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India's surprise baby bust
https://archive.ph/ZDxIe https://archive.ph/ZDxIe
- UKPakiRapeParty 4mo ago[flagged]
- toomuchtodo 5mo agohttps://archive.today/ZDxIe https://archive.today/ZDxIe https://ourworldindata.org/population-simulation-tool?demographyCountry=IND https://ourworldindata.org/population-simulation-tool?demogr...
- ggm 5mo ago... as predicted by demographers for the last ?10? Years? Longer?
- polski-g 5mo agoThey've tried nothing and it didn't work!
- H8crilA 5mo agoEvery single population goes through a baby bust when a certain level of development is achieved - women education seems to be a particularly strongly correlated sub-component.
- kakacik 5mo agoCould be easily verified in wealthy societies where women are still delegated into mostly keeping household & raise kids roles (I don't think I need to name few samples).
- davidedwardc 5mo ago[flagged]
- hedora 5mo agoWhat’s the problem? We’re committed to destroying livable human habitat for 100M’s to 1B’s of people via global warming. That’ll be less painful if there are fewer people. Lower populations should lead to lower emissions growth too.
- hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm 5mo ago[flagged]
- chipsrafferty 5mo agoAh yes let's "make progress" on a planet where people refuse to consume less and we have finite resources.
- hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm 5mo agoMore zero sum thinking.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- hilariously 5mo agoWhat indicators do we have that we care enough to solve the problem? It may be doomer to think we must slow down, but "the other side" just hand waves all the problems and says we'll magically fix them with future technology magic - its not reassuring.
- arbll 5mo agoThere's a significant risk it will lead to a large reduction in living standards. A lot of things like retirement funds are built with the assumption of infinite growth. This assumption will obviously break one day and when it does I don't see how it could go smoothly. On the plus side, it will likely lead to lower emissions, assuming it doesn't lead to massive wars or other destructive behaviors due to the instability it will bring.
- zkmon 5mo agoThis has a religious angle. Some religions believe in having as many babies as possible. Other religions are seeing the effect and realizing their mistake.
- snihalani 4mo agoI keep hearing some religions push for this. I don't understand how it benefits them
- hamdingers 4mo agoIt's significantly harder to convert an adult than it is to indoctrinate a child.
- em-bee 4mo agoyou need to look at the origin. if we accept that this is written in the holy scriptures of the espective religions then the question is how did it benefit the people at the time it was written. never mind today because religions aren't free to just change scripture. if we further assume that those scriptures were actually inspired by god or some other non human entity then the question is practically unanswerable because the benefit for that creator lie beyond our human life experience. there are however a few potential theories for why it makes sense. for one god is described as existing beyond space and time. so god would know that birthrates were necessary to spread humanity across the planet, and maybe that was the goal. god would also know that the birthrate would eventually decline, so this would help be to counteract that decline. we can also ask ourselves, what would be the benefit of a growing population today? if the purpose of humanity is to push forward an ever advancing civilization, that is, to develop and to thrive, then maybe the goal is to maximize the potential of this planet to feed that many people, or to challenge us to be more efficient at food production. isn't population growth one potential driver for innovation? or thinking beyond, maybe the goal is to actually push us to colonize space.
- unclad5968 4mo agoWhy does it have to benefit them?
- i_idiot 5mo agoWhat's the strong case against population dwindling other than supporting aging population? Given the AI armageddon, it just makes sense to reduce the population. If there's less population, we need less production and less workers. Of course, countries have to deal with oldest population for a brief period of time.
- vachina 5mo agoThe top 1% is freaking out at the thought of population shrinking because the cogs of the machine won’t turn itself.
- theflyinghorse 5mo agoTop 1% are too divorced from the real world to have ever seen a cog.
- OutOfHere 5mo agoIsn't that what AI and robots are intended to be for? As for the customers, B2B could still work.
- Ajedi32 5mo agoIf the "cogs of the machine" freeze up and economy tanks the top 1% will be fine. You might not be.
