8 ms·

The complaining about fertility rates, mostly done by the chunk of the population hoarding more and more of the wealth, will continue until people's ability to

The complaining about fertility rates, mostly done by the chunk of the population hoarding more and more of the wealth, will continue until people's ability to afford rent and children improves.

api 1y ago
The thing that collapses in a negative population growth environment is passive earnings from interest and asset appreciation, retirement, and to some extent social welfare states. The whole idea of things like social security is predicated on a growing population paying for the elderly. It's also very, very bearish for things like real estate long term. We are probably still in a real estate bubble. I suppose I've never expected to ever be able to retire unless I get truly wealthy. It's not something I've ever included in my life plan because I've kinda seen the writing on the wall about this since I was in my twenties. I don't think this crash in fertility is that unexpected, and it's not even all bad. It'll help us weather things like climate change and natural resource depletion.
- toomuchtodo 1y ago
  Social security is solvent for at least the next 75 years if the US removes the payroll cap on contributions from wage income. We choose not to. The economic resources exist for these social programs, it will just diminish profits (the horror /s). It's a policy choice. Every year total fertility rate remains lower than replacement rate further locks in the fertility curve, but there is no political will or desire to implement the fixes required. So, we keep kicking the can until we cannot anymore. It's unfortunate. Demographic destiny comes regardless, as each year total fertility rate continues to fall. https://usafacts.org/articles/how-much-does-the-us-spend-on-social-security-is-it-sustainable/ https://usafacts.org/articles/how-much-does-the-us-spend-on-... https://www.pgpf.org/article/social-security-reform-options-to-raise-revenues/ https://www.pgpf.org/article/social-security-reform-options-...
  - rayiner 1y ago
    By 2075, Medicare and Social Security will reach a over 14% of GDP combined, up from around 8% today. To pay that, we'll have to raise taxes by $1.75 trillion using today's GDP figures. That will require just about doubling payroll taxes from the present level. That's probably an underestimate. As population shrinks, GDP will shrink as well, unless we have large gains in productivity, which have stalled. It's not clear to me that the projections about SS/Medicare as a percentage of GDP account for the effect of GDP shrinking due to population decline. CBO assumes a stable population through 2060, using quite arbitrary assumptions about immigration: https://www.cbo.gov/publication/60875 https://www.cbo.gov/publication/60875.
    - toomuchtodo 1y ago
      I agree with your observations. The future will not be as bright as the past, the population boom was already squeezed for the gains. Immigration at the levels needed to change this are unpalatable to most electorates, and with total fertility rate dropping across the world, it's important to be mindful that net migration to Earth is 0 (slide 39). As the economic future deteriorates due to the ever increasing drag of these obligations, I'd expect total fertility rate to continue to decline at present rates (if not slightly accelerate). This creates a self reinforcing feedback loop. A "Demographic Doom Loop" [1]. Happiness is reality minus expectations. [1] https://x.com/KenRoth/status/1753526235173450213 https://x.com/KenRoth/status/1753526235173450213 | https://archive.today/rY4WG https://archive.today/rY4WG
      - variadix 1y ago
        The welfare state has to collapse before people realize children are their retirement plan, and that there’s no guarantee the government will take care of them in old age.
        toomuchtodo 1y ago
        There is no guarantee your children will take care of you. Walk through any nursing or care home and speak with residents, ask the last time a child saw them. One quarter of adult children estranged from a parent - https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/4104138-one-quarter-of-adult-children-estranged-from-a-parent/ https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/4104138-one-qua... - July 19th, 2023
- bombcar 1y ago
  You can retire the other way around - since you need roughly $20 saved for every dollar you need in retirement, reducing expenses by a dollar is as good as saving $20.
  - ben_w 1y ago
