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I don't think it's surprising. People do things for ROI and specifically quality of life ROI. Once the retirement system is socialized or provided by insurance

I don't think it's surprising. People do things for ROI and specifically quality of life ROI. Once the retirement system is socialized or provided by insurance the role of kids for future retirement support immediately goes out of the window and so is the ROI. You privately spend 1 million dollars each to raise them, but society gets to reap the rewards collectively. It's a losing proposition and only a non-smart person would commit to such agreement. If countries want to raise their birthrates they should immediately liquidate all their pension funds and insurance funds (both public and private) and transfer the stock/bonds owned by such entities to the holders of such rights. Also countries should stop policing how people raise their kids. Many parents might want a slightly more ignorant kid in the realm of philosophy/English/math... but prioritizing values of family and most importantly the only value that matters to them: taking care of parents as they enter old age , when I say taking care I mean both financially and socially.

Jensson 4y ago
> You privately spend 1 million dollars each to raise them Average kid costs $227k, not a million. Just wanted to clarify since that number was very off. The cost of raising a child is growing extremely quickly though, much faster than inflation. https://money.cnn.com/2011/09/21/pf/cost_raising_child/index.htm https://money.cnn.com/2011/09/21/pf/cost_raising_child/index... Edit: That was 10 years ago, probably higher today, but pretty sure it still isn't close to a million.
- bombcar 4y ago
  That $250k or so number has been bandied about since the 90s. It’s an average and isn’t entirely useful (as education costs can be a huge portion of it depending on how you calculate it). Kids are expensive but they can be as expensive as you want them to be, as evidenced by poor people having them.
- sarchertech 4y ago
  The average cost per kid also goes down with the number of kids you have. Economies of scale, hand-me-downs, kids sharing rooms, older kids providing free childcare etc…
- falcolas 4y ago
  $300,000 now, not including college or any major emergencies. Having a child with a birth defect or major disorder; it’s easy to see how the costs could easily reach the millions.
goethes_kind 4y ago
Complete nonsense. People naturally do want to have kids. It is just very expensive to have them both in terms of time and energy. I do not know a single person my age (30) who thinks of kids as retirement insurance. Frankly speaking, if I never get to have kids, I couldn't care less what happens to me when I'm an old fart, ideally I would never reach that age at all.
- Bubble_Pop_22 4y ago
  > I do not know a single person my age (30) who thinks of kids as retirement insurance. Well of course, because they don't need it due to the fact that it's already there in the form of socialized retirement. Remove socialized retirement , pension funds etc. and people will start having more kids as they'd start seeing them as a retirement insurance yet again. As they were seen for the whole history of mankind (and still are in high fertility countries). It's time we face the fact that people don't make kids out of love but out of need. If you remove the need and you'd remove the kids, which is what is happening.
  - nonethewiser 4y ago
    There is still need for kids for socialized retirement. They are required to fund it. But now it's a social need instead of an individual need. Not having kids is the entire society's problem. Let's see what people have to say about you not having kids. Are they OK with it? Do they think you should be having kids? How many?
    - Bubble_Pop_22 4y ago
      > Not having kids is the entire society's problem So is tax evasion, CO2 emissions etc. What are the odds of being audited by the IRS ? What are the odds of being punished for illegally burning weeds? What are the odds of being punished for modifying your semi diesel engine so that you can do the "rolling coal" thing? When you move from the level of the individual up to the level of society at large, solving problems (or in this case situations that certain people deem as problems) becomes harder not easier. Good luck trying to force people to have kids and police people's penises and vaginas. Besides it's not even necessary...Nigeria and sub-saharan Africa will take care of that "problem" much like China takes care of the iPhone production problem now. That's why categories exist. The first world can't do the job of the third world and vice versa, each should do their own job.
hsn915 4y ago
People will not like this, but the reason populations are shrinking is because women don't want to have many kids. Ask any modern woman, the majority view child rearing as a huge burden, and most would think three kids is way too much. For perspective, my grand grand mother had 16 kids. All her grand grand children who are my generation that I know of have either two or three, with no apparent plans to have any more.
- nonethewiser 4y ago
  Well this is obviously true. You can argue that its OK, or even good, but there is no questioning that women (and men even) are less inclined to want kids than before.
- ceejayoz 4y ago
  Did your great grandmother want to have 16 kids, or is that just what happened?
  - hsn915 4y ago
    Does she sound to you like a modern woman?
    - ceejayoz 4y ago
      Consider the possibility that women a hundred years ago didn’t necessarily want that many kids either. How many would have opted for birth control were it more readily available and effective?
      - hsn915 4y ago
        I consider your question/objection offensive. Consider that your projections don't apply to people from a 100 years ago.
        ceejayoz 4y ago
        [note: OP changed their comment while this was typed up.] Again, not the question. If you went back in a time machine, and said “here’s some medicine, take it if you wanna stop at three kids” and changed nothing else societally, would everyone who had 16 kids still opt to have 16? I think it’s unlikely every single woman would make the same choice given an alternative. Modern or otherwise.
