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> This decline cannot be explained by demographic, economic, or policy changes. I disagree with this statement. Put yourself in the shoes of 25 years old and

> This decline cannot be explained by demographic, economic, or policy changes. I disagree with this statement. Put yourself in the shoes of 25 years old and ask why don't you want to have kids? * (economic) difficult to manage finances * (economic) can't buy house, too expensive * (economic) to compete with others in the workplace, I need to work >12 hours/day, can't do with kids or will be laid off. * (sociologic) more porn, more entertainment, more fake lives through mobile phones and social networks * (sociologic) shift in mindset: less religion, less community, more money, FIRE, travel while you are young and so on

t0mislav 3y ago
>12 hours/day I can't even imagine working a minute longer than 8 hours per day, and 12+ hours is woow. Is this common in US? I work 8 hours my whole career (IT). My wife works 6 hours per day. (central Europe)
- Aeolos 3y ago
  I have worked 10-12 hours a day throughout all of my working career (from 19yo onwards). This is in central Europe, and I'm not even the hardest worker around.
  - balfirevic 3y ago
    Do you just sleep, work, commute and do chores? That sounds dreadful to me.
    - Aeolos 3y ago
      I also have hobbies and a social life - but it has consequences. Family and children are entirely 100% impossible in this lifestyle without a stay-at-home partner. And unlike previous generations, stay-at-home partners are no longer a thing. (Edit: to make it clear, I am not making a judgement, nor wishing for a stay-at-home partner - I'm entirely in favour of everyone making their own choices in life. I am just pointing out that younger generations are now living in a totally different environment from previous generations, where a stay-at-home wife was the default. Which is yet another component in the birth rate equation.)
      - balfirevic 3y ago
        Props to you man, I have no kids and still barely manage to have hobbies and social life with just normal full-time hours. I do need a lot of time to sleep and simply rest and do nothing, so that is a factor.
- throwaw12 3y ago
  I am an engineer as well, in western Europe with kids. But I regularly see people committing code at 9pm or commenting on docs at 11pm or see their testing traces (logs) at 1am and on weekends. I can't compete with them in any way. "Don't work hard, work smarter" doesn't apply here, because I am surrounded by smart people, who also do smart work, when baseline is same, you just need to work more. Guess who will be liked/praised more and have less chances to be laid off when conditions get worse? I am lucky though, its not easy to fire people here, can't imagine what's happening in US
  - balfirevic 3y ago
    > But I regularly see people committing code at 9pm or commenting on docs at 11pm or see their testing traces (logs) at 1am and on weekends That might not mean much - you'd see the same from me, but I don't work more than 8 hours/day (on average), I just work very irregular hours.
    - throwaw12 3y ago
      > I just work very irregular hours. Do you also come to office and spend 8 hours, even if you do nothing? I see those people in the office almost regularly
      - balfirevic 3y ago
        Yeah, makes sense if you see them in the office all the time. I often come to the office for just a couple of hours and then do more work afterwards from home, and other days work entirely from home.
throwaw12 3y ago
* (sociologic) no trust in your partner (which is partly related to social networks and porn in some ways). they can divorce anytime, because it is easier to divorce than trying to resolve issues in the relationship, which will leave you as a single care taker of the kid, which creates 2 issues: (1) do you want to raise alone, making kid feel half family (2) can you actually raise alone with current demand at workplace * (political) do politicians want to and policies support having kids? Like helping with healthcare when needed or should you spend 10k$ for simple things per kid?
- carlmr 3y ago
  Number one is very true. My generation has so many children of divorced parents that I don't see these trust issues ever being fixed. I'm not sure if it's attributable to porn though. I think it's rather our individualistic, bordering on narcissistic, culture that is driving this. As the old saying goes, it takes a village to raise a child. The next best thing after the village is the family. But in a society where the individual is celebrated and divorce is so common, the whole burden of raising the child rests either on the mother or the father. And that is just too much to deal with. I think if you look back in human history it was natural that the tribe would take care of all the children, thereby spreading the burden a lot. But we don't have the tribe anymore. And the families are now breaking apart, too.
  - willis936 3y ago
    Divorce rates are going down and have been for generations.
    - smith002 3y ago
      you’re insane, divorce has exploded since the 50s
      - abenga 3y ago
        You're wrong, maybe rates went up drastically once it became socially acceptable, but since then they have had a decline [1]. [1] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/marriage-divorce.htm?CDC_AA_refVal=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cdc.gov%2Fnchs%2Fmardiv.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/marriage-divorce.htm?CDC_AA_re..., for rates since 1990.