- danny_codes 4mo ago
- staminade 5mo agoUnless they roll-back women's rights and improvements in child mortality, societies will need to radically overhaul their entire relationship to supporting parenthood in order to reverse this trend. The economic costs of having children at a replacement rate are simply too high. We need universal childcare services, provided by the state and available to all, and other childcare-enabling reforms like automatic right to work from home and other flexible working arrangements for those with children. These won't be popular with everyone, but you'll won't solve the demographic crisis without them.
- kakacik 5mo agoYeah I am not sure I will call that plumber or electrician which only works from home... some folks really live in bubbles, big or small
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- jacobgkau 4mo agoI think jobs that can't be done remotely is where the universal childcare services they mentioned would come into play.
- 9cb14c1ec0 5mo ago> We need universal childcare services Birth rates have been falling worldwide, regardless of the level of government support. It's much more a matter of attitudes about having children. > The economic costs of having children at a replacement rate are simply too high Nope. My wife and I have 4 children, on a lower-middle-class income in the US. Your lifestyle choices matter a lot. If you want to have children, you can find a way to afford them.
- win311fwg 5mo ago> It's much more a matter of attitudes about having children. That is the story right there. We as a society spent decades upon decades demonizing having children at a young-ish age. "Your career is more important", they said. We got shows like "16 and Pregnant" to dissuade viewers from having children. People have become genuinely afraid of having kids. Not until you are in your 30s does the social messaging shift from "only failures have children" to "why haven't you had a child yet?" That change in social pressure often compels one to start to change their mind, but at that point one becomes biologically limited in how many children they can reasonably birth.
- ChrisMarshallNY 5mo ago> But demographers have long shown that what really counts is girls’ education. That makes sense. I know that having less people is not a good thing, but I was brought up with the "impending population crisis" thing drilled into my head, so it's difficult for me to be alarmed. I'm also all for getting women into parity with men. I know that there are a lot of men that will say that this is a bad thing, but I was raised amongst a lot of extremely capable women. I feel that we need to support parents, if we want more kids. Right now, in the US, having kids is economically devastating, and there's almost no support from the government. I'll bet India is worse (but I could be wrong). I feel that nature has controls built in. We see it all the time, in other species. I feel that if we drop too far down, the switch will be turned back on again. [EDITED TO REMOVE TRIGGER WORDS]
- miroljub 5mo ago[flagged]
- ChrisMarshallNY 5mo agoRacist? I agree that it's not a particularly nice thing to say, and I'll change it, to avoid triggering people, but this is a new definition of the word "racist." Thanks for educating me.
- chipsrafferty 5mo agoIt's racist to say that people who don't believe women should have equal rights and opportunities and are equally capable as men - are neanderthals?
- ChrisMarshallNY 5mo agoYou're right. It insults neanderthals, who we are learning were surprisingly advanced.
- miroljub 4mo agoInteresting, this sounds exactly like nazists rebuttal of criticism.
- wg0 5mo agoMaybe economic struggle is not letting people take such a delicate and demanding responsibility. It's getting very difficult everywhere. It's not that just cost of living or housing affordability is a Western problem.
- mywittyname 5mo ago> One study showed how the arrival of cable television in Indian villages in the 2000s led to a moderate fall in fertility. Soap operas depicting urban, middle-class women with small families may have changed norms (though some wonder whether people were just watching TV rather than having sex). The latter part seems like the most meaningful cause world wide. Sex is a boredom activity and we just aren't bored in the slightest, ever. I think most married people know that long power outages are the most romantic thing that can happen (though, less now with cell phones).
- wolfi1 5mo agowhen there is a power outage it is most likely that the cell towers are down, too
- fhdkweig 5mo agoIn the US, cell towers have battery backups so emergency calls can still go through. I imagine most countries do too.
- ssl-3 5mo agoMy experience in the US is that when the power drops, the cell networks immediately become mostly useless. I've theorize that they become overburdened by the pocket supercomputers that automatically start using it instead of local wifi.
