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Singapore's Baby Bust: Record low births in 2023 deepen demographic crisis

28 points by guardianbob 2y ago

onetokeoverthe 2y ago
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ToucanLoucan 2y ago
The article cites the cost of living first and foremost, with the second item being that women disproportionately bear the cost of child-rearing. I wonder how many countries these would also be the two primary drivers. Or, to phrase the question more in line with what I suspect is the case, I wonder how many countries those two aren't the primary drivers in? I suspect not many. I wonder how much longer those in power are going to stare this type of data in the face before realizing we need to make some fundamental systemic changes or this whole party is gonna come to a really nasty end. The first thing that goes in an animal population experiencing stress at scale is reproduction.
- fxtentacle 2y ago
  If you look at China, it appears that young men there need to make exceptionally large and expensive sacrifices, like borrowing money and buying an expensive apartment, just to be allowed into the dating pool. Does that equalise the total investment into conceiving a baby? Is China better off with birth rates as the result? "women disproportionately bear the cost of child-rearing" is very difficult to measure objectively.
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  - tivert 2y ago
    > "women disproportionately bear the cost of child-rearing" is very difficult to measure objectively. Not really, they've got the equipment for it (e.g. uteri and mammary glands). I think it would be impossible to "equalize" the cost without doing some extreme and bizarre things (e.g. have some kind of arbitrary Weregild-type thing to "equalize" the cost). A significant part of the problem seems to be one of ideology colliding with reality.
    - ToucanLoucan 2y ago
      Both of these comments are only reacting to the financial and physical costs of child rearing. Obviously humans with penises cannot bear children and it's unreasonable to suggest they should be made to. Similarly, the fact that those men in China are expected to attain so much debt simply to enter the dating pool is also a legitimate problem that needs addressing. However neither of those things reflect the costs of motherhood, which are a lot more expansive: * Mothers are still by and large the "default" entity for all child care, with it being notable for men to take on that role. Men are regularly praised for "babysitting the kids for mom" even though if you think about that for like, 30 seconds, you realize how insane it is. Of course dad watches the kids too, in any kind of equitable household, that would be expected. * Mothers are also by default responsible for almost all child-adjacent logistics. School, activities, medical appointments, friend visits, school trips, sports, immunization scheduling.... Like, think about all the annoying logistical bullshit in life that you have to get done just for you, and then imagine that you have to do it all twice, for yourself, and for a secondary third party who oftentimes doesn't appreciate it either.
      - tivert 2y ago
        >> A significant part of the problem seems to be one of ideology colliding with reality. I think you should read that a little more expansively that the things I explicitly commented on. Some examples of ideology: "children should be parented with high intensity", "men and women should be doing the exact same things in a family in exactly equal proportions with no specialization", "a family should consist of two capitalism-participting income-earners," etc. I suspect fixing the issues you outlined with the fixes you're implying wouldn't actually do anything to increase birthrates.
    - s1artibartfast 2y ago
      I think they were making a more general point that the article may be taking a overly simplistic view of the "costs of child-rearing". If a mother feeds and cares for children, that can be viewed as a cost of children to her. If a man works to feed and house those same children, surely that is a cost of children to me. I suspect part of the problem is a generation of people raised with just enough economics knowledge to be dangerous, with life viewed through lenses of cost, profit and risk instead of joy, experience, and sentimentalism.
- pocketarc 2y ago
  Something that might be worth pondering is: When was that ever not the case? Are we seriously saying that in the 1800s those poor desperate people who had 12 kids and put most of them (the ones that even survived!) to work in mines and farms, were in a better situation? The discussion around cost is a red herring. If it really was about cost, we'd be seeing the upper middle class having children by the ton. Most of us here on HN would have 10 children each, because cost definitely isn't an issue for any well-paid software engineer or startup founder. I definitely think that you are right - this is definitely going to be a major crisis in the next few decades, and there needs to be a serious course correction, and -major- incentives for having kids. But I don't think it comes down to cost, for the most part. I think there are a number of other factors, but cost just ends up being a nice easy scapegoat because it sounds completely reasonable. Nobody can argue with it, not even oneself.
  - pjc50 2y ago
    > Are we seriously saying that in the 1800s those poor desperate people who had 12 kids and put most of them (the ones that even survived!) This is the origin story of the contraceptive movement: either your population growth rate is contraception-limited, or it's death-limited. The latter is pretty horrific. > If it really was about cost, we'd be seeing the upper middle class having children by the ton The cost issue is even worse for everyone who isn't a rentier, because children need time, and the opportunity cost of that is higher the more you could be earning otherwise. (hmm: "7 points by pjc50 18 minutes ago [flagged]" I see it's going to be one of those days)
  - wongarsu 2y ago
    In unindustrialized agriculture having a lot of children is a sound strategy. The first couple years they cost you food and time, but after that they are cheaper than employing workers, and they will even take care of you when you are too old to work the fields. And without modern healthcare a lot of them will die. If you want to make sure one of them inherits the farm (and provides for you if you manage to become old) you need to have enough children to achieve this at an acceptable level of risk.
  - ToucanLoucan 2y ago
- guardianbob 2y ago