    That presumes knowing in advance what the dollar can buy you. Here's a reductio ad absurdum: a couple live alone on an isolated island, they have and raise one child, and when they reach 67 they stop working and expect their progeny to provide for them as they were provided for in childhood. Two parents provided for three people, became three adults providing for three people, became one adult providing for three people. And when that kid reaches 67 and also decides to stop working? Now nobody's around to provide for them, so nothing is provided. (What will happen in the non-reductio case is much more complex and unpredictable, between the never-ending potential of nuclear wars, and the ongoing but never guaranteed promise of technological progress currently dangling AI and robotics before us like a laser pointer to a cat…)
rayiner 1y ago
Rent is the bigger issue than affordability per se. My wife pointed out the other day that we had our second and third kids shortly after we stopped living in apartments and bought a house. We didn't plan to have a significant age gap between our first (who we had in law school) and our other kids, and we earned a lot of money the whole time, it just happened that way. She's convinced that having the extra space subconsciously encouraged us to have more kids.
- angmarsbane 1y ago
  I've been encouraging my cousin who desperately wants children to have them in her two bedroom apartment but she feels that she needs to have a house first and she and her husband can't afford one. They're in their late 30s. My partner and I are mid-30s planning to have young children in our 2 bedroom apartment, we'd prefer a 3 bedroom but they DO NOT EXIST in our Los Angeles neighborhood. More space means untenable commutes which brings more complicated childcare logistics (can't get to daycare before it closes, less time with kids etc).
  - xp84 1y ago
    > we'd prefer a 3 bedroom but they DO NOT EXIST This seems to be an absolute epidemic across the state. Same with condos. It's like they assume that apartments of any kind are only for single people and maybe a couple with one child. In other words, people who are dragging the fertility rate down toward 50%. When I pull up Zillow and look at rentals across a huge swath of the East Bay, there are 8,309 apartments listed (I filtered out houses and townhomes). I add one filter: 3+ bedrooms. The number drops to 784. Fewer than 10% (!) of apartments listed have 3+ bedrooms. (Also, a quick spot check of these seems to show a nontrivial amount that are actually just houses with faulty metadata.) This puts a tremendous burden on low-income people, to have to foot the higher cost of maintaining a home and/or of an absurd commute, just in order to have enough space[1] to have more than one kid. That, or overpay to compete for one of the few bigger apartments, many of which are "luxury" oriented. Meanwhile, the high-income can afford a house or a luxury 3br apartment, but they are mostly high-income because they've deprioritized family, putting in 10+ years of being DINKs. In my circle of upper middle class tech types, many of them are 35-38 before having their first kid. 1 kid is much more likely than 3 for people starting in their late 30s, so this drags down fertility rates even among the "high income" subgroup! [1] I know opinions vary on whether it's good and healthy to have kids sharing rooms, though imho I don't want a son and daughter forced to bunk together as they get older, and calls to 'just share rooms' is giving "Own nothing and be happy."
vonneumannstan 1y ago
This totally ignores the fact that the decline in fertility is measurable across the globe in the poorest and wealthiest nations in the world. It's clearly not a simple matter of affordability...
- seydor 1y ago
  Poor countries reproduce more, it's not same everywhere https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_and_fertility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_and_fertility
  - toomuchtodo 1y ago
    Look at slide 3 again ("TFR around the world").
    - seydor 1y ago
      those are not the poorest countries (e.g. no african countries are listed either)
      - toomuchtodo 1y ago
        Our World in Data: Fertility rate: births per woman - https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/children-born-per-woman?tab=map https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/children-born-per-woman?t... To the surprise of demographers, African fertility is falling - https://www.mercatornet.com/to_the_surprise_of_demographers_african_fertility_is_falling https://www.mercatornet.com/to_the_surprise_of_demographers_... - September 19, 2024 > Previously in this space, under the heading “Africa Rising?” yours truly cited The Lancet’s latest population stats on sub-Saharan Africa: Sub-Saharan Africa is the world’s only region with an above-replacement total fertility rate (TFR), currently estimated from 4.3 to 4.6. They’ve gone from 8 percent of global births in 1950 to 30 percent in 2021, headed to 54 percent by century’s end. While the region’s TFR is falling fast, any sub-Saharan population contraction is at least a century out. However, according to Macrotrends, Africa’s TFR (4.1) has declined an average of 1.3 percent annually over the last three years. Should this trend persist, Africa will eventually plunge into below-replacement territory. Demographers believe fertility decline is accelerating faster than projected, especially in sub-Sahara Africa. Statista, the European aggregator of figures, projects Africa’s 2030 TFR at 3.8. Fertility rates fall as education levels rise in sub-Saharan Africa - https://www.nature.com/articles/d44148-025-00026-3 https://www.nature.com/articles/d44148-025-00026-3 - January 29th, 2025
