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The US is flirting with its first-ever population decline
- GiorgioG 9mo agoMaybe if young folks could afford housing they'd have kids...there's a thought.
- jleyank 9mo agoMore that young(er) folks could afford to live on a single income for the pre-school years. Or, I guess, that there's extensive parental leave and support for the parent doing primary caregiver.
- bombcar 9mo agoThere are many solutions to different aspects of the problem - if we define the problem something like "people get together older, and have kids older, and have fewer." But even if everything was "easy and perfect" (arguably some other countries have this) - you still have something that is generally discouraging people from having kids. The median Amish family income is about $65,000 and typically has six to eight children.
- jleyank 9mo agoThe Amish aren't on the consumer treadmill. They have amazing social support from their community. They tend to be "traditional families" so there's no question re: child rearing. So I guess that satisfies both of the original conditions... But I figure people would prefer a more commercial lifestyle. Particularly on places like HN.
- amanaplanacanal 9mo agoThe Amish aren't becoming scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs. As a society I don't think the Amish lifestyle is something we would embrace.
- jpadkins 9mo agoI disagree. I think there is a lot we can learn from Amish society. Main of the 'ills' of modern society don't exist in their community. I believe that we can learn and apply aspects of what they do well without losing our ability to support entrepreneurs and engineers.
- watwut 9mo agoBy all estimates, they have also fairly high rates of domestic violence and abuse rates. Which to be fair, traditional families also frequently featured.
- assaddayinh 9mo agoYou need a positive life affirming story in your life to set up kids and the current core does not have that. "You will be either a concentration camp guard or a prisoner, in a apocalyptic war" is not a life narrative, its a contraceptive.
- cvoss 9mo agoMixed in with all this, and possibly preceeding all this, is declining marriage rates. It's significantly riskier, financially and relationally, to have kids without getting married.
- myrmidon 9mo agoI think the "cost of living" explanation for low birthrates is just wrong, and not even plausible (anecdote: my grandmother had 17 siblings, and they could not even afford proper sunday shoes for all of them, much less current living standards). I think the biggest impact is from kids being obsolete/net negative as both workforce (when young) and retirement scheme (when the parents are old). But there is no reverting that development. Easy access to contraceptives probably makes a significant difference too, though.
- actionfromafar 9mo agoContraceptives will be harder to get. Project 2025 is also about stopping the "senseless use of birth control pills".
- dh2022 9mo agoWell, they can do whatever they want in their red-states. Blue states are already moving healthcare away from federal non-sense standards [0] and [1] [0] https://governor.wa.gov/news/2025/washington-california-and-oregon-launch-new-west-coast-health-alliance-uphold-scientific-integrity https://governor.wa.gov/news/2025/washington-california-and-... [1]https://www.michigan.gov/mdhhs/inside-mdhhs/newsroom/2026/01/06/vaccines-state https://www.michigan.gov/mdhhs/inside-mdhhs/newsroom/2026/01...
- actionfromafar 9mo agoThat's what nationalizing elections is for, make blue states turn red.
- llm_nerd 9mo ago>I think the "cost of living" explanation for low birthrates is just wrong If you're demanding it be all-or-nothing, then sure it is "wrong". It obviously isn't the only reason. As countries get richer, people have fewer kids. Is it a factor? Of course it is. Children are incredibly expensive if you subscribe to modern norms and expectations. There are many, many, many people who want kids but can't afford it, and if they do have a kid it's prohibitive having more than 1. Two is basically financial suicide for many. And to be clear, I have four children which is a luxury of being in a financially rewarding career at the right time, but even still it was unbelievably tough making it happen. "anecdote: my grandmother had 17 siblings" Standards change. You understand that, right? If you're middle class in 2026, the expectations around having and raising a child are very, very different from someone sixty years ago. People generally aren't keen on having six kids sharing a room these days. Even bunkbeds are considered poor by many. Now since both parents will have to work, account for childcare, massive vehicles, education savings, and so on.
- indecisive_user 9mo agoIf that were true then we would expect to see a positive correlation between income and family size, but households making 500k are basically the same size as households making 50k.
- jeffbee 9mo agoYour specific claim may indeed be true, but it's misleading. The relationship between income and children is U-shaped. From middle incomes to higher incomes, fertility rises. It is also important to point out that income is tied to other factors in America. You're going to disproportionately find your $500k earners in a handful of superstar coastal cities. Those things need to be controlled for if you want to isolate the effect of income on family size.
- whynotminot 9mo agoThis is often a commonly blamed reason, but I think the data at this point pretty strongly suggests that the more affluent a country is the less kids they have. You look at some of the most third world places in the world without strong economic security, yet somehow they manage to have babies at a higher rate than Western countries do.
- stackskipton 9mo agoSeems like when you give women the choice, many elect to have fewer kids than replacement level. Hell, in many countries in Europe, they basically throw money at anyone having kids and their birthrate has plummeted which would indicate that economics is not only reason.
- dbspin 9mo agoI don't think there's a country in Europe that funds childcare remotely to the level of cost. The most generous I'm aware of is certain states / cities in Germany that provide free 'Kita', essentially Kindergarten. In addition to maternity leave, national insurance etc. But this certainly doesn't cover the numerous costs (including time off work etc) associated with having kids. Would be an interesting experiment to actually pay people to have kids - i.e.: financially reward them in accordance with the costs involved. I suspect, as with an actual liveable UBI, the results would differ radically.
- bombcar 9mo agoWe do pay people to have kids in the USA - once you're on welfare. Your WIC and EBT allowances go up per kid. And even if you're not that poor, you get subsidized kids through things like the earned income tax credit and the child tax credit. It's annoying that while some of those support 3+ kids, many "top out" at three and stop increasing. I've often thought of searching for "sponsorships" for additional children (though we'd probably have them anyway) - not sure I want my son to be named Facebook X AI though ;)
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- sinnsro 9mo agoGod forbid paying the masses a living wage or allowing them access to things their forebears had. They will own nothing and they will be thankful for it. [/s just in case it goes over someone's head]
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 9mo agoIs housing really that expensive? When you price out a loan on a starter house it really ain't that bad. I'm a recent first time homebuyer and I don't understand why people think they aren't affordable. There were plenty of cheaper homes that I looked at and even with rates at their highest would be cheaper than my rent. Do people expect a palace? Are there more unmarried people today who can't afford it alone?
- bnjms 9mo agoHow much cost do you consider a first time home as costing?
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- neogodless 9mo agoBased on your lower comment, Rhode Island. Median family income $87k Cost-of-living ~$36k excluding housing With your example of a $350K home, someone making the median (presumably not 20-30 year olds but more like 40-45 year olds...) they could save up the $70k down payment in under 2 years. P & I payment of ~$2k / month. Maybe $1k more for escrow of taxes and insurance. So $72k total cost of living on $87k, assuming you've made it to median income. Of course, if you're making less than $72k, buying a $350k house would simply be... untenable. Also, based on rough guideline of "30% of income on housing", you'd definitely want to keep your mortgage under $2200 / month. Census link indicates median home values are closer to $404K though, too. https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/RI/LFE046224 https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/RI/LFE046224 https://livingcost.org/cost/united-states/ri https://livingcost.org/cost/united-states/ri
- nickjj 9mo ago> Cost-of-living ~$36k excluding housing When you say housing, are you excluding utilities or just not direct rent / mortgage / property taxes? Either way, that's a good example of how different things are without kids and maybe why folks are choosing not to have them. As someone without kids who lives in NY (not NYC), I couldn't even imagine spending 36k / year (minus rent). Even if I took a 3 week international vacation every quarter I wouldn't come close to that amount after factoring in my normal costs.
- Buttons840 9mo agoLots of people are doing the math and explaining why what the people who aren't having kids are saying is wrong. They have their math and the people still don't have kids.
- wcoenen 9mo agoThis comes up in every discussion about demographics. But counterintuitively, there are no examples of financial incentives actually fixing this problem. For example, in 2022 Hungary was spending 6.2% of GDP on such incentives[1], but this only managed to bring total fertility rate up to about 1.6 [2]. It is the same everywhere else. The real reason fertility has declined since the sixties is because people have access to effective birth control. Nobody wants to be a baby factory. [1] https://abouthungary.hu/news-in-brief/hungary-to-spend-6-2-of-gdp-on-family-support-measures-in-2022 https://abouthungary.hu/news-in-brief/hungary-to-spend-6-2-o... [2] https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/hun/hungary/fertility-rate https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/hun/hun...
- pjc50 9mo agoBack of an envelope suggests that to really make this work you'd need most women in the 20-40 range to have the job title of "parent" and a lower middle class or more salary paid by the state, so .. 10-20% of GDP? Nobody wants to contemplate just how expensive this is going to be, including the fact that now you have a short-term labour shortage (because they're out of the regular workforce as well!)
- plaguna 9mo agoMaybe they should have a look to what other countries are doing. [0] [0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jan/27/spain-decree-regularise-undocumented-migrants https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jan/27/spain-decree-r...