- btilly 5mo agoMost power outages are local, not regional. And cellphone towers will work at a surprising distance. Therefore my experience has been that cellphones tend to remain up, even though the power is down.
- kuhsaft 5mo agoCell phone towers and communication systems have backup power for emergency communication during power outages. If you have backup power for your router and ONT/Modem, you should also still have internet service during a power outage. The ISP-owned ONT for a place I lived had a little lead-acid battery attached to it, and during power outages I still had internet service.
- cboyardee 5mo ago[dead]
- pelagicAustral 5mo ago> But as India and others hurtle through their demographic transition, the consequences will not be pain-free. Pain for whom? The people profiting from cheap labor probably. Why is such a massive sin to scale down? To slow down a bit, I don't think the whole world is about to collapse, but even if it was, I rather that than turning it all into the hellscapes we see on some of the most overpopulated places in the world just so a mere 1% of the population can indulge.
- calepayson 5mo ago> Pain for whom? The people profiting from cheap labor probably. A pretty consistent trend throughout history is that shit rolls downhill.
- vkou 5mo agoWhat about the pain from overpopulation and a glut of uneducated labour? Doesn't that shit roll downhill, too? "The poor will always pay for it" is a thought-terminating cliche that is often trotted out in support of the status quo (or some mythical past status quo). How do you know that past status quo isn't actually worse for them than the direction things are trending? Do you think we somehow stumbled upon some global maximum for them [1], and any deviation from that, in any direction is going to make things worse for them? [1] In spite of, as you say, shit flowing downhill.
- BobaFloutist 4mo agoWhat overpopulation?
- vkou 4mo agoThe kind you'd find in any place with a housing or food shortage, (or a job shortage if you are the sort of person who has #firstworldproblems) or really any other shortage where some public demand cannot be met by limited supply. We don't see a lot of food shortages these days, but with climate change fucking with agriculture sufficiently, regular famines in the global south might make a comeback... Or might not, if population growth and degrowth projections solve that problem before crop yields are seriously impacted.
- voxleone 5mo agoOther Global South countries show the same trend. At roughly 1.6, Brazil is now in a similar range to countries such as the United States (slightly below replacement).
- NoMoreNicksLeft 5mo ago>But when Indian school textbooks are reprinted this summer, they will carry a very different message. They will warn not of the dangers of having too many babies, but of the risks of having too few. The Chinese have discovered that it is easy to crank down the fertility rate, but impossible to raise it again when you want to do that. And they have brutal totalitarianism on their side.
- geodel 4mo agoRight. That will just turn the clock back. Because people are so clueless, stupid, they don't see around and notice this endless overcrowding is making their lives living hell. They don't read or see about lack of jobs, constant layoffs, housing shortage or anything else. Just a warning about lack of cheap labor for 1 percenters in India should make every boy and girl in India to fulfill national duty to make more babies.
- trumpdong 4mo agoI think the Chinese discovered that because they lowered fertility rates at a time they were naturally lowering anyway (as we see everywhere else). They can accelerate or, probably, slow down the natural progression but can't reverse it.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
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- simbosambo 5mo ago[dead]
- xaxaxb 5mo ago"It is not just rich places that are becoming less fertile." Yes, good to know the "rich places" are not alone.
- fred_is_fred 5mo agoEvery single population growth and peak chart for the last 10 years (and maybe 20) has been wrong with growth slowing much faster than expected. It's basically the opposite of all the solar power growth predictions. I predict this article is wrong too and the growth continues to fall. Just wait until no kids becomes the norm for couples in their 30s in India like it is here in the US.
- mekdoonggi 5mo agoIf they have the freedom to choose otherwise, they will. The global fertility "crisis" is simply individuals exercising their choices. Kids are really expensive, and if you want people to willingly have them outside of accidents, you're going to need to pay them a lot of money.
- exitb 5mo agoRising kids also has a time, effort and opportunity costs which are not easily offset with money. I don’t think there’s a way to frame modern parenting in a way where it „pays off” in the same sense as it did in the past. As of now, it’s essentially a hobby.
