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UK survey five years ago - https://yougov.co.uk/society/articles/25364-why-are-britons-choosing-not-have-children https://yougov.co.uk/society/articles/25364-wh

UK survey five years ago - https://yougov.co.uk/society/articles/25364-why-are-britons-choosing-not-have-children https://yougov.co.uk/society/articles/25364-why-are-britons-... top 5 ranked > too old > don’t want lifestyle changes > too expensive > overpopulation > don’t like children more recently, but free text answers classified by ML model (which seems to removes some nuance in the categories) - https://yougov.co.uk/society/articles/51749-why-do-some-britons-not-want-children https://yougov.co.uk/society/articles/51749-why-do-some-brit...

like_any_other 2y ago
Overpopulation concern is the funniest one of all for the UK: Why Britain needs more migrants - It cannot fix its population-growth slowdown without them - https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2022/01/14/why-britain-needs-more-migrants https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2022/01/14/why-brit... Britain ‘must rely on immigration’ to compensate for falling birth rate - https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/03/26/rise-in-older-mothers-means-britain-must-rely-on-migration/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/03/26/rise-in-olde... UK will be reliant on immigration for nearly 80 years due to falling birth rates - https://www.independent.co.uk/world/population-fertility-immigration-uk-b2516198.html https://www.independent.co.uk/world/population-fertility-imm... Birth rates in the UK are now, according to the ONS, at their lowest levels since records began in 1938, at a rate of 1.44 children per woman. With a rapidly ageing population, migrants will be essential to replace UK-born workers - https://www.tradeandbusiness.uk/news/six-reasons-why-the-uk-needs-immigration https://www.tradeandbusiness.uk/news/six-reasons-why-the-uk-... It's like an iterated prisoner's dilemma, but one prisoner refuses to defect or learn anything, despite the other constantly defecting.
- dijksterhuis 2y ago
  as someone who squarely falls into the “probably don’t want kids because of overpopulation” category — i get the irony you’re trying to point out. but global overpopulation is not the same as national overpopulation. at some point we’re gonna run out of fucking food as a species. * the sooner we can get our heads out of our arses and past the primitive tribalism of “we need to have more than the other lot” as a species, the better. i squarely fall into the “migration is the solution, not the problem” camp too [0]. exactly because of that global perspective. plenty of people in the world. maybe it’s time we learned to share as a species? although fuck all chance of that happening any time soon in the current political climate. * someone usually attempts a retort about “technology will magically save all of us” to this point. which is just kicking the can down the road. [0]: edit to note that the problem i’m referring to here is national underpopulation specifically
  - oezi 2y ago
    Some problems need tackling at the right time. We don't need to get too crazy about declining populations when we are facing more urgent issues. Maybe the world in 2050 will be so different that the issue has resolved itself. Always remember that the world was fine with 2bn people just 100 years ago.
    - dijksterhuis 2y ago
      > Always remember that the world was fine with 2bn people just 100 years ago. we’ve gone from ~2 billion to ~8 billion in 100 years. compared to the (highly estimated) figures from before 100 years ago — that’s a massive increase. the graph is basically a line going straight up compared to the rest of (highly estimated) population data for the last 10k years. and growth is continuing. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/population https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/population > Maybe the world in 2050 will be so different that the issue has resolved itself “maybe a miracle might happen” — is just kicking the can down the road in my book. we are out of balance with our surrounding environment. there will be a readjustment — whether we choose to make that readjustment ourselves (take responsibility for the problem), or let the readjustment happen (the problem really becomes a problem), is up to us as a species. > Some problems need tackling at the right time. some problems take a really long time and a lot of effort to work on so maybe starting to work on them early and proactively might be a good idea. like climate change. > We don't need to get too crazy about declining populations when we are facing more urgent issues. speaking of climate change, global overpopulation kinda has an impact on it! more people -> use more resources -> screwing up the planet faster
      - oezi 2y ago
        Your arguments are a bit all over the place for me to follow. I don't think it is kicking down the can if you don't have enough information to not get to much into panic mode. If this turns out to be an issue we can act. At the moment it looks like it to me that the climate crisis is more relevant than the demographic change, because as you said: Less people are actually better for the planet. With AI becoming more capable each year we might find that many of the issues of large elderly populations can be alleviated. Let's check back in 5 or 10 years if the demographics is really shaping up to be a problem.