echelon 3y ago
To quote Peter Zeihan, kids are no longer free labor for the farm, they're expensive furniture for your tiny condo that often break things.
- lynx23 3y ago
  What a wise man.
- moffkalast 3y ago
  In short, they are an expensive and smart cat.
red_admiral 3y ago
* (sociologic) fear of climate change (will the world still be habitable in 20 years' time) or commitment to make a small positive impact on climate change by not having kids I'm not saying this is true or rational (there are actually blog posts in the rationalist community along the lines of "no, having kids does not cause climate change") but it's definitely a sentiment I've encountered.
- hardware2win 3y ago
  >will the world still be habitable in 20 years' time I dont know anyone that is seriously worried about this in such a way And dont get me wrong - we arent climate change deniers, just... pick your battles Why waste your life worrying about something you have tiny impact on?
  - crooked-v 3y ago
    It's anecdotal, of course, but I've definitely seen a number of posts online that amount to 'my spouse and I have decided not to have children, because we don't want to inflict them with the terrible state of the planet in 30 or 40 or 50 years'.
    - hardware2win 3y ago
      Ive seen crazy stuff on the internet too! But until I or you manage to meet at least one person with such approach, then I do recommend to do not take it seriously
      - generic92034 3y ago
        I have met several people with that idea in "real life". And now?
        bitlax 3y ago
        You're just someone on the internet.
loxs 3y ago
* (policy) - If things don't work out, your wife will divorce you, take half of what you have and enslave you to pay her support for the next 15 years. Actually, she might do that just because she needs more passion while you are hard at work.
- lynx23 3y ago
  Whenever I hear "wedding" I wonder why the male is going for that risk. The obvious unfairness and non-equality during a divorce is the main reason why I never would get married. Its just illogical to put yourself that much at risk.
  - loxs 3y ago
    Marriage is only worse, but having kids without marriage comes with most of the same risks and inequalities. Like what are the chances that the father gets custody?
    - lynx23 3y ago
      The father only gets custody if the mother is proovably insane or basically unable to provide for herself. In all other cases, she is treated with extra priviledge.
  - tombert 3y ago
    I mean, disregarding "love" and whatnot, at least in the US, there are lots of bureaucratic benefits to it. I'm not religious or anything, so a wedding in itself doesn't mean a lot to me, but my wife and I got married in no small part so we could share health insurance, help with her immigration, and lower our tax burden. I don't regret the marriage, I trust my wife, and we've been pretty happy for the last eight years.
    - pjc50 3y ago
      People forget all the reasons gay marriage had to be fought for; no matter how solid a relationship is, the external privileges of having that status recognized matter. (Also, few of the posters in this subthread are looking at the woman's side of the game theory)
greenimpala 3y ago
I think your last two points make up most of the drivers. Particularly now many people are in an un-breakable relationship with their smartphones. I know many people that simply don't want to entertain the "hassle" of a relationship. It's an inconvenience for them to think about somebody else other than their own immediate needs and wants.
usui 3y ago
I generally agree with you and while reading that line made me laugh, I think you are misunderstanding the statement. If I read that line charitably, it wants to point out that no single set of demographic, economic, or policy changes can directly explain the decline. It appears to be an emergent outcome—a sum of its constituent factors. Yes we could go and enumerate the hundreds of reasons people contribute to the decline, but the article wants to ascribe a more "matter-of-fact" explanation to populations of people rather than speculating those hundreds of reasons. And though I'm defending the above statement, the article writes in a tone of surprise ("The Mystery"), which makes it difficult to take the article seriously. This emergent property shouldn't surprise anyone at all considering nearly every developed nation is experiencing it...
crooked-v 3y ago
I feel like real estate prices outweigh a lot of other factors entirely because real estate costs in places people would prefer to live are an order of magnitude higher than they were even a generation ago after accounting for inflation, and where people live determines an immense number of other factors. Of course, it will be hard to fix that unless we can get people to realize the problem is fundamentally a literal shortage of housing in places, and that slapfighting with developers and landlords won't conjure up more homes for people to live in.
- tonyedgecombe 3y ago
  Japan has a similar problem but my understanding is house prices are much more reasonable there.
quaintdev 3y ago
Wait I know a video that describes your comment https://youtube.com/watch?v=j800SVeiS5I https://youtube.com/watch?v=j800SVeiS5I
