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As the article points out, having a choice, and not being pressured by society into having kids one doesn't want, certainly is a good thing. On the other hand,

• lynx23 3y ago
  At least in my case, I moved to a city for more infrastructure, public transport and my job. I had absolutely no plans to raise kids there. In fact, most people I know move out of the city center to the suburbs once they have kids. I dont follow your analysis why less childbirth would automatically lead to deserted cities.
  • klipt 3y ago
    A shrinking population does eventually have to lead to smaller (or fewer) cities.
    • lynx23 3y ago
      Why? What if those left alone in rural areas end up moving to cities for the exact reasons they already do? At least that is what happens right now. Rural areas do nothing to make the young stay. If you don't own a car, you are lost. Most jobs are mechanical in nature, software almost nowhere to be found. And the cities are growing, slowly, but they are. What maes you think this effect would be changed just because overall, population goes down?
      • klipt 3y ago
        Math? City population has to be smaller than total population. If total population eventually shrinks to zero, city population must eventually too.
        • lynx23 3y ago
          Haha, if we are talking about the final outcome of zero population, of course the cities are empty. But until then, there is still some way to go. And I am pretty convinced people will flock together in cities instead of withering away lonely in the countryside.
    • aylmao 3y ago
      IMO this is getting a bit too ahead of ourselves. IIRC, Russia and Japan are the countries with the most population shrinkage, and they've just lost 5 million and 2.5 million people off their peak. - 5 million / 148 million is 3% down from peak for Russia. - 2.5 million / 128 million is 2% down from peak for Japan. Most importantly, Russia's population decline (which started before Japan's) has leveled off. It hit a local minima in 2008. It has wobbled up and down, but stayed close to 143m for almost 20 years [1]. This is how populations usually work; they level off and oscillate around their carrying capacity. It's often studied in biology [2]. Shaving off 3% of the population of a country doesn't lead to deserted cities any more than other factors do. Natural resource depletion and economic factors are and will most definitely keep being bigger worries for cities (ie, droughts leading to water shortages, big employers moving out, etc). [1]: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.POP.TOTL?locations=RU https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.POP.TOTL?locations=R... [2]: https://www.khanacademy.org/science/hs-biology/x4c673362230887ef:matter-and-energy-in-ecosystems/x4c673362230887ef:population-growth-and-carrying-capacity/a/population-growth-and-carrying-capacity-article https://www.khanacademy.org/science/hs-biology/x4c6733622308...
      • DirectorKrennic 3y ago
        Unless Japan's birthrate picks up, its population is slated to fall by a lot more than 2% from its peak. Try 50% or more. A birthrate below 2.1 children per woman leads to extinction.
        • aylmao 3y ago
          This is true, Japan's population pyramid [1] looks way more dire that Russia's [2]. Russia's does seem to suggest shrinkage after the big generation born in the 80's passes away, but oscillation afterwards. Japan's is an inverted pyramid. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Japan#/media/File:Japan_Population_Pyramid.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Japan#/media/F... [2]: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e8/Russian_population_%28demographic%29_pyramid_%28structure%29_on_January%2C_1st%2C_2022.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e8/Russian_...
    • deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    • pyuser583 3y ago
      All it takes is people moving from rural areas to cities.
    • r00fus 3y ago
      More likely - dried out husks of small cities that shrivel up and die. Look to the US rust belt as a historical indicator. For modern times, climate change has made it impossible to insure some areas of the US (Norther CA fire country, Florida hurricane corridor, etc). Insurers are going out of business or just not paying claims.
      • bequanna 3y ago
        Small cities died because of increased crop farming efficiency, factory livestock farming and decreased heavy industry/manufacturing in the US. I absolutely love the doomerism in your second paragraph. If you listen to those who buy into the whole climate armageddon thing, you would think that by 2030 large swaths of the US are going to be uninhabitable or under water. No, the West isn’t going to burn away. We just need to resume good forestry practices and not build houses in precarious places. Similarly in FL, this has little to do with “climate change” but rather an elimination of Government subsidized risk taking so the full insurance cost is bore by the property owners and not taxpayers.
• valleyer 3y ago
  > will eventually drain cities of young people and those cities will be left behind Where are they going to move to? Or are you saying that there simply won't be any young people anywhere, because they were never born?
