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U.S. Fertility Rate Falls to Record Low
- mikestew 2y agohttps://archive.ph/gbGxj https://archive.ph/gbGxj
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- TacticalCoder 2y agoAnd the genius answer of both the US and EU governments is to bring in millions of non-nationals in, yearly. Somehow thinking this shall prevent their ponzi (state debt) from crashing. Fertility rates going down should be a cause for celebration, not concern. But there's the mother of all ponzis sustain so...
- redder23 2y ago[dead]
- atonse 2y agoWhy is it a cause for celebration?
- coolspot 2y agoLess people -> less congestion, less pollution, less finite resources consumption . With automation we don’t need that many people as in the past. Infinite growth is not sustainable.
- atonse 2y agoTo offer a counter-point, doesn't less people = less workforce over time, less economic activity, less competition, less able-bodied men for your military, making you more vulnerable compared to other nations with better birth rates? Doesn't seem like a slam-dunk case but rather one of tradeoffs? I get that infinite growth isn't sustainable, but shrinking isn't the only alternative, correct? It can be slower rates of growth.
- coolspot 2y agoNot necessarily, if you have automation and AI. > less workforce over time Manual workforce can be replaced by robots. We don’t need 4M+ uber drivers if we have 4M Waymos. > less economic activity, less competition Not if you compensate productivity with automation and AI. Work of 100 people done by one. > less able-bodied men for your military Ideally, you should have most of your army be robots and semi-autonomous systems. Military action should only cause equipment loss on your side and not personnel loss. You still can have growth, just not the population growth, but productivity and quality of life growth instead.
- tivert 2y ago> Why is it a cause for celebration? Anti-humanist environmentalism?
- PlunderBunny 2y agoI understand you’re not necessarily taking a stand one way or another on “anti-humanist environmentalism”, but surely it’s possible to be both in favour of declining population numbers for the environmental and other benefits, _and_ not be anti-humanist at the same time?
- moffkalast 2y agoMore planet for the rest of us. /s
- fooker 2y agoYou need people to work. A consequence of decreased fertility is increasing median age. It's a compounding problem as you need resources and more young people to support older peoplevv
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- TulliusCicero 2y agoHow do you support retirees on a declining population? There's a reason there's all this pressure to raise retirement ages.
- WarOnPrivacy 2y ago> There's a reason there's all this pressure to raise retirement ages. From this end, the pressure to work later in life feels more like our only chance to avoid homeless retirement. I only say that because that is the pure reality for many of us.
- redder23 2y ago[dead]
- TulliusCicero 2y agoThe less cultural pressure and cultural momentum there is to have and raise kids, the more utilitarian factors have sway, imo, and expectations for parents to be spending more money and time on their kids seem to be ever rising. But even relatively generous countries like Sweden don't come close to bringing parents to financial parity with non-parents -- even though it's the state that's benefitting financially long-term -- so getting to replacement rate for any developed country seems unlikely in the foreseeable future.
- andrewmcwatters 2y agoPlenty of people want kids, but societally across the world in developed nations we don't value doing something about making housing something middle class people can purchase and own.
- TulliusCicero 2y agoThat's definitely a factor, absolutely, and something Western countries have been doing absolutely pathetically at. Very much a "we've tried nothing and we're out of ideas" sort of situation. But even if housing was cheaper, it would still be more expensive to have kids than not, if you want the space-per-person metric to stay at least somewhat similar.
- andrewmcwatters 2y ago> But even if housing was cheaper, it would still be more expensive to have kids than not, if you want the space-per-person metric to stay at least somewhat similar. Yeah, that's a good point. We have tax credits for families, but they're utterly pathetic.
- SvenL 2y agoI think it’s not just housing. Childcare, pediatrics (medical care for children) and social acceptance could be better. Finding a spot for your child in a kindergarten in a big city is really challenging. Phoning every pharmacy in town to find the prescribed drug for your child (simple things like antibiotics). Leaving work 14:30 because you have to pickup your child from Kindergarten („can’t your wife pick him up“) Being a parent is still great, but sometimes it feels harder than it should be. Note: I live in Germany - might be different somewhere else.
- cheschire 2y agoI wonder if it’s more than just correlation that Facebook was made available to everyone in late 2006. Modern dating kind of sucks.
- kiba 2y agoModern dating does suck and probably doesn't help contribute to fertility rate.
- twojobsoneboss 2y agoNah, even among married couples it’s still way down. Costs and incentives are just way misaligned right now
- tivert 2y ago> Nah, even among married couples it’s still way down. Costs and incentives are just way misaligned right now And culture. People keep talking about the birth rate like it's just an economics problem, but it's not. It's just that people are too comfortable with thinking in economic terms, and looking at it from the angle of culture is taboo in many ways.