nonethewiser 4y ago
Socializing the retirement system would make us MORE dependent on the birthrate. Social security draws from the working force to pay for currently retired. Its already breaking at the seams. If the working force increases and the retirees increase we are in trouble. It would be better if people saved up for their own retirement over time and did not depend on the government forcing the working force to give up their income.
- phlipski 4y ago
  "It would be better if people saved up for their own retirement over time and did not depend on the government forcing the working force to give up their income." The US had that exact system up until about 1935 - when Social Security was founded. It turns out that if we let people save for their own retirement, the vast majority will choose not to.
- slavik81 4y ago
  The money is an abstraction. If you look at the actual production and consumption, it's clear that the issue persists regardless of whether the retirement system is government-provided or funded through private savings. You can't actually save up the things that retirees need. They will mostly require services. No matter how much cash has been set aside up to pay for it, the supply of services is largely dependent on the labour force available. The production and consumption of services needs to balance instantaneously.
ceejayoz 4y ago
> If countries want to raise their birthrates they should immediately liquidate all their pension funds and insurance funds (both public and private) and transfer the stock/bonds owned by such entities to the holders of such rights. “Sweet, I’m putting all of it in Terra $LUNA!” Welcome to a golden age of scams.
- prottog 4y ago
  We're in the golden age of the wise elites in government protecting people from themselves, so pick your poison, I guess.
  - ceejayoz 4y ago
    We’ve tried both poisons. I’ll take safe medications over snake oil, and seatbelt laws over road deaths. The charts at https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm4818a1.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm4818a1.htm are pretty striking.
    - Bubble_Pop_22 4y ago
      Who is we? Personal responsibility doesn't mean you'd have to take snake oil or travel at 200mph without seatbelt. It simply means that you get to keep your own money and get to decide each on your own if you want to test your pills before popping them or if you want install safety systems in your car before hitting the road. I think it's very peculiar that the US became so socialized given that every kid in the country dreams of hitting the walk-off Home run in the 9th inning of Game 7 of the World Series
      - ceejayoz 4y ago
        > Who is we? The developed world. > It simply means that you get to keep your own money and get to decide each on your own if you want to test your pills before popping them or if you want install safety systems in your car before hitting the road. Again, we tried that. We have concrete evidence of how that works. "Test your own pills" is silly enough I don't think I need to address it. Car manufacturers got pushed, kicking and screaming, into seatbelts, airbags, and a variety of other safety measures. Market pressure didn't do it, but thousands of people a year stay alive because of that regulation. > I think it's very peculiar that the US became so socialized given that every kid in the country dreams of hitting the walk-off Home run in the 9th inning of Game 7 of the World Series These are two very odd things to attempt to tie together.
Juliate 4y ago
> People do things for ROI and specifically quality of life ROI. Right. The famous, old, debunked https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_economicus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_economicus. Of course.
sveme 4y ago
Most people don't do things for ROI. My kids were definitely not "done" with ROI considered. They are costly and time-consuming, but I love them. Western countries with their lack of intergenerational support and lack of affordable child care while we have stagnating wages are probably the major reason.
- IMTDb 4y ago
  > They are costly and time-consuming, but I love them. That's your ROI; you spend time and energy raising them, caring for them, cleaning for them, providing for them. In return, they give you affection, love, you enjoy playing with them, or having conversation with them. If you are someone who does not enjoy spending time with children, or do not think you will enjoy seeing them grow, you usually... avoid having children since you do not see the return. At some point, you made the decision to have children because you think you would be happier with some.
  - sveme 4y ago
    Seriously, this whole ROI thing does not work with kids, at least not in my case. In most cases they return vomit, poo, curses, anger, anxiety. Yet I would miss them dearly if they were gone. Can this really be rationally explained? The first one was actually an accident. As is so often the case. Life cannot always be explained using an Homo oeconomicus.
    - agent008t 4y ago
      My point is that of course once they are here you care for them, would miss them if they are gone, etc. etc. They are living beings, so of course ROI calculations no longer apply - you just want to do what's in your power for them to be happy, reduce their suffering etc. However, before you are in that situation, ROI calculations absolutely do apply. To give you an example - most people on HN that have children probably have 1-3 of them - and that's about as many as they wanted to have. But if you somehow happened to already have 10 children, would you then be selling 7-9 of them (or indeed any) to the circus? Of course not. You would love them, care for them and do the best you can, and you would miss each of them dearly if they were gone. And yet, given any degree of control over the situation, you would probably try not to have so many. Why not? Because of some calculation - let's call it the ROI calculation. It is precisely the same calculation that keeps you from having 10 children that keeps others from having any children at all.

