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Fascinating topic. I personally suspect that it has more to do with attitude and life style priorities rather than economics. But I remember reading a very rece

Fascinating topic. I personally suspect that it has more to do with attitude and life style priorities rather than economics. But I remember reading a very recent article in the Economist that argued that birth rates declined mostly in low income families, which would contradict that. > Underpinning these policies is an assumption that poorer women are more likely to respond to incentives to have more children. Indeed, their fertility rates do seem more elastic than those of professional women. Whereas the fertility rates of older, college-educated women have remained fairly steady over the past six decades, most of the collapse in fertility in America and Britain since 1980 stems from younger and poorer women having fewer children, particularly from unplanned pregnancies. https://www.economist.com/leaders/2025/06/19/why-magas-pro-natalist-plans-are-ill-conceived https://www.economist.com/leaders/2025/06/19/why-magas-pro-n... Just like with many of these topics, most sources seem to contradict each other.

varjag 1y ago
This doesn't explain why Afghan fertility rates under Taliban are also declining.
- chithanh 1y ago
  Or in North Korea which has outlawed birth control
  - Henchman21 1y ago
    No I think “despair” covers both NK & Afghanistan pretty well as an explanation
    - varjag 1y ago
      See, that's the thing. Fertility rates fall globally and while you can come up with a plausible sounding explanation for each isolated case they don't cover the other nations and territories.
v5v3 1y ago
>more to do with attitude and life style priorities Which are values 'sold' to them via the media.
pjc50 1y ago
> fewer children, particularly from unplanned pregnancies Yes. Let's be clear, public opinion hates young mothers having unplanned pregnancies, because then the support cost falls on someone else, so this is a win of decades of policy. (under-mentioned factor: people are very, very judgy about the parenting of others, a traditional problem which has been made worse by social media, so when faced with the choice of a lot of hassle for sub-perfect parenting a lot of women simply opt not to)
- spwa4 1y ago
  1) it used to be the case that child allowance for 3 kids was better paid than a supermarket job. So both for women directly this was a win. For a woman: 3 kids? Reasonably comfortable life without the need for a job. But of course, judgement and getting bothered by child services. And for families. 3 kids? Stay-at-home wife (and in one of twenty cases, dad-at-home) 2) Just throwing kids out used to be perfectly acceptable. They'd go to school, then play in the street or park and weren't welcome home until it was time for dinner. After dinner? Bedtime with maybe 20-30 minutes of time with parents. That is how things worked. 100 years ago in most places, and that's how it still works in places with high fertility. Now societies (not just America) have collectively decided kids are like pets. You want one? You take care of them and you pay for them. And we'll just magically make up the ever-larger shortage of people with immigration, while complaining ever more about how evil and negative immigration is.
  - pjc50 1y ago
    > it used to be the case that child allowance for 3 kids was better paid than a supermarket job. For what time period in what country?
  - amy214 1y ago
    >And for families. 3 kids? Stay-at-home wife (and in one of twenty cases, dad-at-home) Women are strong and as good a-, no, better, superior, to men. We will outperform you in the workplace, men need to be shown this because all they want is a barefooted pregnant wife. Women are crushing men in the workplace, not because they don't want kids, but because this is a more vital and greater goal. Once it's estalblished woman superiority, then we can talk repopulation
SiempreViernes 1y ago
Economics is a pretty strong driver of "life style" priorities, for example the amount of people working so they can afford housing is not insignificant. Anyway, they say it's not just economics already in the abstract: > We refer to this phenomenon as “shifting priorities” and propose that it likely reflects a complex mix of changing norms, evolving economic opportunities and constraints, and broader social and cultural forces.
exiguus 1y ago
There is a study[1] that backup this claim. The two main key findings are: Women from disadvantaged backgrounds and lower early achievement levels experience a more significant fertility-decreasing effect from college education. And the effects of college on fertility attenuate as the likelihood of college attendance and completion increases. But I have to say, that it rely on data from 1979, that is nearly 50 years old. However, there are many studies that back up the claim that 'higher education levels are associated with lower birth rates.' The key findings of the linked study here close the gap between the poor and the educated in my opinion. Personally, I prefer to follow this theory because life style means that no partner is needed to have children, and that having children is not a problem even at an age over 40. Of course, both are only possible if you are really rich and they are the other extreme of the spectrum. But in my opinion, this is what life style means. [1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3449224/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3449224/
msgodel 1y ago
I think the problem is that many of these countries have a cultural idea of economic milestones you're supposed to reach in life (moving out, getting a real job, becoming stable, getting married etc) before having kids and the mass migration from countries with different ideas of how economics work have made these unreachable.