- danny_codes 4mo agoI mean, it can be offset with money. - Kids take time - Yes, so does working. If you cutout the 90h my partner and I spend working, that's a lot of time to put into raising children. - Kids take effort - Yes, so does working. If I didn't need to work this becomes much easier. - Opportunity cost - Yes, just pay me for the opportunity cost. Pay for my PhD after my kids are in grade school. It's just that these policies are very expensive, and right now we allocate our money mostly to make rich people richer and maintain very high QoL for our elderly population. That's a choice we make in setting up our society.
- aidenn0 4mo agoExiting the workforce for a decade (Replacement fertility rate is 2.1 implying some people will have 3 kids, spaced 2 years apart plus 5 years of child-rearing until kindergarten) has an opportunity cost that is potentially in the millions of dollars, depending on the industry, and the time costs of child rearing doesn't suddenly end at 5 either.
- mrguyorama 4mo agoIt just has to be a "Job" you get paid to do. People will absolutely sign up. The problem is that there will be far too many people wanting that job, so you have to filter somehow, and that's basically eugenics which isn't the most fun, so I guess you'd have to have a lottery and deal with the fact that like 10% of the population will constantly riot about someone who "doesn't deserve it" getting paid to raise kids.
- MontyCarloHall 5mo agoThis has happened to every single society [*] as it industrializes [0], and offering extensive support and incentives to parents (e.g. as has been tried in Scandinavian countries) does very little to reverse this trend [1, 2]. My hypothesis is that as societies industrialize, they afford their population more and more activities that are simply more fun and rewarding than having children. So many people I know put off having children (or curtailed the number they had) because they were reluctant to give up the activities only available in a childfree/one-and-done life. Ultimately, we are hedonistic creatures, and having kids is antithetical to the myriad hedonic pursuits available in wealthy, industrialized societies. [*] Israel is the lone exception, due to its Orthodox Jewish population. [0] https://ourworldindata.org/global-decline-fertility-rate https://ourworldindata.org/global-decline-fertility-rate [1] https://pub.nordregio.org/r-2024-13-state-of-the-nordic-region-2024/chapter-2-fertility-decline-in-the-nordic-region.html https://pub.nordregio.org/r-2024-13-state-of-the-nordic-regi... [2] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10049131/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10049131/
- mekdoonggi 5mo agoIs it hedonism if a child-free adult gets fulfillment out of nurturing and caring for others, mentoring, caring for themselves and their community? That's like, the complete opposite of the hedonistic young couple not using protection and accidentally getting pregnant.
- MontyCarloHall 5mo agoI'd call it hedonism if a couple wants to be able to go out on a date on a whim, easily take a vacation, watch adult-appropriate movies on a big TV in the living room, maintain good sleep/health habits, keep a flexible schedule unconstrained by school pickups/staying home with a sick kid, etc. These are all real examples of why people I know delayed having kids, curtailed the number they had, or never had them altogether.
- happytoexplain 5mo agoIt's unclear what you're saying. Obviously it's not hedonistic to "want" those things, as you say. You might use the term if they try to have their cake and eat it too, irresponsibly. Hedonism has negative connotations, colloquially (and colloquially is how we are speaking).
- mekdoonggi 5mo agoInfinite economic growth depends on women having babies above replacement. Therefore, the economic value of a woman having three babies is virtually unlimited, and the economic destruction of a woman having less is also unlimited (when projecting far enough into the future). It really makes you wonder if some actors would feel a need to exercise control over this scarce and limited resource...
- phendrenad2 4mo agoThat's the basic background in the book The Handmaids Tale, but ironically the book might be used to fearmonger against anyone trying to incentivize births.
- theturtle 5mo ago[dead]
- eudamoniac 4mo agoThe desire to procreate above replacement levels is probably heritable, so it will all work itself out naturally.
- John7878781 4mo agoGiven that intelligence is ~60% genetic, if well-educated people are having kids less, then are we going to start getting dumber?