vixen99 1y ago
'hoarding more and more of the wealth'. Sounds very much like you believe in the pie fallacy. A zero sum game? Maybe that's not what you meant though.
- Arainach 1y ago
  The pie has nothing to do with it. The tide is rising and most ships are sinking. Productivity in the last 40 years has skyrocketed. The gains have overwhelmingly gone to a tiny minority while everyone else has seen rent, food, education, and more go up dramatically faster than wages. This has accelerated in the last 15 years and has destroyed any faith in the social contract.
  - WalterBright 1y ago
    Have you noticed the massive growth in government? You're paying for it, one way or another. Inflation is caused by the government via deficit spending. It's another tax on you.
    - Arainach 1y ago
      Inflation isn't the problem. Corporate consolidation, collusion, price fixing, and market capture are the problems. In nearly every field where there used to be 10-20 competitors there are 2-4 and they're not doing much "competing" any more. They're using consultants and third parties to share data and fix prices, they're buying up the entire supply and dividing areas so they have monopolies. Note how during the COVID "inflation" corporate profits soared faster than inflation.
      - WalterBright 1y ago
        > In nearly every field where there used to be 10-20 competitors there are 2-4 and they're not doing much "competing" any more. I'm old, and I've heard that my entire life. Something's wrong with your assessment.
- jocaal 1y ago
cyberax 1y ago
The drop in fertility rate is directly liked to migration into dense cities. They are just not a good place to have children. The US resisted the fertility drop for much longer, because of higher suburban population.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- toomuchtodo 1y ago
  > The US resisted the fertility drop for much longer, because of higher suburban population. It was immigration, but next generation of all immigrants (native born) adopts host country total fertility rate in this context. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2019/08/08/hispanic-women-no-longer-account-for-the-majority-of-immigrant-births-in-the-u-s/ https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2019/08/08/hispanic-... https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2016/10/26/5-facts-about-immigrant-mothers-and-u-s-fertility-trends/ https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2016/10/26/5-facts-a... https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/FT_19.07.16_ImmigrantFertility_2.png https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/FT_19... visually nails this. Now, would these people have had a higher birth rate if they remained in their LATAM countries? The data indicates no. Latin America’s Baby Bust Is Arriving Early - https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2025-05-22/latin-america-s-baby-bust-is-coming-ahead-of-schedule https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2025-05-22/latin-... | https://archive.today/EPMAU https://archive.today/EPMAU - May 22nd, 2025 Population Prospects and Rapid Demographic Changes in the First Quarter of the Twenty-first Century in Latin America and the Caribbean - https://repositorio.cepal.org/server/api/core/bitstreams/dc566b9e-b3ef-44e9-a167-995614696404/content https://repositorio.cepal.org/server/api/core/bitstreams/dc5... - 2024
  - cyberax 1y ago
    In 2003 the average fertility rate was around 2.03 It started falling to 1.6 around 2008 ( https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/usa/united-states/fertility-rate https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/usa/uni... ) which coincided with the millennials getting into the child-bearing age. And the millennials are much more likely to live in cities, even though they don't want that: https://news.gallup.com/poll/245249/americans-big-idea-living-country.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/245249/americans-big-idea-livin...
nobodywillobsrv 1y ago