Ekaros 3y ago
Would there also be effect that long term relationships are hard and pairing up has been disturbed by dating apps. If you aren't living together with regular partner taking next step of getting kid rarely happens.
- mschuster91 3y ago
  > If you aren't living together with regular partner taking next step of getting kid rarely happens. Hard to live together with your partner if you're living with roommates (or worse, parents) because you can't make rent or can barely afford a 20 m² micro apartment.
throwaway346434 3y ago
Yeah that statement is whacky. Over the past 40 years, was has been rate and efficacy of formal and informal sexual health education? Pretty sure 80s kids got a lot of reasonable knowledge their parents lacked, and then went on to raise the next generation who are now much more aware of gender, sexual preference, etc concepts and increasingly so via informal means (Tiktok, etc). No explanation! Just dont look at education policy!
- pjc50 3y ago
  > Just dont look at education policy! Indeed. There's been decades of "TEENAGERS: DO NOT HAVE SEX AND IF YOU DO ESPECIALLY DO NOT GET PREGNANT, PREGNANCY AND LABOUR ARE DANGEROUS AND UNCOMFORTABLE" messaging, and now we're surprised that it's working?
madaxe_again 3y ago
There’s a really fundamental socio-economic change that nobody has touched upon here yet, as it’s such a slow one with such inertia it’s barely noticeable from the ground. Having children used to be a profitable enterprise. You’d get married, bang them out one after another, hope that a decent number survived, raised them cheaply, and put them to work as soon as they were able. Once, and if, they were grown, they would then be part of your family enterprise, be it subsistence farming, cobbling, scrivening, or lording, and would add value. Now, having a child is a definite cost centre for the individual, for the family. As healthcare, industry, and the idea of the nuclear family and the individual have developed over the last several centuries, birth rates have declined rather precipitously - if you are 40, you probably have one child, one sibling, at least two uncles or aunts per family side, and your grandparents probably have six siblings each. You can see this process happening at various stages, in various parts of the world. It’s universal. This is a long term trend, and it has been on the trajectory to where we are now for a long while. It isn’t terribly problematic, to my view, as it hasn’t been previously. Yes, it leaves an eldercare labour and pension gap, but if other trends in industrialisation and the decoupling of human effort from realised value continue, this will fill said gap.
- usui 3y ago
  > Once, and if, they were grown, they would then be part of your family enterprise, be it subsistence farming, cobbling, scrivening, or lording, and would add value. > Now, having a child is a definite cost centre for the individual, for the family. I get what you're saying, but I mean nowadays it's not like they grow up as a purely sunk cost... A fairly-average-in-all-industrious-matters child will get a job and make an income, and there's a good chance the child will produce more than the input cost. It's up to the family if they're going to share that total wealth with each other though. In fact, compared to before, there might be even more opportunities for children to increase that "return on investment", if you really want to think that way.
  - j7ake 3y ago
    That kid though will want to have their own family, and on goes the cycle.
than3 3y ago
don't forget education is expensive, and quite a few have received funding in predatory lending ways where the debt cannot be discharged in bankruptcy without even receiving the degree. you need to marry, be debt free, and have a down payment (20% of 700k is 140k down) for a house to have kids. Kids need to happen before 35 for your wife; mortality increases greatly after that. You need 2 with modern medicine, or 4 children without for one to make it to 18. These are all very known quantities. If you can't make enough to cover your expenses and enough for 2 others you can't have kids. Couple that with the job market, education, debt, and all the other unlivable things the silent generation didn't have to deal with and that's why we are where we are. A lot of people aren't having kids because there are no incentives; you bear the cost. Its stupid, but that is the world we all have created over the past two generations. Through inaction or action. Personally I'd like to have kids but just like everyone else, the economics just isn't there. There's also the general unlivable coercion that's everywhere nowadays. So a lot of people are choosing to be the last generation of their family line. That's not even touching things that will never likely pay out a benefit by the time I get to the age where I can use those programs. It has no funding after 2032 or something like that.
- berberous 3y ago
  You think you need two children for one to make it to 18?
  - mschuster91 3y ago