- liglam 4mo ago[dead]
- FuriouslyAdrift 4mo agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiocracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiocracy
- eudamoniac 4mo agoYes, definitely. Or at least there will be negative evolutionary pressure on intelligence; it might still go up from other pressures.
- seinvak 4mo agoEducation doesn't imply intelligence. 90% of humanity that has ever lived has probably never read a word.
- manquer 4mo agoLiteracy is not education either ?.
- porridgeraisin 4mo agoI have written about this before here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44098431 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44098431 BTW, the fertility rate is _increasing_ now (granted from an existing base of 1.2TFR) in the richer states of india, due to better availability of IVF and in general healthcare. The combination of lack of prosperity as well as the effect of nuclearisation that I mentioned above was what made it go weirdly low. It's not that low if you exclude unintentionally non-reproducing couples. I'm not saying its replacement rate, but its also not 1.2. Many poorer states of india will face the same nuclearisation of the family unit, but crucially when healthcare is more generally available, so you won't see those parts go as low as 1.2. Again, replacement rate is almost impossible in a nuclear family unit, unless you manage to substitute something else that contributes the benefits, i.e reinvent joint families from first principles (and maybe it will be better!)
- martythemaniak 4mo agoAm I the only one that doesn't with about this "crisis". The world's population isn't going to fall, it'll level off around 2100, nobody is enough to read this will be around, our kids and grandkids can decide for themselves. Local populations will see very different trajectories, yes. Africa will see population growth and many other places will see steep decline. Societies can choose to keep their current system and take in immigrants, or choose to keep their "national character" (or whatever) and rejig their societies so the remaining productive parts pay for increasing numbers of old people. Grifters (Brexiters, MAGA, Le Pen, etc) will attempt to sidestep such obvious tradeoffs, but they will fail, hastening the decline of these societies.
- dismalaf 4mo agoA big part of people having lots of kids was infant mortality, the need for physical labour (farming) and lack of old age security (kids take care of parents). All 3 of these issues are mostly gone so now parents try to focus resources into ensuring their children are as successful as possible instead of as numerous as possible.
- disqard 4mo ago"In many places birth rates are plunging despite marriage remaining near-universal and even though few women have formal jobs." This is not just about women entering the workforce, etc. Something is affecting Human society more "horizontally".
- fangorn 4mo agoFT's "Why birth rates are falling everywhere all at once" was published, and discussed, recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48168928 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48168928 https://www.ft.com/content/fba35eca-df3a-4ad6-b42d-eb08eb7c9ad3 https://www.ft.com/content/fba35eca-df3a-4ad6-b42d-eb08eb7c9... https://archive.is/6VpWy https://archive.is/6VpWy Spoiler: smartphones, social media, housing.
- whatever1 4mo agoAlso it’s not ok anymore to rape/get married to 13yo girls. And now with a smartphone every girl knows that it is not ok.
- croisillon 4mo ago[flagged]
- illiac786 4mo agoIt has become so tribal lately, do you even have to care about this? Just scream loudly, ragebait 24/7 and you’re good.
- throwaway85825 4mo agoAs communication increases the perception of competition also increases. The cost of raising a child that can compete in the world is now known to be higher. Eg cost of tutoring, after school activities, college etc. People who now know they dont have the economic resources to compete at a high level opt out of having children alltogether.
- silexia 4mo agoThe purpose of life is reproduction and having your own kids is the greatest joy in life. I am a very successful and wealthy entrepreneur who can do anything I wish with my time and I have done everything; travel, rock climbing, super cars, wine tasting, etc etc. Time with my kids is all that matters to me.
- zb3 4mo ago> The purpose of life is reproduction There's no "purpose" of life, it just happens, it's physics. > I am a very successful and wealthy entrepreneur So now imagine you're not, and your life sucks because of such "successful and wealthy entrepreneurs" sucking all the wealth. If your life is shit, you naturally don't want to make it even shittier just so you can produce people whose life will also be shit (thanks to the class society). Since we stopped forcing people to do this, they're naturally excercising their will. But your wealth depends on them reproducing, so that's a nice middle finger they gave you by not doing so. You're concerned? You should be, that's the message.