- garbawarb 9mo agoHeck, they could just make it easier for documented immigrants to live here.
- actionfromafar 9mo agoThere are other plans now: https://baptistnews.com/article/remember-the-first-goal-of-project-2025-is-to-create-a-baby-boom/ https://baptistnews.com/article/remember-the-first-goal-of-p...
- mindslight 9mo agoThe ever-advancing big tech dystopia where individuals are pervasively tracked, quantified, and siloed. A destroyed economy squashing mobility, making the basic necessities uncertain, and future wealth questionable. Terrorist gangs abducting people in their homes based on what AI says, and executing people in the streets for protesting about it. All things that make for warm fuzzy feelings about bringing children into this world! As a parent, I will say that the reelection of destructionists has basically guaranteed that my son's life will be markedly worse than my own. This was our chance to pull up out of the death spiral, but instead we chose full speed ahead, downward. The only sane way to analyze the fascist movement is as the death throes of our society, rather than latching on to any of their conflicting purportedly-constructive plans they chum out to fool the gullible.
- idontwantthis 9mo agoHoly shit that article invokes explicit nazi policy without a shred of shame.
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- gadders 9mo agoSounds hellish. "His administration is focused on delivering on his promise to reduce the immigrant population and argues, despite the protestations of economists, that doing so will mean greater opportunities and wages for native-born workers and will reduce the cost of everything from housing to health care by reducing demand. “There is no shortage of American minds and hands to grow our labor force, and President Trump’s agenda to create jobs for American workers represents this Administration’s commitment to capitalizing on that untapped potential while delivering on our mandate to enforce our immigration laws,” says Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman."
- jeffbee 9mo ago“There is no shortage of American minds and hands to grow our labor force" - amazing that you can get people to believe that. There is a massive shortage of labor and the labor force participation rate is already dangerously high.
- daymanstep 9mo agoThere is no labor shortage. Look at layoffs and job openings - lowest since 2020.
- jeffbee 9mo agoYes, Trump is also successfully destroying the demand side of the labor economy at the same time. Is that what his supporters imagined that sentence means? It is nevertheless the case that the prime-age labor force participation rate is bouncing off 85% and getting it any higher than that is impossible.
- gadders 9mo agoLOL. There is no labour shortage. There is only a shortage at a particular price point. If there is such a labour shortage, what explains the layoffs?
- someperson 9mo agoI wish there were more reasoned debate and distinguishing between legal immigration including tech workers (H-1B visas) versus illegal immigration for eg food truck workers, DoorDash scooter drivers. Also the lack of knowledge about the existence of the fantastic and generous H-2A visa for farm workers is maddening.
- sandworm101 9mo agoGood. As the working population stagnates perhaps employers will attach some value to workers. Of course, without an underclass of immigrant labor, prices will rise and the US will have to import more food. And temporary heathcare workers can be brought in to help the aging population. It's good that America's cordial relationships with key trading partners will facilitate the free movement of goods and labor ... #1 story on BBC news: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cpw052pkvl0o https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cpw052pkvl0o
- postflopclarity 9mo agofacilitating the free movement of labor across borders by... abducting and abusing all the laborers coming across our borders? very curious
- dbspin 9mo agoI think you missed the sarcasm.
- postflopclarity 9mo agoI did, sorry
- bombcar 9mo agoIt's not a guarantee that we'll import more food - though that may be a good thing in the long run to help other countries - we could also switch what kinds of food we eat. Not everything needs manual labor to harvest like strawberries, crops like corn and wheat and others are quite capable of being harvested in bulk by machinery. Net calories per employee/farmer would be an interesting metric.
- dpc050505 9mo agoEating only corn and wheat will leave you with nutrient deficiencies. You can be obese and still malnourished if all the veggies you eat are a slice of tomato and lettuce in your burger and half a potato with the same volume of frying oil.
- mikert89 9mo ago[flagged]
- postflopclarity 9mo agogo back to the incel corners pls and keep this kind of misogynist rhetoric out of here
- mikert89 9mo ago[flagged]
- postflopclarity 9mo agomaybe you're just undesirable
- neogodless 9mo agoBut it's objective!! You can objectively measure the value of people. We could just plug people's value into a database and let AI do the match-making. People don't have to be involved in the decision-making. Especially not female people! /s
- mikert89 9mo agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypergamy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypergamy
- coldtea 9mo agothat, but also men in their 20s and 30s refusing to settle down, and wasting with gaming, entertainment, and porn (and caling women that are objectively their equal, or even much superior "mid").
- mikert89 9mo agoi know almost zero men that dont want a girlfriend, many are trying
- queuebert 9mo agoWhy do we obsess over growing everything all the time?
- seanmcdirmid 9mo agoWe need young people to pay for old people retirement (economically speaking, someone has to be working when someone else is just eating).
- mmastrac 9mo agoI really hope that automation and robotics will _finally_ allow us to invert the pyramid.
- nradov 9mo agoDespite the hype cycle around humanoid robots it's unlikely that they'll advance enough to be capable of replacing many human workers in nursing homes and assisted-living facilities within our lifetimes. Expect to see lots of really sad stories about elder abuse and neglect because as a society we simply won't have the resources to adequately care for them all.
- seanmcdirmid 9mo agoThey don’t have to. If say robotaxis become widespread, you’ve freed up some portion of the labor market to do something else. They don’t have to automate all jobs, just some.
- arcologies1985 9mo agoThe evidence has shown that this thinking is flawed - disruption of jobs in an industry causes a slow, wrenching, scarring adjustment process that increases the load on welfare programs and makes quality of life broadly worse: https://www.npr.org/2025/02/11/g-s1-47352/why-economists-got-free-trade-with-china-so-wrong https://www.npr.org/2025/02/11/g-s1-47352/why-economists-got...
- Papazsazsa 9mo agoAn unsolvable problem that will correct itself homeostatically. Also: https://fs.blog/chestertons-fence/ https://fs.blog/chestertons-fence/
- fedeb95 9mo agoI don't get what the fence metaphor has to do with the problem
- ashishb 9mo agoNew Yorker has a detailed article on this phenomenon that's a great read. It busts many common myths. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/03/03/the-population-implosion https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/03/03/the-population...
- phainopepla2 9mo agoWhat are some of the myths they bust in that article? For those of us who can't see past the paywall
- PyWoody 9mo agohttps://archive.is/bmlll https://archive.is/bmlll
- Mycroftty 9mo agoI am at work and didn't have time to read the full article. Here's Gemini summary: The article "The End of Children" (published in The New Yorker, March 2025) explores the global phenomenon of plummeting fertility rates, examining why traditional explanations and policy solutions are failing to reverse the trend. Here is a summary of the key points: * Economic Support Isn't Enough: The article challenges the popular liberal argument that fertility decline is primarily caused by economic insecurity or a lack of childcare. It points out that Nordic countries like Finland and Sweden—which offer generous parental leave, "baby boxes," and flexible work cultures—still face declining birth rates similar to or lower than the U.S. Even in places where childcare is free (Vienna) versus expensive (Zurich), fertility rates often remain identical. * The "Achievement Culture" Trap: The definition of "affording" a child has inflated significantly. In many wealthy, educated circles, raising a child now implies providing a suite of expensive advantages—individual bedrooms, travel sports, private lessons, and organic diets. This "intensive parenting" model means working mothers today actually spend more time on active childcare than stay-at-home mothers did in previous generations, making the prospect of parenthood feel overwhelming. * Political and Educational polarization: There is a widening fertility gap based on politics and education. Democrats and those with higher degrees are significantly more likely to be childless. This is partly attributed to the extended time required for education and career establishment, pushing childbearing to later years when it is biologically more difficult. * Failed Government Interventions: The author highlights various aggressive attempts by governments to boost birth rates, such as Hungary's tax exemptions for mothers of four and South Korea's numerous "happiness projects" and subsidies. Despite spending fortunes, no modern nation has successfully reversed a low fertility rate back to replacement levels. * A Shift in Meaning: The article concludes with a philosophical reflection on how children have transformed from a natural part of life into "variables" in a high-stakes lifestyle choice. They are increasingly viewed through the lens of identity and personal fulfillment, leading to a culture where parents fear judgment and non-parents fear being seen as selfish, intensifying the anxiety around having children at all.
- yoyohello13 9mo agoThe primary cause of low birth rates is that society does not value children. Sure we talk a big game, everything is 'for the children' obviously. However, we publicly divest from schools, we invest in technologies that devalue humans and human labor. Growing up we make people believe they need to be millionaires just to not be swallowed up by the 9-to-5 meat grinder (this is true actually). It's no wonder young people don't value family when every signal in our society is telling them not to.
- tayo42 9mo agoAgree with the statement, Don't agree with the supporting statements though. Parenting is just really hard, families need two parents working, birthing itself is expensive, even with good insurance, day care is 2k a month and it's not a good idea to skip it. Houses are expensive, raising a kid in a tiny apartment is hard, renting brings instability to your life. There is no serious parental leave for new parents.
