5 ms·

> That's completely out of the realm of reality for many young people now and the plummeting birth rates show it. I'm skeptical of this explanation for falling

> That's completely out of the realm of reality for many young people now and the plummeting birth rates show it. I'm skeptical of this explanation for falling birthrates just because birthrates are falling across the world and there seems to be no correlation between fertility and financial security. America has low birthrates. Scandinavia (usually considered to have generous welfare states) has low birthrates. Hungary, where the government gives massive tax breaks (IIRC they spend around ~6% of their GDP on child incentives), has low birthrates. Europe, East Asia, India, the Middle East, the Americas, basically the whole world except for central Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa (which are catching up) has low birth rates. Obviously the economic conditions between basically all the countries in the world varies wildly, but there isn't a consistent relationship between those conditions and fertility. Also within countries, the number of children people have is not always correlated with wealth (and at times in the past 60 years it has been negatively correlated). Anyway, I find your argument intuitive, but it doesn't seem to align with the data we have.

uniq7 11mo ago
In which of those countries is it possible for a man to work an ordinary job, buy a house, settle down with a wife and support two or three children?
- amy_petrik 11mo ago
  It's a simple catch-22 - women don't want to leave the workforce because one salary cannot support a family - yet women remaining in the workforce, since single-salary is infeasible, thusly doubling supply of workers, lowering salaries, which itself makes it infeasible to single-income a family Not to pick on women, as a feminist if you ask me, all modern men should have to be houseboys to serve their feminine masters. It does suck but it is necessary to benefit the modern women who did not suffer, in so by causing modern men to suffer -- to make amends for the suffering of all women in the perpetuity of history at the hands of all historical men, neither of which are alive today.
  - kamaal 11mo ago
    Well that's the point, men are refusing to suffer. There is little incentive to walking in a contract, where you are working all the time, no appreciation, love, gratitude or even a thank you. All the time being made to feel like you are not measuring up. And they'd rather be with somebody else apart from you. That done, you also come back from work and do all the chores you would if you remained single. And if a few years later the other party decided to break the contract, now they take your home, get monthly pensions(with raises), and get to start the process all over again with somebody else at your expense. Plus these days kids don't stay back with aging parents to care for them, so having kids appears pointless as well. By and large, let alone an incentive, marriage and children seem to a massive negative for men. Hence I wouldn't be surprised low marriage and birth rates all over the world. Why would you want to do all this? When you can work, keep the money, and spend it for your pleasure by staying single?
    - watwut 11mo ago
      Except that it is men who complain constantly about wanting to marry and have kids while women are much more content being single and have friends. You dont have to pay alimony of the wife worked thw whole time. That complain is funny in the comtext of men demanding to return back to time where alimony arrangement was necessary protection. Even in marriage, it is more of women who initiate divorce are report higher hapiness after the divorce. Men report lower hapiness and are more likely yo want to marry again.
      - kamaal 11mo ago
        Its in the nature of men to work and provide. That's how men seek fulfilment in life. But if you dial up the pain in the process men will bail. This shouldn't be surprising. Perhaps the most primal biological set up of all, the very basis of evolution is response to stimulus.
        4ggr0 11mo ago
        > Its in the nature of men to work and provide. That's how men seek fulfilment in life. i'm sorry, what? it's ingrained in men to be worker-drones and every man sees this as his fulfillment? yikes. as the kids say, 'touch grass'. translated for older people, "maybe expand your world-view and don't extrapolate your idea of a man to all of men."
- jaredklewis 11mo ago