varjag 1y ago

This doesn't explain why Afghan fertility rates under Taliban are also declining.

chithanh 1y ago
Or in North Korea which has outlawed birth control
- Henchman21 1y ago
  No I think “despair” covers both NK & Afghanistan pretty well as an explanation
  - varjag 1y ago
    See, that's the thing. Fertility rates fall globally and while you can come up with a plausible sounding explanation for each isolated case they don't cover the other nations and territories.

v5v3 1y ago

>more to do with attitude and life style priorities Which are values 'sold' to them via the media.

pjc50 1y ago

> fewer children, particularly from unplanned pregnancies Yes. Let's be clear, public opinion hates young mothers having unplanned pregnancies, because then the support cost falls on someone else, so this is a win of decades of policy. (under-mentioned factor: people are very, very judgy about the parenting of others, a traditional problem which has been made worse by social media, so when faced with the choice of a lot of hassle for sub-perfect parenting a lot of women simply opt not to)

spwa4 1y ago
1) it used to be the case that child allowance for 3 kids was better paid than a supermarket job. So both for women directly this was a win. For a woman: 3 kids? Reasonably comfortable life without the need for a job. But of course, judgement and getting bothered by child services. And for families. 3 kids? Stay-at-home wife (and in one of twenty cases, dad-at-home) 2) Just throwing kids out used to be perfectly acceptable. They'd go to school, then play in the street or park and weren't welcome home until it was time for dinner. After dinner? Bedtime with maybe 20-30 minutes of time with parents. That is how things worked. 100 years ago in most places, and that's how it still works in places with high fertility. Now societies (not just America) have collectively decided kids are like pets. You want one? You take care of them and you pay for them. And we'll just magically make up the ever-larger shortage of people with immigration, while complaining ever more about how evil and negative immigration is.
- pjc50 1y ago
  > it used to be the case that child allowance for 3 kids was better paid than a supermarket job. For what time period in what country?
- amy214 1y ago
  >And for families. 3 kids? Stay-at-home wife (and in one of twenty cases, dad-at-home) Women are strong and as good a-, no, better, superior, to men. We will outperform you in the workplace, men need to be shown this because all they want is a barefooted pregnant wife. Women are crushing men in the workplace, not because they don't want kids, but because this is a more vital and greater goal. Once it's estalblished woman superiority, then we can talk repopulation

SiempreViernes 1y ago

Economics is a pretty strong driver of "life style" priorities, for example the amount of people working so they can afford housing is not insignificant. Anyway, they say it's not just economics already in the abstract: > We refer to this phenomenon as “shifting priorities” and propose that it likely reflects a complex mix of changing norms, evolving economic opportunities and constraints, and broader social and cultural forces.

exiguus 1y ago

There is a study[1] that backup this claim. The two main key findings are: Women from disadvantaged backgrounds and lower early achievement levels experience a more significant fertility-decreasing effect from college education. And the effects of college on fertility attenuate as the likelihood of college attendance and completion increases. But I have to say, that it rely on data from 1979, that is nearly 50 years old. However, there are many studies that back up the claim that 'higher education levels are associated with lower birth rates.' The key findings of the linked study here close the gap between the poor and the educated in my opinion. Personally, I prefer to follow this theory because life style means that no partner is needed to have children, and that having children is not a problem even at an age over 40. Of course, both are only possible if you are really rich and they are the other extreme of the spectrum. But in my opinion, this is what life style means. [1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3449224/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3449224/

msgodel 1y ago

I think the problem is that many of these countries have a cultural idea of economic milestones you're supposed to reach in life (moving out, getting a real job, becoming stable, getting married etc) before having kids and the mass migration from countries with different ideas of how economics work have made these unreachable.