  I mean the biggest target thing for Singapore to target would be housing costs “No Flat, No Child” is becoming more and more common as even public flat prices skyrocket https://www.population.fyi/p/singapore-no-flat-no-child https://www.population.fyi/p/singapore-no-flat-no-child
  - fxtentacle 2y ago
    Housing in Singapore is surprisingly cheap when you compare it to European or US megacities.
- wongarsu 2y ago
  Germany might be a counter-example. Cost of living has steadily risen 2008-2021 (and dropped a bit since then), but Germany's birth rate has increased over that period, while birth rates in France and the US have fallen. Germany's birth rate is generally slowly rising ever since a low in 1995. If you zoom out a bit more Germany's birth rate cratered in the 1960s/70s, generally attributed to the wider availability of oral contraceptives. Similarly in its peers. Though that's only the enabling technology, the lower desire for babies is almost certainly driven by other factors (urbanization, better health care, etc)
  - tivert 2y ago
    > Though that's only the enabling technology, the lower desire for babies is almost certainly driven by other factors (urbanization, better health care, etc) I'm not so sure about that. There's no law that says desire has to be aligned with needed action. For instance: up to the availability of oral contraceptives, it was very hard to avoid having kids even if you didn't want them. Kids would happen automatically if you desired a different thing: sex. It's sort of like exercise: it used to not matter if someone desired to "exercise" or not, because they were forced to do lots of physical activity if they wanted to live (e.g. physical work on a farm, walk to the market, etc.). Now technology has enabled a previously impossible level of sedentary life for the common person, moving exercise from a necessity to a desire, we have huge and increasing levels of health problems in society because the desire for the needed thing itself isn't there. I predict, after some period of time, "childfree" psychology will breed itself out of society, and the people who are left will have a lot more explicit desire for children.
  - hobotime 2y ago
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    - nebula8804 2y ago
      They aren't making a dent. The country is on track for population collapse. Although the last person left that will turn off the lights might not be the typical German that you think of. [1]:https://www.populationpyramid.net/germany/2023/ https://www.populationpyramid.net/germany/2023/ What you describe is true in the US though. They have been able to 'cheat' by getting the cream of the crop via immigration to bolster their numbers(although its now fraying post Trump). Without that immigration, they would probably be mirroring German numbers. [2]:https://www.populationpyramid.net/united-states-of-america/2023/ https://www.populationpyramid.net/united-states-of-america/2...
- s1artibartfast 2y ago
  Isnt women's share of child rearing at an all-time low in most of the western world? I cant help but wonder if the causality runs the other direction. That is to say, as motherhood becomes less central to the concept of womanhood, fewer women build self models that include it. That said, I think a more influential cause than either factor is the increasing risk aversion and increasing expectations across the board, and especially when it comes to partnering, life choices, and having kids. Simply put, people arent taking as many risks, and marriage and children are increasingly viewed as risks.
  - jauntywundrkind 2y ago
    Women's share of child rearing might be at an all time low, but homemaking used to be many women's only job. Maybe men are helping more now, but women are also keeping full time careers going and juggling child rearing at the same time. That it's somewhat less child rearing isn't exactly a big comfort in these new circumstances. This is absolutely a story about risk, you're right on that. But I truly feel like you'd have to be willfully blinding yourself to not recognize that the risks are way worse than ever. The full grind of capitalism in a global economy has chewed up humanity & left us deeply powerless & exploited. The demands for housing health care, and help have shot to exceptional unaffordability. I don't think risk aversion has necessarily changed: it's just a fact that trying to raise a family is far riskier & much harder than it has been. Those willing to have a family have had to go against ever more abysmal ods.
    - s1artibartfast 2y ago
      >That it's somewhat less child rearing isn't exactly a big comfort in these new circumstances. Absolutely agree. My my main goal was to highlight the proportion of rearing duties may not be causal, or at least a root cause. Im not sure that equal division of labor would even help with two working parents. >The full grind of capitalism in a global economy has chewed up humanity & left us deeply powerless & exploited. Im not sure that I lay this all on capitalism, but think that at a minimum, the two are tied. Parallel desires for risk mitigation and consumption feed directly into trained helplessness. Housing and healthcare are prime examples of this. I dont think that raising a family is intrinsically any riskier or harder, it is just harder to do in parallel with fulfilling other desires. People want family + X, and the expectations and cost for X grow ever higher. It is obviously easier to have a family with a 500sqft trailer in the country than a 2000sqft house in the city.
- mc32 2y ago
  In countries with the fastest growth rates women have an even greater child-rearing burden so that's not it. That said, it's a tiny island, do they really need more people as a society? Or is this mainly looking at is a country wanting continuous neverending economic growth?
  - ToucanLoucan 2y ago
    > Or is this mainly looking at is a country wanting continuous neverending economic growth? I mean, yes almost assuredly. But that doesn't mean shrinking populations are without their own issues, outside economic ones, elder care being the most obvious. And, shrinking populations can quite easily contribute to large-scale cultural demise, which is always something worth considering. That said, fewer humans overall is undeniably better for our environmental outlook.
    - mc32 2y ago
      I guess the implication I'm making is can we at some point say, we've achieved a pretty good standard of living, let's enjoy our national patrimony and not perpetuate the rat race?
      - ToucanLoucan 2y ago
        I mean if you're asking me? I'd say we're already there. If you're asking the MBA-brain-worms-having grindset number-go-up crazy people who run our society? Never.
  - datavirtue 2y ago
    It's nature. If you aren't growing, you are dying. At work, if you aren't moving up you are on the way out.