  • bombcar 3y ago
    Exactly that, it can very quickly snowball and then you just don't need as many buildings anymore. Or look at it this way: https://www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/2020/08/20/facts-on-u-s-immigrants-trend-data/ https://www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/2020/08/20/facts-on-u-s... > There were a record 44.8 million immigrants living in the U.S. in 2018, making up 13.7% of the nation’s population. If the USA was net neutral on immigration (as many people entered as left), the birth rate would be too low, there would be some tens of millions of dwelling units either empty or never having been built.
    • AnimalMuppet 3y ago
      This is a very important point that gets almost no discussion. Two classic "liberal" policy objectives, immigration and affordable housing, are at war with each other. This is not an "own the libs" comment. Both policy objectives can be morally right, and still work badly with each other. Immigration makes it much harder to fix affordable housing. That's just reality. It seems to be completely ignored by politicians, though - including those on the right, who seem to have ignored this as a club for beating up politicians on the left.
      • andrewjl 3y ago
        There is a simple solution to fix unaffordable housing that is effective regardless of immigration levels. And that's to allow more housing to be built by relaxing zoning restrictions. Support for both immigration and zoning reform are in no way incompatible.
      • dabbledash 3y ago
        > Immigration makes it much harder to fix affordable housing. That's just reality. Wasn't overall population growth higher back when housing was more affordable?
• tomcar288 3y ago
  the material standard of living has been dropping and it's now getting to the point where people can't afford shelter any more and thus no more kids. CA's birthrate has already plummeted to a level lower than in the great depression several years ago. What i don't get is why decreasing fertility is always presented so negatively in the media. falling fertility is a huge blessing in the long run. we can't keep growing our population exponentially.. there's already way more people on the planet than the planet can support (see overshoot theory; climate change, earth mineral shortages, shelter shortages, etc). Humans outnumber other animals (non-domesticated) by orders of magnitude: it's not natural or sustainable.
  • faeriechangling 3y ago
    Because the population decline isn’t evenly distributed, it’s happening as the article points out, to rich people. Who of course complain the problem is that they simply don’t have enough money and that’s why they don’t have more kids.
    • bitcharmer 3y ago
      So those millions of young people in developed wealthy countries who can't afford their own place to live are rich? Please explain
• glitchc 3y ago
  That's just a function of changing economic conditions. Do you care about Detroit the same way you care about SF? It had a roaring culture in the 40s-60s, but is now little more than a derelict husk.
• jojobas 3y ago
  Not having children at any particular level of "poverty" is still a choice. African women have >4 children in conditions that makes a food stamp life look like king's.
  • bitcharmer 3y ago
    This is for a very different reason. It's about mortality rate before reaching adolescence.
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• seydor 3y ago
  They dont seem to leave the cities. they just stop having kids. If the world wants more kids though, it should allow cities to expand
• mostlyreadertom 3y ago
  One of the issues you mentioned is inherent to city living itself. Although we have been led to believe that city living is more efficient, let's examine whether this perception holds true. The cost of constructing single-family homes in non-dense areas is significantly lower, averaging around $150 per square foot. In contrast, high-rise buildings can cost five to ten times more, with an average of $800 to $1500 per net rentable square foot. Infrastructure costs, including roads and utilities, typically range from $30 to $60 per square foot for a 1500 square foot area, with sewer systems being the most expensive component. Yes, you don’t get paved road in rural. But gravel road is just fine there. Considering these figures, it becomes evident that city living cannot be deemed cheaper based solely on the cost per square foot. However, the lower cost of construction in non-dense areas doesn’t translate to ample of low cost housing because it has its own zoning and regulation that prohibit from happening. Drawing from my personal experience as a software engineer turned builder/developer, these observations are rooted in real projects and data.