- georgeburdell 4mo agoThe first time it happened it was physics. The next several billion years it was the purpose.
- trumpdong 4mo agoNo, that's not correct. Otherwise grey tin would also have the same purpose. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tin_pest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tin_pest This is an allotrope (alternative crystal form) of tin metal that forms spontaneously at very low temperatures and can convert ordinary tin that it touches into the same form at room temperature. (It's not irreversible, as it melts into regular molten tin.). In other words, it's a metal that reproduces. At first due to physics, but after the first time it's purpose, wouldn't you say?
- nercht12 4mo agoThe problem with society is that people are commonly selfish, so the majority of people only do things that benefit them. Children benefited ancient societies. The problem with industrialized societies is that people lost all markers of adulthood. Everything became about worshiping convenience, and once convenience (for short-term pleasure) became "god", people wanted to avoid things they saw as unnecessarily difficult. To reverse the trend, we need people to understand that the difficulty of life isn't a bad thing, that struggle and suffering aren't bad, they are essential for growth in becoming a better, happier person in the long run. Would you rather be an ever-weakening wimp? Most people unconsciously say "yes", afraid of the world. Kids are afraid of the chaos in life - suffering that happens when life throws you curve balls, like "what would I do without monetary support?". Even "adults" now are really kids are heart - afraid of losing social security, medicare, etc. "Welfare" programs don't end the dilemma - they only reinforce the childishness and dependency on gov for support. We need more bold people, people who aren't afraid to suffer because they see the light at the end of the road. Courage separates the men from the boys.
- nercht12 4mo agoThe downvotes explain why the world is declining in population. Most people fail to see this is the problem.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- co-ent 4mo agoOh look at that: the poster advocating for an effective, positive, and personal change instead of thrashing about in the status quo is downvoted. Imagine that. Personal responsibility is an anathema and we are doomed to this path for it.
- cindyllm 4mo ago[dead]
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- onesociety2022 4mo agoNaive question- why does the human population need to keep growing? Why can’t we let it shrink? If AI and robotics are going to come to fruition in the next 50 years, why do we need so many people?
- IncreasePosts 4mo agoWe can't do anything, because in almost the entire world, the only thing stopping you from having a baby is your biology and your willingness.
- nashashmi 4mo agoAI and robotics will still need maintenance. The expertise for the maintainers will be quite expensive to develop (longer years of schooling). Larger portions of society will now be necessary dedicated to new tech. More people are needed to fulfill future needs.
- willmarch 4mo agoThe robots will maintain themselves. AI will be dedicated to new tech.
- mauvehaus 4mo agoNot that I disagree with you, but as US society, and AIUI many other modern societies, are organized around a growing population. In order to have Medicare and Social Security in their current forms, you need n increasing number of working age people to keep the programs solvent. Changing this, and moving to a society where AI and robots solve the problem of letting people retire (presuming that's possible, technologically) would require a massive shift in how people are, for lack of a better word, valued by society. Right now, we assign a lot of value to individuals based on their level of economic productivity. It would be a change of considerable magnitude to let AI and robots create the economic value and then distribute it to individuals on some "fair" basis. I suggest that based on the current situation, finding agreement on what constitutes "fair" would be challenging, at best.