    - luqtas 2y ago
      like trees that reach maturity in 25-40 years then live up to 300-600 basically with the same mature form?
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pjc50 2y ago
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oldpersonintx 2y ago
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whateverevetahw 2y ago
There are many reasons people aren't having kids. Climate change and general meaninglessness come to mind.
AndrewKemendo 2y ago
Someone flagged what I thought was a good comment so I couldn’t respond to it unfortunately. I honestly struggled to think of what would be a valuable way to have this discussion and it seems like there’s no way to avoid a flamewar. The only thing I would add is that the English anthropologist Chris Knight wrote extensively about “sex strikes” (which goes beyond the simple act of sex of course, into the entire structural notion of child rearing as a social function) being the driver of cultural peace throughout human history in his critical 1991 book “blood relations” Relevant chapter: http://www.chrisknight.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/Sex-Strike.pdf http://www.chrisknight.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/Sex-... Seems fairly obvious that’s what’s happening and mirrors historical birth rate crashes aligning with general breakup of long running social expectations Polybius wrote as such in 200BC: “ In our time all Greece was visited by a dearth of children and generally a decay of population, owing to which the cities were denuded of inhabitants, and a failure of productiveness resulted, though there were no long-continued wars or serious pestilences among us.” Birth rates crashe when people generally feel like there is no future for the current type of society or future societies that their current societies are headed towards. https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0234%3Abook%3D37%3Achapter%3D9# https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext... https://fabiusmaximus.com/2008/06/11/polybius/amp/ https://fabiusmaximus.com/2008/06/11/polybius/amp/
- linearrust 2y ago
  > Someone flagged what I thought was a good comment so I couldn’t respond to it unfortunately. The best and the worst comments tend to be flagged. Not sure why we aren't allowed to continue the discussion within 'flagged' comments. Just hide it for those who don't want to see flagged threads and let the rest of us continue on. > Birth rates crashe when people generally feel like there is no future for the current type of society or future societies that their current societies are headed towards. Perhaps in certain instances in the past, but I doubt it. The current birth rate decline is a result of intentional policies of the elites. Starting with Europe and the US in the 60s and 70s and then these policies eventually got exported to or forced upon our 'allies' or major trading partners. The implementation of these policies varied from pushing '2 is enough' style propaganda to encourage couples to limit the amount of children, propaganda programming to encourage females to put off child bearing to work and of course enacting drastic policies like the 1 child policy ( the 1 child policy wasn't a chinese policy but one of american/european demands for opening trade and attaining foreign investment ). You can see it with bangladesh, india, etc. They are being forced to adopt 'child planning' policies by the US and Europe in exchange for investment. No doubt africa will get the same demands in the near future. The birth rate decline isn't some natural quirk of society. It is a result of a planned systematic state policy. Everything from education to propaganda encourages men and women to have less children. What's laughable is that the same propagandists are scratching their heads wondering why fertility is declining all the while pushing propaganda to decrease fertility.
triceratops 2y ago
In the aggregate is the "baby bust" a real problem? Even a halving of current world population, which isn't close to happening in the next 100 years, would only take us back to the population level of 1975. If it's really true that productivity has gone up since 1975, we should be able to maintain the same standard of living as now. As a corollary, if people are having fewer children with more thought and deliberation, then those children are probably better cared-for. I can't see that as a bad thing.
- lesuorac 2y ago
  > If it's really true that productivity has gone up since 1975, we should be able to maintain the same standard of living as now. I don't think thats going to be accurate. A population of purely 20-40yr olds is going to be way more productive than a population of 60-80yr olds. This is typically the concern people bring up with the baby bust stats. We achieved a lot of productivity by having a "young" demographic where there wasn't a lot of 60yr olds to each say 50- yr olds. There's going to be a productivity drop off as people voluntary retire or become too injured to work their original jobs. Additionally, older people require more supportive care so more old people means less young people in more productive (according to GDP) positions. Take a look at Russia's demographics [1]. That bulge around 40yrs old is going to become a bulge at 60yrs old in 20 years while a lot of them will die so it'll be a smaller bulge at 60yrs old the 20yr old bulge will remain quite a bit smaller. Sure, Russia as a country won't disappear because of this; but they will be less competitive on the global scale and a lot of menial jobs will go unfilled because there just aren't bodies. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Russia#/media/File:Russia_Population_Pyramid.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Russia#/media/...
  - triceratops 2y ago
    It's bad timing for Russia now. If it were to happen to some other country 20 years from now, it would be less bad. For starters, we'd have 20 years of additional advances in robotics, healthcare, eldercare, or artificial intelligence. Perhaps GenAI will wipe out a lot of white collar work in that time. This frees up people to do physical labor. Maybe it supercharges robotics or drones by letting them understand the physical world better. Think robotic orderlies changing bedpans, or robots picking fruit. Then we need fewer people for labor. More likely it will be a combination of both.
nickdothutton 2y ago