  I mean that I know of first hand, just the US and Japan. "Possible" being a low bar that just means that I've seen it at least once. I don't think data with all of those factors (household income, number of earners per household, gender of the earners, home ownership, and number of children) exists for any country. Do you have data like that for 1960s America or is your argument based on extrapolations from watching Leave it to Beaver? But if we abstract your hypothesis slightly to: fertility is lower now than in 1960 because people are less financially secure now than they were in 1960, I don't think the data we have supports this.
  - f1shy 11mo ago
    I have seen it all across the EU. Is pretty doable (granted, you have a University title). But you can absolutely buy a home and have a couple of children which will have absolute all they need.
    - zwnow 11mo ago
      Yea because the average Joe totally has a university title. However in Germany a lot of poor people have many children while a lot of academics have less [0]. It's "doable" also doesn't mean its pleasant. I have checked the rural housing market recently and for a somewhat acceptable house you will have to pay easily ~3k per month given you have a somewhat big start capital. Not sustainable if one person loses their job for a while. Not to say it was that much easier back in the day, the housing market is just beyond fucked for most ordinary people. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Germany
      - f1shy 11mo ago
        A decent Flat in Germany, for example near Stuttgart, with good connections with train is about 300k. There are credit lines for 25 years with relative low interest rates. For that you are way lower than 3k per month (assuming 0 downpayment). With 2 people working in a household, you can afford that. Granted, you will not be the "typical" german doing 3 times a year nice vacations. But doing a "real" 1 or 2 week vacation once every 2 years is pretty much standard outside Germany, I think.
- watwut 11mo ago
  Ordinary men have wifes and two children in all those countries. You are also projecting American lifestyle "buying house without family help is necessary" on countries "hungary" where this was not an expectation for a really really long time. Like, generations.
- zdragnar 11mo ago
  Two of my friends with relatively ordinary jobs have stay at home spouses. The cost of daycare is so high that it would basically eat up one of their salaries, and this way they get to actually spend time with their children, which they find to be more filling than a BS career. It is definitely doable in the US, and I would imagine most Western countries as well. My knowledge outside of them isn't current enough to speak for the rest.
  - ThunderSizzle 11mo ago
    It's do-able, but the housing crisis needs to be resolved. People will never own a house if they didn't have skin in the game by 2021. Salaries are not rising to match housing price inflation. Specifically, both house prices and interest need to go down heavily. Sadly, they used higher interest to try to lower prices, and that didn't really bring prices down. More supply isn't helping much either, as there is no diversity of supply, and builds aren't undercutting the market yet.
    - formerly_proven 11mo ago
      > It's do-able, but the housing crisis needs to be resolved. Why? Almost everywhere a majority of people (and certainly the majority of voters) are already invested in housing and do not want their investment to loose value. > Specifically, both house prices and interest need to go down heavily. Sadly, they used higher interest to try to lower prices, and that didn't really bring prices down. People are more willing to spend an ever-growing share of their dual-incomes on housing, which drives housing prices modulo interest. So interest has no actual effect on housing affordability, since it doesn't influence how much people are willing to spend. If you lower interest, prices are simply going to rise such that people spend the same % of their income on housing. If you increase interest, prices will (eventually, slowly, since this is a seller-dominated market) fall to match. > More supply isn't helping much either, as there is no diversity of supply, and builds aren't undercutting the market yet. New builds will never be cheaper than existing housing stock. Low-cost new housing is a mirage; new housing is premium by construction.
      - 11mo ago
- roenxi 11mo ago