- huytersd 2y agoYou can speak for yourself. I’ve been able to “do it” with more than a 100 women because of dating apps. I can’t even imagine being able to do that without meeting women online.
- nox101 2y agothere must be more to it. You're not picky? You're atractive? You've got game? You're on a site for hookups and not one for long term relationships? I meet less than 2 women a year from dating sites. I've been on them since 93. Just rejecting relgious women easily removes 95% Of the rest, a large percentage write nothing in their profile so that I have no reason to write. And, personal preference means I'm interested in at most 1 of 20. no, I'm not looking for models, just something that suggests we might be a match
- kiba 2y agoBirthrate decline due to increased wealth and social status is not inevitable. See Sweden.[1] However, as the article said, there are issues around the uncertainty of the future and economic issues that's contributing to depressed fertility rate. We should take of that. It is unclear if taking care of these problems will lead to income-fertility relationship that was shown in the Swedish population. 1. https://www.niussp.org/fertility-and-reproduction/income-and-fertility-a-positive-relationship/ https://www.niussp.org/fertility-and-reproduction/income-and...
- fooker 2y agoSweden has accomplished this with unfettered immigration, which they seem to be doing a 180 on right now. Will be interesting to see how it works out. https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/daa97aba-en/index.html?itemId=/content/component/daa97aba-en#:~:text=The%20new%20government%2C%20which%20took,to%20reduce%20immigration%20to%20Sweden https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/daa97aba-en/index.html?i....
- kiba 2y agoHigher income is correlated with higher fertility rate in Sweden. Presumably, immigrants are more likely to be poorer.
- sarimkx 2y agoUnfettered or not, immigration is inevitable for the west. Italy and Poland were really tough on illegal immigration but gave out the highest amount of work VISAs. European Commissioner for Home Affairs Ylva Johansson in 2024 said the European Union “needs a million migrants a year”.
- tivert 2y ago> Unfettered or not, immigration is inevitable for the west. That assumes birthrates elsewhere are high enough to sustain that, but they're declining everywhere. Immigration is basically just exporting the low birthrate problem to someplace less equipped to deal with it (which is par for the course for rich, western countries). I expect we'll start to see emigration controls in the not too distant future.
- Ancalagon 2y agoAfter seeing what states have done to reproductive rights in the last 5 years and the continual lack of affordable healthcare which is considered a basic right in every other developed nation: fuck em'. The pensions, the tax system, the politician's salaries and kickbacks, they can all burn.
- tivert 2y ago> The pensions, the tax system, the politician's salaries and kickbacks, they can all burn. A pretty straightforward fix would be to make pension eligibility contingent on fertility: no kids, no pension benefit. Of course, you'd still have to pay into the system, regardless.
- toomuchtodo 2y agoOne could start buying unwanted fertility from the childfree using carbon credits for the kids they’d never have, investing the lump sum, to attempt to tip the scale back. There are economic tools available if intentionally choosing not to have kids is weaponized by nation states through policy for exploitation.
- Ancalagon 2y agoLove this. Then our leaders' true views of us as cattle will be out wide in the open.
- tivert 2y ago> Love this. Then our leaders' true views of us as cattle will be out wide in the open. Wow, you misunderstood that pretty badly. Unless you can make a money-golem, a pile of cash can't take care of you in your old age, labor will. If you haven't had kids, it means you haven't paid into the future labor pool, and it would therefore be unfair for you to withdraw from it once labor becomes too constrained. To do otherwise would be like paying out full pensions to people who never paid a dime into the system.
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- roland35 2y agoIt is very expensive to have kids in this country!
- bottlepalm 2y agoI think saying, "we don't want kids for economic reasons" is a cover. Kids are a lot of work, contraception is effective, and we don't want to be tied down for 18 years if we don't have to. It's selfish, but the truth. My great grandparents had 8 kids, their kids had 4, mine 2, and me zero. There you go. Each generation in my family at least was financially better than the last. I’ll go so far as to say many put sex ahead of kids, and when the sex dies so does the family. Kids be damned. Next level hedonism enabled by our advanced technology that we are unable to resist.
- TulliusCicero 2y agoIt's just more than one thing. Kids are getting more expensive due to expectations and cost of living increases (and expensive healthcare/college). Obviously the workload and commitment are also factors, all of these things are.
- bottlepalm 2y agoBy that logic the richest people should have the most kids. Other than Elon Musk does that correlate at all? The stereotype seems to be the rich city people have less kids and the poor country folk have more.
- TulliusCicero 2y agoIt's more than just one thing. A lot of rich people value their career highly and wouldn't want to sacrifice the time for kids. That said, the correlation within developed countries between income and how many kids you have varies IIRC, some places richer people have more kids, in other places they have fewer.
