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>The authors say this like it's a bad thing. Children have become so expensive to raise in the west that there is _no_ country which is not in demographic coll

>The authors say this like it's a bad thing. Children have become so expensive to raise in the west that there is _no_ country which is not in demographic collapse. This is being offset by mass immigration which only works so long as the developing world is producing a surplus of people. Something that is no longer happening. Because of laws like this we have set up a demographics time bomb where in any country richer than India there aren't enough women under 40 to give birth to a generation of the same size as the previous one. It's rather bizarre listening to people praise a model which is so unsustainable it produces more 80+ year olds than >30 year olds.

coolspot 4y ago
Meanwhile, Earth population has reached 8 billion people in 2022. The current average population increase is estimated at 81 million people per year.
- thrown_22 4y ago
  Yes, that's what happens when people don't die in their 40s. Now what happens when the median age is over 50?
  - pixl97 4y ago
    Then we get eventually get a population reduction. If you're an economist this is bad. If you're old, this ain't great. If you're interested in preserving at least a little bit of nature and the environment on this planet though, it's likely a good thing.
    - thrown_22 4y ago
      At some point you need birth rates to stabilize for a population to survive. This is not something that _any_ country with a GDP over $5,000 PPP is currently managing. The result isn't a population reduction, it is a population extinction. Too few births is just as bad as too many. It's just that you don't notice you've decided to go extinct until 30 years after the point of no return.
pengaru 4y ago
> It's rather bizarre listening to people praise a model which is so unsustainable it produces more 80+ year olds than >30 year olds. Expecting a temporary transient condition to be sustained seems incredibly misguided.
- thrown_22 4y ago
  The non-transient condition is extinction of all western societies. That the same model is being exported to the developing world just means that the extinction will be general rather than localized.
- somenameforme 4y ago
  The exact scale might be transitory, but the issue won't be. Any society with a fertility rate below replacement will trend towards producing a larger elderly than youthful population. The lower the fertility rate, the higher this disproportion will be. Imagine you start with a population of 100 who were just born, and a fertility rate of 1. For simplicity, we'll assume everybody gives birth at 20 years old, and dies at 80: Year 0: 100 newborns Year 20: 100 twenties, 50 newborns Year 40: 100 forties, 50 twenties, 25 newborns Year 60: 100 sixties, 50 forties, 25 twenties, 12 newborns Year 80: 50 sixties, 25 forties, 12 twenties, 6 newborns Year 100: 25 sixties, 12 forties, 6 twenties, 3 newborns Year 120: 12 sixties, 6 forties, 3 twenties, 1 newborn There's always the same ratio people above a given age as there are below, for a given fertility rate, once an equilibrium is established. In cases where your fertility rate is above 2, this ratio will be below 1 (more young than elderly). In cases where your fertility rate is below 2, it will be above 1. Both relationships are exponential, not linear. I think another interesting issue that demonstrates is the sort of exponential snap, the "demographic bomb", in fertility related issues. In spite of an extinction level fertility rate, the population nearly doubles to 187 by year 60, before suddenly collapsing down to 22 over the next 60 years. And these are numbers that are not entirely out of question anymore in many places. South Korea's fertility rate has dropped to 0.84.
asdfasgasdgasdg 4y ago
> produces more 80+ year olds than >30 year olds. In the US less than 5% of the population is over 80 whereas around 30% is below thirty.
- thrown_22 4y ago
  Yes, because of immigrants. They first show up sometime in their 20s or 30s, have more children than the average for the country, then their children have more children than the average too. When you look at the demographics of people who are third or later generation immigrants the demographics look apocalyptic. The west is the first fully parasitic society which can't survive without constant colonialism of human capital from the rest of the world.
em-bee 4y ago
i don't think it is these laws that reduce the birthrate. as far as i can see the birthrate correlates with living standards and education levels. higher education, access to and knowledge about contraception, more opportunity for alternative entertainment, not needing kids to take care of you in old age, are all factors that lower the birthrate. cost may be a factor too, but i believe that the cost of raising kids in 3rd word countries is still takes a greater part of their income than it is in 1st world countries. france has the highest birthrate in europe, followed by ireland and sweden. i don't know what ireland and sweden are doing, but i understand that france offers infant daycare, allowing more parents to work. as for this article, it specifically talks about families getting a third child when they already have two in car-seat age. it looks to me that the problem is not cost, but possibly the fact that many cars can't fit three car seats in the back. this comment from the original discussion, and the study authors response also seem to support that idea: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24648548 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24648548
- somenameforme 4y ago
  But correlation is not the same as causation. In the past those of means and education continued to raise large families, and in the present exceptions abound. Israel: 3rd most educated country in the world, strong economy, fertility rate of 3. Thailand: about 50% do not even complete high school, relatively poor country, fertility rate of 1.5 - even lower than the US (1.8). European numbers are largely controlled by Islamic populations. Pew carried out an interesting study [1] on the numbers. The Islamic fertility rate in France is 2.9, the non-Islamic fertility rate is 1.9. In Sweden it's 2.8 vs 1.8. There is no European country with a non-Islamic fertility rate over 2. Ireland is the highest at exactly 2.0. The fact that these extreme trends exist even within Western countries, emphasize that it's primarily a cultural issue. I am not implying the West should adopt Islamic social views, but the irony is that we will end doing exactly that if nothing changes simply because they are reproducing in healthy numbers while non-Islamic groups are not. [1] - https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2017/11/29/europes-growing-muslim-population/ https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2017/11/29/europes-grow...
  - em-bee 4y ago
andrewjl 4y ago
> It's rather bizarre listening to people praise a model which is so unsustainable it produces more 80+ year olds than >30 year olds. What's more bizarre is thinking this model can change. Despite financial incentives and many other measures short of coercion, it hasn't.