- apwell23 2y ago
  not sure how thats relevant. planet is still overpopulated. Its not like someone polluting the planet in uk will only pollute uk. we all share the same global atmosphere.
  - modo_mario 2y ago
    Chances are if you keep pulling people out of places with high birthrates they will continue to have high birthrates and you will continue to have the low birthrates fueled by people who feel there's no space for their childwish.
    - apwell23 2y ago
      > Chances are if you keep pulling people out of places with high birthrates they will continue to have high birthrates no comments mentioning immigrant birthrates below misunderstood what is being talked about here. > they will continue to have high birthrates 'they' here is not immigrants , they here is ppl in the places where immigrants came from.
      - modo_mario 2y ago
        I didn't say indefinitely...But all else being equal you're limiting a dampening effect on their population growth.
      - like_any_other 2y ago
        Yes: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7363754/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7363754/ https://paa2012.populationassociation.org/papers/121522 https://paa2012.populationassociation.org/papers/121522 https://d-nb.info/1152178954/34 https://d-nb.info/1152178954/34
- lupusreal 2y ago
  I don't see the humor you're seeing, there's no hypocrisy because the two messages are coming from two very different groups with very different values and motivations. The "we need more people" stuff is coming from the capital class and their sycophants. They want more people so they can have more laborers to drive down the cost of labor, and more consumers to buy more product, and more renters to drive up the price of rent. They want population number to go up because they are invested and committed to the numbers go up game. As long as more people means more numbers go up, that's what they'll keep demanding. The UK has more people than ever before, it's steadily climbing but they always want even more. Unbounded growth. The "I don't want kids because this place is crowded" and "kids are too expensive" messages are coming from members of the general public who are dealing with the ramifications of the policies of the first group. Their rent is high, their towns and cities growing, traffic is getting worse, city buses are packed, there's lots of things they want to buy but the value of their labor isn't keeping pace. Birth rate falls in response to these pressures, so the capital class tries to import new labor from poor parts of the world, knowing those new laborers will feel relatively happy to live 10 people to an apartment working for piss poor pay, because those conditions are still an improvement over where they are coming from.
  - like_any_other 2y ago
    It's the bitter humor of a pacifist in war.
- api 2y ago
  The Population Bomb by Paul Ehrlich has turned out to be almost exactly wrong. Here's a good pod on the subject: https://open.spotify.com/episode/7Lk2wsYafTyoPA2hrNVN8e?si=L551KEdWQR-XA-xufkHnqA&utm_source=copy-link&nd=1&dlsi=31fd9b1458614717 https://open.spotify.com/episode/7Lk2wsYafTyoPA2hrNVN8e?si=L... For some strange reason this line of thinking had tremendous influence on the left, at least in the West, despite the fact that there has always been a huge undercurrent of racism in overpopulation discourse. This pod does a decent job calling that out. I remember watching an overpopulation alarmist documentary as a teenager and thinking -- without any prompting -- that the whole thing came off as super racist. Any time they wanted to show the looming population catastrophe they always showed hordes of people with dark skin. Ehrlich continues to be treated like an economist -- meaning, given intellectual credibility despite a track record of having been consistently wrong. This doesn't mean I buy into underpopulation hysteria either. I see them making the same mistake: assuming that current trends will continue indefinitely. It's entirely possible that things like the childfree movement will cause a population rebound. How? By selecting out of the gene pool whatever traits make people more reluctant to reproduce. Until recently reproduction was pretty automatic, allowing those traits to persist, but after a few more generations of reproduction being solidly optional we could end up with a population composed of almost 100% people with intense "biological clocks" and a strong urge to have babies. The present decline in fertility could be like a "bear trap" on a bull market stock graph.
gaiagraphia 2y ago
Left high school in the UK thinking that anything connected with family and having children was some type of carnal sin. Seemed the idea of anything traditional was an aboslute taboo to most of the staff. When I compare schooling experiences to people from other countries, it seemed everything was so negative and guilt-ridden in comparison.
- PaulHoule 2y ago
  By the way people respond you'd think that the mainstream thinks natalism is the ultimate squick.
- trollbridge 2y ago
  This is definitely a belief system isolated to certain social classes. Lots of other classes of people thinking having children is great, love going to children's birthday parties, get excited when a relative is expecting a baby, and so forth.