  If they're happy to do it to 1970s standards, probably most of them. The standard of what an ordinary life looks like has gone up a lot. Plus when only the man worked looking after a home was a full time job - much less in the way of microwaves and washing machines and whatnot. It is worth remembering that in the early 1900s there were a lot of houses that didn't even have electricity. The trends [0] are clear. As society offers people more comfort they have less children. Often radically so, having a GDP per capita of above $30k basically means that people stop having enough babies to hit the replacement rate. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_and_fertility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_and_fertility
  - ako 11mo ago
    According to Hans Rosling correlation was more between education level of women and the number of children: the higher women are educated, the less children they decide to have.
    - Planktonne 11mo ago
      Another potential framing is that the higher women are educated, the more they get to decide.
      - lazide 11mo ago
        Also - the more education men have, and the higher income they have, the less they want to join the military. It’s a similar type of issue - of course individuals don’t want to submit to a painful process with high risk and sometimes dubious value to them individually if they have other choices. Most places in the developed world aren’t currently drafting large portions of their population for military service - and a large portion of the population says they’d fight it if they did. Maybe at some point, they wouldn’t have a choice - or the choice would be made very expensive for them to make the other way. I suspect it will be similar for birth rates too.
  - engeljohnb 11mo ago
    This ridiculous lie needs to end. I can get a microwave for ~$60. I can get a decent used cell phone for ~$100. Appliances are a little more expensive, but I can get a washing machine for ~$300, less if I go to facebook marketplace. But in my area, a victorian house that's litterally crumbling with no central cooling and not up-to-code wiring where you can't run a hair dryer and coffee machine at the same time? $180,000 Cost of rent at a similar quality house half the size? $1600/month Modern comforts are not the reason people can't afford to live.
- 4er_transform 11mo ago
  In which periods in human history has that been possible? In the parts of the world with the highest birth rates is that possible?
- TuringNYC 11mo ago
  >> In which of those countries is it possible for a man to work an ordinary job, buy a house, settle down with a wife and support two or three children? It seems impossible to do this in 2025 with white collar work because so much of it is tied to HCOL cities (except for hedge funders, FAANG workers who got lucky on timing, bankers, some lawyers.) From what I can see amongst friends and family -- it is possible with blue collar trades jobs where you can be selective on where in the country you can live and where you have some level of ownership of your practice. There are numerous affordable locations in the country. I can confirm -- based on how difficult it is to get an appointment -- that my tree guy, electrician, and plumber all make more than me as an executive. Some of these workers further force payments in cash, so they are probably not even paying tax on all their income.
- dennis_jeeves2 11mo ago
  0
pchristensen 11mo ago
This documentary goes into a lot of detail on the causes worldwide: The Birth Gap - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2GeVG0XYTc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2GeVG0XYTc
- frm88 11mo ago
  I just watched this. While I completely disliked the heavy emotional focus and bias of the presenter (for example: no interviews with people who don't want children were held, particularly not men), the data seemed solid. There's a peer review pending - I'd like to look at that when it comes out. If the conclusions are solid, we would have to change our societies and economies in such a fundamental way - I don't see that happening in the next 50 years, if at all. Thanks for the link, it was interesting.
nairboon 11mo ago
A generous welfare state (like the Nordics or Switzerland) does not necessarily mean that the middle class is well off with lots of resources for kids. Usually it's the middle class (+upper class) that pays for the generous welfare state, but gets almost none of the benefits. You don't get/need the welfare, if you earn enough to be considered middle class.
- cluckindan 11mo ago
  If by ”Nordics” you mean the rich oil kingdom of Norway, sure. Everyone else has been cutting back on welfare for the last 20 years.
  - johnisgood 11mo ago
    My former friend in Finland finished med school, "for free", while living in a really nice apartment "for free", receiving ADHD medications "for free", and then went to a business school "for free". He has not worked a single day in his life and he is in his very late 20s.
