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Needing immigration to make up for plummeting birth rates in the US will be a challenge in the current political climate. Having kids is expensive and for many

Needing immigration to make up for plummeting birth rates in the US will be a challenge in the current political climate. Having kids is expensive and for many people of reproductive age there's the additional concern of bringing a child into a world in crisis. I believe that all these problems are technically solvable but are not politically palatable. The simplest thing that we could do would be to subsidize childcare so that the biggest economic hurdle would be addressed. But again, that would be dismissed as socialism and would be a non-starter today.

lostlogin 1y ago
Has any country improved its birth rate via policy change?
- pstuart 1y ago
  Apparently so: https://ifstudies.org/blog/does-pronatal-policy-work-it-did-in-france https://ifstudies.org/blog/does-pronatal-policy-work-it-did-... Daycare is significant financial burden: https://blog.dol.gov/2024/11/19/new-data-childcare-costs-remain-an-almost-prohibitive-expense https://blog.dol.gov/2024/11/19/new-data-childcare-costs-rem... Of course the expected response is "that's the mother's job" but millions of families need both parents working to get by.
- FridayoLeary 1y ago
  [flagged]
- NoMoreNicksLeft 1y ago
  Some claim slight improvements. I have two views of this that I alternate between without coming to any lasting conclusion. In the first view, they've merely managed to move forward births that were always going to happen. Some couple would have a child two years from now, but because the governemnt (of whatever country) bribed them, they had the kid early. This isn't particularly difficult to eliminate by proper windowing, I thought, but they're often bragging about the numbers early and (of course) juking the stats. In the second view, they have actually slightly increased fertility (and only temporarily). But at what cost? No one refuses to believe that it's impossible to bribe someone to have a child they wouldn't otherwise have anyway. If you offered $1 billion in cash, up front, you'd probably have riots of women trying to sign up for it. But this is ultimately unaffordable is it not? If the US needs 500,000 extra births next year, we can't afford $500 trillion for that, and not when we need as many the year after, and the year after that. It doesn't become more tractable by reducing the bribe, you get far few takers (which is why they've only managed to slightly raise fertility rates so far, they offered far too little). Whichever of these possibilities happens to be the truth, neither bodes well. Government doesn't have any levers that it can pull to meaningfully change this.
  - lostlogin 1y ago
    > If the US needs 500,000 extra births next year, we can't afford $500 trillion for that And yet the US is spending money to deport people. How this plays out over the next few decades is going to be grim.
    - NoMoreNicksLeft 1y ago
      > And yet the US is spending money to deport people. If the US citizens are slowly going extinct, why would we want to import foreigners? Aren't we simply giving our country away at that point?
      - lostlogin 1y ago
        That’s a mindset problem. Every American is going to die. The replacement Americans surely don’t have to be American born. America was built by immigrants, what’s so bad about them now? If you let in people with the skills you want isn’t it mutually beneficial?
        NoMoreNicksLeft 1y ago
        >If you let in people with the skills you want isn’t it mutually beneficial? No. If a person can decide for themselves what they want (what benefits them), then I decide that I do not what that, and it is therefor not mutually beneficial. If you have some alternate theory of objective benefice, I'll hear it, but it seems you only assume such exists.
        lostlogin 1y ago
        I don’t understand you. If a government decides it wants a particular type of worker (eg a nurse), then it can give them residency, a work visa or something like that. What’s the issue? America appears to be on a different path.
        1y ago
xnx 1y ago
> The simplest thing that we could do would be to subsidize childcare so that the biggest economic hurdle would be addressed. This seems logical, but to my knowledge there are no successful examples of pro-natalist policies (nordic countries, russia, south korea, etc.).
- pstuart 1y ago
  Per another comment: https://blog.dol.gov/2024/11/19/new-data-childcare-costs-remain-an-almost-prohibitive-expense https://blog.dol.gov/2024/11/19/new-data-childcare-costs-rem... Obviously looking for existing patterns of success to validate assumptions is a reasonable ask, but it doesn't mean we couldn't forge new ones with proper diligence. It would be expensive but an investment in the people that would pay huge dividends. Safeguards from fraud and abuse would be required but these are technical problems and are solvable. The only hurdle is consensus.
- bediger4000 1y ago
  Some communities in Japan have had success: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45726896 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45726896 They implemented similar policies to those you quoted above.
jstanley 1y ago
> the additional concern of bringing a child into a world in crisis I don't understand this view. If you think it is net negative for a child to be born in this world then isn't it also net negative for you to continue in this world? Yet people will continue living their own life while talking about how they don't think it's fair to have a child. If your life is worth living despite the supposed world in crisis (as if there is any other kind) who are you to say somebody else's wouldn't be?
- wffurr 1y ago
  There’s a big difference between continuing to mope along oneself and take on the enormous life crushing burden of becoming a parent.
- BowBun 1y ago
  Your logic is unsound. The child does not exist, the person living does exist. Typical childfree folks like myself don't point at kids and say "ew, that kid shouldn't exist!". This is bias towards values that some don't align too. > isn't it also net negative for you to continue in this world? Careful here. Whether you intended to or not, my interpretation of what you said is "if you don't think it's right to bring a child into this world, then you should consider suicide". > Yet people will continue living their own life while talking about how they don't think it's fair to have a child. No, this is not what childfree folks say. We do not want kids, we do not care what you do.
  - randallsquared 1y ago
    > No, this is not what childfree folks say. We do not want kids, we do not care what you do. People who just don't want kids do not seem to make up the bulk of people who self-identify as "childfree", in my observation.
  - jstanley 1y ago
    The part about "don't think it's fair to have a child" meant that you don't think it's fair for the child. The point about suicide is approximately what I meant, although of course I do not intend to drive anyone to suicide, only to help them see that their preference to live would also be shared by a hypothetical child. If your revealed preference is to exist rather than not to exist in this "world in crisis", why would you not afford a hypothetical child the same courtesy?
mixmastamyk 1y ago
We don't need more people, "plummeting" birth rates are not a problem when there are already >8 billion of us. The problem is having decedents pay for our retirement. Instead, end that system and start saving for your own retirement.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 1y ago
  >We don't need more people, "plummeting" birth rates are not a problem when there are already >8 billion of us. This is mathetmatically ignorant. Clearly, if all 8 billion people are 90 yrs old, it wouldn't matter that there were 8 billion. It wouldn't matter that there were 900 quadrillion. 90 yr olds can't reproduce, and so those people are all functionally dead anyway. A bee hive might be bustling, swarming with workers, but once the queen bee is gone, once the hive has no more capacity to rear another queen in a hurry, that hive has become functionally extinct. Pretending that it's just fine, that you can hear the buzzing and that there are thousands of cute little bees flying around is ignorant, because you're not counting on the only thing that matters. And just like with this bee hive, so you're talking the same about humanity. Functional extinction is looming.
  - mixmastamyk 1y ago
    Nice strawman, mr. ignorant. What you described isn't the current reality; fantasy situations are not useful to debate here.
    - NoMoreNicksLeft 1y ago
      I gave an exaggerated example so that the dimwitted could understand something that apparently isn't clear: not everyone in a population counts equally. Only the smaller fraction of a population that is capable of reproduction counts. It's not 8 billion in number, and in most of the world it is shrinking.
      - mixmastamyk 1y ago
        A subset of 8 billion is sufficient as well.