While I generally agree with this and am angry at "the elites" who seem to both want increased fertility but also don't really target it in their companies ... I think the bigger unspoken issue is really the TFR skew. Global fertility can go down for a while and it isn't disastrous. TFR skew results in large problems if the least progressive and poorest groups systematically have much higher TFR over extended periods. None of the solutions I can think of are very appealing or even tolerable. It really feels like it's a matter of carrying on and having hope. But perhaps we could start by merely describing the data and the situation.
lurk2 1y ago
> will continue until people's ability to afford rent and children improves. National fertility rates don’t correlate with any measure of average income. The only thing that does is the average number of years a woman spends being educated; this probably isn’t causal because the decline in fertility occurs across all income and education levels.
- worik 1y ago
  > the average number of years a woman spends being educated; Have you a recent reference for that? I think even that correlation has broken down, but I do not know
  - lurk2 1y ago
    I don’t have any structured references saved, sorry. My understanding is that the only real correlation is years in education, but this is at the national level; the very rich and very poor (which imperfectly correlates with level of education attained) tend to have more children than the middle class, but fertility rates are down across every income level. What this means is that if you look at two countries and see that one has a higher level of education than the other, you would expect the country with the higher level of education to have a lower fertility rate, but within both countries you would expect to see a relatively uniform decline in fertility across every income level, with a more pronounced decline around middle income levels. This is maybe what’s being referenced when people saying they’ll have kids when capitalism gets sorted, but this isn’t seen in countries where standards of living have improved considerably. The simplest theory is that more people are using contraceptives because they simply don’t want children. Some people might subjectively feel like they can’t afford to have children, but by world historical (and contemporary) standards of living this argument looks incredibly silly.
    - bombcar 1y ago
      At some point years of education crimps into childbearing years - I know two women who could easily have obtained their degree even after having a child, but quickly got to a “fuck this shit I’m a mom” and left the program never to return. I don’t even know if things like FMLA apply to college classes.
WalterBright 1y ago
> will continue until people's ability to afford rent and children improves. Historically that's never been a requirement for people to make children. Poor people have tended to be pretty prolific. > hoarding more and more of the wealth In a free market society, wealth is created, it is not "concentrated".
- oh_my_goodness 1y ago
  'In a free market society, wealth is created, it is not "concentrated".' That's a theory from economists. Economists have a lot of theories.
  - WalterBright 1y ago
    It's a fact, not a theory. The wealth in the economy did not exist 100 years ago. Therefore it must have been created. And where did Musk's money come from? Who did he transfer it from?
    - oh_my_goodness 1y ago
      Come on. Sometimes wealth gets created. Sometimes wealth just gets moved around. That is a fact. Musk's wealth is mostly notional. Most of it is based on people's guesses about the future of electric cars and so forth. It's not clear yet whether that is creation or transfer or what.
      - WalterBright 1y ago
        Musk's wealth was transferred from nobody. It was created. When wealth gets "moved around", that is not the market doing that. It's force. Like social security payments. That's why I prefaced it with "free market".
        oh_my_goodness 1y ago
        Maybe a startup can have a high valuation for a while and ultimately be worth nothing. Maybe that has happened. Maybe Musk will turn out to have created 10x more wealth than he has now. Maybe he will screw up and go broke. Maybe both. Where did Bernie Madoff's wealth come from before he got caught? Where did Sam Bankman-Fried's wealth come from? We can't just point to a unit of wealth and automatically applaud its legal owner as having created it. Maybe they created it. Maybe they stole it. Maybe we all wigged out and handed it to them voluntarily. It's case by case. We all read Ayn Rand back in the day. And I can groove with that at a certain dosage, but you're taking way too much.
mensetmanusman 1y ago
Rational millennials who will have to work until 75 at current rates may also complain :)