It stands to reason that when a population delays family formation and childrearing, starting years or even decades later than in the past (say... 30+ compared to late teens), there will be dramatically fewer children born. In the case of some couples, no children at all (even if some are desired). If you live in Europe then the population of your country 30 years from now will most likely not look much like you, and the prevailing culture, institutions, and religions will look more like those of newcomers who have higher birth rates, at least for the first couple of generations, and less like those of yours/your-parents.
poikroequ 2y ago
I'm so tired of hearing this. Declining birthrates is NOT a crisis. It's a good thing populations are declining. We live in a world of finite resources. There's only so much to go around. A larger population simply means we're less prosperous as individuals. It's only a crisis to economists who depend on an ever growing population to drive infinite growth.
- w-j-w 2y ago
  This misses a bigger issue with a baby bust: population composition. When birth rates decline sharply all at once, as is happening here, populations skew older and older. More elderly people being supported by fewer young people is also not a recipe for sustainability, in fact it is quite the opposite. The people who will be burdened with caring for the elderly are also the people who will need to have children in order to stabilize the population. This isn't an easy leveling-off of a population, its the beginning of a collapse.
  - poikroequ 2y ago
    There's plenty of young people to care for the elderly. There's this strange assumption that it takes one young person to care for one elderly person, I've seen it in news articles, and I've seen people say it, either implicitly or explicitly. Here's the shocker: one young person can care for more than one elderly person. Not every elderly person needs a young person exclusively devoted to them. Also not all elderly people need caretakers. Not all elderly people are helpless without young people. My dad is well into his 70s now, and he may be retired, but is still helping family and friends, fixes up their homes, helps care for his grandchildren, and holds his own. Society won't fall apart. You just need to adjust your expectations and things will work out in the end.
lgvln 2y ago
Singaporeans work the longest hours in the world, are the most sleep deprived and have the highest rates of depression in Asia. On top of that, an authoritarian regime, a lack of civil liberties, high cost of living and inequality. Maybe the kind of conditions to make people not want to have children?
georgeburdell 2y ago
Malay, Indian, and “Others” do not seem to have this problem. https://www.ica.gov.sg/docs/default-source/ica/stats/annual-bd-statistics/stats_2023_annual_rbd_report.pdf?sfvrsn=a4042753_3 https://www.ica.gov.sg/docs/default-source/ica/stats/annual-...
gradschoolfail 2y ago
Not just Singapore, but there is a curious discrepancy in that the cost of children are felt at the family level but the benefits only at the state level. The other issue is that many educated people (including Elon Musk) realize they can have more impact in their careers, maybe even as managers, than in their children’s lives. Maybe the authoritarians of Singapore need to train their citizens to run and extract value from their charges’ lives more effectively. Other extreme ideas which may work for liberal societies include legalizing child employment for family businesses, collective childrearing, organized homeschooling, family intellectual property, and so forth.
fuzzythinker 2y ago
For those who have no idea what "double-barrelled race" is: "Couples of inter-ethnic marriages now have the additional option to reflect both their races for their child as a double-barrelled race. This is on top of the existing options of choosing only one of the two different races – either that of the father or the mother – for their child." [1] Found it via searching it in wikipedia, and even that doesn't define it, only linking to [1] via footnote in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_in_Singapore https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_in_Singapore . [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20170729133759/https://www.ica.gov.sg/news_details.aspx?nid=12443 https://web.archive.org/web/20170729133759/https://www.ica.g...
iteratethis 2y ago
Singapore, as well as South Korea and in part China and Japan have a few things in common. A work yourself to death culture, paired with the expectation to forever take care of your parents/in-laws. Not exactly a fertile ground to start a family on. And that doesn't even go into gender expectations. My take on this is that the current performance culture we've been living since the 80s where we worship the economy over anything else is biting us in the ass. We value work over family and children. We even dare to call them an "opportunity cost". We should return to a single income society. A modern version of it that is not gendered. A single full-time income should be enough to run the basics of a family. Fail to deliver this and there will be no families. In general we should work less and enjoy life more. Otherwise, what is the point? The point of technical progress should be less labor needed. But this progress is never paid out because we keep using that room to make up new bullshit jobs to produce garbage products we don't need. A dutch economist once calculated that about 40-50% of the world economy is bullshit. Busy-keep, non-essential, a replacement for boredom. Anyway, a system that advocates for dual incomes, job insecurity and high retirement ages that sees children as a distraction to optimal performance will cease to exist. Children are the most valuable "product" in society, yet we care about it the least.
- shrimp_emoji 2y ago
  The key misconception here is that people want a single-income household and to have kids, and they've been Shanghaied out of this idyllic state of affairs by The Economy. No. It's revealed preference, reflected worldwide. People think being single-income sucks. People think having kids sucks. They'll tell you they want to have kids and this and that if only it were "affordable", even when it's more affordable than it ever was for their parents. What their parent really had was a lack of contraception and other options; otherwise, they wouldn't've had kids and blamed it on something else the way you'd explain why you don't go to the gym more often. The way the world used to work has been a Ponzi scheme, and we've only now unlocked the ability to change the channel. So no. There is no going back. And, even if there was, we'd only roll forward again since the fate of that lifestyle is to be defeated by your Bullshit Economy. It's a dead end. The only way is forward: growing posthumans in pods. We're only like 100 or 200 years away from that, and we'll make it there easily under a widening demographic pyramid.