lostlogin 1y ago

Has any country improved its birth rate via policy change?

pstuart 1y ago
Apparently so: https://ifstudies.org/blog/does-pronatal-policy-work-it-did-in-france https://ifstudies.org/blog/does-pronatal-policy-work-it-did-... Daycare is significant financial burden: https://blog.dol.gov/2024/11/19/new-data-childcare-costs-remain-an-almost-prohibitive-expense https://blog.dol.gov/2024/11/19/new-data-childcare-costs-rem... Of course the expected response is "that's the mother's job" but millions of families need both parents working to get by.
FridayoLeary 1y ago
[flagged]
NoMoreNicksLeft 1y ago
Some claim slight improvements. I have two views of this that I alternate between without coming to any lasting conclusion. In the first view, they've merely managed to move forward births that were always going to happen. Some couple would have a child two years from now, but because the governemnt (of whatever country) bribed them, they had the kid early. This isn't particularly difficult to eliminate by proper windowing, I thought, but they're often bragging about the numbers early and (of course) juking the stats. In the second view, they have actually slightly increased fertility (and only temporarily). But at what cost? No one refuses to believe that it's impossible to bribe someone to have a child they wouldn't otherwise have anyway. If you offered $1 billion in cash, up front, you'd probably have riots of women trying to sign up for it. But this is ultimately unaffordable is it not? If the US needs 500,000 extra births next year, we can't afford $500 trillion for that, and not when we need as many the year after, and the year after that. It doesn't become more tractable by reducing the bribe, you get far few takers (which is why they've only managed to slightly raise fertility rates so far, they offered far too little). Whichever of these possibilities happens to be the truth, neither bodes well. Government doesn't have any levers that it can pull to meaningfully change this.
- lostlogin 1y ago
  > If the US needs 500,000 extra births next year, we can't afford $500 trillion for that And yet the US is spending money to deport people. How this plays out over the next few decades is going to be grim.
  - NoMoreNicksLeft 1y ago
    > And yet the US is spending money to deport people. If the US citizens are slowly going extinct, why would we want to import foreigners? Aren't we simply giving our country away at that point?
    - lostlogin 1y ago
      That’s a mindset problem. Every American is going to die. The replacement Americans surely don’t have to be American born. America was built by immigrants, what’s so bad about them now? If you let in people with the skills you want isn’t it mutually beneficial?
      - NoMoreNicksLeft 1y ago
        >If you let in people with the skills you want isn’t it mutually beneficial? No. If a person can decide for themselves what they want (what benefits them), then I decide that I do not what that, and it is therefor not mutually beneficial. If you have some alternate theory of objective benefice, I'll hear it, but it seems you only assume such exists.
        lostlogin 1y ago
        I don’t understand you. If a government decides it wants a particular type of worker (eg a nurse), then it can give them residency, a work visa or something like that. What’s the issue? America appears to be on a different path.
        1y ago