- dagurp 4mo ago
- nashashmi 4mo agoLots of theories here. Industrialization. Wealth. Education. First world transformation. Kids' expense. All of these are second-round of reasons. Primary reason: Materialistic wealth or wealth in general is preferred over human contact. Effect: People connection drops. Community drops. Independence and Individualism prosper. Secondary effect: The seeds for family development (community, human connection, village camaraderie) go missing. Growing a family now requires artificial support. When family members grow up, their time is now spread across materialisms and career development. Career development goes up and takes priority. Wealth acquisition takes priority. Except everyone is doing this so basic needs have to be fulfilled with limited resources. All prices are now going up. What was the point of everyone working now? Wealth acquisition. hmm. Tertiary Effect: Huge workforce looking for work. Wages diminish because supply went up. Businesses prosper. Market caps go up. Business becomes easier. Dominance becomes easier. 4th Effect: Debt goes up to fulfill materialistic quests. Interest locks in people into a debt that grows over time even if the supply of money does not go up. Now people are perpetually looking to complete paying off their debt. And they will perpetually need to work. And worker supply perpetually increases. Freedoms go away. Wealth centers on to certain people. They take over media, entertainment, recreation, and tourism. We end up with a tale of two worlds. Edit: Before the primary reason goes into effect, I will acknowledge industrialization improved people's access to wealth and materialism. And that replaced human connection.
- zbentley 4mo ago> I will acknowledge industrialization improved people's access to wealth and materialism. And reduced illness, increased education, increased access to better nutrition, increased lifespan, increased able lifespan (knees/back/teeth don’t give out as early), and lots more. Like, even if I grant that this replaced human connection (and I’m not sure that’s true, nor am I sure if it is meaningfully true—access to water replaces thirst, too), some very substantial benefits were acquired in return.
- nashashmi 4mo agoThe theory that improved health and safety and lifespan will shrink the urge to procreate is so far fetched I find it hard to imagine. The longer you live, the more likely you seek connection. It would be easier to imagine that long lifespan and better health makes people less attached to their spouse.
- voiceofchoice 4mo agoI encourage anyone surprised that people would opt out of babies and raising kids actually spend time with kids. Not just like for the holidays and pass them back when they start crying, but an actual extended period of time dealing with all the issues that they bring. You've got to be a special kind of idealistic romantic to still see the appeal afterwards. Which is great for you of course if you do. But there's a reason authoritarians across the world are banning abortion and targeting birth control.
- zbentley 4mo ago> there's a reason authoritarians across the world are banning abortion and targeting birth control I don’t think that’s because of birth rate decline. While authoritarians give lip service to that occasionally, it’s never their primary cited reason (which is usually some combo of religion, purported return to “traditional” prosperity via reduced promiscuity, aggression against feminist political opponents, etc). Also, most authoritarians aren’t that long-term in their goals.
- em-bee 4mo agothere are several comments here contradicting you directly and talking about how kids are a great experience.
- voiceofchoice 4mo agoI mean yeah, the human experience is vast and varied, I'll grant you that. As long as people get to make the best choice for themselves that's really what matters. There's lots of people who would choose not to expose ourselves to the risks and liabilities because we don't see the rewards as worth it.
- matchbok3 4mo agoExtended period? How about 5 years? 15? 25? There is literally nothing in the world that compares to the joy of having a large, loving, family that you helped create. The day-by-day crying or trivial complaints that you are so short-sighted about simply don't matter. I encourage you to talk to some happy families.
- kylehotchkiss 4mo agoIs this a surprise to people there though? There was a big boom around independence and people wanted to give their own children a better life. India doesn't have a free national public school system like other countries do, which I believe is a big factor.
- manquer 4mo agoIndia has a large public school system. It is managed by each state .
- karakoram 4mo agohttps://archive.md/ZDxIe https://archive.md/ZDxIe
- madhacker 4mo agoLess children less taxing on the planet. Not everyone needs a replacement copy of themselves. The world population in 2026 is approximately 8.3 billion people. It is projected to continue growing, reaching around 10 billion by 2060.
- thewhitetulip 4mo agoEspecially when in India individual tax payers pay more % of overall tax collection than corporates since the recent tax cut of corporate tax 12yrs ago
- diddid 4mo agoI’m always a bit confused by this, don’t we want this? If the end goal is to have ai and robots do it all, and there are no jobs left, what would children provide if they aren’t down payments on a future work force? Only people that wanted children would have children as all the old childless people would be taken care of by the states robots. I mean not exactly like that but something like that. Ai isn’t taken anyone’s job is there is nobody there to take it from. Or is that line of think too… something.