28 points by guardianbob 2y ago

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The article cites the cost of living first and foremost, with the second item being that women disproportionately bear the cost of child-rearing. I wonder how many countries these would also be the two primary drivers. Or, to phrase the question more in line with what I suspect is the case, I wonder how many countries those two aren't the primary drivers in? I suspect not many. I wonder how much longer those in power are going to stare this type of data in the face before realizing we need to make some fundamental systemic changes or this whole party is gonna come to a really nasty end. The first thing that goes in an animal population experiencing stress at scale is reproduction.

fxtentacle 2y ago
If you look at China, it appears that young men there need to make exceptionally large and expensive sacrifices, like borrowing money and buying an expensive apartment, just to be allowed into the dating pool. Does that equalise the total investment into conceiving a baby? Is China better off with birth rates as the result? "women disproportionately bear the cost of child-rearing" is very difficult to measure objectively.
- deleted 2y ago
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- tivert 2y ago
  > "women disproportionately bear the cost of child-rearing" is very difficult to measure objectively. Not really, they've got the equipment for it (e.g. uteri and mammary glands). I think it would be impossible to "equalize" the cost without doing some extreme and bizarre things (e.g. have some kind of arbitrary Weregild-type thing to "equalize" the cost). A significant part of the problem seems to be one of ideology colliding with reality.
  - ToucanLoucan 2y ago
    Both of these comments are only reacting to the financial and physical costs of child rearing. Obviously humans with penises cannot bear children and it's unreasonable to suggest they should be made to. Similarly, the fact that those men in China are expected to attain so much debt simply to enter the dating pool is also a legitimate problem that needs addressing. However neither of those things reflect the costs of motherhood, which are a lot more expansive: * Mothers are still by and large the "default" entity for all child care, with it being notable for men to take on that role. Men are regularly praised for "babysitting the kids for mom" even though if you think about that for like, 30 seconds, you realize how insane it is. Of course dad watches the kids too, in any kind of equitable household, that would be expected. * Mothers are also by default responsible for almost all child-adjacent logistics. School, activities, medical appointments, friend visits, school trips, sports, immunization scheduling.... Like, think about all the annoying logistical bullshit in life that you have to get done just for you, and then imagine that you have to do it all twice, for yourself, and for a secondary third party who oftentimes doesn't appreciate it either.
    - tivert 2y ago
      >> A significant part of the problem seems to be one of ideology colliding with reality. I think you should read that a little more expansively that the things I explicitly commented on. Some examples of ideology: "children should be parented with high intensity", "men and women should be doing the exact same things in a family in exactly equal proportions with no specialization", "a family should consist of two capitalism-participting income-earners," etc. I suspect fixing the issues you outlined with the fixes you're implying wouldn't actually do anything to increase birthrates.
  - s1artibartfast 2y ago
    I think they were making a more general point that the article may be taking a overly simplistic view of the "costs of child-rearing". If a mother feeds and cares for children, that can be viewed as a cost of children to her. If a man works to feed and house those same children, surely that is a cost of children to me. I suspect part of the problem is a generation of people raised with just enough economics knowledge to be dangerous, with life viewed through lenses of cost, profit and risk instead of joy, experience, and sentimentalism.
pocketarc 2y ago
Something that might be worth pondering is: When was that ever not the case? Are we seriously saying that in the 1800s those poor desperate people who had 12 kids and put most of them (the ones that even survived!) to work in mines and farms, were in a better situation? The discussion around cost is a red herring. If it really was about cost, we'd be seeing the upper middle class having children by the ton. Most of us here on HN would have 10 children each, because cost definitely isn't an issue for any well-paid software engineer or startup founder. I definitely think that you are right - this is definitely going to be a major crisis in the next few decades, and there needs to be a serious course correction, and -major- incentives for having kids. But I don't think it comes down to cost, for the most part. I think there are a number of other factors, but cost just ends up being a nice easy scapegoat because it sounds completely reasonable. Nobody can argue with it, not even oneself.
- pjc50 2y ago
  > Are we seriously saying that in the 1800s those poor desperate people who had 12 kids and put most of them (the ones that even survived!) This is the origin story of the contraceptive movement: either your population growth rate is contraception-limited, or it's death-limited. The latter is pretty horrific. > If it really was about cost, we'd be seeing the upper middle class having children by the ton The cost issue is even worse for everyone who isn't a rentier, because children need time, and the opportunity cost of that is higher the more you could be earning otherwise. (hmm: "7 points by pjc50 18 minutes ago [flagged]" I see it's going to be one of those days)
- wongarsu 2y ago
  In unindustrialized agriculture having a lot of children is a sound strategy. The first couple years they cost you food and time, but after that they are cheaper than employing workers, and they will even take care of you when you are too old to work the fields. And without modern healthcare a lot of them will die. If you want to make sure one of them inherits the farm (and provides for you if you manage to become old) you need to have enough children to achieve this at an acceptable level of risk.
- ToucanLoucan 2y ago
guardianbob 2y ago
I mean the biggest target thing for Singapore to target would be housing costs “No Flat, No Child” is becoming more and more common as even public flat prices skyrocket https://www.population.fyi/p/singapore-no-flat-no-child https://www.population.fyi/p/singapore-no-flat-no-child