    - jamesblonde 11mo ago
      Apart from the free appartment, that's the same as most countries in Europe.
      - johnisgood 11mo ago
        University is not free in most countries in Europe though, is it?
        gessha 11mo ago
        It is or it’s heavily subsidized and what you pay for is the admin costs typically, which end up <$1000/year.
        11mo ago
akoboldfrying 11mo ago
Birth rates correlate negatively with education of women. I read somewhere that this is one of the most robust findings in all of social science (and when I asked Gemini just now whether there was such a correlation, it said the same).
- jaredklewis 11mo ago
  There’s a (positive or negative) correlation between birth rates and dozens of factors, because over the period birth rates have been falling, the world has changed dramatically. Issue is we don’t know what is causal. education also correlates with all kinds of other factors like income, type of work, marital status, and political views, meaning birth rates are also likely correlated with all of these factors.
  - akoboldfrying 11mo ago
    >Issue is we don’t know what is causal. Is it really true that this is not known? Although I only claimed correlation (and am thus surprised that I was downvoted twice, as that claim is obviously true), based on the famous "robustness" of this observation, I strongly suspect that confounding factors like those you mention have already been analysed to death, and found not to eliminate the explanatory power of women's education. At least, checking these confounders seems an obviously valuable and interesting avenue to explore. If it hasn't been done yet, I wonder what social scientists are doing instead.
    - otabdeveloper4 11mo ago
      > I strongly suspect that confounding factors like those you mention have already been analysed to death I doubt it, because the xUSSR is an obvious counterexample. Access to condoms is probably a bigger factor.
      - akoboldfrying 11mo ago
        I agree that access to birth control is a strong factor and likely heavily confounded with women's education. I think there will have been examples of women's education but lack of birth control (e.g., predominantly Catholic nations, especially early on), not sure if there are many examples in the other direction though. Unfamiliar with USSR -- is the birth rate high there despite lots of educated women?
croes 11mo ago
Having many kids is often because of a necessity like cheap workforce for the family or high child mortality. Kids can be fun but also can be really exhausting. How many kids are really born just for having am offspring and not because of other reasons. If people can consciously decide to have or not to have kids my bet is on falling birth rates. For stable population you need two kids per couple and first could be an eye opener that children are a lot of work.
- gessha 11mo ago
  I have a partner and we are the age where we need to decide if we want to have kids or not. Genuinely curious - what are some reasons to have kids aside from “just having offspring”?
  - danielscrubs 11mo ago
    Might sound cliche but it might shape you to become a responsible person from pure pressure. If you are jumping around from project to project, odds are that lack of commitment stems from lack of pressure. No one wants pressure though… it’s hell.
guerrilla 11mo ago
> America has low birthrates. Scandinavia (usually considered to have generous welfare states) has low birthrates. While that's true, things are much worse here than they were in several different dimensions.
marcosdumay 11mo ago
Financial security to young people has been highly correlated all over the world for many decades.
- jaredklewis 11mo ago
  I don't buy that at all. Young people in Russia and next door Finland have equal levels of financial security? What are you basing this on? But let's say I did accept your premise, I still don't think financial security drives birth rates. In 1957, almost 10% of teenage women gave birth. Do we think 1957 teenagers were having babies because they were all homeowners with secure, well paying jobs?
judahmeek 11mo ago
The best explanation I've heard for the falling birth rates of developed countries is that the cause is a massive increase in social expectation on parents. It used to be that whether your child made it through childhood was up to God due to the massive number of risk factors beyond the parents' control. Those risk factors are much more easily mitigated in developed countries, so now the responsibility rests solely on the parents, and that's why kids can no longer go outside.