    The US has seen an insane rise of child and adolescent mortality over the last years [1] - and a large part of this is due to the top death cause: homicide or other firearm incidents [2], a scale orders of magnitude worse than among other developed nations. Add on top of that the rising drug epidemic, the removal of access to reproductive and mental health care... [1] https://news.vcu.edu/article/2023/03/child-and-teen-mortality-in-the-us-experiences-largest-increase-in-decades https://news.vcu.edu/article/2023/03/child-and-teen-mortalit... [2] https://www.kff.org/health-reform/press-release/firearms-are-the-leading-cause-of-death-for-children-in-the-united-states-but-rank-no-higher-than-fifth-in-other-industrialized-nations/ https://www.kff.org/health-reform/press-release/firearms-are...
thiht 3y ago
> This decline cannot be explained by demographic, economic, or policy changes Yeah what the hell, of course it can. How blind do you have to be to write something like that?
kbrkbr 3y ago
But why is this trend then not visible in Germany? All of what you say applies there too. https://www.destatis.de/DE/Themen/Gesellschaft-Umwelt/Bevoelkerung/Geburten/Tabellen/geburtenziffer.html https://www.destatis.de/DE/Themen/Gesellschaft-Umwelt/Bevoel...
- BobTheDestroyer 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - kbrkbr 3y ago
    To make that useful to the question you may want to show that this is different than in US, which sees also a lot of immigration. I added a comment that shows the numbers are also quite normal in UK and France. That should also be accounted for.
- kbrkbr 3y ago
  Here is a better chart to back this up. Data from France, UK, Germany and US: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?locations=FR-GB-DE-US&start=2000 https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?location... Seems pretty unique to US. Thus I conclude that most of the speculation in this thread is not backed by the facts.
- throwaw12 3y ago
  there are couple of differences between EU and US which can introduce confusion: 1. EU countries sees a lot immigration from Middle East and Africa, who has more kids and there is still a cultural difference towards having kids, give some time to those people to notice the environment and you see similar trend 2. but also EU countries have stronger labor policies which impacts birth rate. Not easy to fire, even when they don't have a job, they get support from government, cheap healthcare (I pay ~250-300 EUR/month for a family, no payment for kids), free dentist until 18 years for kids. It doesn't cancel what I have said about the impact and reasons, if same conditions exist in EU countries as well, you would see similar decline, which also means this is a political and economical issue
RhysU 3y ago
There's a comical Jurassic Park "life finds a way" outcome lurking... those reproductively restricted by these ideas gradually will be replaced by those who are not so inhibited.
rufus_foreman 3y ago
>> to compete with others in the workplace, I need to work >12 hours/day, can't do with kids or will be laid off The Bureau of Labor Statistics in the US tracks this. Average weekly hours worked as of April of this year is 34.4, or 6.9 hours a day: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t18.htm https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t18.htm. For IT, that would be under "Information" on that chart, so the average was 36.3 hours, or 7.3 hours a day. In addition, the number of hours worked per day has been falling historically in the US. So if a high number of hours worked was negatively associated with birth rate, birth rate should be higher now than in the past. As far as being laid off, the unemployment rate is as low as it has been in over half a century.
taylodl 3y ago
(policy) the middle class was forced to bail out the 0.1% for making bad investments during the crises of 2008. It should be obvious to everybody the U.S. is an oligarchy. It actually has been for decades now, but it was laid bare in 2008. Many people are fighting the oligarchs in an interesting way - refusing to provide them the labor they need to further enrich themselves. The kids born in 2008 would be 15 in 2023. What the oligarchs are worried about is a huge drop in the labor market. That's one reason they're pushing so hard for ending abortion. All I can say is there's going to be a lot more incels.
- colpabar 3y ago
  Increased/unlimited immigration seems like their preferred solution to the labor shortage problem. So what if a country's population are refusing to work, just bring in people who are used to worse and pay them less than those pesky citizens.
  - taylodl 3y ago
    Then why do these same people complain so much about being "invaded" from the Southern border? Seeing as how I see them as both xenophobic and racist I see their real fear is the precipitous drop in white women having children. They want labor, and they want it to be white. American, at a minimum.
    - leereeves 3y ago
      Immigration has always been an issue in America, even in the past when the immigrants were white, and even now among Hispanics themselves. There are so many reasons for it (economic, social, political, religious, etc) that are just ignored when the thought terminating insults come out.
    - david38 3y ago
      Because people want to do many of these jobs, but at a livable wage?
      - 3y ago
ethor 3y ago
These statistics [1] would suggest that sociological factors are in play, especially if you look at the graphs for young people. The number of young men not having sex is at record numbers. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/03/29/share-americans-not-having-sex-has-reached-record-high/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/03/29/share-ame...