- fxtentacle 2y ago
  Housing in Singapore is surprisingly cheap when you compare it to European or US megacities.
wongarsu 2y ago
Germany might be a counter-example. Cost of living has steadily risen 2008-2021 (and dropped a bit since then), but Germany's birth rate has increased over that period, while birth rates in France and the US have fallen. Germany's birth rate is generally slowly rising ever since a low in 1995. If you zoom out a bit more Germany's birth rate cratered in the 1960s/70s, generally attributed to the wider availability of oral contraceptives. Similarly in its peers. Though that's only the enabling technology, the lower desire for babies is almost certainly driven by other factors (urbanization, better health care, etc)
- tivert 2y ago
  > Though that's only the enabling technology, the lower desire for babies is almost certainly driven by other factors (urbanization, better health care, etc) I'm not so sure about that. There's no law that says desire has to be aligned with needed action. For instance: up to the availability of oral contraceptives, it was very hard to avoid having kids even if you didn't want them. Kids would happen automatically if you desired a different thing: sex. It's sort of like exercise: it used to not matter if someone desired to "exercise" or not, because they were forced to do lots of physical activity if they wanted to live (e.g. physical work on a farm, walk to the market, etc.). Now technology has enabled a previously impossible level of sedentary life for the common person, moving exercise from a necessity to a desire, we have huge and increasing levels of health problems in society because the desire for the needed thing itself isn't there. I predict, after some period of time, "childfree" psychology will breed itself out of society, and the people who are left will have a lot more explicit desire for children.
- hobotime 2y ago
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  - nebula8804 2y ago
    They aren't making a dent. The country is on track for population collapse. Although the last person left that will turn off the lights might not be the typical German that you think of. [1]:https://www.populationpyramid.net/germany/2023/ https://www.populationpyramid.net/germany/2023/ What you describe is true in the US though. They have been able to 'cheat' by getting the cream of the crop via immigration to bolster their numbers(although its now fraying post Trump). Without that immigration, they would probably be mirroring German numbers. [2]:https://www.populationpyramid.net/united-states-of-america/2023/ https://www.populationpyramid.net/united-states-of-america/2...
s1artibartfast 2y ago
Isnt women's share of child rearing at an all-time low in most of the western world? I cant help but wonder if the causality runs the other direction. That is to say, as motherhood becomes less central to the concept of womanhood, fewer women build self models that include it. That said, I think a more influential cause than either factor is the increasing risk aversion and increasing expectations across the board, and especially when it comes to partnering, life choices, and having kids. Simply put, people arent taking as many risks, and marriage and children are increasingly viewed as risks.
- jauntywundrkind 2y ago
  Women's share of child rearing might be at an all time low, but homemaking used to be many women's only job. Maybe men are helping more now, but women are also keeping full time careers going and juggling child rearing at the same time. That it's somewhat less child rearing isn't exactly a big comfort in these new circumstances. This is absolutely a story about risk, you're right on that. But I truly feel like you'd have to be willfully blinding yourself to not recognize that the risks are way worse than ever. The full grind of capitalism in a global economy has chewed up humanity & left us deeply powerless & exploited. The demands for housing health care, and help have shot to exceptional unaffordability. I don't think risk aversion has necessarily changed: it's just a fact that trying to raise a family is far riskier & much harder than it has been. Those willing to have a family have had to go against ever more abysmal ods.
  - s1artibartfast 2y ago
    >That it's somewhat less child rearing isn't exactly a big comfort in these new circumstances. Absolutely agree. My my main goal was to highlight the proportion of rearing duties may not be causal, or at least a root cause. Im not sure that equal division of labor would even help with two working parents. >The full grind of capitalism in a global economy has chewed up humanity & left us deeply powerless & exploited. Im not sure that I lay this all on capitalism, but think that at a minimum, the two are tied. Parallel desires for risk mitigation and consumption feed directly into trained helplessness. Housing and healthcare are prime examples of this. I dont think that raising a family is intrinsically any riskier or harder, it is just harder to do in parallel with fulfilling other desires. People want family + X, and the expectations and cost for X grow ever higher. It is obviously easier to have a family with a 500sqft trailer in the country than a 2000sqft house in the city.
mc32 2y ago
In countries with the fastest growth rates women have an even greater child-rearing burden so that's not it. That said, it's a tiny island, do they really need more people as a society? Or is this mainly looking at is a country wanting continuous neverending economic growth?
- ToucanLoucan 2y ago
  > Or is this mainly looking at is a country wanting continuous neverending economic growth? I mean, yes almost assuredly. But that doesn't mean shrinking populations are without their own issues, outside economic ones, elder care being the most obvious. And, shrinking populations can quite easily contribute to large-scale cultural demise, which is always something worth considering. That said, fewer humans overall is undeniably better for our environmental outlook.
  - mc32 2y ago
    I guess the implication I'm making is can we at some point say, we've achieved a pretty good standard of living, let's enjoy our national patrimony and not perpetuate the rat race?
    - ToucanLoucan 2y ago
      I mean if you're asking me? I'd say we're already there. If you're asking the MBA-brain-worms-having grindset number-go-up crazy people who run our society? Never.
- datavirtue 2y ago
  It's nature. If you aren't growing, you are dying. At work, if you aren't moving up you are on the way out.
  - luqtas 2y ago
    like trees that reach maturity in 25-40 years then live up to 300-600 basically with the same mature form?
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whateverevetahw 2y ago

