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Nah. EU is "the west" too, and it's more people than US. And maternity leaves here are around 6-12 months. Population still decreases. Significant part of EU wa
by ajuc 4y ago
Nah. EU is "the west" too, and it's more people than US. And maternity leaves here are around 6-12 months. Population still decreases. Significant part of EU was under communism and had baby booms then despite abysmal pay and much WORSE standards of living then than now. Now their populations go down despite the face they are much wealthier and well off. I live in Poland. There's no comparison, when I look at photos and videos made in 80s in my country it looks like 3rd world. I haven't realized then but now when I look back it's crazy how much changed. But people had kids then and don't have kids now.
What changed is perspectives. In communism you'd earn almost the same no matter where, how much, and how well you worked. And money mattered little anyway, you couldn't buy anything with them, you had to have connections to "arrange" anything (even basic building materials were "arranged" through social networks not bought from a shop). So people invested in families and big social networks to survive. And had lots of kids cause there wasn't much else to do. No career to sacrifice, no recreation other than drinking and partying. No internet. TV had 2 channels and most people had only black-and-white receivers. Culture was only accessible in big cities. Half the families had no car. You couldn't travel abroad easily. There was censorship. There were blackouts at the night.
Why not have kids in these circumstances? What are you losing?
Now your standard of living depends mostly on your education and working ethic. And it can vary greatly. Sky is the limit. You can have a yacht. You can travel all over the world. You can be unemployed and live under the bridge. And anything in between.
You don't need other people to survive. Money are very important. Career is an option. There's LOTS of ways to spend time and money. Having a kid is a big sacrifice in this world. So people work more and have smaller families.
The parts of each country that are less wealthy are usually also the parts with highest natural growth.
Basically - economic growth and development reduces natural growth. Pro-family laws are nice, but they don't change the basic calculation of pros vs cons as much as the changes in societies did.
- codefreeordie 4y agoGo back and read Adam Smith. The thing we don't appreciate today is that having more children used to be an investment -- not just in the idea of family, but literally an investment, as kids would grow up enough to start producing more resources than they cost pretty quickly, and were a net contributor to the family. Nowadays, having kids is wonderful and great and fulfilling and life-changing and all those things -- but economically a disaster. It is therefore unsurprising that there are so many fewer children. You have to really want them.
- ajuc 4y agoThat's before WW2 maybe. I'm talking about 80s vs now.
- codefreeordie 4y agoOh, for sure, having children stopped being net-economically-positive long ago -- though the degree to which it is net-economically-negative seems like it has kept increasing, as our expectations of an acceptable childhood keep growing.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- ajuc 4y agoI don't think going from 2.x kids per family to 1.x or even lower was mostly about money. It's about opportunity costs (and the resource that you must allocate between the alternatives is mostly time). To put it differently: in 80s your standard of living was X no matter if you had kids. Now if you have kids it's 2X and if you don't it's 5X (assuming the same effort). That's why giving people with kids enough money to survive don't help much. It changes it from 2X vs 5X to 2.1X vs 5X. Maybe 3X vs 5X if you're very generous.
- codefreeordie 4y agoThis is really about economics. 100 years ago, having a kid produced more resources. 40 years ago, it was relatively close to neutral ("X no matter if you had kids"). Now, it's super strongly negative.
- ajuc 4y agoIf that was the case - big social spending would increase natural growth significantly. But it doesn't. For example in Poland in 2015 a new social program was introduced. Parents get paid 500 PLN for each kid each month till it's 18 years old. At the time the median wage was under 2500 PLN for comparison. So 2 kids increased your earnings by 20%-40% (depending if both parents work). Natural growth increased by 3.5% for 1 year and quickly returned to the trend. You can't even guess on the graph when it was introduced [1] It's not about money. [1] https://portalstatystyczny.pl/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/ruch-naturalny-ludnosc.jpg https://portalstatystyczny.pl/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/ruc... The graph shows natural growth vs deaths in thousands.
- selimthegrim 4y agoGDR had dropping birthrate as well as peaking suicide rate