like_any_other 2y ago

Overpopulation concern is the funniest one of all for the UK: Why Britain needs more migrants - It cannot fix its population-growth slowdown without them - https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2022/01/14/why-britain-needs-more-migrants https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2022/01/14/why-brit... Britain ‘must rely on immigration’ to compensate for falling birth rate - https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/03/26/rise-in-older-mothers-means-britain-must-rely-on-migration/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/03/26/rise-in-olde... UK will be reliant on immigration for nearly 80 years due to falling birth rates - https://www.independent.co.uk/world/population-fertility-immigration-uk-b2516198.html https://www.independent.co.uk/world/population-fertility-imm... Birth rates in the UK are now, according to the ONS, at their lowest levels since records began in 1938, at a rate of 1.44 children per woman. With a rapidly ageing population, migrants will be essential to replace UK-born workers - https://www.tradeandbusiness.uk/news/six-reasons-why-the-uk-needs-immigration https://www.tradeandbusiness.uk/news/six-reasons-why-the-uk-... It's like an iterated prisoner's dilemma, but one prisoner refuses to defect or learn anything, despite the other constantly defecting.

dijksterhuis 2y ago
as someone who squarely falls into the “probably don’t want kids because of overpopulation” category — i get the irony you’re trying to point out. but global overpopulation is not the same as national overpopulation. at some point we’re gonna run out of fucking food as a species. * the sooner we can get our heads out of our arses and past the primitive tribalism of “we need to have more than the other lot” as a species, the better. i squarely fall into the “migration is the solution, not the problem” camp too [0]. exactly because of that global perspective. plenty of people in the world. maybe it’s time we learned to share as a species? although fuck all chance of that happening any time soon in the current political climate. * someone usually attempts a retort about “technology will magically save all of us” to this point. which is just kicking the can down the road. [0]: edit to note that the problem i’m referring to here is national underpopulation specifically
- oezi 2y ago
  Some problems need tackling at the right time. We don't need to get too crazy about declining populations when we are facing more urgent issues. Maybe the world in 2050 will be so different that the issue has resolved itself. Always remember that the world was fine with 2bn people just 100 years ago.
  - dijksterhuis 2y ago
    > Always remember that the world was fine with 2bn people just 100 years ago. we’ve gone from ~2 billion to ~8 billion in 100 years. compared to the (highly estimated) figures from before 100 years ago — that’s a massive increase. the graph is basically a line going straight up compared to the rest of (highly estimated) population data for the last 10k years. and growth is continuing. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/population https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/population > Maybe the world in 2050 will be so different that the issue has resolved itself “maybe a miracle might happen” — is just kicking the can down the road in my book. we are out of balance with our surrounding environment. there will be a readjustment — whether we choose to make that readjustment ourselves (take responsibility for the problem), or let the readjustment happen (the problem really becomes a problem), is up to us as a species. > Some problems need tackling at the right time. some problems take a really long time and a lot of effort to work on so maybe starting to work on them early and proactively might be a good idea. like climate change. > We don't need to get too crazy about declining populations when we are facing more urgent issues. speaking of climate change, global overpopulation kinda has an impact on it! more people -> use more resources -> screwing up the planet faster
    - oezi 2y ago
      Your arguments are a bit all over the place for me to follow. I don't think it is kicking down the can if you don't have enough information to not get to much into panic mode. If this turns out to be an issue we can act. At the moment it looks like it to me that the climate crisis is more relevant than the demographic change, because as you said: Less people are actually better for the planet. With AI becoming more capable each year we might find that many of the issues of large elderly populations can be alleviated. Let's check back in 5 or 10 years if the demographics is really shaping up to be a problem.
apwell23 2y ago
not sure how thats relevant. planet is still overpopulated. Its not like someone polluting the planet in uk will only pollute uk. we all share the same global atmosphere.
- modo_mario 2y ago