Jensson 4y ago

> You privately spend 1 million dollars each to raise them Average kid costs $227k, not a million. Just wanted to clarify since that number was very off. The cost of raising a child is growing extremely quickly though, much faster than inflation. https://money.cnn.com/2011/09/21/pf/cost_raising_child/index.htm https://money.cnn.com/2011/09/21/pf/cost_raising_child/index... Edit: That was 10 years ago, probably higher today, but pretty sure it still isn't close to a million.

bombcar 4y ago
That $250k or so number has been bandied about since the 90s. It’s an average and isn’t entirely useful (as education costs can be a huge portion of it depending on how you calculate it). Kids are expensive but they can be as expensive as you want them to be, as evidenced by poor people having them.
sarchertech 4y ago
The average cost per kid also goes down with the number of kids you have. Economies of scale, hand-me-downs, kids sharing rooms, older kids providing free childcare etc…
falcolas 4y ago
$300,000 now, not including college or any major emergencies. Having a child with a birth defect or major disorder; it’s easy to see how the costs could easily reach the millions.

goethes_kind 4y ago

Complete nonsense. People naturally do want to have kids. It is just very expensive to have them both in terms of time and energy. I do not know a single person my age (30) who thinks of kids as retirement insurance. Frankly speaking, if I never get to have kids, I couldn't care less what happens to me when I'm an old fart, ideally I would never reach that age at all.

Bubble_Pop_22 4y ago
> I do not know a single person my age (30) who thinks of kids as retirement insurance. Well of course, because they don't need it due to the fact that it's already there in the form of socialized retirement. Remove socialized retirement , pension funds etc. and people will start having more kids as they'd start seeing them as a retirement insurance yet again. As they were seen for the whole history of mankind (and still are in high fertility countries). It's time we face the fact that people don't make kids out of love but out of need. If you remove the need and you'd remove the kids, which is what is happening.
- nonethewiser 4y ago
  There is still need for kids for socialized retirement. They are required to fund it. But now it's a social need instead of an individual need. Not having kids is the entire society's problem. Let's see what people have to say about you not having kids. Are they OK with it? Do they think you should be having kids? How many?
  - Bubble_Pop_22 4y ago
    > Not having kids is the entire society's problem So is tax evasion, CO2 emissions etc. What are the odds of being audited by the IRS ? What are the odds of being punished for illegally burning weeds? What are the odds of being punished for modifying your semi diesel engine so that you can do the "rolling coal" thing? When you move from the level of the individual up to the level of society at large, solving problems (or in this case situations that certain people deem as problems) becomes harder not easier. Good luck trying to force people to have kids and police people's penises and vaginas. Besides it's not even necessary...Nigeria and sub-saharan Africa will take care of that "problem" much like China takes care of the iPhone production problem now. That's why categories exist. The first world can't do the job of the third world and vice versa, each should do their own job.

hsn915 4y ago

People will not like this, but the reason populations are shrinking is because women don't want to have many kids. Ask any modern woman, the majority view child rearing as a huge burden, and most would think three kids is way too much. For perspective, my grand grand mother had 16 kids. All her grand grand children who are my generation that I know of have either two or three, with no apparent plans to have any more.

nonethewiser 4y ago
Well this is obviously true. You can argue that its OK, or even good, but there is no questioning that women (and men even) are less inclined to want kids than before.
ceejayoz 4y ago
Did your great grandmother want to have 16 kids, or is that just what happened?
- hsn915 4y ago
  Does she sound to you like a modern woman?
  - ceejayoz 4y ago
    Consider the possibility that women a hundred years ago didn’t necessarily want that many kids either. How many would have opted for birth control were it more readily available and effective?
    - hsn915 4y ago
      I consider your question/objection offensive. Consider that your projections don't apply to people from a 100 years ago.
      - ceejayoz 4y ago
        [note: OP changed their comment while this was typed up.] Again, not the question. If you went back in a time machine, and said “here’s some medicine, take it if you wanna stop at three kids” and changed nothing else societally, would everyone who had 16 kids still opt to have 16? I think it’s unlikely every single woman would make the same choice given an alternative. Modern or otherwise.