t0mislav 3y ago

>12 hours/day I can't even imagine working a minute longer than 8 hours per day, and 12+ hours is woow. Is this common in US? I work 8 hours my whole career (IT). My wife works 6 hours per day. (central Europe)

Aeolos 3y ago
I have worked 10-12 hours a day throughout all of my working career (from 19yo onwards). This is in central Europe, and I'm not even the hardest worker around.
- balfirevic 3y ago
  Do you just sleep, work, commute and do chores? That sounds dreadful to me.
  - Aeolos 3y ago
    I also have hobbies and a social life - but it has consequences. Family and children are entirely 100% impossible in this lifestyle without a stay-at-home partner. And unlike previous generations, stay-at-home partners are no longer a thing. (Edit: to make it clear, I am not making a judgement, nor wishing for a stay-at-home partner - I'm entirely in favour of everyone making their own choices in life. I am just pointing out that younger generations are now living in a totally different environment from previous generations, where a stay-at-home wife was the default. Which is yet another component in the birth rate equation.)
    - balfirevic 3y ago
      Props to you man, I have no kids and still barely manage to have hobbies and social life with just normal full-time hours. I do need a lot of time to sleep and simply rest and do nothing, so that is a factor.
throwaw12 3y ago
I am an engineer as well, in western Europe with kids. But I regularly see people committing code at 9pm or commenting on docs at 11pm or see their testing traces (logs) at 1am and on weekends. I can't compete with them in any way. "Don't work hard, work smarter" doesn't apply here, because I am surrounded by smart people, who also do smart work, when baseline is same, you just need to work more. Guess who will be liked/praised more and have less chances to be laid off when conditions get worse? I am lucky though, its not easy to fire people here, can't imagine what's happening in US
- balfirevic 3y ago
  > But I regularly see people committing code at 9pm or commenting on docs at 11pm or see their testing traces (logs) at 1am and on weekends That might not mean much - you'd see the same from me, but I don't work more than 8 hours/day (on average), I just work very irregular hours.
  - throwaw12 3y ago
    > I just work very irregular hours. Do you also come to office and spend 8 hours, even if you do nothing? I see those people in the office almost regularly
    - balfirevic 3y ago
      Yeah, makes sense if you see them in the office all the time. I often come to the office for just a couple of hours and then do more work afterwards from home, and other days work entirely from home.

throwaw12 3y ago

* (sociologic) no trust in your partner (which is partly related to social networks and porn in some ways). they can divorce anytime, because it is easier to divorce than trying to resolve issues in the relationship, which will leave you as a single care taker of the kid, which creates 2 issues: (1) do you want to raise alone, making kid feel half family (2) can you actually raise alone with current demand at workplace * (political) do politicians want to and policies support having kids? Like helping with healthcare when needed or should you spend 10k$ for simple things per kid?

carlmr 3y ago
Number one is very true. My generation has so many children of divorced parents that I don't see these trust issues ever being fixed. I'm not sure if it's attributable to porn though. I think it's rather our individualistic, bordering on narcissistic, culture that is driving this. As the old saying goes, it takes a village to raise a child. The next best thing after the village is the family. But in a society where the individual is celebrated and divorce is so common, the whole burden of raising the child rests either on the mother or the father. And that is just too much to deal with. I think if you look back in human history it was natural that the tribe would take care of all the children, thereby spreading the burden a lot. But we don't have the tribe anymore. And the families are now breaking apart, too.
- willis936 3y ago
  Divorce rates are going down and have been for generations.
  - smith002 3y ago
    you’re insane, divorce has exploded since the 50s
    - abenga 3y ago
      You're wrong, maybe rates went up drastically once it became socially acceptable, but since then they have had a decline [1]. [1] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/marriage-divorce.htm?CDC_AA_refVal=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cdc.gov%2Fnchs%2Fmardiv.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/marriage-divorce.htm?CDC_AA_re..., for rates since 1990.

echelon 3y ago

To quote Peter Zeihan, kids are no longer free labor for the farm, they're expensive furniture for your tiny condo that often break things.