- jeffbee 2y agoThat's just stereotypes. Globally, wealth is inverse with fertility. But within a given country, it's J-shaped: wealthier people have more children on the margin.
- TulliusCicero 2y ago
- WarOnPrivacy 2y agoIt really is more than one thing. Over the last 100 years: We've eliminated multi-generational families along with the affordable, appropriate sized housing they need. Humanity's history of extended family support seems to have ended here. Two parents are now expected to have the same wisdom, experience and energy that came from many. Over the last 50 years: We've wiped out free range area and adult-free time for children. That ended critical peer-based growth - which somehow has to replicated by two parents (hopefully two). Parenting hours increase from dozens per week, upwards to 168. Over the last 10 years: We've raised the cost of living so high that ~4 typical incomes are required to pay basic bills. Modern parents are expected to replace 10 adults + entire child peer groups, perform this task 24/7 - while earning ~70% of their basic bills. In the face of this, declining birth rates seem inevitable.
- mlboss 2y agoThis is controversial and might get downvoted. Raising kids is a lot of work without any monetary reward. In past 50% of the human population was tasked with taking care of family. Now that part of the population goes to office and actively take part in economy and enjoys all the benefit it provides. Unless government starts to pay a attractive salary to at home parents things are not going to improve.
- sarimkx 2y agoPeople keep pointing to how "expensive" it is to have kids, however I see rich, well off people having fewer and fewer kids. I really think deep down the reasons are social and societal. The decline of the family system, religion, and traditional values have all led to this. Look around. People just don't want kids (no matter the money). They don't like to admit this but they find it burdensome. They want "freedom". At least this is my observation. I find this to be more common in America than in other western countries. As one American friend put it: "Americans love their granite counter tops more than they love their children".
- OkayPhysicist 2y agoIf you look at the actual numbers, it's not the rich having fewer children over time. The people with (some) money (defined here as 2x the poverty rate) have fewer children, period, but they're not causing the DECREASE in birthrate, because they've always had fewer children, and that hasn't changed much. The birthrate among poor people, though, has plummeted since 2008. It absolutely is an economic issue, and you get what you pay for. If people are not secure in their current status, they're not going to risk poverty to have kids. Children need to be cared for, and that means either professional childcare (which is expensive, since the professional needs to make enough to survive off of a handful of kids) or giving up half of a household's income.
- medvezhenok 2y agoThe other factor is the drop in teen pregnancy. I think the birth rate for 26-35 hasn’t changed as much as the teen birth rate has dropped (which is correlated with poverty)
- DoreenMichele 2y agoIt mentions the high cost of housing, but I feel like that gets largely overlooked as a factor. It lists it as just one thing of many and I can't help but feel some of the other stuff is related. Women pursuing "fulfilling" careers: One possible reason is greater financial need rather than desire for some kind of self fulfillment. Student loans: We get told we need education to have well-paid careers. Contraception: Cool, but you can also just not have sex as one strategy for trying to not have kids. (Granted women can get raped so it's not necessarily a perfect answer.) For most Americans, housing is the single biggest budget item and homelessness is a horrifying scenario that is tough to escape once there. The best answer is just don't end up homeless to begin with, so I think a lot of people are doing their best to run faster to stay in place. And children are a burden that would slow them down and have them fall off this treadmill.
- villson 2y agoThere's a lot of points in this thread about birth rates needing to rise for economic good. This is based on the false premise that the only stable thing for an economy is growth. For what it matters, here are my reasons for not having children. And yes, I'm in a heterosexual relationship and it was possible for us to have children but chose not to. The world is fucked, I couldn't bring a life in to this world where we are killing ourselves and the planet. Where the day to day is to hope you make enough money to just survive. We humans are selfish and fearful creatures. It's a gross world we live in. Someone will come along and say, who will take care of me when I'm old? When I get close to that point, I'll follow Hunter S. Thompson's lead. Seriously, I watched my grand parents slowly decay over the course of 15 years, it was not life. If our primary goals as humans was to learn, create, explore and preserve; I would probably have a big fucking family because I would want my children to share in that. Rather, we deny, horde, kill and build walls.
- xscott 2y ago> This is based on the false premise that the only stable thing for an economy is growth. Are you sure it's false? I'd like to believe that we could just have the generation being born replace the generation that's dying. But when you're saving for retirement will the inflation adjusted price of your stocks go up? There are a lot of interesting details to look at. For instance, housing: With population size fixed, once a country has built enough housing, you'd only build new houses if you're going to tear another one down. Maybe this results in better housing over the long run, and maybe it results in the construction industry diminishing.
- OkayPhysicist 2y agoIt is pretty funny to see the moral outrage over both declining birth rates and overpopulation. Remember when everyone was panicked about overpopulation in the 90's? Well, it turns out it's a self-solving problem. No eugenics or state-mandated contraception control necessary!