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The irony of "higher" standards of living is that meanwhile, African countries, and a few strict islamic ones, have much less of all this and they're the only p
by narrator 1y ago
The irony of "higher" standards of living is that meanwhile, African countries, and a few strict islamic ones, have much less of all this and they're the only places reproducing at faster than replacement rate.
- const_cast 1y agoIt's just a human geography thing. Developed countries reproduce less because they provide greater autonomy to women. Underdeveloped or developing countries reproduce much more. Turns out if you give women a choice to have children, a lot of them will say no. They'd rather have career. Having children has, like, a lot of downsides. It can literally kill you.
- pas 1y agoThere's no magic number of people that we have to have. The fertility rate will continue to fluctuate depending on the circumstances. Currently the balance of incentives-disincentives regarding having kids in many places is simply favoring the "not" side. Having a smaller population with advanced automation technology is completely okay. And if a society feels it really values having more people around through births (and not through migration for example) they can alter policies to support families. (For example see how the child tax credits policy is not made permanent, also it's ridiculously small compared to cost of living and cost of child rearing. Then there's the cost of education, cost of having a bigger house, then there's the whole fucking problem of logistics, which is extremely costly in the US [because streets are not kid safe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43364761 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43364761 )