• airgapstopgap 3y ago
  Those economic explanations are searching for keys under the lamp post. As Tanner Greer notes[1]: > Structurally the arguments in both countries go like “life is so hard, and things generally so depressing, that I have no desire to bring children into the world.” > In both cases generations previous, who lived through events far more harrowing and whose material circumstances were far worse, did not express similar beliefs at any scale. Improving living conditions is always nice, so it is shoehorned into every conversation. What arguments could he raised against improving the atrocious housing situation (at least on the level of vague sentiment, "time to build", not necessarily YIMBY activism)? None at all, the very attempt amounts to a political suicide. Yet when you see basically the same trends and very similar absolute values in countries as dramatically distinct as Argentina, Belgium, England, Iran and Russia [2], it becomes increasingly clear that no economic variable suffices, no charitable materialist analysis can account for the cultural shift. The real answer is simply the perceived value of children and lifestyle amenable to their existence plummeting worldwide. Now, even minor (by the standards of our predecessors) inconveniences and contrived long-term considerations like climate change can be cited as legitimate reason to not have any (or not have more than one). Modernity sees no point to children. And as nations age and budget decisions are weighted in favor of older and childless people, as urban infrastructure itself evolves to make children more of a labor-intensive chore a working person would not be expected to afford, any possible remaining point becomes even less compelling. But to begin with, rationalizing the child-free lifestyle with material excuses is just a vestige of old normative morality, token respect for traditional natalism. In fact, we would advance the discourse more if we paid attention to outliers both in terms of fertility and in terms of its trend, those being, to my knowledge: Israel, Mongolia, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan. And no, it's not entirely about low-education traditionalist groups, certainly not in Israel. 1. https://twitter.com/Scholars_Stage/status/1658850183629733890 https://twitter.com/Scholars_Stage/status/165885018362973389... 2. https://twitter.com/BirthGauge/status/1662234743851700224 https://twitter.com/BirthGauge/status/1662234743851700224
  • lotsofpulp 3y ago
    > And no, it's not entirely about low-education traditionalist groups, certainly not in Israel. Yes it is, Israel’s high fertility rate is driven by tribes that either explicitly or implicitly influence how many children they want by restricting their financial independence. Same story with all the other countries you listed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Israel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Israel > The ethnic group with highest recorded TFR is the Bedouin of Negev. Their TFR was reported at 10.06 in 1998, and 5.73 in 2009. TFR is also very high among Haredi Jews. For Ashkenazi Haredim, the TFR rose from 6.91 in 1980 to 8.51 in 1996. The figure for 2008 is estimated to be even higher. TFR for Sephardi/Mizrahi Haredim rose from 4.57 in 1980 to 6.57 in 1996.[30] In 2020 the overall Jewish TFR in Israel (3.00) was for the first time measured higher than Arab Muslim TFR (2.99). Look at the graph here of the fertility rates of different types of Jews: https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2022/08/18/in-israel-birth-rates-are-converging-between-jews-and-muslims https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2022/08/18/...
• opportune 3y ago
  What’s most concerning is that this might be a negative spiral. I think one reason young people these days get so squeezed financially is that proportionately more retirees/near retirees in the population means that, structurally, economic output needs to be taxed or otherwise transferred (from rents, dividends, capital gains) from those who are working to those who are retired. If this squeezing causes people to reduce their birthdates, it continues the age pyramid inversion and necessitates even more squeezing later on. Suggesting we treat housing as a good (which should be easily accessible and inexpensive) rather than an investment would surely help and isn’t controversial here. But it does pose a systemic problem as many current and upcoming retirements at present hinge on housing prices, which is how we got into this mess. Perhaps a more controversial suggestion: fund retirements based on taxes or other forms of “cash flow” rather than through investments. Tax policy has directly incentivized investment as a way of funding retirement. At a societal level increasing the capital base probably makes us more efficient but we are shifting so much more economic output/returns from labor to capital that you can easily be much, much wealthier in retirement than as a worker. And people wouldn’t need to save and invest so much if they knew they’d get a reasonable pension. As good as it is for people in their 50s and beyond, I think turning everybody into an investor has created inherent age-based inequality which becomes especially impactful in the prices of housing (and probably other markets that are expected to retain value, even if not investments, like art).
  • slaw 3y ago
    One of the solutions is to tax wealth more and labor less.