nonethewiser 4y ago

Socializing the retirement system would make us MORE dependent on the birthrate. Social security draws from the working force to pay for currently retired. Its already breaking at the seams. If the working force increases and the retirees increase we are in trouble. It would be better if people saved up for their own retirement over time and did not depend on the government forcing the working force to give up their income.

phlipski 4y ago
"It would be better if people saved up for their own retirement over time and did not depend on the government forcing the working force to give up their income." The US had that exact system up until about 1935 - when Social Security was founded. It turns out that if we let people save for their own retirement, the vast majority will choose not to.
slavik81 4y ago
The money is an abstraction. If you look at the actual production and consumption, it's clear that the issue persists regardless of whether the retirement system is government-provided or funded through private savings. You can't actually save up the things that retirees need. They will mostly require services. No matter how much cash has been set aside up to pay for it, the supply of services is largely dependent on the labour force available. The production and consumption of services needs to balance instantaneously.

ceejayoz 4y ago

> If countries want to raise their birthrates they should immediately liquidate all their pension funds and insurance funds (both public and private) and transfer the stock/bonds owned by such entities to the holders of such rights. “Sweet, I’m putting all of it in Terra $LUNA!” Welcome to a golden age of scams.

prottog 4y ago
We're in the golden age of the wise elites in government protecting people from themselves, so pick your poison, I guess.
- ceejayoz 4y ago
  We’ve tried both poisons. I’ll take safe medications over snake oil, and seatbelt laws over road deaths. The charts at https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm4818a1.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm4818a1.htm are pretty striking.
  - Bubble_Pop_22 4y ago
    Who is we? Personal responsibility doesn't mean you'd have to take snake oil or travel at 200mph without seatbelt. It simply means that you get to keep your own money and get to decide each on your own if you want to test your pills before popping them or if you want install safety systems in your car before hitting the road. I think it's very peculiar that the US became so socialized given that every kid in the country dreams of hitting the walk-off Home run in the 9th inning of Game 7 of the World Series
    - ceejayoz 4y ago
      > Who is we? The developed world. > It simply means that you get to keep your own money and get to decide each on your own if you want to test your pills before popping them or if you want install safety systems in your car before hitting the road. Again, we tried that. We have concrete evidence of how that works. "Test your own pills" is silly enough I don't think I need to address it. Car manufacturers got pushed, kicking and screaming, into seatbelts, airbags, and a variety of other safety measures. Market pressure didn't do it, but thousands of people a year stay alive because of that regulation. > I think it's very peculiar that the US became so socialized given that every kid in the country dreams of hitting the walk-off Home run in the 9th inning of Game 7 of the World Series These are two very odd things to attempt to tie together.

Juliate 4y ago

> People do things for ROI and specifically quality of life ROI. Right. The famous, old, debunked https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_economicus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_economicus. Of course.

sveme 4y ago

Most people don't do things for ROI. My kids were definitely not "done" with ROI considered. They are costly and time-consuming, but I love them. Western countries with their lack of intergenerational support and lack of affordable child care while we have stagnating wages are probably the major reason.

IMTDb 4y ago
> They are costly and time-consuming, but I love them. That's your ROI; you spend time and energy raising them, caring for them, cleaning for them, providing for them. In return, they give you affection, love, you enjoy playing with them, or having conversation with them. If you are someone who does not enjoy spending time with children, or do not think you will enjoy seeing them grow, you usually... avoid having children since you do not see the return. At some point, you made the decision to have children because you think you would be happier with some.
- sveme 4y ago
  Seriously, this whole ROI thing does not work with kids, at least not in my case. In most cases they return vomit, poo, curses, anger, anxiety. Yet I would miss them dearly if they were gone. Can this really be rationally explained? The first one was actually an accident. As is so often the case. Life cannot always be explained using an Homo oeconomicus.
  - agent008t 4y ago
    My point is that of course once they are here you care for them, would miss them if they are gone, etc. etc. They are living beings, so of course ROI calculations no longer apply - you just want to do what's in your power for them to be happy, reduce their suffering etc. However, before you are in that situation, ROI calculations absolutely do apply. To give you an example - most people on HN that have children probably have 1-3 of them - and that's about as many as they wanted to have. But if you somehow happened to already have 10 children, would you then be selling 7-9 of them (or indeed any) to the circus? Of course not. You would love them, care for them and do the best you can, and you would miss each of them dearly if they were gone. And yet, given any degree of control over the situation, you would probably try not to have so many. Why not? Because of some calculation - let's call it the ROI calculation. It is precisely the same calculation that keeps you from having 10 children that keeps others from having any children at all.