- mekdoonggi 9mo agoAs a parent, I genuinely question why I continue to participate in a society that tolerates traffic deaths and firearm violence like the US. If there's a large chunk of people who won't lift a finger to keep kids from being shot at school, there's a large chunk of people who value my child's life at zero.
- supertrope 9mo agoOne of the ways the Netherlands made streets safer for dismounted people was by framing it as stopping killing kids with your cars. Yes this is "think of the children" logic but since kids are generally healthy the top causes of kid death in the US are gunfire and cars.
- jodrellblank 9mo agoThe USA had those same protests a decade before the Netherlands, but collectively decided that they preferred to blame the parents more than they wanted to restrict car drivers: From https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-10-08/the-hidden-history-of-american-anti-car-protests https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-10-08/the-hidde...: > "all over America in the 1950s and 1960s, residents, particularly women, organized demonstrations against car traffic—and their street protests often closely resembled the Dutch Stop de kindermoord protests that would come in the 1970s. They demanded slower driving, usually seeking stop signs, streetlights, or crossing guards. Some demanded pedestrian over- or underpasses." ... > "Many demonstrations—particularly the biggest ones—were triggered by the injury or death of a child. Against any tendency to blame the parents for permitting their children to have a life of their own beyond home and school, demonstrators consistently demanded streets that local children could use safely. And while the demonstrations were nearly always nonviolent, they were vocal and insistent, and sometimes confrontational. They included some degree of traffic obstruction, sometimes even full blockades that barred all motor vehicles." ... > "Women bearing signs picketed streets and intersections, or set up folding chairs across the breadth of streets and sat in them. Children often participated. A mainstay of the demonstrations was baby carriages, occupied or not, which rhetorically associated the demonstrations with motherhood and with the safety of children. The technique was common enough to give the demonstrations a name: Some newspapers called them “baby carriage blockades.”" ... > "the now-preferred path to child traffic safety: the two-car family, parental chauffeuring of children, a surrender to car dependency regardless of the costs or family income, and the abandonment of children’s independent mobility. Where streets were unsafe for children, the problem became the mother’s responsibility, and an injury or a death was the mother’s fault."
- andrewla 9mo agoThe article is paywalled but it seems the gist is that by restricting immigration and escalating deportation, we risk population decrease. What I find amusing about this is that it is roughly equivalent to saying that the United States needs to conquer new territory to survive. Need to bring more people under our thumb. This is definitely "dying empire" thinking. Worth saying that I do not agree with this. I think in many ways our cardinal sin is that in the interest of legibility (especially for tax purposes) we've regulated our ability to employee people and to get work to an absolutely insane degree. To such a degree in fact, that much of our economy relies on having a source of "black market" labor and indentured servitude in the guise of immigration. Where we flirt with danger is that we look at one side of this equation, the immigration side, but not the other, the labor side.
- tantalor 9mo agoThe recent episode of The Daily gives a prime example of this, I was seeing people getting hired and getting paid a lot less than me. And when I inquired about it, my boss would say, well, they’re less expensive. I don’t have to pay workman’s comp on them. I don’t have to pay general liability insurance on them. If they get hurt, they’ll go to the emergency room. No sweat off my back. And I was getting paid less and less, because I was competing against people who were hired because it cost less to hire them or employ them... It’s illegal, by the way. But people are getting away with it and I’m competing against them. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/09/podcasts/the-daily/why-trump-voters-are-torn-over-minneapolis.html?showTranscript=1 https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/09/podcasts/the-daily/why-tr... I think he unfairly places the blame on the immigrants themselves, when the true culprits are the employers and system of black market employment.
- pessimizer 9mo agoWanting them gone isn't the same as putting the blame on them. It isn't a personality conflict or a troubled relationship; immigrants shouldn't feel guilty for wanting to stay and the people competing with them should feel guilty for wanting them to go. Or rather, who cares? Shouldn't people be allowed to have their inner states to themselves? Can't we own anything? How did a discussion about labor exploitation turn into a discussion about feelings? And why is it a discussion about some workers' feelings vs. other workers' feelings? How did the boss manage to completely recuse himself?
- jdlyga 9mo agoOnce you have a kid, it's obvious why even besides the costs involved. There's not much sense of community, particularly in the white middle class. People are very individualistic and distrusting of others. There's a good reason for some of this, but to have a community you need to be a community member. And that means letting people in, trusting others and being trustworthy, and being out for the group instead of just yourself.
- nine_zeros 9mo agoI think the fear narrative in America is just completely out of whack. Besides gun shooting and ICE, there are no real threats. The politicians have made it seem like there is a lot of there is so much threat but realistically normal people just exist. Stop filling for fox news and maga hate messaging.
- b0rtb0rt 9mo agothis really depends on where you live. i’m in an extremely safe family oriented suburb, there’s lot of community, kids have freedom to go outside, good friends with lots of neighbors and parents, my social life is busier than it was when i didn’t have kids.
- bombcar 9mo agoI'd say (and this is painful for many) that it really depends on who you are and how you act - if you're outgoing, or force yourself to pretend to be, and you talk, and you listen, and you don't immediately judge people (by whatever metric you come up with) - you can build community anywhere Is it easier if you're in a group of tightly-knit people all nearly identical to you? Sure! But it's possible with work anywhere that has any population at all. Social media and the Internet have let us self-select for "friends" who are as close to us as possible, there's ease because of the lack of friction, but that same lack of friction prevents our rough edges from being sanded off. The number of people who could list what they want in a community, and when presented with a community that matches their list, cry that it votes wrong is way too high, just as an example.
- throwawayohio 9mo agoLiving in a city that this administration has constantly been attacking forced me and my wife, as well as many of our neighbors, to put off our family growth plans. Not only did many of my neighbors lose their jobs, but others are simply fearful of living their lives. We're fine financially, have housing, etc, but at this point why would we go through the stress of raising a child when a masked federal agent might jump out and disappear our friends, family, or nanny who could be watching them? And that is before we even get into the potentially disastrous child healthcare decisions and regulation rollbacks. It's an unfortunate time to be trying to grow a healthy family, IMO. ETA: I already have children.
- ryandrake 9mo agoMany of our family's friends have already left back to their home countries (bringing their own families with them). Risk/reward calculation has abruptly changed. The risk to your life and livelihood is not worth it, and the reward of living in the US has been steadily declining.
- mattmaroon 9mo agoThat is almost certainly the reason why they are making such a spectacle of it. Self deportation is the goal.
- CoastalCoder 9mo ago> Self deportation is the goal. Perhaps. GP didn't say whether or not there were any legal clouds over the persons he's describing. The answer to that makes a big difference to his point.
- ryandrake 9mo agoEvery one of them are legal permanent residents who don't feel welcome here anymore. Some are afraid they're one mistaken identity away from ending up black bagged and sent to El Salvador.
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- pessimizer 9mo agoIf productivity gains had ever filtered down to the population instead of being frittered away by the wealthy in orgies of creation and destruction, it would be easy to afford a population decline. Productivity went up 90% since 1979, and pay went up 30%. We could support 2x the ratio of retirees to workers as 1979 at the same level of comfort. Instead, we build huge houses (for wealthy people) and tear them down, and build a military to kill impoverished foreigners (for our wealthy investors), blow it up, and build it again. The "demographic crisis" people are a child-sacrificing cult posing as a child-worshipping cult. They want more people to keep the prices of labor down, and they act like that's a concern that you should share. Unless you're in the top 20-40% in the West, you're going to work until you die, or get sick and die in the gutter. If you really wanted the population to go up, maybe don't engineer society so that all of its wealth lies in the hands of boomers and their failchildren who don't work. Governance would improve instantly and vastly if only people who worked got a vote. The funny thing is that the right-wing pro-natalist points at wealthy elites and concocts a conspiracy that they want to reduce the population (for unknown, nefarious reasons.) No, they love cheap servants. They spend all of their effort in bombing and sieging poor countries on bizarre pretenses then opening the doors to their own countries to let them rush in. The only difference between the right-wing pro-natalists and wealthy elites is that the elite will happily import the servants from the South to wherever they want to live, and right-wingers (even if they call themselves "liberals") are secretly just doing the 14 words. We don't need more immigrants or more babies, we need to shed parasites.
- bpt3 9mo agoI ask this of basically everyone on here who posts something like this, and never get a reply, but I'll try again: Why would you expect income increases to track productivity gains?
- czbond 9mo agoI believe the trend of population decline coupled with the wave of retirees when coupled with "AI" will produce a net benefit for everyone. I believe humans and jobs will be able to accomplish more, with less people and have better margins - and thus be able to be paid much more. I am an optimist that these trends together, when managed and harnessed well, can make us better paid, less stressed, and with more free time.
- bombcar 9mo agoEvery single other previous advance that could have done that has NOT produced the less stressed part - imagine taking an 1800s subsistence farmer and arming him with modern equipment and tooling; he'd be ecstatic. The key is always internal, personal, once you right yourself, the world starts feeling much better.