lynx23 3y ago
What a wise man.
moffkalast 3y ago
In short, they are an expensive and smart cat.

red_admiral 3y ago

* (sociologic) fear of climate change (will the world still be habitable in 20 years' time) or commitment to make a small positive impact on climate change by not having kids I'm not saying this is true or rational (there are actually blog posts in the rationalist community along the lines of "no, having kids does not cause climate change") but it's definitely a sentiment I've encountered.

hardware2win 3y ago
>will the world still be habitable in 20 years' time I dont know anyone that is seriously worried about this in such a way And dont get me wrong - we arent climate change deniers, just... pick your battles Why waste your life worrying about something you have tiny impact on?
- crooked-v 3y ago
  It's anecdotal, of course, but I've definitely seen a number of posts online that amount to 'my spouse and I have decided not to have children, because we don't want to inflict them with the terrible state of the planet in 30 or 40 or 50 years'.
  - hardware2win 3y ago
    Ive seen crazy stuff on the internet too! But until I or you manage to meet at least one person with such approach, then I do recommend to do not take it seriously
    - generic92034 3y ago
      I have met several people with that idea in "real life". And now?
      - bitlax 3y ago
        You're just someone on the internet.

loxs 3y ago

* (policy) - If things don't work out, your wife will divorce you, take half of what you have and enslave you to pay her support for the next 15 years. Actually, she might do that just because she needs more passion while you are hard at work.

lynx23 3y ago
Whenever I hear "wedding" I wonder why the male is going for that risk. The obvious unfairness and non-equality during a divorce is the main reason why I never would get married. Its just illogical to put yourself that much at risk.
- loxs 3y ago
  Marriage is only worse, but having kids without marriage comes with most of the same risks and inequalities. Like what are the chances that the father gets custody?
  - lynx23 3y ago
    The father only gets custody if the mother is proovably insane or basically unable to provide for herself. In all other cases, she is treated with extra priviledge.
- tombert 3y ago
  I mean, disregarding "love" and whatnot, at least in the US, there are lots of bureaucratic benefits to it. I'm not religious or anything, so a wedding in itself doesn't mean a lot to me, but my wife and I got married in no small part so we could share health insurance, help with her immigration, and lower our tax burden. I don't regret the marriage, I trust my wife, and we've been pretty happy for the last eight years.
  - pjc50 3y ago
    People forget all the reasons gay marriage had to be fought for; no matter how solid a relationship is, the external privileges of having that status recognized matter. (Also, few of the posters in this subthread are looking at the woman's side of the game theory)

greenimpala 3y ago

I think your last two points make up most of the drivers. Particularly now many people are in an un-breakable relationship with their smartphones. I know many people that simply don't want to entertain the "hassle" of a relationship. It's an inconvenience for them to think about somebody else other than their own immediate needs and wants.

usui 3y ago

I generally agree with you and while reading that line made me laugh, I think you are misunderstanding the statement. If I read that line charitably, it wants to point out that no single set of demographic, economic, or policy changes can directly explain the decline. It appears to be an emergent outcome—a sum of its constituent factors. Yes we could go and enumerate the hundreds of reasons people contribute to the decline, but the article wants to ascribe a more "matter-of-fact" explanation to populations of people rather than speculating those hundreds of reasons. And though I'm defending the above statement, the article writes in a tone of surprise ("The Mystery"), which makes it difficult to take the article seriously. This emergent property shouldn't surprise anyone at all considering nearly every developed nation is experiencing it...

crooked-v 3y ago

I feel like real estate prices outweigh a lot of other factors entirely because real estate costs in places people would prefer to live are an order of magnitude higher than they were even a generation ago after accounting for inflation, and where people live determines an immense number of other factors. Of course, it will be hard to fix that unless we can get people to realize the problem is fundamentally a literal shortage of housing in places, and that slapfighting with developers and landlords won't conjure up more homes for people to live in.

tonyedgecombe 3y ago
Japan has a similar problem but my understanding is house prices are much more reasonable there.

quaintdev 3y ago

Wait I know a video that describes your comment https://youtube.com/watch?v=j800SVeiS5I https://youtube.com/watch?v=j800SVeiS5I

Ekaros 3y ago

Would there also be effect that long term relationships are hard and pairing up has been disturbed by dating apps. If you aren't living together with regular partner taking next step of getting kid rarely happens.

