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When looking at that sort of graph you do need to hold in mind that we had a substantial period of our evolutionary history where owning a house wasn't an optio

by roenxi 1y ago

When looking at that sort of graph you do need to hold in mind that we had a substantial period of our evolutionary history where owning a house wasn't an option because houses didn't exist. It isn't the lack of a house that is causing the drop in fertility - if it was, all animal species would die out with rare exceptions. Humans are perfectly capable, as a race, of population growth without any houses at all. Indeed, you might even find that the houses most of your ancestors lived in are illegal to build in many parts of the world by virtue of being too basic. That suggests it is still a priorities question - people would much prefer to embrace the luxury and comforts of the modern world and work to maximise them rather than starting a family.

amluto 1y ago
> we had a substantial period of our evolutionary history where owning a house wasn't an option because houses didn't exist. The population density at the time was much, much, much lower than it is now.
- pjc50 1y ago
  Exactly. We have a historical fertility rate that's much higher to go with our historical early fatality rare, which was much higher. Population grew gradually from the development of agriculture to the Industrial Revolution, being basically starvation-limited or disease-limited along the way, and then exploded.
Havoc 1y ago
Yes we're still the same evolutionary humans, but you can't set up a subsistence farm with your 8 children as free labour and go hunting in lower Manhattan. Unless you're proposing mass de-urbanization and rolling back 100+ years of societal evolution it's practically just not all that relevant that this worked fine in an earlier era and humans could hypothetically just go back to slumming it medieval style. > It isn't the lack of a house that is causing the drop in fertility Find some 20 somethings in a major 1st world metro and ask them.
- roenxi 1y ago
  I'd propose that if you can't give your children a good life you shouldn't have them. It seems a comfortingly large chunk of the world agrees to some degree.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - Havoc 1y ago
    >if you can't give your children a good life you shouldn't have them Which brings us neatly back to dropping fertility is driven by the divergence between salary and cost of housing. Bunch of young people looking at their budget and concluding society has made it impossible for them to provide said good life to a potential offspring
    - roenxi 1y ago
      If you want the thread to do a couple of laps I'm game - this is the point where I point out homelessness was the normal standard of living for most of humanities evolutionary history. People are demanding a standard for their children that only the tinyest of slivers of prior generation has been capable of providing. If any were at all, after accounting for standards of medical care. Being unable to afford a home isn't the major factor here, that has pretty much always been a factor. It is standards, priorities and options changing.
      - salawat 1y ago
        You seem dense and fairly committed to not seeing the fact that we've pretty much tapped the developable wilds, and set bars so high in terms of barriers of economic entry you can't just plop out a kid and rely on opportunity existing anymore. My grandmother was one of 13 children reared on a farm. Each of them could meaningfully contribute to the operation of the farm back then in ways that would be non-starters today, and for a myriad of good reasons. There was a smaller population to carry, higher attrition rates, more and deadlier wars, and many other factors. Also, ffs, it's called resource crunch and wealth centralization, and I'm not entirely convinced we aren't staring down the smoldering barrel of some serious shit Stateside over the next decade.
surgical_fire 1y ago
Evolution is such a terrible way to look at this. The incentives of a hunter-gatherer nomadic group of people living in prehistoric African savannah and the incentives of people living in a modern urban environment are worlds apart. Back then it was probable that most children would just die before reaching maturity, and most humans would not live much past their early adulthood. Life was fulfilled by the most basic subsistence, and that was all. I don't think most humans nowadays, be them rich or poor, would want to live in such an environment. Am I soft because I enjoy playing videogames or watching a movie after my daughter is sound asleep in her girl's bedroom in a house with proper heating? Probably. I still wouldn't want to team up with my neighbor to go into the wilderness to hunt a boar while the wife and daughter freeze in a mud hut. > That suggests it is still a priorities question - people would much prefer to embrace the luxury and comforts of the modern world and work to maximise them rather than starting a family. When given a choice, people enjoy some mild comfort. Oh the horror.

by roenxi 1y ago

amluto 1y ago

> we had a substantial period of our evolutionary history where owning a house wasn't an option because houses didn't exist. The population density at the time was much, much, much lower than it is now.

pjc50 1y ago
Exactly. We have a historical fertility rate that's much higher to go with our historical early fatality rare, which was much higher. Population grew gradually from the development of agriculture to the Industrial Revolution, being basically starvation-limited or disease-limited along the way, and then exploded.

Havoc 1y ago

Yes we're still the same evolutionary humans, but you can't set up a subsistence farm with your 8 children as free labour and go hunting in lower Manhattan. Unless you're proposing mass de-urbanization and rolling back 100+ years of societal evolution it's practically just not all that relevant that this worked fine in an earlier era and humans could hypothetically just go back to slumming it medieval style. > It isn't the lack of a house that is causing the drop in fertility Find some 20 somethings in a major 1st world metro and ask them.

roenxi 1y ago
I'd propose that if you can't give your children a good life you shouldn't have them. It seems a comfortingly large chunk of the world agrees to some degree.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- Havoc 1y ago
  >if you can't give your children a good life you shouldn't have them Which brings us neatly back to dropping fertility is driven by the divergence between salary and cost of housing. Bunch of young people looking at their budget and concluding society has made it impossible for them to provide said good life to a potential offspring
  - roenxi 1y ago
    If you want the thread to do a couple of laps I'm game - this is the point where I point out homelessness was the normal standard of living for most of humanities evolutionary history. People are demanding a standard for their children that only the tinyest of slivers of prior generation has been capable of providing. If any were at all, after accounting for standards of medical care. Being unable to afford a home isn't the major factor here, that has pretty much always been a factor. It is standards, priorities and options changing.
    - salawat 1y ago
      You seem dense and fairly committed to not seeing the fact that we've pretty much tapped the developable wilds, and set bars so high in terms of barriers of economic entry you can't just plop out a kid and rely on opportunity existing anymore. My grandmother was one of 13 children reared on a farm. Each of them could meaningfully contribute to the operation of the farm back then in ways that would be non-starters today, and for a myriad of good reasons. There was a smaller population to carry, higher attrition rates, more and deadlier wars, and many other factors. Also, ffs, it's called resource crunch and wealth centralization, and I'm not entirely convinced we aren't staring down the smoldering barrel of some serious shit Stateside over the next decade.

surgical_fire 1y ago

Evolution is such a terrible way to look at this. The incentives of a hunter-gatherer nomadic group of people living in prehistoric African savannah and the incentives of people living in a modern urban environment are worlds apart. Back then it was probable that most children would just die before reaching maturity, and most humans would not live much past their early adulthood. Life was fulfilled by the most basic subsistence, and that was all. I don't think most humans nowadays, be them rich or poor, would want to live in such an environment. Am I soft because I enjoy playing videogames or watching a movie after my daughter is sound asleep in her girl's bedroom in a house with proper heating? Probably. I still wouldn't want to team up with my neighbor to go into the wilderness to hunt a boar while the wife and daughter freeze in a mud hut. > That suggests it is still a priorities question - people would much prefer to embrace the luxury and comforts of the modern world and work to maximise them rather than starting a family. When given a choice, people enjoy some mild comfort. Oh the horror.