- whatever1 9mo agoMost of the developed countries are facing this. I think our financial/defense systems are not prepared for population decline, so I foresee a lot of turbulence. The new left will call for more immigration and more globalism to avoid wars, but will have to deal with integration of swaths of immigrants. The new right will call for closing of the borders and double down on AI doing the work of producing and defending, but will have to deal with the fact that AI will not be ready for that.
- brightball 9mo agoI've watched most of my life as narratives have been pushed in popular culture, TV, music, magazines, online articles, etc that go out of their way to convince people not to have children. Just some examples of trends I've observed personally. - Scare media about the cost of having children - Scare media about the environmental impact of having children, even calling it irresponsible for the planet - Scare media about the state of the world aka "how could you bring a child into this" when, at least in the western world, we have the highest standard of living in human history. - Scare media about motherhood, things not working out with your husband, kids being brats who don't respect you and constantly living in a house of sadness. - Scare media about fatherhood promoting the idea of women having a baby just to hook the father for child support and the divorcing him. - Scare media about having to trade your career for a family All of this while growing up and realizing more and more, by talking to everyone around me, people older than me, friends of my parents, my other friends in their 40s and on down the line...there is nothing in this world that brings people more joy than their families and their children. Nothing. It's devastating for the people who I know who can't have children despite all of their attempts and even then tends to lead to adoption in many cases. All of the narratives, trend marketing and media capitalize on a story that people have been invested in pushing for decades that is at worst an outright lie and at best a half truth to accomplish some political goals. People need each other. Men need women. Women need men. Children need both parents. And we are all better for it. No matter how broke you think you are or how much you think it will cost, you will figure it out together. People do this all the time with less than you have ever had in your life and they make it work. Together. And it's worth it.
- 9mo ago
- ryandrake 9mo agoIf the US wants to increase its population, maybe it should stop sending masked agents out to kick in doors, directly reducing the population.
- koolba 9mo agoThe US has endless backlog of people waiting in line to legally enter the country. It doesn’t need to keep any illegal aliens to meet its immigration goals.
- hobs 9mo agoThe vast majority taken up in these dragnets are legal residents of the united states. The attorney representing ICE to the courts in MN admitted it directly, admitted that ICE does not believe it needs to honor orders of the federal court system, and that they do not comply with orders to release legal residents of the united states. You should educate yourself. Here's commentary that directly references the lawyer's responses and judge's commentary https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6o-_2thaI8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6o-_2thaI8
- fooker 9mo agoThis logic would fly a couple of years ago. Since then, we have seen indiscriminate violence against people and families following the rules. And a bizzare hate campaign against H1B. And court judgements explicitly enabling masked government agents to target someone solely on the basis of skin color.
- koolba 9mo ago> Since then, we have seen indiscriminate violence against people and families following the rules. I'm not aware of any such thing, especially anything "indiscriminate". For sure there are causalities when protests go from speech to violence or directly interfere with the ability of law enforcement to enforce the law. But your framing makes it sound like roving bands of beat down squads. > And a bizzare hate campaign against H1B. There's nothing bizarre about workers being angry at a system that is being abused to drive down wages. The reality is that there are segments of workforce in the USA that will only hire H1Bs workers because they know they can treat them illegally. This happens all over the place but is particularly prevalent at larger orgs (both in tech and finance). The behavior is implicitly authorized by the companies as they outsource the "being the jerk" to those managers. The non-H1B workers rightfully feel angered by this because it directly lowers their wages. It's like scabs flooding a union shop. Only worse as the scabs are scared of not only losing their jobs, but their visas. > And court judgements explicitly enabling masked government agents to target someone solely on the basis of skin color. If there was not a concerted effort to interfere with law enforcement or dox the people that work at those places, the masks would not be necessary.
- dfilppi 9mo ago[dead]
- xyst 9mo agoPoor people. Start pumping out kids to be future wage slaves in this corpo dominated country. Carls Jr loves you.
- Curiositiy 9mo agoICE works :0
- compounding_it 9mo agoMy darwinian theory: About 11 years ago I went on a bus in Rochester, NY. It was bizarre to me that every person in the bus (about 12-15 people aged between 18-25 maybe) were buried in their phones. No one was talking to each other, not looking outside, nothing. I had the latest iPhone but since America was new for me I mostly spent time looking at the world around me and talking to people. I felt sad that the social world had come to this. Fast forward to now and this is what I see in India too. Talking to random people in their prime years (maybe 18-30) is now 'weird'. But it's perfectly fine if it's via 'insta' or 'snap'. I can't imagine how much worse it's now in America in that age group. I know my pre teen nephews have withdrawals if I take away their devices here in India. The moral here is that procreation requires better social skills and strong presence in the world and good parenting will probably create that. In order to raise an offspring, people need to have good mental health and that generally leads to good physical health which in turn improves the mental health and so on which can lead to procreation etc. The scrolling and virtual world is a distraction from reality. Something that keeps away humans from each other. We will only see this getting worse. In India the social world is still good enough to see higher birth rates. But that is also now slowing down. Mental health of people is not great. People complain about being single but there is virtually no way to hold a conversation as getting their attention is impossible. Phones are glued to their eyes and hands even when sitting with you. I am hoping though things will be different in the future.
- yoyohello13 9mo agoIt's like Google, Meta, etc are not only siphoning money from peoples attention. They are siphoning human life force.
- compounding_it 9mo agoIf you look at the top companies in America currently by market share, pretty much all are selling addictions while maybe a handful actually selling tangible products.
- foobar_______ 9mo ago
- andrewshawcare 9mo agoThat sounds like a horrible way to flirt.
- josefritzishere 9mo agoDeporting hundreds of thousands of people might have something to do with that. Economic contraction seems to be a certainty.
- mountainb 9mo agoPopulation declines have happened many times in many places in history, and it sometimes heralds collapse and at other times it is just a temporary phenomenon. Part of the issue is with how you define the metrics and what you consider success. Population increase can correlate with good things and also with bad things. Perhaps much of the problem here is with the idea that gross population numbers should be a governance KPI, rather than more specific measures and goals.
- Balgair 9mo agoI like to hang out on fertility twitter. It's a strange place. Since the fertility problem is worldwide, you get a lot of ideologies mixing about. There's hardcore CCP folks, free market Mormons, radical Imams, universalist preachers, the whole lot of them. They're all trying to share ideas and jumping on the latest research findings from reputable and crackpot sources. They're all looking for the recipe to get people to have kids again, and mostly finding nothing. "Oh it's apartments!" "Oh it's incentives!" "Oh it's childcare!" And then bickering how none of it is real and affects popsquat. Once some formula is found, then the whole place will fall apart and they'll go back to hating each other again. But for now, it's a nice weird little place. My take on it is: you have to make your country/society a place where people will want to have children and feel/know that their children's lives will be good ones. I know that's almost tautological. But it's simplicity cuts through the crap. No amount of baby cash, or white picket fences, or coercion, or lack of birth control, or whatever other set of schemes you can make, none of that matters. Only if the mothers in aggregate truly believe that their children will have good lives, then will they have them. That's a gigantic task, I know. And I don't have the policy recommendations to enact that. I'm just a dweb on the Internet. But that is my take.
- lackerloser 9mo ago[dead]
- pydry 9mo agoTheyre probably all correct. Nobody is exactly in a position to test their ideas though are they?
- tcmart14 9mo agoYup and thats part of the issue. Too many people want to simplify it down to, "if we just did x, then we will see y." Nah, this is a complicated problem. Its probably gonna take the whole alphabet of solutions, but there is no political will or too much squabbling to since people want their idea why we have population decline to be right. But the bottom line is, having kids is expensive. You can make it less expensive, but that alone probably isn't gonna solve it.
- bradlys 9mo agoI approve. The population shrinks until we build more god damn housing in these major cities where all the fucking jobs are!! We are in dire need of housing in these cities. I don’t think we should keep trying to recreate 1920s tenement conditions.
- kingkawn 9mo agoMass human behavior in regards to fertility, climate destruction, and social decay is much more sensical if you frame it as species-wide suicidality.
- fulafel 9mo agoSuicidality seems rather overdramatic. It'd take a lot of halvings of the population to reach species viability threshold.
- jedberg 9mo agoThis is what happens when your population growth is driven by legal immigrants, and then you make your country very unfriendly to legal immigrants by "accidentally" locking them up while at the same time making it really hard for them to become permanent residents. The Olympics have really driven home to me how America is truly a melting pot. When you look at the Olympians from say Greece, you can say "oh those are Greek people". When you look at the Nordic athletes, you can say the same. Or the Japanese or Chinese. But you look at the American team, and they don't have a single physical "look". There is a mix of races and cultures, and they're all American. People complain that America doesn't have a culture, and they're kind of right. We have mix of everyone else's. It will take decades, if ever, to fix this. Some people from all around the world longed to come to America. Not anymore. Now they are looking elsewhere.