mschuster91 3y ago
> If you aren't living together with regular partner taking next step of getting kid rarely happens. Hard to live together with your partner if you're living with roommates (or worse, parents) because you can't make rent or can barely afford a 20 m² micro apartment.

throwaway346434 3y ago

Yeah that statement is whacky. Over the past 40 years, was has been rate and efficacy of formal and informal sexual health education? Pretty sure 80s kids got a lot of reasonable knowledge their parents lacked, and then went on to raise the next generation who are now much more aware of gender, sexual preference, etc concepts and increasingly so via informal means (Tiktok, etc). No explanation! Just dont look at education policy!

pjc50 3y ago
> Just dont look at education policy! Indeed. There's been decades of "TEENAGERS: DO NOT HAVE SEX AND IF YOU DO ESPECIALLY DO NOT GET PREGNANT, PREGNANCY AND LABOUR ARE DANGEROUS AND UNCOMFORTABLE" messaging, and now we're surprised that it's working?

madaxe_again 3y ago

There’s a really fundamental socio-economic change that nobody has touched upon here yet, as it’s such a slow one with such inertia it’s barely noticeable from the ground. Having children used to be a profitable enterprise. You’d get married, bang them out one after another, hope that a decent number survived, raised them cheaply, and put them to work as soon as they were able. Once, and if, they were grown, they would then be part of your family enterprise, be it subsistence farming, cobbling, scrivening, or lording, and would add value. Now, having a child is a definite cost centre for the individual, for the family. As healthcare, industry, and the idea of the nuclear family and the individual have developed over the last several centuries, birth rates have declined rather precipitously - if you are 40, you probably have one child, one sibling, at least two uncles or aunts per family side, and your grandparents probably have six siblings each. You can see this process happening at various stages, in various parts of the world. It’s universal. This is a long term trend, and it has been on the trajectory to where we are now for a long while. It isn’t terribly problematic, to my view, as it hasn’t been previously. Yes, it leaves an eldercare labour and pension gap, but if other trends in industrialisation and the decoupling of human effort from realised value continue, this will fill said gap.

usui 3y ago
> Once, and if, they were grown, they would then be part of your family enterprise, be it subsistence farming, cobbling, scrivening, or lording, and would add value. > Now, having a child is a definite cost centre for the individual, for the family. I get what you're saying, but I mean nowadays it's not like they grow up as a purely sunk cost... A fairly-average-in-all-industrious-matters child will get a job and make an income, and there's a good chance the child will produce more than the input cost. It's up to the family if they're going to share that total wealth with each other though. In fact, compared to before, there might be even more opportunities for children to increase that "return on investment", if you really want to think that way.
- j7ake 3y ago
  That kid though will want to have their own family, and on goes the cycle.

than3 3y ago

don't forget education is expensive, and quite a few have received funding in predatory lending ways where the debt cannot be discharged in bankruptcy without even receiving the degree. you need to marry, be debt free, and have a down payment (20% of 700k is 140k down) for a house to have kids. Kids need to happen before 35 for your wife; mortality increases greatly after that. You need 2 with modern medicine, or 4 children without for one to make it to 18. These are all very known quantities. If you can't make enough to cover your expenses and enough for 2 others you can't have kids. Couple that with the job market, education, debt, and all the other unlivable things the silent generation didn't have to deal with and that's why we are where we are. A lot of people aren't having kids because there are no incentives; you bear the cost. Its stupid, but that is the world we all have created over the past two generations. Through inaction or action. Personally I'd like to have kids but just like everyone else, the economics just isn't there. There's also the general unlivable coercion that's everywhere nowadays. So a lot of people are choosing to be the last generation of their family line. That's not even touching things that will never likely pay out a benefit by the time I get to the age where I can use those programs. It has no funding after 2032 or something like that.

berberous 3y ago
You think you need two children for one to make it to 18?
- mschuster91 3y ago
  The US has seen an insane rise of child and adolescent mortality over the last years [1] - and a large part of this is due to the top death cause: homicide or other firearm incidents [2], a scale orders of magnitude worse than among other developed nations. Add on top of that the rising drug epidemic, the removal of access to reproductive and mental health care... [1] https://news.vcu.edu/article/2023/03/child-and-teen-mortality-in-the-us-experiences-largest-increase-in-decades https://news.vcu.edu/article/2023/03/child-and-teen-mortalit... [2] https://www.kff.org/health-reform/press-release/firearms-are-the-leading-cause-of-death-for-children-in-the-united-states-but-rank-no-higher-than-fifth-in-other-industrialized-nations/ https://www.kff.org/health-reform/press-release/firearms-are...