The complaining about fertility rates, mostly done by the chunk of the population hoarding more and more of the wealth, will continue until people's ability to afford rent and children improves.

api 1y ago

The thing that collapses in a negative population growth environment is passive earnings from interest and asset appreciation, retirement, and to some extent social welfare states. The whole idea of things like social security is predicated on a growing population paying for the elderly. It's also very, very bearish for things like real estate long term. We are probably still in a real estate bubble. I suppose I've never expected to ever be able to retire unless I get truly wealthy. It's not something I've ever included in my life plan because I've kinda seen the writing on the wall about this since I was in my twenties. I don't think this crash in fertility is that unexpected, and it's not even all bad. It'll help us weather things like climate change and natural resource depletion.

toomuchtodo 1y ago
Social security is solvent for at least the next 75 years if the US removes the payroll cap on contributions from wage income. We choose not to. The economic resources exist for these social programs, it will just diminish profits (the horror /s). It's a policy choice. Every year total fertility rate remains lower than replacement rate further locks in the fertility curve, but there is no political will or desire to implement the fixes required. So, we keep kicking the can until we cannot anymore. It's unfortunate. Demographic destiny comes regardless, as each year total fertility rate continues to fall. https://usafacts.org/articles/how-much-does-the-us-spend-on-social-security-is-it-sustainable/ https://usafacts.org/articles/how-much-does-the-us-spend-on-... https://www.pgpf.org/article/social-security-reform-options-to-raise-revenues/ https://www.pgpf.org/article/social-security-reform-options-...
- rayiner 1y ago
  By 2075, Medicare and Social Security will reach a over 14% of GDP combined, up from around 8% today. To pay that, we'll have to raise taxes by $1.75 trillion using today's GDP figures. That will require just about doubling payroll taxes from the present level. That's probably an underestimate. As population shrinks, GDP will shrink as well, unless we have large gains in productivity, which have stalled. It's not clear to me that the projections about SS/Medicare as a percentage of GDP account for the effect of GDP shrinking due to population decline. CBO assumes a stable population through 2060, using quite arbitrary assumptions about immigration: https://www.cbo.gov/publication/60875 https://www.cbo.gov/publication/60875.
  - toomuchtodo 1y ago
    I agree with your observations. The future will not be as bright as the past, the population boom was already squeezed for the gains. Immigration at the levels needed to change this are unpalatable to most electorates, and with total fertility rate dropping across the world, it's important to be mindful that net migration to Earth is 0 (slide 39). As the economic future deteriorates due to the ever increasing drag of these obligations, I'd expect total fertility rate to continue to decline at present rates (if not slightly accelerate). This creates a self reinforcing feedback loop. A "Demographic Doom Loop" [1]. Happiness is reality minus expectations. [1] https://x.com/KenRoth/status/1753526235173450213 https://x.com/KenRoth/status/1753526235173450213 | https://archive.today/rY4WG https://archive.today/rY4WG
    - variadix 1y ago
      The welfare state has to collapse before people realize children are their retirement plan, and that there’s no guarantee the government will take care of them in old age.
      - toomuchtodo 1y ago
        There is no guarantee your children will take care of you. Walk through any nursing or care home and speak with residents, ask the last time a child saw them. One quarter of adult children estranged from a parent - https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/4104138-one-quarter-of-adult-children-estranged-from-a-parent/ https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/4104138-one-qua... - July 19th, 2023
bombcar 1y ago
You can retire the other way around - since you need roughly $20 saved for every dollar you need in retirement, reducing expenses by a dollar is as good as saving $20.
- ben_w 1y ago
  That presumes knowing in advance what the dollar can buy you. Here's a reductio ad absurdum: a couple live alone on an isolated island, they have and raise one child, and when they reach 67 they stop working and expect their progeny to provide for them as they were provided for in childhood. Two parents provided for three people, became three adults providing for three people, became one adult providing for three people. And when that kid reaches 67 and also decides to stop working? Now nobody's around to provide for them, so nothing is provided. (What will happen in the non-reductio case is much more complex and unpredictable, between the never-ending potential of nuclear wars, and the ongoing but never guaranteed promise of technological progress currently dangling AI and robotics before us like a laser pointer to a cat…)

rayiner 1y ago

Rent is the bigger issue than affordability per se. My wife pointed out the other day that we had our second and third kids shortly after we stopped living in apartments and bought a house. We didn't plan to have a significant age gap between our first (who we had in law school) and our other kids, and we earned a lot of money the whole time, it just happened that way. She's convinced that having the extra space subconsciously encouraged us to have more kids.

angmarsbane 1y ago
I've been encouraging my cousin who desperately wants children to have them in her two bedroom apartment but she feels that she needs to have a house first and she and her husband can't afford one. They're in their late 30s. My partner and I are mid-30s planning to have young children in our 2 bedroom apartment, we'd prefer a 3 bedroom but they DO NOT EXIST in our Los Angeles neighborhood. More space means untenable commutes which brings more complicated childcare logistics (can't get to daycare before it closes, less time with kids etc).
- xp84 1y ago
  > we'd prefer a 3 bedroom but they DO NOT EXIST This seems to be an absolute epidemic across the state. Same with condos. It's like they assume that apartments of any kind are only for single people and maybe a couple with one child. In other words, people who are dragging the fertility rate down toward 50%. When I pull up Zillow and look at rentals across a huge swath of the East Bay, there are 8,309 apartments listed (I filtered out houses and townhomes). I add one filter: 3+ bedrooms. The number drops to 784. Fewer than 10% (!) of apartments listed have 3+ bedrooms. (Also, a quick spot check of these seems to show a nontrivial amount that are actually just houses with faulty metadata.) This puts a tremendous burden on low-income people, to have to foot the higher cost of maintaining a home and/or of an absurd commute, just in order to have enough space[1] to have more than one kid. That, or overpay to compete for one of the few bigger apartments, many of which are "luxury" oriented. Meanwhile, the high-income can afford a house or a luxury 3br apartment, but they are mostly high-income because they've deprioritized family, putting in 10+ years of being DINKs. In my circle of upper middle class tech types, many of them are 35-38 before having their first kid. 1 kid is much more likely than 3 for people starting in their late 30s, so this drags down fertility rates even among the "high income" subgroup! [1] I know opinions vary on whether it's good and healthy to have kids sharing rooms, though imho I don't want a son and daughter forced to bunk together as they get older, and calls to 'just share rooms' is giving "Own nothing and be happy."

