outside of the natural womb, can't see another way to reverse this trend outside of the above mentioned measures / circumstances At this point, its pretty clear that naturally starting and carrying a developing fetus is not an issue. Its the cost of the child after its born that's the issue. Having a bunch of babies coming out of artificial wombs is a recipe for disaster if they have no parents. Have you learned nothing from the single parent household pandemic? Single parent children have much worse life outcomes than dual parent households. Zero parents? I'd imagine that would be worse.
- hunglee2 5y agoYes, possibly dire consequences I agree. Two things not in a way of a rebuttal but to advance the dialogue 1) Artificial wombs ≠ no parents. Kids might just be handed over to folks who want to parent but don't want the pregnancy / birth. 2) Kids could be raised by the state. Has been done before, though generally as a form of military service, thinking specifically of the Ottoman devshirme system; granted they did abduction, but are a decent example of state managed child rearing 3) Maybe robots could do the parenting. Eventually they may be able to make a passable attempt at it. Reminded of the movie 'Mother' - a dystopia obviously but still...better than no be at all!
- brimble 5y ago> We probably need to think seriously about making people outside of the natural womb, can't see another way to reverse this trend outside of the above mentioned measures / circumstances Find a way to make the cost to parents zero over the lifetime of the kid for all the basics (child care, healthcare, food, clothing) and I bet rates shoot way up. Having a kid is an extremely expensive luxury good right now. No wonder people are hesitant to do it.
- rdtwo 5y agoIf it wasn’t so cost prohibitive and so difficult to balance with work obligations I’d have 2-3 but one is hard enough
- hunglee2 5y agogood point! though having a kid being a luxury good is likely a persistent condition regardless of how strong the welfare state is, unless you actually go to the point of paying women to have more children (something we should try btw). Right now the incentives are weak - cash bonus in some countries, some form of income support in others - all pretty small beer, not enough to make a difference!
- rayiner 5y agoThe fertility rate in the U.S. in the 1960s was around 3.5 and it wasn't exactly Afghanistan back then.