There are many reasons people aren't having kids. Climate change and general meaninglessness come to mind.

AndrewKemendo 2y ago

Someone flagged what I thought was a good comment so I couldn’t respond to it unfortunately. I honestly struggled to think of what would be a valuable way to have this discussion and it seems like there’s no way to avoid a flamewar. The only thing I would add is that the English anthropologist Chris Knight wrote extensively about “sex strikes” (which goes beyond the simple act of sex of course, into the entire structural notion of child rearing as a social function) being the driver of cultural peace throughout human history in his critical 1991 book “blood relations” Relevant chapter: http://www.chrisknight.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/Sex-Strike.pdf http://www.chrisknight.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/Sex-... Seems fairly obvious that’s what’s happening and mirrors historical birth rate crashes aligning with general breakup of long running social expectations Polybius wrote as such in 200BC: “ In our time all Greece was visited by a dearth of children and generally a decay of population, owing to which the cities were denuded of inhabitants, and a failure of productiveness resulted, though there were no long-continued wars or serious pestilences among us.” Birth rates crashe when people generally feel like there is no future for the current type of society or future societies that their current societies are headed towards. https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0234%3Abook%3D37%3Achapter%3D9# https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext... https://fabiusmaximus.com/2008/06/11/polybius/amp/ https://fabiusmaximus.com/2008/06/11/polybius/amp/

linearrust 2y ago
> Someone flagged what I thought was a good comment so I couldn’t respond to it unfortunately. The best and the worst comments tend to be flagged. Not sure why we aren't allowed to continue the discussion within 'flagged' comments. Just hide it for those who don't want to see flagged threads and let the rest of us continue on. > Birth rates crashe when people generally feel like there is no future for the current type of society or future societies that their current societies are headed towards. Perhaps in certain instances in the past, but I doubt it. The current birth rate decline is a result of intentional policies of the elites. Starting with Europe and the US in the 60s and 70s and then these policies eventually got exported to or forced upon our 'allies' or major trading partners. The implementation of these policies varied from pushing '2 is enough' style propaganda to encourage couples to limit the amount of children, propaganda programming to encourage females to put off child bearing to work and of course enacting drastic policies like the 1 child policy ( the 1 child policy wasn't a chinese policy but one of american/european demands for opening trade and attaining foreign investment ). You can see it with bangladesh, india, etc. They are being forced to adopt 'child planning' policies by the US and Europe in exchange for investment. No doubt africa will get the same demands in the near future. The birth rate decline isn't some natural quirk of society. It is a result of a planned systematic state policy. Everything from education to propaganda encourages men and women to have less children. What's laughable is that the same propagandists are scratching their heads wondering why fertility is declining all the while pushing propaganda to decrease fertility.

triceratops 2y ago

In the aggregate is the "baby bust" a real problem? Even a halving of current world population, which isn't close to happening in the next 100 years, would only take us back to the population level of 1975. If it's really true that productivity has gone up since 1975, we should be able to maintain the same standard of living as now. As a corollary, if people are having fewer children with more thought and deliberation, then those children are probably better cared-for. I can't see that as a bad thing.

lesuorac 2y ago
> If it's really true that productivity has gone up since 1975, we should be able to maintain the same standard of living as now. I don't think thats going to be accurate. A population of purely 20-40yr olds is going to be way more productive than a population of 60-80yr olds. This is typically the concern people bring up with the baby bust stats. We achieved a lot of productivity by having a "young" demographic where there wasn't a lot of 60yr olds to each say 50- yr olds. There's going to be a productivity drop off as people voluntary retire or become too injured to work their original jobs. Additionally, older people require more supportive care so more old people means less young people in more productive (according to GDP) positions. Take a look at Russia's demographics [1]. That bulge around 40yrs old is going to become a bulge at 60yrs old in 20 years while a lot of them will die so it'll be a smaller bulge at 60yrs old the 20yr old bulge will remain quite a bit smaller. Sure, Russia as a country won't disappear because of this; but they will be less competitive on the global scale and a lot of menial jobs will go unfilled because there just aren't bodies. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Russia#/media/File:Russia_Population_Pyramid.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Russia#/media/...
- triceratops 2y ago
  It's bad timing for Russia now. If it were to happen to some other country 20 years from now, it would be less bad. For starters, we'd have 20 years of additional advances in robotics, healthcare, eldercare, or artificial intelligence. Perhaps GenAI will wipe out a lot of white collar work in that time. This frees up people to do physical labor. Maybe it supercharges robotics or drones by letting them understand the physical world better. Think robotic orderlies changing bedpans, or robots picking fruit. Then we need fewer people for labor. More likely it will be a combination of both.