- gorfian_robot 9mo agothis is the issue. the US was easily addressing this problem with immigration before the current regime
- retox 8mo ago[dead]
- oulipo2 9mo ago[flagged]
- Night_Thastus 9mo agoThis is happening everywhere, including nations with great social systems/healthcare/parental leave/etc. And it happens even when nations try throwing money at the problem. While economic concerns may be worsening the issue - I don't think they're the root cause as many would like to say. I think the root cause is that we have outsmarted our biology. Once you give people education on the risks of sex and pregnancy, a focus on consent, easy access to contraceptives, knowledge of the responsibilities of child-rearing, and a world of other activities and pursuits - they simply stop having children at or above replacement rate. Once given the knowledge and choice, humans do not have enough children to sustain a population. No one wants that answer because it means we can't just blame it on [[CURRENT_PROBLEM]]. And it means there are no real 'solutions'. People in their 20's will see peak world population in their lifetime. It will be fascinating to see how society changes over the decades that follow that.
- mjburgess 9mo agoChildren are pensions, that's why poorer nations have lots of children because lots are needed to look after people in their old age. Thus, many of these comments on HN and elsewhere, "make the nation better", only have led -- and will lead -- to fewer children. When the old don't need households of the young to provide for them, there won't be any. But this, and the education of women, and increasing productivity etc. are the barrier --- this isnt some "indictment of our culture" -- a sentiment no better than "we're being punished by god"-thinking which turns every weather event into a didactic lesson on people's pet peeves.
- anal_reactor 9mo agoYou're implying that people incapable of planning next Thursday are thinking about their pensions. Poor countries reproduce a lot because they still have a lot of people functioning on the level of biological impulses rather than rational thought.
- Night_Thastus 9mo agoThat...may be pushing it a lot. People in poorer countries are just as capable of rational thought as anyone else. The difference is in the education they've received, the resources they have access to, and the rights individuals have. Mentally, there's little difference - minus effects of things like malnutrition in severe cases.
- boilerupnc 9mo agoSurprised nobody has brought this up yet. There is also a competitive element to family additions in the form of pets. While not cheap, they are significantly cheaper. Lower emotional and financial stakes also makes them feel like an easier choice. "Loving dogs has become an expression not of loneliness but of how unhappy many Americans are with society and other people. [...] For some owners, dogs simply offer more satisfying relationships than other people do." [0] [0] https://theconversation.com/americans-are-asking-too-much-of-their-dogs-256768 https://theconversation.com/americans-are-asking-too-much-of...
- giantg2 9mo agoSlow and sustained population decline while automation and AI are increasing is great news. A gradual gobal population decrease would be beneficial in every way except for economies built on perpetually increasing consumption.
- hannofcart 9mo agoFully agree and I don't see why more people aren't talking about this. World population in early 1800 was around a billion. As recent as 1928, it was only 2 billion. We added 3x that number in the last 100 years! I see population decline as a good thing. Nations should focus on managing the decline gracefully. It's good for the environment. It's good for distributing our limited resources equitably.
- WhompingWindows 9mo agoIt's not just numbers or speed. It's the shape of the population pyramid. Around the world except Africa, populations are aging. This means less taxes will come in, less workers of prime age, much more healthcare and elder care will be needed, and thus less of the valuable workers in other sectors.
- giantg2 9mo agoThat's only a bad thing if automation and AI don't increase productivity (shrink the number of workers needed). Otherwise, it's a benefit. Taxes are already unsustainable in the US.
- exodys 9mo agoThis may offend some, but I think the large amount of women joining the labor force may be a factor. American society, pre-WWII, usually had only one member of the household at work. More often than not it was the man who went to work, and the women stayed home to take care of the children. American society, pre-1930s (the Great Depression saw the rise of the female workers) was build on a one-income household. And yes, there is a big income disparity in the US. However, the fact that labor has practically doubled is another thing.
- bitmasher9 9mo agoThis seems like the type of argument that is possible to perform a data analysis to defend or refute. Lot of countries collect data on female participation in the workforce and birth rates. Many countries also collect data that could determine if this has an impact on the individual household level.
- tfehring 9mo agoThis is surely part of the story historically, but not recently. Women’s labor force participation rate peaked in the late 90s in the US, while total fertility rate is down ~20% since then. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300002 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300002
- MetaWhirledPeas 9mo agoThere could be a rubber band effect, where it takes time to get a feel for things like paying for childcare. The reaction is going to come from those who are observing what's happening to the "early adopters".
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- GoatInGrey 9mo agoIn my opinion, it's this, though I think it's a second-order effect. I believe that the issue isn't so much that women are working, but rather that there is a shortage of household labor. This labor pool is what was traditionally used for childcare needs. When you pair that labor shortage with (terrible) modern parenting standards, there just isn't enough time to raise kids without becoming a zombie. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/G-p2hvebQAEkEBg?format=jpg&name=large https://pbs.twimg.com/media/G-p2hvebQAEkEBg?format=jpg&name=... Edit: To be clear, I think there are multiple contributing factors. It's just that, in my view, the time/labor shortage is the core of the issue. Everything else feeds into it in some way. The factors eventually start stacking and problems that contribute to the time issue get exacerbated by their own contributing factors. Economics pressures, for instance. Bad housing economics means couples work maximum hours to afford daily expenses, decreasing available household labor. It also fractures extended family systems when people have to relocate for cheaper housing or better jobs, eliminating the traditional labor-pooling arrangements for childrearing. Generally poor median household economics keep parents in constant anxiety too, which then requires time to be spent on coping routines. Social atomization has further taken away the kind of pooled childcare labor that used to absorb overflow. Media has displaced churches, bars, parks, and bowling alleys with private screen time, shrinking social circles with scarce opportunities to rebuild them. Car-based infrastructure further reduces local community interaction and subtly dehumanizes neighbors into obstacles who steal parking and slow you down. Remote work and online shopping accelerate this deterioration. The result of all of this? Parents who already don't have extended family, also don't have friends, neighbors. or community to cover childcare needs. The sort of "Hang out at the neighbor's house while I go to my book club meeting." scenario has largely gone extinct because of this. Even if a couple does better than the average bear in these areas, and they have options, ambient paranoia bottlenecks their outsourcing of childcare anyway. Our media environment has normalized constant fear. Fear that every blade of grass conceals a potential predator, so every adult is regarded as a serious risk to your kid(s). This compounds further because it's gotten to the point where children (and teenagers) can't play outside or otherwise exist independently without supervision. This increases the time parents must spend on daily childcare needs. So not only can they not decrease the time spent, but they now have to spend even more because of it. On top of all of this, the fraying social fabric creates an effect similar to cellular breakdown. Where those who become disconnected from the larger biological system stop acting for the collective benefit and further prioritize the self, becoming cancerous. This leads to growing numbers of extremist, anti-social individuals with poor mental health. Individuals who both compound the scarcity and isolation of parents, and justify their media-sourced fear of other adults. This is an example of the contributing factors to the contributing factors. You get the idea.
- jmyeet 9mo agoCapitalism. The problem is capitalism. The endless quest for ever-increasing profits just expands wealth inequality. Millennials went through this when the job pipeline died in 2008 (ie entry level positions disappeared). We now have a huge number of people who are laden with debt they’ll never repay and many will never own a home or retire. Illegal immigration exists to suppress wages of both documented and undocumented people. It’s to increase profits. Certain industries will collapse without it. And as the global hegemonic superpower, imperialism is the highest form of capitalism. Destabilizing other countries is a tool for exploitation. Immigration has been the only thing propping up population growth. I honestly see the US collapsing in our lifetimes. The billionaires will flee. Empires don’t die quietly or quickly however. It’s going to be violent and drawn out.
- b65e8bee43c2ed0 9mo agoincels blame women, femcels blame men, the left blames cost of living, the right blames lack of values, journalists blame the current thing. it's all so tiresome. the real reason is both boring and obvious: a very significant percentage of educated urban people in the developed world don't want children. both sexes have a very high number of very valid reasons for that, and it's very pointless to examine any particular one. and no, importing uneducated rural people from the undeveloped world won't fix shit, because their children too will be educated urban people. I think our young global leaders are beginning to realize that, hence the very recent shift from ubiquitous antinatalism of the previous decades to frantic nagging about our unwillingness to breed. it would take extremely dystopian measures to "fix" the birth rates, and no one, not even Russia and China are presently willing to go that far. Russia is, however, rapidly ramping up its authoritarianism to North Korea levels, so I assume it will be them who will be the first to ban contraception - the least insane measure that can make significant difference. and given how eagerly the West has been embracing Internet censorship, political violence against dissidents, social credit, and other hallmarks of authoritarian regimes in the past decade, I assume that after a few years of pearl clutching, they will follow suit.