coolspot 4y ago

Meanwhile, Earth population has reached 8 billion people in 2022. The current average population increase is estimated at 81 million people per year.

thrown_22 4y ago
Yes, that's what happens when people don't die in their 40s. Now what happens when the median age is over 50?
- pixl97 4y ago
  Then we get eventually get a population reduction. If you're an economist this is bad. If you're old, this ain't great. If you're interested in preserving at least a little bit of nature and the environment on this planet though, it's likely a good thing.
  - thrown_22 4y ago
    At some point you need birth rates to stabilize for a population to survive. This is not something that _any_ country with a GDP over $5,000 PPP is currently managing. The result isn't a population reduction, it is a population extinction. Too few births is just as bad as too many. It's just that you don't notice you've decided to go extinct until 30 years after the point of no return.

pengaru 4y ago

> It's rather bizarre listening to people praise a model which is so unsustainable it produces more 80+ year olds than >30 year olds. Expecting a temporary transient condition to be sustained seems incredibly misguided.

thrown_22 4y ago
The non-transient condition is extinction of all western societies. That the same model is being exported to the developing world just means that the extinction will be general rather than localized.
somenameforme 4y ago
The exact scale might be transitory, but the issue won't be. Any society with a fertility rate below replacement will trend towards producing a larger elderly than youthful population. The lower the fertility rate, the higher this disproportion will be. Imagine you start with a population of 100 who were just born, and a fertility rate of 1. For simplicity, we'll assume everybody gives birth at 20 years old, and dies at 80: Year 0: 100 newborns Year 20: 100 twenties, 50 newborns Year 40: 100 forties, 50 twenties, 25 newborns Year 60: 100 sixties, 50 forties, 25 twenties, 12 newborns Year 80: 50 sixties, 25 forties, 12 twenties, 6 newborns Year 100: 25 sixties, 12 forties, 6 twenties, 3 newborns Year 120: 12 sixties, 6 forties, 3 twenties, 1 newborn There's always the same ratio people above a given age as there are below, for a given fertility rate, once an equilibrium is established. In cases where your fertility rate is above 2, this ratio will be below 1 (more young than elderly). In cases where your fertility rate is below 2, it will be above 1. Both relationships are exponential, not linear. I think another interesting issue that demonstrates is the sort of exponential snap, the "demographic bomb", in fertility related issues. In spite of an extinction level fertility rate, the population nearly doubles to 187 by year 60, before suddenly collapsing down to 22 over the next 60 years. And these are numbers that are not entirely out of question anymore in many places. South Korea's fertility rate has dropped to 0.84.

asdfasgasdgasdg 4y ago

> produces more 80+ year olds than >30 year olds. In the US less than 5% of the population is over 80 whereas around 30% is below thirty.

thrown_22 4y ago
Yes, because of immigrants. They first show up sometime in their 20s or 30s, have more children than the average for the country, then their children have more children than the average too. When you look at the demographics of people who are third or later generation immigrants the demographics look apocalyptic. The west is the first fully parasitic society which can't survive without constant colonialism of human capital from the rest of the world.

em-bee 4y ago

i don't think it is these laws that reduce the birthrate. as far as i can see the birthrate correlates with living standards and education levels. higher education, access to and knowledge about contraception, more opportunity for alternative entertainment, not needing kids to take care of you in old age, are all factors that lower the birthrate. cost may be a factor too, but i believe that the cost of raising kids in 3rd word countries is still takes a greater part of their income than it is in 1st world countries. france has the highest birthrate in europe, followed by ireland and sweden. i don't know what ireland and sweden are doing, but i understand that france offers infant daycare, allowing more parents to work. as for this article, it specifically talks about families getting a third child when they already have two in car-seat age. it looks to me that the problem is not cost, but possibly the fact that many cars can't fit three car seats in the back. this comment from the original discussion, and the study authors response also seem to support that idea: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24648548 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24648548

somenameforme 4y ago
But correlation is not the same as causation. In the past those of means and education continued to raise large families, and in the present exceptions abound. Israel: 3rd most educated country in the world, strong economy, fertility rate of 3. Thailand: about 50% do not even complete high school, relatively poor country, fertility rate of 1.5 - even lower than the US (1.8). European numbers are largely controlled by Islamic populations. Pew carried out an interesting study [1] on the numbers. The Islamic fertility rate in France is 2.9, the non-Islamic fertility rate is 1.9. In Sweden it's 2.8 vs 1.8. There is no European country with a non-Islamic fertility rate over 2. Ireland is the highest at exactly 2.0. The fact that these extreme trends exist even within Western countries, emphasize that it's primarily a cultural issue. I am not implying the West should adopt Islamic social views, but the irony is that we will end doing exactly that if nothing changes simply because they are reproducing in healthy numbers while non-Islamic groups are not. [1] - https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2017/11/29/europes-growing-muslim-population/ https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2017/11/29/europes-grow...
- em-bee 4y ago

andrewjl 4y ago

> It's rather bizarre listening to people praise a model which is so unsustainable it produces more 80+ year olds than >30 year olds. What's more bizarre is thinking this model can change. Despite financial incentives and many other measures short of coercion, it hasn't.