thiht 3y ago

> This decline cannot be explained by demographic, economic, or policy changes Yeah what the hell, of course it can. How blind do you have to be to write something like that?

kbrkbr 3y ago

But why is this trend then not visible in Germany? All of what you say applies there too. https://www.destatis.de/DE/Themen/Gesellschaft-Umwelt/Bevoelkerung/Geburten/Tabellen/geburtenziffer.html https://www.destatis.de/DE/Themen/Gesellschaft-Umwelt/Bevoel...

BobTheDestroyer 3y ago
[flagged]
- kbrkbr 3y ago
  To make that useful to the question you may want to show that this is different than in US, which sees also a lot of immigration. I added a comment that shows the numbers are also quite normal in UK and France. That should also be accounted for.
kbrkbr 3y ago
Here is a better chart to back this up. Data from France, UK, Germany and US: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?locations=FR-GB-DE-US&start=2000 https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?location... Seems pretty unique to US. Thus I conclude that most of the speculation in this thread is not backed by the facts.
throwaw12 3y ago
there are couple of differences between EU and US which can introduce confusion: 1. EU countries sees a lot immigration from Middle East and Africa, who has more kids and there is still a cultural difference towards having kids, give some time to those people to notice the environment and you see similar trend 2. but also EU countries have stronger labor policies which impacts birth rate. Not easy to fire, even when they don't have a job, they get support from government, cheap healthcare (I pay ~250-300 EUR/month for a family, no payment for kids), free dentist until 18 years for kids. It doesn't cancel what I have said about the impact and reasons, if same conditions exist in EU countries as well, you would see similar decline, which also means this is a political and economical issue

RhysU 3y ago

There's a comical Jurassic Park "life finds a way" outcome lurking... those reproductively restricted by these ideas gradually will be replaced by those who are not so inhibited.

rufus_foreman 3y ago

>> to compete with others in the workplace, I need to work >12 hours/day, can't do with kids or will be laid off The Bureau of Labor Statistics in the US tracks this. Average weekly hours worked as of April of this year is 34.4, or 6.9 hours a day: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t18.htm https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t18.htm. For IT, that would be under "Information" on that chart, so the average was 36.3 hours, or 7.3 hours a day. In addition, the number of hours worked per day has been falling historically in the US. So if a high number of hours worked was negatively associated with birth rate, birth rate should be higher now than in the past. As far as being laid off, the unemployment rate is as low as it has been in over half a century.

taylodl 3y ago

(policy) the middle class was forced to bail out the 0.1% for making bad investments during the crises of 2008. It should be obvious to everybody the U.S. is an oligarchy. It actually has been for decades now, but it was laid bare in 2008. Many people are fighting the oligarchs in an interesting way - refusing to provide them the labor they need to further enrich themselves. The kids born in 2008 would be 15 in 2023. What the oligarchs are worried about is a huge drop in the labor market. That's one reason they're pushing so hard for ending abortion. All I can say is there's going to be a lot more incels.

colpabar 3y ago
Increased/unlimited immigration seems like their preferred solution to the labor shortage problem. So what if a country's population are refusing to work, just bring in people who are used to worse and pay them less than those pesky citizens.
- taylodl 3y ago
  Then why do these same people complain so much about being "invaded" from the Southern border? Seeing as how I see them as both xenophobic and racist I see their real fear is the precipitous drop in white women having children. They want labor, and they want it to be white. American, at a minimum.
  - leereeves 3y ago
    Immigration has always been an issue in America, even in the past when the immigrants were white, and even now among Hispanics themselves. There are so many reasons for it (economic, social, political, religious, etc) that are just ignored when the thought terminating insults come out.
  - david38 3y ago
    Because people want to do many of these jobs, but at a livable wage?
    - 3y ago

ethor 3y ago

These statistics [1] would suggest that sociological factors are in play, especially if you look at the graphs for young people. The number of young men not having sex is at record numbers. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/03/29/share-americans-not-having-sex-has-reached-record-high/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/03/29/share-ame...