  Chances are if you keep pulling people out of places with high birthrates they will continue to have high birthrates and you will continue to have the low birthrates fueled by people who feel there's no space for their childwish.
  - apwell23 2y ago
    > Chances are if you keep pulling people out of places with high birthrates they will continue to have high birthrates no comments mentioning immigrant birthrates below misunderstood what is being talked about here. > they will continue to have high birthrates 'they' here is not immigrants , they here is ppl in the places where immigrants came from.
    - modo_mario 2y ago
      I didn't say indefinitely...But all else being equal you're limiting a dampening effect on their population growth.
    - like_any_other 2y ago
      Yes: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7363754/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7363754/ https://paa2012.populationassociation.org/papers/121522 https://paa2012.populationassociation.org/papers/121522 https://d-nb.info/1152178954/34 https://d-nb.info/1152178954/34
lupusreal 2y ago
I don't see the humor you're seeing, there's no hypocrisy because the two messages are coming from two very different groups with very different values and motivations. The "we need more people" stuff is coming from the capital class and their sycophants. They want more people so they can have more laborers to drive down the cost of labor, and more consumers to buy more product, and more renters to drive up the price of rent. They want population number to go up because they are invested and committed to the numbers go up game. As long as more people means more numbers go up, that's what they'll keep demanding. The UK has more people than ever before, it's steadily climbing but they always want even more. Unbounded growth. The "I don't want kids because this place is crowded" and "kids are too expensive" messages are coming from members of the general public who are dealing with the ramifications of the policies of the first group. Their rent is high, their towns and cities growing, traffic is getting worse, city buses are packed, there's lots of things they want to buy but the value of their labor isn't keeping pace. Birth rate falls in response to these pressures, so the capital class tries to import new labor from poor parts of the world, knowing those new laborers will feel relatively happy to live 10 people to an apartment working for piss poor pay, because those conditions are still an improvement over where they are coming from.
- like_any_other 2y ago
  It's the bitter humor of a pacifist in war.
api 2y ago
The Population Bomb by Paul Ehrlich has turned out to be almost exactly wrong. Here's a good pod on the subject: https://open.spotify.com/episode/7Lk2wsYafTyoPA2hrNVN8e?si=L551KEdWQR-XA-xufkHnqA&utm_source=copy-link&nd=1&dlsi=31fd9b1458614717 https://open.spotify.com/episode/7Lk2wsYafTyoPA2hrNVN8e?si=L... For some strange reason this line of thinking had tremendous influence on the left, at least in the West, despite the fact that there has always been a huge undercurrent of racism in overpopulation discourse. This pod does a decent job calling that out. I remember watching an overpopulation alarmist documentary as a teenager and thinking -- without any prompting -- that the whole thing came off as super racist. Any time they wanted to show the looming population catastrophe they always showed hordes of people with dark skin. Ehrlich continues to be treated like an economist -- meaning, given intellectual credibility despite a track record of having been consistently wrong. This doesn't mean I buy into underpopulation hysteria either. I see them making the same mistake: assuming that current trends will continue indefinitely. It's entirely possible that things like the childfree movement will cause a population rebound. How? By selecting out of the gene pool whatever traits make people more reluctant to reproduce. Until recently reproduction was pretty automatic, allowing those traits to persist, but after a few more generations of reproduction being solidly optional we could end up with a population composed of almost 100% people with intense "biological clocks" and a strong urge to have babies. The present decline in fertility could be like a "bear trap" on a bull market stock graph.

gaiagraphia 2y ago

Left high school in the UK thinking that anything connected with family and having children was some type of carnal sin. Seemed the idea of anything traditional was an aboslute taboo to most of the staff. When I compare schooling experiences to people from other countries, it seemed everything was so negative and guilt-ridden in comparison.

PaulHoule 2y ago
By the way people respond you'd think that the mainstream thinks natalism is the ultimate squick.
trollbridge 2y ago
This is definitely a belief system isolated to certain social classes. Lots of other classes of people thinking having children is great, love going to children's birthday parties, get excited when a relative is expecting a baby, and so forth.