nickdothutton 2y ago

It stands to reason that when a population delays family formation and childrearing, starting years or even decades later than in the past (say... 30+ compared to late teens), there will be dramatically fewer children born. In the case of some couples, no children at all (even if some are desired). If you live in Europe then the population of your country 30 years from now will most likely not look much like you, and the prevailing culture, institutions, and religions will look more like those of newcomers who have higher birth rates, at least for the first couple of generations, and less like those of yours/your-parents.

poikroequ 2y ago

I'm so tired of hearing this. Declining birthrates is NOT a crisis. It's a good thing populations are declining. We live in a world of finite resources. There's only so much to go around. A larger population simply means we're less prosperous as individuals. It's only a crisis to economists who depend on an ever growing population to drive infinite growth.

w-j-w 2y ago
This misses a bigger issue with a baby bust: population composition. When birth rates decline sharply all at once, as is happening here, populations skew older and older. More elderly people being supported by fewer young people is also not a recipe for sustainability, in fact it is quite the opposite. The people who will be burdened with caring for the elderly are also the people who will need to have children in order to stabilize the population. This isn't an easy leveling-off of a population, its the beginning of a collapse.
- poikroequ 2y ago
  There's plenty of young people to care for the elderly. There's this strange assumption that it takes one young person to care for one elderly person, I've seen it in news articles, and I've seen people say it, either implicitly or explicitly. Here's the shocker: one young person can care for more than one elderly person. Not every elderly person needs a young person exclusively devoted to them. Also not all elderly people need caretakers. Not all elderly people are helpless without young people. My dad is well into his 70s now, and he may be retired, but is still helping family and friends, fixes up their homes, helps care for his grandchildren, and holds his own. Society won't fall apart. You just need to adjust your expectations and things will work out in the end.

lgvln 2y ago

Singaporeans work the longest hours in the world, are the most sleep deprived and have the highest rates of depression in Asia. On top of that, an authoritarian regime, a lack of civil liberties, high cost of living and inequality. Maybe the kind of conditions to make people not want to have children?

georgeburdell 2y ago

Malay, Indian, and “Others” do not seem to have this problem. https://www.ica.gov.sg/docs/default-source/ica/stats/annual-bd-statistics/stats_2023_annual_rbd_report.pdf?sfvrsn=a4042753_3 https://www.ica.gov.sg/docs/default-source/ica/stats/annual-...

gradschoolfail 2y ago

Not just Singapore, but there is a curious discrepancy in that the cost of children are felt at the family level but the benefits only at the state level. The other issue is that many educated people (including Elon Musk) realize they can have more impact in their careers, maybe even as managers, than in their children’s lives. Maybe the authoritarians of Singapore need to train their citizens to run and extract value from their charges’ lives more effectively. Other extreme ideas which may work for liberal societies include legalizing child employment for family businesses, collective childrearing, organized homeschooling, family intellectual property, and so forth.

fuzzythinker 2y ago

For those who have no idea what "double-barrelled race" is: "Couples of inter-ethnic marriages now have the additional option to reflect both their races for their child as a double-barrelled race. This is on top of the existing options of choosing only one of the two different races – either that of the father or the mother – for their child." [1] Found it via searching it in wikipedia, and even that doesn't define it, only linking to [1] via footnote in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_in_Singapore https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_in_Singapore . [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20170729133759/https://www.ica.gov.sg/news_details.aspx?nid=12443 https://web.archive.org/web/20170729133759/https://www.ica.g...

iteratethis 2y ago

Singapore, as well as South Korea and in part China and Japan have a few things in common. A work yourself to death culture, paired with the expectation to forever take care of your parents/in-laws. Not exactly a fertile ground to start a family on. And that doesn't even go into gender expectations. My take on this is that the current performance culture we've been living since the 80s where we worship the economy over anything else is biting us in the ass. We value work over family and children. We even dare to call them an "opportunity cost". We should return to a single income society. A modern version of it that is not gendered. A single full-time income should be enough to run the basics of a family. Fail to deliver this and there will be no families. In general we should work less and enjoy life more. Otherwise, what is the point? The point of technical progress should be less labor needed. But this progress is never paid out because we keep using that room to make up new bullshit jobs to produce garbage products we don't need. A dutch economist once calculated that about 40-50% of the world economy is bullshit. Busy-keep, non-essential, a replacement for boredom. Anyway, a system that advocates for dual incomes, job insecurity and high retirement ages that sees children as a distraction to optimal performance will cease to exist. Children are the most valuable "product" in society, yet we care about it the least.

shrimp_emoji 2y ago
The key misconception here is that people want a single-income household and to have kids, and they've been Shanghaied out of this idyllic state of affairs by The Economy. No. It's revealed preference, reflected worldwide. People think being single-income sucks. People think having kids sucks. They'll tell you they want to have kids and this and that if only it were "affordable", even when it's more affordable than it ever was for their parents. What their parent really had was a lack of contraception and other options; otherwise, they wouldn't've had kids and blamed it on something else the way you'd explain why you don't go to the gym more often. The way the world used to work has been a Ponzi scheme, and we've only now unlocked the ability to change the channel. So no. There is no going back. And, even if there was, we'd only roll forward again since the fate of that lifestyle is to be defeated by your Bullshit Economy. It's a dead end. The only way is forward: growing posthumans in pods. We're only like 100 or 200 years away from that, and we'll make it there easily under a widening demographic pyramid.