- phendrenad2 9mo agoI think you're the closest to being right, but assuming that dystopia can actually arise is a stretch. A proper understanding of the world incorporates the understanding that there the population and leadership are a fluid, with people moving back and forth all the time. Maybe with a robot army the rulers can impose a dystopia for the rest, but at that point we also would have infinite robot labor, so it's kind of a cop-out.
- dpc050505 9mo agoPulling out is pretty effective when you do it right, they can't really ban that. In very catholic Quebec up to the 1950s priests would get involved in couple's marital lives and apply pressure when wives weren't getting pregnant for just that reason.
- ramon156 9mo agoIs this a stupid question? Why do we want high fertility rates anyway? Isn't the world overpopulated?
- alt227 9mo agoYes the world is overpopulated. However a lot of developed societies based their framework for budgets on permanent growth, for example the idea that the young paying tax will always pay for the benefits of the elderly. However with the population rate decreasing, suddenly there is lots of older population expecting things like healthcare and pensions to be paid for them. With less and less young people to cover the cost in tax, there is a looming defecit which is very worrying to a lot of economists.
- eightysixfour 9mo agoI tend to think people who argue about the economics or community issues tend to miss the forest for the trees. For the most part, other than biological drive, having kids is stupid. The systems that most people complain about failing - mostly around the community or economic costs of childcare - exist to make having children less stupid. We dramatically reduced teen and early 20s pregnancy rates, when hormones are yelling at us to make babies, and expected people to have them later in life when they're better at self-control? Then, people who have a child that young are far, far more likely to have additional children. Outside of the first few years, a sibling often reduces the strain on the parents, and provides additional value. Your life starts to orient around the kid(s), and we get a couple of other hormone boosts so we love them and want more of them. I am consistently confused that this conversation never seems to touch on just how many births are mostly because two people's biology overrode their judgement and that initial failure results in a feedback loop where you have another child or two. If that poor judgement doesn't happen, you don't kick off that loop, and then you're trying to rationally choose to do something that never made all that much sense in the first place.
- _bohm 9mo agoI think it's clear that the reduction in teen pregnancy is indeed a big contributor to the decreasing fertility rate. I would guess the reason this doesn't get brought up in discussions about how to _increase_ the fertility rate is that reversing the trend on teen pregnancy is just really not a palatable solution to many people. Although there are some, usually on the religious right, who advocate for banning contraception, teaching abstinence-only sex education, etc., which would most likely have the effect of reversing the teen pregnancy trend.
- eightysixfour 9mo agoI think not talking about it skews the conversation towards incorrect remedies - the discourse is about what has changed about the economy, communities, family life, etc, that makes people want fewer kids and then trying to derive solutions from those things as the assumed problem. It makes too much of the discourse a question of “how do we go back to the previous conditions?” If instead we say this is a biological imperative that we have interrupted and many people don’t rationally want children no matter how perfect those conditions are, then instead of looking back to previous states, we can ask what new conditions must occur to change this behavior.
- tbirdny 9mo agoThe exchange of value between men and women has changed. Women used to have time but no money. Men had money but no time. Men and women exchanged these with each other. Now everyone has to have a job to even support themselves, and no time to raise a family.
- incahoots 9mo agoThe economics no longer support families—and after decades of calls for “fiscal responsibility” across cultures and states, is it any wonder birthrates are falling? Burnout among the working class plays an equal part in the decline. “It takes a village to raise a child” isn’t advice, it’s a policy framework because massive support is needed to rear kids and the majority today have less than their previous generations.
- spaceribs 9mo agoI don't see a lot of comments about how China is tackling this. While the US is spending all it's time/investments developing AI, China is investing heavily in robotics. They seem to understand that they can't mitigate the decline, they may be able to provide the same level of service without the need for as many workers. Based on the experiments we have attempted to fix this issue, I think that's actually a smart move.
- brandonfalls 9mo ago[flagged]
- hinkley 9mo ago¿Por qué no los dos?
- joewhale 9mo agoOne factor is that people are obsessed with removing any friction in their life that stands in the way of whatever they believe makes them happy at the end of the day. Which for a lot of the US is just being alone and unbothered with a TV or a phone. Having responsibilities and caring for others is actually good for the human soul. Being inconvenienced is a part of real life. I’m not trying to convince everyone that they need to have a kid. But from my experience, having kids provides a very deep and satisfying purpose. Not the only purpose. But it does provide one. And it helps cut through the craziness and hurt and vanity of this world.
- anal_reactor 9mo ago> Which for a lot of the US is just being alone and unbothered with a TV or a phone. Yes, and I'm tired of pretending otherwise.
- hinkley 9mo agoHill climbing algorithms. We were warned about those in undergrad classes. Others were not.
- rpnx 9mo agoGood. Reduce population growth until housing buildout can catch up with population. Trying to create more babies and allowing immigration when there aren't enough homes is dumb.
- WhompingWindows 9mo agoIt's actually not a good trade at all, you need a balanced population pyramid if you want a functional economy in the future. The housing stock is behind due to financial crisis in 2007, as well as lots of other factors, and population decrease won't solve most of those. In fact, declining population could make the housing problem worse, if there's far fewer workers to make the new housing.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- whalesalad 9mo agoI'm struggling to see why this is a problem.
- trgn 9mo agoa usa with fewer people would be quite nice. more liebensraum for everybody, true affluence, a spacious rowhome in a walkable city and a rustic cabin in the woods for everybody. population decline is really only a problem in welfare states. it took less than 2 generations to demonstrate this.
- jimt1234 9mo agoI've said it before on HN, but it's worth repeating: When my parents started a family in the late-60's, my dad had only a high school diploma, yet he supported his wife, 2 kids, 2 cars, and a brand new house. Heck, one of their cars was a 1964 convertible Corvette (my mom still talks about how much she misses that car). That is basically unheard-of these days.
- dude250711 9mo agoHow many other people did your parents independently date before settling down with each other if you do not mind me asking?
- rangestransform 9mo agoToo bad the rest of the world is no longer in shambles due to war and has other options than buying American
- mwillis 9mo agoI truly believe psychology is at the root of this. People start families when the optimism they feel about the future outweighs the pessimism. Even if this evaluation is done subconsciously. At some point, in first-world society - averaging across different societies and social support systems, and considering the numbers in aggregate - we flipped. Pessimism about the future outweighs optimism. Downstream of that flip, the prevailing trend changed. Here we are.
- shipman05 9mo agoHard to believe that people who suffered the atrocities of the first half of the 20th Century were tremendously optimistic about the future, yet birthrates were MUCH higher across the world.
- acdha 9mo agoThe birth control pill wasn’t on the market in the first half of the 20th century (1960) and there was more religious pressure not to use contraception (e.g. how many women faced significant external pressure to be married housewives and mothers and weren’t even allowed to pursue careers?). Lack of choice masked true preferences – but as we could see from things like the big spike in divorces when it was legalized, there were costs to that.
- firstplacelast 9mo agoWhile acts of war separate couples and would confound the analysis a bit, I think there is typically a big spike in births following wars. Baby boomers most notably being born after WWII. Optimism is dynamic and not a set threshold, wrapping up wars leads to new found optimism about the future. How terrible the recent past was is not all that relevant as it is about the trajectory. If anything having a terrible past may make the bar lower for experiencing optimism, as it's easier to expect a better future when the overall bar is lower. Hopefully explaining that well enough and it's certainly not the only issue, but I believe we see the same thing on the stock market when large class action settlements are reached with a corp and the stock then rises as it is forward looking and optimistic now that the 'awful past' is settled. First-gen immigrants tend to have larger families as the impetus to move countries is an optimistic endeavor itself. And while a reach, I think through this lens you can make an argument as to why lower classes tend to have more children than middle classes (currently in the US). It's easier to expect better for your children when you are at the bottom of the barrel (no where to go but up), whereas the middle class is in an increasingly precarious position.
- charcircuit 9mo agoArranging society in such a way that women would rather have a career than be a mother will have profound consequences. The value of motherhood needs to be properly valued in society's collective mind.
- philipwhiuk 9mo agoNo view on fatherhood? Quelle surprise
- charcircuit 9mo agoThat is also important, but I think it is a step separate from the birth rate.
- acdha 9mo agoThey’re pretty tightly coupled. Mothers do the hardest part but human children are incredibly expensive in terms of the time investment. If society wants to have more children, one of the easiest ways to reduce that burden is by sharing the load evenly across both parents. This is also important for political reasons: dads who do half of the work are more likely to understand why the expenses for things like government-provided childcare are good societal investments.
- charcircuit 9mo agoThe father already has to go to work to provide for the family. The burden is already being split. I do not think government provided childcare is a good idea since it would incentivize children to spend time away from their family.
- acdha 9mo ago> The father already has to go to work to provide for the family. The burden is already being split. Haha, are you serious? One of the biggest demographic trends of the last century has been the rise of dual-income households, and we have decades of studies showing that the burdens are not evenly distributed. Consider also that childcare isn’t a “ha, let’s ditch the kids and go clubbing” thing but a necessity for all but the richest households. Housing costs cause pressure both directly and indirectly: if you have to commute further to afford a house large enough for your family, childcare is essential to retaining the job which lets you afford that family. I’d also note that I’m not saying the government should always provide everything but rather that to the extent that we decide birth rates falling is bad, we should assume that people are making economically rational decisions. There isn’t a simple nudge to shift a major life decision like this.