• faeriechangling 3y ago
  I don’t buy the hypothesis that it’s simply lack of means driving the lack of fertility. Poorer countries and poorer times both came hand in hand with higher fertility than we see today. My hypothesis isn’t that it’s not affordable, it’s that people don’t stand to personally benefit from having kids, and birth control is available, so they don’t. If you‘re willing to tolerate any quality of life, well you might just be able to afford kids. I also think our attitude towards education specifically is a key driver of low fertility. We have invented a system where we literally take the horniest most fertile members of the population and we have them compete in a boundless contest to accumulate more and more prestigious, time consuming, and necessarily more irrelevant accreditations.
  • ouid 3y ago
    what are you talking about?
  • agent008t 3y ago
    It's not about an objective level of means, but more about one's relative standing and its security. Take a modern young couple in a place like NYC. Having to work incredibly hard in an uncertain job - both of them - never too far from being unable to pay rent (or mortgage, although that now tends to come later in life). Meanwhile bombarded by ads of all kinds (and people they see around, both in real life and online) to have consumption of a certain level just to maintain the status quo of their social standing. Add to that a complete lack of positive vision for the 'developed' world but plenty of negative ones. A complete lack of any sort of utopian thinking. Including the fact that whoever does end up having children will end up with those children later having to support all the pensioners. --------- So in a way, the poor are more secure in their poverty than the young people in the middle, and therefore they procreate. So do the more wealthy that are secure in their wealth.
• rayiner 3y ago
  > As the article points out, having a choice, and not being pressured by society into having kids one doesn't want, certainly is a good thing. Why? If elevating individual “choice” and doing what you “want” results in a society that literally cannot perpetuate itself, I struggle to see how that’s a “good thing” much less “certainly” so. To me, it sounds like the sign of an evolutionary dead end—one that’s sustainable in the short term only by arbitraging a world order where wealth inequalities drive many people to leave their homelands for these otherwise terminal places.
• nazgulnarsil 3y ago
  the balance on this is pretty clear afaik, people are consistently undershooting their desired fertility outcomes.
• speby 3y ago
  Affordability is a factor, but also one of several. Affordability, among other issues, certainly would lead some couples to decide to have fewer children than they otherwise might (1 instead of 2, or 2 instead of 3). Besides affordability, more recent generations focusing more on career, quality of life, freedom, overall thrill- and experience-seeking, has led people to make lifestyle choices that do not involve children, as children can be a hindrance to some of those lifestyle choices. Because of those choices, many of these same people simply don't value children [of their own] as much and thus have fewer or none at all. Career aspirations, increasing wealth/income, and keeping a majority control over one's time and obligations has become more important than accepting the stresses and challenges of raising one's own family, even when considering the special kind of joy that also arises from pursuing that endeavor. Adding onto that, say what you will about organized religions, but the increasing level of secularism is perhaps also a factor in leading to a declining birthrate, as most organized religions tend to "bake in" a kind of enthusiasm and social "nudging" to have more children.
  • hnick 3y ago
    I think that as the number of choices and opportunities in life go up, the opportunity cost of giving up a portion of this naturally increases. You might end up with "more" overall than past generations even after having kids, but loss aversion makes you feel the part you're giving up more keenly which steers some people away. It's the same reason some people can't just relax and turn off. We're able to be so efficient/productive now, 30 minutes "wasted" costs a lot more now than it did in 1990 or earlier.
• lumost 3y ago
  > This policy and societal failure of squeezing every bit of wealth out of the new generation and not giving them anything will eventually drain cities of young people and those cities will be left behind as times change with the newer generations. The cities will miss out on culture, societal change, modernity, eventually of sheer people. See San Francisco, New York, Seoul, etc. It doesn't seem like countries are treating this as the problem it is and I fear for the future of all these currently-popular cities. Or.. we will have smaller populations. It's difficult to cite new cities. The US ostensibly has a lot of land area to make new cities - but if you get into the details there are a variety of reasons that the existing cities are where they are (including wildfire/water risks).
• namaria 3y ago
  To me all this just sounds like price mechanisms are working and overpopulation is a self correcting problem. As labor grows scarce over time automation will take over. We all know society is an enormously complex system, yet we spend hours upon hours of our limited waking lives fretting about things we can't possibly, as individuals, understand or change.
• FreshStart 3y ago
  To offer a escape from the clutches of the global renteering uperclass could provide a vital avenue to a vibrant future for many countries.