uniq7 11mo ago

In which of those countries is it possible for a man to work an ordinary job, buy a house, settle down with a wife and support two or three children?

amy_petrik 11mo ago
It's a simple catch-22 - women don't want to leave the workforce because one salary cannot support a family - yet women remaining in the workforce, since single-salary is infeasible, thusly doubling supply of workers, lowering salaries, which itself makes it infeasible to single-income a family Not to pick on women, as a feminist if you ask me, all modern men should have to be houseboys to serve their feminine masters. It does suck but it is necessary to benefit the modern women who did not suffer, in so by causing modern men to suffer -- to make amends for the suffering of all women in the perpetuity of history at the hands of all historical men, neither of which are alive today.
- kamaal 11mo ago
  Well that's the point, men are refusing to suffer. There is little incentive to walking in a contract, where you are working all the time, no appreciation, love, gratitude or even a thank you. All the time being made to feel like you are not measuring up. And they'd rather be with somebody else apart from you. That done, you also come back from work and do all the chores you would if you remained single. And if a few years later the other party decided to break the contract, now they take your home, get monthly pensions(with raises), and get to start the process all over again with somebody else at your expense. Plus these days kids don't stay back with aging parents to care for them, so having kids appears pointless as well. By and large, let alone an incentive, marriage and children seem to a massive negative for men. Hence I wouldn't be surprised low marriage and birth rates all over the world. Why would you want to do all this? When you can work, keep the money, and spend it for your pleasure by staying single?
  - watwut 11mo ago
    Except that it is men who complain constantly about wanting to marry and have kids while women are much more content being single and have friends. You dont have to pay alimony of the wife worked thw whole time. That complain is funny in the comtext of men demanding to return back to time where alimony arrangement was necessary protection. Even in marriage, it is more of women who initiate divorce are report higher hapiness after the divorce. Men report lower hapiness and are more likely yo want to marry again.
    - kamaal 11mo ago
      Its in the nature of men to work and provide. That's how men seek fulfilment in life. But if you dial up the pain in the process men will bail. This shouldn't be surprising. Perhaps the most primal biological set up of all, the very basis of evolution is response to stimulus.
      - 4ggr0 11mo ago
        > Its in the nature of men to work and provide. That's how men seek fulfilment in life. i'm sorry, what? it's ingrained in men to be worker-drones and every man sees this as his fulfillment? yikes. as the kids say, 'touch grass'. translated for older people, "maybe expand your world-view and don't extrapolate your idea of a man to all of men."
jaredklewis 11mo ago
I mean that I know of first hand, just the US and Japan. "Possible" being a low bar that just means that I've seen it at least once. I don't think data with all of those factors (household income, number of earners per household, gender of the earners, home ownership, and number of children) exists for any country. Do you have data like that for 1960s America or is your argument based on extrapolations from watching Leave it to Beaver? But if we abstract your hypothesis slightly to: fertility is lower now than in 1960 because people are less financially secure now than they were in 1960, I don't think the data we have supports this.
- f1shy 11mo ago
  I have seen it all across the EU. Is pretty doable (granted, you have a University title). But you can absolutely buy a home and have a couple of children which will have absolute all they need.
  - zwnow 11mo ago
    Yea because the average Joe totally has a university title. However in Germany a lot of poor people have many children while a lot of academics have less [0]. It's "doable" also doesn't mean its pleasant. I have checked the rural housing market recently and for a somewhat acceptable house you will have to pay easily ~3k per month given you have a somewhat big start capital. Not sustainable if one person loses their job for a while. Not to say it was that much easier back in the day, the housing market is just beyond fucked for most ordinary people. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Germany
    - f1shy 11mo ago
      A decent Flat in Germany, for example near Stuttgart, with good connections with train is about 300k. There are credit lines for 25 years with relative low interest rates. For that you are way lower than 3k per month (assuming 0 downpayment). With 2 people working in a household, you can afford that. Granted, you will not be the "typical" german doing 3 times a year nice vacations. But doing a "real" 1 or 2 week vacation once every 2 years is pretty much standard outside Germany, I think.
watwut 11mo ago
Ordinary men have wifes and two children in all those countries. You are also projecting American lifestyle "buying house without family help is necessary" on countries "hungary" where this was not an expectation for a really really long time. Like, generations.
zdragnar 11mo ago