- jrochkind1 9mo agoIf we need more young people in our society in the USA, this is actually the easiest problem to solve -- just open up immigration. As long as lots of people still want to come here (not guaranteed to last forever), not having enough people is a problem only of our own making. If only most of our problems were so easy to solve.
- pelzatessa 9mo agoIt's only a short term solution, as all countries around the world (even those third-world ones, with current fertility rate above 4.0) are experiencing lower birthrates every year. See the movie birthgap
- jrochkind1 9mo agoAs long as people from those countries want to come to the USA, it would be a problem for those countries and not the USA. However, "those third-world ones with current fertility rates above 4.0" probably have a ways to drop before it actually becomes a problem for them, couple few generations or so. In that time, the context for all of this could change (50 years ago, people were more worried about too much reproduction? Who knows in another 50). In fact, for whatever reasons, the most predictable trend seems to be that fertility rates are inversely correlated with standard of living. As standard of living goes up, fertility goes down and vice versa. if those "third world ones" actually drop their fertility to "first world" levels, it would probably mean that their standard of living is such that immigration to the USA won't be so appealing either. At that point, it seems the global social political context is changed enough that we will have an entirely different set of problems and solutions that are hard to predict now.
- franczesko 9mo agoWe should ask ourselves a question, if the system we're living in is not rewarding having kids, is a good system at all?
- peter_d_sherman 9mo ago(Comedy writing mode ON: ) "We need to flatten the curve..." (Comedy writing mode OFF: ) You know, to re-quote the powers-that-be and the mainstream news media... What, no takers? You know, "flatten the curve... of population increase?" -- what, still not funny? Hey, I'm just re-quoting what other people said... (a whole lot of people, incidentally!) but in the context of the article, above! What, still no takers? You people have no sense of (dark, very dark, let's be completely honest about that!) humor! :-)
- engelo_b 9mo ago[dead]
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- t0bia_s 9mo agoTotal Fertility Rate (births per woman) un US: 2015 | 1.83 2016 | 1.80 2017 | 1.75 2018 | 1.71 2019 | 1.68 2020 | 1.62 2021 | 1.63 2022 | 1.67 2023 | 1.62 2024 | 1.62 2025 | 1.62 2026 | 1.61 Politizacion of long term trend wont help here.
- symlinkk 9mo agoMost men can’t even get a date anymore, but we’re not allowed to talk about the reasons why.
- cindyllm 9mo ago[dead]
- nelblu 9mo agohttps://archive.ph/LdA0d https://archive.ph/LdA0d
- levocardia 9mo agoAll the comments are about having babies but as the article points out the actual proximate reason the US population is declining right now is the immigration enforcement approach taken by the Trump administration. Fewer people are coming the the US (including legally), and more people (including legal residents) are being deported or are leaving, and as a result there is net outflow of people from the country. The situation will only worsen with the incipient war on H1B and other visas.
- hinkley 9mo agoWe decided that brain drain wasn’t something we wanted to do anymore. We also have an uptick of expats as people worry this is 1937 all over again.
- ljsprague 9mo agoMarvelous.
- OkayPhysicist 9mo agoGood? Population can't grow forever. We're not even fucking close to going extinct, and if we did start trending that direction countries like the USSR demonstrated that simple objectives like promising a medal to anyone who pops out 7 kids solves that problem overnight. Next steps should be raising the quality of life globally, to make this trend universal.
- Animats 9mo agoRobots may fill the gap. Really. It seems silly now, but give it twenty years. The developed world may end up with a modest human population and a large robotic population. Asimov explored that idea in SF decades ago. The humans may still think they're in charge. They won't be.
- jfengel 9mo agoI don't see why there has to be a "gap" at all. The country had half as many people in 1950, and it got along fine. The world is different now, but I don't see why it takes 300 million people to run the country today. If the US gets back to 150 million people, it will look different, but I don't see why it has to be any worse than it is now. And I can think of a lot of reasons why it might be better.
- lotsofpulp 9mo agoGet rid of Medicare and Social Security, and the transition would be fine. The problem will be in transferring more and more wealth from the working and giving it to the non working, resulting in an everlasting loss of quality of life for the working (absent sufficient advances in automation).
- giardini 9mo agoAfter a brief look at this discussion I am surprised that little reference is made of the evolutionary aspects of having children. Posts tend to center on "It's all about me!" rather than "it's all about the genes!" Atomic theory and evolutionary theory would be the two conceptual frameworks that I would do most to teach to people: the first to understand the world and the second to understand behavior. I believe we have failed, as a society, to teach the second (and possibly the first).
- 11101010010001 9mo agoAll it takes is a demographic trend to make the entire population a bunch of crackpots! Behold.
- weirdmantis69 9mo agoEvery country will have to figure out how to deal with this. Once India and China go negative who is going to fill that gap? It's impossible. The only question is whether or not countries can retain their culture and population or whether they will be replaced by outsiders.
- umeshunni 9mo ago> Once India and China go negative who is going to fill that gap? Take a look at the fertility rates and population growth rates in African countries.
- prirun 9mo agoThere are big economic differences and expectations between when I was growing up in the 60's and now. My parents married right out of high school, which was pretty much the norm I think. I lived on a dead-end street where nearly every house had kids my age. Dads worked, moms didn't. Moms might babysit, iron, do laundry for others, etc., but moms took care of the house and the kids. The houses were 850 sq ft, most with 3 (small!) bedrooms, a kitchen a living room, and 1 bath. We lived in that house until I was 8 and my sisters were 6 and 2, so 5 of us in 850 sq ft. My dad worked as a bag boy at Kroger during high school and could: - get married - buy a house after a year married - start a family at 20 - had 1 car for the family - had a boat - had a motorcycle right out of high school. There's no way an unskilled high-school kid could do that today. They'd be lucky to have a car and be able to fill it with gas and have car insurance. I don't think most people today would consider that lifestyle feasible, but at the time, it was fine. I don't think it's doable today because both parents have to work since inflation over the decades has had a dramatic effect on prices.
- Gud 9mo agoEveryone should ask themselves why the working class and middle class can’t afford to have the same lifestyles that were possible 60 years ago, While 0.1% of the population live like God kings. Donald Trump, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk sure as shit don’t feel the effects of “inflation”.
- lotsofpulp 9mo agoEveryone should ask themselves how much healthcare, and how high quality of healthcare, and how much defined benefit pensions old people received during prirun’s parents’ young days. It’s 2/3rd of all federal government spend today, and doesn’t even included all the state and local government spend. There are cities and states spending double digit percentages on paying for pensions and retiree healthcare for labor that happened in the past. https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/federal-spending/ https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/feder... You can liquidate all the equity rich people have (which will cause its price to drop precipitously and so you won’t get as much you think it will), but it won’t make a lick of a difference, because the numbers show the wealth transfer from working to non working is far, far greater than it was when prirun’s parents were young. That is one of the reasons prirun’s dad had much more purchasing power. The president just said the country’s goal is to make sure the people who own land are prioritized over those who don’t, by keeping house prices high. https://youtu.be/ToJxd3HBviE https://youtu.be/ToJxd3HBviE That would not have helped prirun’s dad buy a house out of high school. Everything we do is to benefit the asset owners and the old, at the expense of the young and yet to be born. And it’s happening all over the world. We don’t want young people to have more fruits of their labor, we want the fruits of their labor to be eaten by old people to meet their expectations of quality of life because they are a bigger voting bloc.
- Seabiscuit 9mo agoAs a (young, thus-far childless) woman, I feel it's important to add something that men may not fully grasp and I haven't seen much in the thread so far: what tips the scales in this decision is often not just daycare costs/career prospects, but also the potentially extreme side effects of pregnancy on the body. Going through the process of being pregnant and giving birth is absolutely terrifying to me and most of my friends. How many tech bros do you know who do their blood labs on a yearly basis, or track their blood sugar daily? How many do sports physio to avoid the possibility of a minor training injury, or do any number of peptide interventions to micro-optimise some aspect of their health or physique? If having babies, for them, was basically a coin toss re: possibly developing diabetes, ripping open their pelvic floor and becoming incontinent, adding 8 points to your BMI, or major sleeping problems, etc., would they still be as mystified about the low TFR? (Of course, many men go through physical hell when raising children too, and I don't want to diminish their contribution, but on average their physical symptoms are less extreme) Sometimes the knee jerk 'just get a caesarean' and lower maternal mortality numbers mask the reality of how barbaric the process seems, at least from my vantage point as someone who might one day be involved in the process. The number of privileged women who choose the surrogate path alone should suggest how many women might opt out of the physical part of it, if they could; if having babies isn't a social obligation or a biological inevitability without birth control, there's quite a strong argument for putting it off just one more year...