vonneumannstan 1y ago

This totally ignores the fact that the decline in fertility is measurable across the globe in the poorest and wealthiest nations in the world. It's clearly not a simple matter of affordability...

seydor 1y ago
Poor countries reproduce more, it's not same everywhere https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_and_fertility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_and_fertility
- toomuchtodo 1y ago
  Look at slide 3 again ("TFR around the world").
  - seydor 1y ago
    those are not the poorest countries (e.g. no african countries are listed either)
    - toomuchtodo 1y ago
      Our World in Data: Fertility rate: births per woman - https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/children-born-per-woman?tab=map https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/children-born-per-woman?t... To the surprise of demographers, African fertility is falling - https://www.mercatornet.com/to_the_surprise_of_demographers_african_fertility_is_falling https://www.mercatornet.com/to_the_surprise_of_demographers_... - September 19, 2024 > Previously in this space, under the heading “Africa Rising?” yours truly cited The Lancet’s latest population stats on sub-Saharan Africa: Sub-Saharan Africa is the world’s only region with an above-replacement total fertility rate (TFR), currently estimated from 4.3 to 4.6. They’ve gone from 8 percent of global births in 1950 to 30 percent in 2021, headed to 54 percent by century’s end. While the region’s TFR is falling fast, any sub-Saharan population contraction is at least a century out. However, according to Macrotrends, Africa’s TFR (4.1) has declined an average of 1.3 percent annually over the last three years. Should this trend persist, Africa will eventually plunge into below-replacement territory. Demographers believe fertility decline is accelerating faster than projected, especially in sub-Sahara Africa. Statista, the European aggregator of figures, projects Africa’s 2030 TFR at 3.8. Fertility rates fall as education levels rise in sub-Saharan Africa - https://www.nature.com/articles/d44148-025-00026-3 https://www.nature.com/articles/d44148-025-00026-3 - January 29th, 2025

vixen99 1y ago

'hoarding more and more of the wealth'. Sounds very much like you believe in the pie fallacy. A zero sum game? Maybe that's not what you meant though.

Arainach 1y ago
The pie has nothing to do with it. The tide is rising and most ships are sinking. Productivity in the last 40 years has skyrocketed. The gains have overwhelmingly gone to a tiny minority while everyone else has seen rent, food, education, and more go up dramatically faster than wages. This has accelerated in the last 15 years and has destroyed any faith in the social contract.
- WalterBright 1y ago
  Have you noticed the massive growth in government? You're paying for it, one way or another. Inflation is caused by the government via deficit spending. It's another tax on you.
  - Arainach 1y ago
    Inflation isn't the problem. Corporate consolidation, collusion, price fixing, and market capture are the problems. In nearly every field where there used to be 10-20 competitors there are 2-4 and they're not doing much "competing" any more. They're using consultants and third parties to share data and fix prices, they're buying up the entire supply and dividing areas so they have monopolies. Note how during the COVID "inflation" corporate profits soared faster than inflation.
    - WalterBright 1y ago
      > In nearly every field where there used to be 10-20 competitors there are 2-4 and they're not doing much "competing" any more. I'm old, and I've heard that my entire life. Something's wrong with your assessment.
jocaal 1y ago

cyberax 1y ago

The drop in fertility rate is directly liked to migration into dense cities. They are just not a good place to have children. The US resisted the fertility drop for much longer, because of higher suburban population.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
toomuchtodo 1y ago
> The US resisted the fertility drop for much longer, because of higher suburban population. It was immigration, but next generation of all immigrants (native born) adopts host country total fertility rate in this context. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2019/08/08/hispanic-women-no-longer-account-for-the-majority-of-immigrant-births-in-the-u-s/ https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2019/08/08/hispanic-... https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2016/10/26/5-facts-about-immigrant-mothers-and-u-s-fertility-trends/ https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2016/10/26/5-facts-a... https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/FT_19.07.16_ImmigrantFertility_2.png https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/FT_19... visually nails this. Now, would these people have had a higher birth rate if they remained in their LATAM countries? The data indicates no. Latin America’s Baby Bust Is Arriving Early - https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2025-05-22/latin-america-s-baby-bust-is-coming-ahead-of-schedule https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2025-05-22/latin-... | https://archive.today/EPMAU https://archive.today/EPMAU - May 22nd, 2025 Population Prospects and Rapid Demographic Changes in the First Quarter of the Twenty-first Century in Latin America and the Caribbean - https://repositorio.cepal.org/server/api/core/bitstreams/dc566b9e-b3ef-44e9-a167-995614696404/content https://repositorio.cepal.org/server/api/core/bitstreams/dc5... - 2024
- cyberax 1y ago
  In 2003 the average fertility rate was around 2.03 It started falling to 1.6 around 2008 ( https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/usa/united-states/fertility-rate https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/usa/uni... ) which coincided with the millennials getting into the child-bearing age. And the millennials are much more likely to live in cities, even though they don't want that: https://news.gallup.com/poll/245249/americans-big-idea-living-country.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/245249/americans-big-idea-livin...