Two of my friends with relatively ordinary jobs have stay at home spouses. The cost of daycare is so high that it would basically eat up one of their salaries, and this way they get to actually spend time with their children, which they find to be more filling than a BS career. It is definitely doable in the US, and I would imagine most Western countries as well. My knowledge outside of them isn't current enough to speak for the rest.
- ThunderSizzle 11mo ago
  It's do-able, but the housing crisis needs to be resolved. People will never own a house if they didn't have skin in the game by 2021. Salaries are not rising to match housing price inflation. Specifically, both house prices and interest need to go down heavily. Sadly, they used higher interest to try to lower prices, and that didn't really bring prices down. More supply isn't helping much either, as there is no diversity of supply, and builds aren't undercutting the market yet.
  - formerly_proven 11mo ago
    > It's do-able, but the housing crisis needs to be resolved. Why? Almost everywhere a majority of people (and certainly the majority of voters) are already invested in housing and do not want their investment to loose value. > Specifically, both house prices and interest need to go down heavily. Sadly, they used higher interest to try to lower prices, and that didn't really bring prices down. People are more willing to spend an ever-growing share of their dual-incomes on housing, which drives housing prices modulo interest. So interest has no actual effect on housing affordability, since it doesn't influence how much people are willing to spend. If you lower interest, prices are simply going to rise such that people spend the same % of their income on housing. If you increase interest, prices will (eventually, slowly, since this is a seller-dominated market) fall to match. > More supply isn't helping much either, as there is no diversity of supply, and builds aren't undercutting the market yet. New builds will never be cheaper than existing housing stock. Low-cost new housing is a mirage; new housing is premium by construction.
    - 11mo ago
roenxi 11mo ago
If they're happy to do it to 1970s standards, probably most of them. The standard of what an ordinary life looks like has gone up a lot. Plus when only the man worked looking after a home was a full time job - much less in the way of microwaves and washing machines and whatnot. It is worth remembering that in the early 1900s there were a lot of houses that didn't even have electricity. The trends [0] are clear. As society offers people more comfort they have less children. Often radically so, having a GDP per capita of above $30k basically means that people stop having enough babies to hit the replacement rate. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_and_fertility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_and_fertility
- ako 11mo ago
  According to Hans Rosling correlation was more between education level of women and the number of children: the higher women are educated, the less children they decide to have.
  - Planktonne 11mo ago
    Another potential framing is that the higher women are educated, the more they get to decide.
    - lazide 11mo ago
      Also - the more education men have, and the higher income they have, the less they want to join the military. It’s a similar type of issue - of course individuals don’t want to submit to a painful process with high risk and sometimes dubious value to them individually if they have other choices. Most places in the developed world aren’t currently drafting large portions of their population for military service - and a large portion of the population says they’d fight it if they did. Maybe at some point, they wouldn’t have a choice - or the choice would be made very expensive for them to make the other way. I suspect it will be similar for birth rates too.
- engeljohnb 11mo ago
  This ridiculous lie needs to end. I can get a microwave for ~$60. I can get a decent used cell phone for ~$100. Appliances are a little more expensive, but I can get a washing machine for ~$300, less if I go to facebook marketplace. But in my area, a victorian house that's litterally crumbling with no central cooling and not up-to-code wiring where you can't run a hair dryer and coffee machine at the same time? $180,000 Cost of rent at a similar quality house half the size? $1600/month Modern comforts are not the reason people can't afford to live.
4er_transform 11mo ago
In which periods in human history has that been possible? In the parts of the world with the highest birth rates is that possible?
TuringNYC 11mo ago
>> In which of those countries is it possible for a man to work an ordinary job, buy a house, settle down with a wife and support two or three children? It seems impossible to do this in 2025 with white collar work because so much of it is tied to HCOL cities (except for hedge funders, FAANG workers who got lucky on timing, bankers, some lawyers.) From what I can see amongst friends and family -- it is possible with blue collar trades jobs where you can be selective on where in the country you can live and where you have some level of ownership of your practice. There are numerous affordable locations in the country. I can confirm -- based on how difficult it is to get an appointment -- that my tree guy, electrician, and plumber all make more than me as an executive. Some of these workers further force payments in cash, so they are probably not even paying tax on all their income.
dennis_jeeves2 11mo ago
0