- swat535 9mo agoNot to take away from your fear but women have been having children since the dawn of time. Especially with modern medical care and support, it's relatively low risk (assuming you are of an healthy young age without prior conditions). Pregnancy is not classified as a disease and within a year the body recovers quickly (Tokophobia exists however).
- ponector 9mo ago>> Especially with modern medical care and support, it's relatively low risk Low risk of death, sure. But ripping pelvic floor and getting diabetes is not a low risk.
- tsoukase 9mo agoLet's reiterate: * kids are and were always born in severely underdeveloped places like Africa and during hard times like famines or wars * worldwide in the last 100 years and maybe throughout all history the education level and social freedom of woman severely impacts her fertility Draw your own conclusions about the causes and solutions of the demographic problem
- frm88 9mo agoNone of those arguments are supported by the article.
- h4kunamata 9mo ago[flagged]
- thankyoufriend 9mo agoDo you really believe that "women/DEI" folks have ever had more political power than white males? Seems weird to me to put blame on them instead of the wealthy and ruling class.
- h4kunamata 9mo ago>Do you really believe that "women/DEI" folks have ever had more political power than white males? Seems weird to me to put blame on them instead of the wealthy and ruling class. YES!!! Let me bring your knowledge up to speed. The Australian group Collective Shout went after Steam because of games "exploring kids". Steam didn't do anything. CS went after Visa and Master Card and because of CS political influence, Visa and Master Card went after Steam: You either comply or you can no longer use the only payment system used worldwide. CS has done the same in the past, they have massive political influence and the group is composed of 100% feminists only who hate men in any way and form, check their X account. The same week that happened, the UK pushed age verification, everything went to shit from there which brings us to the mess things are right now, all in the name of "protect the kids", all started by one group with enough power. All it took was a feminist group with political influence to create a domino effect that isn't stopping any time soon. Services are rushing to comply causing personal information of millions of people to be for sale on the dark web :) But hey, you don't have to believe on me. I gave you the names and order of how things happened. Feel free to cross-check them.
- thankyoufriend 9mo agoYou have given an example of a group which affected change on a $10+ billion estimated valuation company, in a ~$43 billion PC gaming market. You then insinuated that it was connected to age verification in the UK because it happened in the same week - not very convincing evidence. Isn't it more likely that age verification is another attempt by tech oligarchs to stockpile more of our personal data? I think you may need to take a few steps back and widen your perspective beyond the gaming world. US GDP was $31+ trillion which puts the PC gaming market at .0014% of US GDP. So some small company used their collective power to force some larger company to do something they didn't want to do. Form your own company and do the same thing then. It's quite weird that you blame all women and DEI for this, and not the bean counters and wealthy/powerful people. I challenge you to question WHY so many women hate men - they weren't born hating them. Maybe numerous men did something vile enough to them and earned their hatred? Generalizing that hate onto all men would merely be a survival tactic if that were true, don't you think? Sort of similar to how you seem to hate women because perhaps you were physically or emotionally hurt by them in the past.
- zhoujianfu 9mo agoThis inspired me to make https://poputrend.clodhost.com/ https://poputrend.clodhost.com/ You can mess with assumptions and see how it projects out the population of any country/continent/the globe (based on 2024 data and trends).
- K0balt 9mo agoPopulation decline is disastrous for sprawling developing nations like the United states. It’s bad for fully developed nations as well, but it’s cyanide for developing countries. Infrastructure build out requires a strongly growing population, or it’s just not fundable. For low density countries like the USA, infrastructure is already a disproportionate burden. Population decline will spark a crisis of crumbling regressions and the loss of economic vitality.
- snowwrestler 9mo agoThe economics of infrastructure actually improve for stable or shrinking populations because funding can shift from raw capacity buildout (extremely expensive) to maintenance and value-add services (profitable). Observe that the best infrastructure in the world is in nations with slow population growth, like Western Europe, Japan, and more recently the U.S. and China. Whereas nations with very high population growth struggle to deliver capacity for even basic needs like clean water or paved roads.
- K0balt 9mo agoSlow population growth or even stable population is dramatically different from population decline. Usually slow growth is the ideal. But even a modest decline shifts extreme burdens onto wage earners. OTOH, it’s great for buying up property.
- g9yuayon 9mo agoHonest question: why are we so afraid of population decline? For people on the left, it means less consumption, less environment impact, less carbon footprint, and in general fewer damn evil people who are destroying the mother earth. For the right, everyone is responsible for their own destiny including their retirement life so they worry about their retirement spending solely on their own anyway. In practice, Japan seems to be fine. In particular their young people have so many job openings to fill. So, what exactly are we worrying about? The social security is not sustainable? The medical cost will go through the roof? There's no enough military power? There won't be enough consumption to support the growth (in that case, why do we have to keep growing? Why can't we just stay where we are? Again, not rhetorical questions but honestly curious about the answers)?
- simonsarris 9mo agoMostly because when social security was designed there was a retiree to worker ration of 1:130. Today it is closer to 1:3. Soon it will be 1:2. We already allocate immense resources to the elderly (over 50% of US federal budget is for old people + national debt, where debt accrues for fungible reasons but the biggest explosion is money transfers/healthcare to the old). We have a few levers we can pull there - we don't have to give money transfers to the wealthiest members of what are, in fact, the wealthiest generation by taking from younger people. We could maybe means-test some of it. But they are politically hairy and come kind-of late. All that debt is essentially already borrowing from people who don't yet exist to pay off the old of today. So it would be somewhat nice to have more people in the future because we have already borrowed their money (or if you are 30, our money). That makes things difficult. Even if we did not set up the entire USG to do this, having more retirees than workers makes it hard economically. You could imagine a decade where every 4th person is working in a nursing home, basically. But other than the massive looming financial crisis and the care problem, yeah, its not so bad.
- 46493168 9mo ago>In practice, Japan seems to be fine Japan seems to be fine? Japan, which created its own lost generation [0]? Japan, which has a word for "death by overwork" [1]? Japan, which has 9 million abandoned homes in ghost towns [2], the highest public debt in the developed world [3], and healthcare system under strain because old people are being left there for no other reason than there's no one to care for them? [4] In what way is Japan doing fine? [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hikikomori https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hikikomori [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karoshi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karoshi [2]https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/8/15/in-japans-ageing-countryside-communities-are-facing-extinction https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/8/15/in-japans-ageing-co... [3]https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/123015/3-economic-challenges-japan-faces-2016.asp https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/123015/3-eco... [4]https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7533196/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7533196/
- 46493168 9mo agoFor me, it was choosing between having kids or caring for my aging parents. With social security probably getting cut in the next 5-10 years, I just couldn't swing it. So I prioritized the already living over the potentially living. Hopefully we'll have robots for when I get old.
- kittikitti 9mo agoI don't think the ideas linking immigration to population growth or decline are productive. It hides the root cause of potential population decline. Why aren't people who are raised in the US having children? I think it's because most of us are lonely and miserable. Perhaps we can try and take care of each other, and many other things will show signs of improving? There needs to be more access to things like healthcare, childcare, education, entertainment, leisure, arts, recreation, and so much more. There needs to be more love in our societies and the numbers that indicate well-being will follow. After all, what is the point of all of this? To get a promotion?
- notesinthefield 9mo agoI have yet to see anyone, my family included, that actually seemed to enjoy parenting. I know for a fact my father was ready to run to the middle east shortly after I was born, my brother was a total accident and not terribly wanted either. As a result we’ve never been close my parents and I…why would I want to be a parent after that? I have no desire to live a life a child would require either.
- giardini 9mo agoWhat's the problem? The US is simultaneously flirting with potential AI. If the AI proves to be productive, we won't need as many workers. The economy can shift from a human worker only base to a human + AI base. The solution is merely to tax the AI part too!.
- tormeh 9mo agoBecoming a parent is basically a destruction of the self. My sister and her husband get 1-2 hours of time for themselves per day, and then they are too tired to do anything but watch TV. They've ceased to exist as individuals, basically. To them, work and the office are their places of relaxation. They're not on HN to explain this to anyone because they just don't have the time.
- kashunstva 9mo ago> Becoming a parent is basically a destruction of the self. I am a parent and have definitely felt very stressed on account of children. But as for feeling like my "self" was destroyed, I can't really say I ever experienced that; and I'm not even sure about the idea of a fixed immutable self anyway. I'm not advocating for having children, or against having children; but I don't think I was crushed as a human being because of my choice. My last child is graduating from high school this year. She's a violinist and I'm a pianist. I've always accompanied her since she was 3; and we do a lot of musical collaborations. I definitely feel like my sense of self is expanded by all of this. But maybe I just got lucky.
- tormeh 9mo agoI should have made clear that being a parent _of young children_ is destruction of the self. I'm sure once the kids are all old enough to use the toilet independently and otherwise entertain themselves it will be different. But right now their situation reminds me less of a lifestyle and more some kind of punishment.