xnx 1y ago

> The simplest thing that we could do would be to subsidize childcare so that the biggest economic hurdle would be addressed. This seems logical, but to my knowledge there are no successful examples of pro-natalist policies (nordic countries, russia, south korea, etc.).

pstuart 1y ago
Per another comment: https://blog.dol.gov/2024/11/19/new-data-childcare-costs-remain-an-almost-prohibitive-expense https://blog.dol.gov/2024/11/19/new-data-childcare-costs-rem... Obviously looking for existing patterns of success to validate assumptions is a reasonable ask, but it doesn't mean we couldn't forge new ones with proper diligence. It would be expensive but an investment in the people that would pay huge dividends. Safeguards from fraud and abuse would be required but these are technical problems and are solvable. The only hurdle is consensus.
bediger4000 1y ago
Some communities in Japan have had success: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45726896 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45726896 They implemented similar policies to those you quoted above.

jstanley 1y ago

> the additional concern of bringing a child into a world in crisis I don't understand this view. If you think it is net negative for a child to be born in this world then isn't it also net negative for you to continue in this world? Yet people will continue living their own life while talking about how they don't think it's fair to have a child. If your life is worth living despite the supposed world in crisis (as if there is any other kind) who are you to say somebody else's wouldn't be?

wffurr 1y ago
There’s a big difference between continuing to mope along oneself and take on the enormous life crushing burden of becoming a parent.
BowBun 1y ago
Your logic is unsound. The child does not exist, the person living does exist. Typical childfree folks like myself don't point at kids and say "ew, that kid shouldn't exist!". This is bias towards values that some don't align too. > isn't it also net negative for you to continue in this world? Careful here. Whether you intended to or not, my interpretation of what you said is "if you don't think it's right to bring a child into this world, then you should consider suicide". > Yet people will continue living their own life while talking about how they don't think it's fair to have a child. No, this is not what childfree folks say. We do not want kids, we do not care what you do.
- randallsquared 1y ago
  > No, this is not what childfree folks say. We do not want kids, we do not care what you do. People who just don't want kids do not seem to make up the bulk of people who self-identify as "childfree", in my observation.
- jstanley 1y ago
  The part about "don't think it's fair to have a child" meant that you don't think it's fair for the child. The point about suicide is approximately what I meant, although of course I do not intend to drive anyone to suicide, only to help them see that their preference to live would also be shared by a hypothetical child. If your revealed preference is to exist rather than not to exist in this "world in crisis", why would you not afford a hypothetical child the same courtesy?

mixmastamyk 1y ago

We don't need more people, "plummeting" birth rates are not a problem when there are already >8 billion of us. The problem is having decedents pay for our retirement. Instead, end that system and start saving for your own retirement.

NoMoreNicksLeft 1y ago
>We don't need more people, "plummeting" birth rates are not a problem when there are already >8 billion of us. This is mathetmatically ignorant. Clearly, if all 8 billion people are 90 yrs old, it wouldn't matter that there were 8 billion. It wouldn't matter that there were 900 quadrillion. 90 yr olds can't reproduce, and so those people are all functionally dead anyway. A bee hive might be bustling, swarming with workers, but once the queen bee is gone, once the hive has no more capacity to rear another queen in a hurry, that hive has become functionally extinct. Pretending that it's just fine, that you can hear the buzzing and that there are thousands of cute little bees flying around is ignorant, because you're not counting on the only thing that matters. And just like with this bee hive, so you're talking the same about humanity. Functional extinction is looming.
- mixmastamyk 1y ago
  Nice strawman, mr. ignorant. What you described isn't the current reality; fantasy situations are not useful to debate here.
  - NoMoreNicksLeft 1y ago
    I gave an exaggerated example so that the dimwitted could understand something that apparently isn't clear: not everyone in a population counts equally. Only the smaller fraction of a population that is capable of reproduction counts. It's not 8 billion in number, and in most of the world it is shrinking.
    - mixmastamyk 1y ago
      A subset of 8 billion is sufficient as well.