nobodywillobsrv 1y ago

While I generally agree with this and am angry at "the elites" who seem to both want increased fertility but also don't really target it in their companies ... I think the bigger unspoken issue is really the TFR skew. Global fertility can go down for a while and it isn't disastrous. TFR skew results in large problems if the least progressive and poorest groups systematically have much higher TFR over extended periods. None of the solutions I can think of are very appealing or even tolerable. It really feels like it's a matter of carrying on and having hope. But perhaps we could start by merely describing the data and the situation.

lurk2 1y ago

> will continue until people's ability to afford rent and children improves. National fertility rates don’t correlate with any measure of average income. The only thing that does is the average number of years a woman spends being educated; this probably isn’t causal because the decline in fertility occurs across all income and education levels.

worik 1y ago
> the average number of years a woman spends being educated; Have you a recent reference for that? I think even that correlation has broken down, but I do not know
- lurk2 1y ago
  I don’t have any structured references saved, sorry. My understanding is that the only real correlation is years in education, but this is at the national level; the very rich and very poor (which imperfectly correlates with level of education attained) tend to have more children than the middle class, but fertility rates are down across every income level. What this means is that if you look at two countries and see that one has a higher level of education than the other, you would expect the country with the higher level of education to have a lower fertility rate, but within both countries you would expect to see a relatively uniform decline in fertility across every income level, with a more pronounced decline around middle income levels. This is maybe what’s being referenced when people saying they’ll have kids when capitalism gets sorted, but this isn’t seen in countries where standards of living have improved considerably. The simplest theory is that more people are using contraceptives because they simply don’t want children. Some people might subjectively feel like they can’t afford to have children, but by world historical (and contemporary) standards of living this argument looks incredibly silly.
  - bombcar 1y ago
    At some point years of education crimps into childbearing years - I know two women who could easily have obtained their degree even after having a child, but quickly got to a “fuck this shit I’m a mom” and left the program never to return. I don’t even know if things like FMLA apply to college classes.

WalterBright 1y ago

> will continue until people's ability to afford rent and children improves. Historically that's never been a requirement for people to make children. Poor people have tended to be pretty prolific. > hoarding more and more of the wealth In a free market society, wealth is created, it is not "concentrated".

oh_my_goodness 1y ago
'In a free market society, wealth is created, it is not "concentrated".' That's a theory from economists. Economists have a lot of theories.
- WalterBright 1y ago
  It's a fact, not a theory. The wealth in the economy did not exist 100 years ago. Therefore it must have been created. And where did Musk's money come from? Who did he transfer it from?
  - oh_my_goodness 1y ago
    Come on. Sometimes wealth gets created. Sometimes wealth just gets moved around. That is a fact. Musk's wealth is mostly notional. Most of it is based on people's guesses about the future of electric cars and so forth. It's not clear yet whether that is creation or transfer or what.
    - WalterBright 1y ago
      Musk's wealth was transferred from nobody. It was created. When wealth gets "moved around", that is not the market doing that. It's force. Like social security payments. That's why I prefaced it with "free market".
      - oh_my_goodness 1y ago
        Maybe a startup can have a high valuation for a while and ultimately be worth nothing. Maybe that has happened. Maybe Musk will turn out to have created 10x more wealth than he has now. Maybe he will screw up and go broke. Maybe both. Where did Bernie Madoff's wealth come from before he got caught? Where did Sam Bankman-Fried's wealth come from? We can't just point to a unit of wealth and automatically applaud its legal owner as having created it. Maybe they created it. Maybe they stole it. Maybe we all wigged out and handed it to them voluntarily. It's case by case. We all read Ayn Rand back in the day. And I can groove with that at a certain dosage, but you're taking way too much.

mensetmanusman 1y ago

Rational millennials who will have to work until 75 at current rates may also complain :)