pchristensen 11mo ago

This documentary goes into a lot of detail on the causes worldwide: The Birth Gap - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2GeVG0XYTc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2GeVG0XYTc

frm88 11mo ago
I just watched this. While I completely disliked the heavy emotional focus and bias of the presenter (for example: no interviews with people who don't want children were held, particularly not men), the data seemed solid. There's a peer review pending - I'd like to look at that when it comes out. If the conclusions are solid, we would have to change our societies and economies in such a fundamental way - I don't see that happening in the next 50 years, if at all. Thanks for the link, it was interesting.

nairboon 11mo ago

A generous welfare state (like the Nordics or Switzerland) does not necessarily mean that the middle class is well off with lots of resources for kids. Usually it's the middle class (+upper class) that pays for the generous welfare state, but gets almost none of the benefits. You don't get/need the welfare, if you earn enough to be considered middle class.

cluckindan 11mo ago
If by ”Nordics” you mean the rich oil kingdom of Norway, sure. Everyone else has been cutting back on welfare for the last 20 years.
- johnisgood 11mo ago
  My former friend in Finland finished med school, "for free", while living in a really nice apartment "for free", receiving ADHD medications "for free", and then went to a business school "for free". He has not worked a single day in his life and he is in his very late 20s.
  - jamesblonde 11mo ago
    Apart from the free appartment, that's the same as most countries in Europe.
    - johnisgood 11mo ago
      University is not free in most countries in Europe though, is it?
      - gessha 11mo ago
        It is or it’s heavily subsidized and what you pay for is the admin costs typically, which end up <$1000/year.
        11mo ago

akoboldfrying 11mo ago

Birth rates correlate negatively with education of women. I read somewhere that this is one of the most robust findings in all of social science (and when I asked Gemini just now whether there was such a correlation, it said the same).

jaredklewis 11mo ago
There’s a (positive or negative) correlation between birth rates and dozens of factors, because over the period birth rates have been falling, the world has changed dramatically. Issue is we don’t know what is causal. education also correlates with all kinds of other factors like income, type of work, marital status, and political views, meaning birth rates are also likely correlated with all of these factors.
- akoboldfrying 11mo ago
  >Issue is we don’t know what is causal. Is it really true that this is not known? Although I only claimed correlation (and am thus surprised that I was downvoted twice, as that claim is obviously true), based on the famous "robustness" of this observation, I strongly suspect that confounding factors like those you mention have already been analysed to death, and found not to eliminate the explanatory power of women's education. At least, checking these confounders seems an obviously valuable and interesting avenue to explore. If it hasn't been done yet, I wonder what social scientists are doing instead.
  - otabdeveloper4 11mo ago
    > I strongly suspect that confounding factors like those you mention have already been analysed to death I doubt it, because the xUSSR is an obvious counterexample. Access to condoms is probably a bigger factor.
    - akoboldfrying 11mo ago
      I agree that access to birth control is a strong factor and likely heavily confounded with women's education. I think there will have been examples of women's education but lack of birth control (e.g., predominantly Catholic nations, especially early on), not sure if there are many examples in the other direction though. Unfamiliar with USSR -- is the birth rate high there despite lots of educated women?

croes 11mo ago

Having many kids is often because of a necessity like cheap workforce for the family or high child mortality. Kids can be fun but also can be really exhausting. How many kids are really born just for having am offspring and not because of other reasons. If people can consciously decide to have or not to have kids my bet is on falling birth rates. For stable population you need two kids per couple and first could be an eye opener that children are a lot of work.

gessha 11mo ago
I have a partner and we are the age where we need to decide if we want to have kids or not. Genuinely curious - what are some reasons to have kids aside from “just having offspring”?
- danielscrubs 11mo ago
  Might sound cliche but it might shape you to become a responsible person from pure pressure. If you are jumping around from project to project, odds are that lack of commitment stems from lack of pressure. No one wants pressure though… it’s hell.

guerrilla 11mo ago

> America has low birthrates. Scandinavia (usually considered to have generous welfare states) has low birthrates. While that's true, things are much worse here than they were in several different dimensions.

marcosdumay 11mo ago

Financial security to young people has been highly correlated all over the world for many decades.

jaredklewis 11mo ago
I don't buy that at all. Young people in Russia and next door Finland have equal levels of financial security? What are you basing this on? But let's say I did accept your premise, I still don't think financial security drives birth rates. In 1957, almost 10% of teenage women gave birth. Do we think 1957 teenagers were having babies because they were all homeowners with secure, well paying jobs?

judahmeek 11mo ago

The best explanation I've heard for the falling birth rates of developed countries is that the cause is a massive increase in social expectation on parents. It used to be that whether your child made it through childhood was up to God due to the massive number of risk factors beyond the parents' control. Those risk factors are much more easily mitigated in developed countries, so now the responsibility rests solely on the parents, and that's why kids can no longer go outside.