- throwaway123bc4 4mo agoSo many theories for why people stop having babies. I haven't heard anyone talk about romanticism as its cause. The second millenium began this trend of valuing more "feelings" than "duty". What before was considered madness (falling in love) became a core value. As everyone knows that feeling doesnt last long. We have been conditioned to think that anything "wrong" in the way we feel can be fixed with changing the externalities of our life: a new marriage, a new car, etc. God forbid we tell people they are having less kids or getting divorced more because they avoid their duty and are too self centered. The tragedy is that everyone is so blinded by themselves that it's far easier to tell them it's because the gov't doesn't pay childcare or xyz. Breaks are off and we are close the bottom
- dmode 4mo agoAnecdotally, every single family member I have in India has 1 or 0 kids.
- messh 4mo agoWe're becoming people that care only about money and career, and kids are not exactly helping...
- epestr 4mo agoThere seems to be a lot of discussion on economic incentives (harder to raise, stronger pensions and less personal involvement) and other modes of entertainment being the reason for this trend, but I wonder if it could be attributed to more understanding on proper upbringing and awareness of such, and self-doubt on people to meet that demands. Maybe the TV and schooling discussed is indirectly related, such as better understanding of proper upbringing, or more ways to see how things can be messed up, and having larger support group beyond family (and children) for said women in poorer countries. In general there is more focus put on raising a child better and more involvement beyond hedonistic, time or economic reasons and better parenting expected that some don't think they meet the needs or find it harder to do the same for more than one child. This is a bit of extrapolating from a small anecdotal group, but I wonder how statistically significant said group is.
- dyauspitr 4mo agoNot a surprise. It has been below replacement rate since 2019.
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- munificent 4mo agoI'm always surprised this topic comes up all the time and there's all sorts of navel gazing about economics and housing and other reasons people want to have fewer kids. It seems to me that the simplest and most likely explanation is: Having kids was never a primary motivation. Having sex was. Kids were just a hard-to-avoid downstream consequence of that. Once you have the pill, which makes it much easier to have sex without creating kids (and in particular, which allows women to avoid having kids even when they are raped), then the natural result is that there are a lot fewer babies popping out. Because for the majority of sex acts, babies were never the goal in the first place.
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- bombcar 4mo agoIt seems a natural consequence of the pill is going to be that in a few generations, most of the people will be of the kind for whom babies are a goal if not the main goal. Thinking of the Amish, or Orthodox Jews, or Trad Caths, Quiverfulls, etc. If they're averaging 4+ and everyone else is down below 1, how quickly does the world turn over?
- globular-toast 4mo agoYeah. I think there's a couple of reasons why people think this way: 1. There is still shame associated with wanting sex. We're not ashamed of wanting food or sleep, but sex, oh no, 2. People change after having children and it's permanent. They forget what they were like before. It's kinda like taking LSD or something. These things can fundamentally change you as a person.
- Ekaros 4mo agoThere is abortion option. And adoption. But to me it has always sounded like that most make it work somehow. So once there is a kid economics can in many cases workout somehow. Maybe not optimally but somehow. With even more kids later.
- Ampersander 4mo agoI don't think the data support the conclusion that contraceptives are the main driver behind the decline in fertility. Contraceptives have been available for a long time and fertility is continually decreasing even when nothing changes in the availability of contraceptives. Also, data going further back show that fertility has been declining since before contraceptives were widely available. Sweden for example: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1033535/fertility-rate-sweden-1800-2020/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1033535/fertility-rate-s...
- karthikreddi 4mo agoA cash incentive in other places may not work but it’ll definitely work in India. Most of the country is still poor, offering $100 per child will drastically increase the birth rate, at least in the short term. Of course this doesn’t incentivize the right people to have kids, but population grows none the less. A state in India is already trying to implement this (https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/why-andhra-pradesh-wants-families-to-have-more-kids-plans-40000-incentive-cm-chandrababu-naidu-explains-population-101778993423721.html https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/why-andhra-pradesh...), $300 for 3rd child and $400 for 4th child.
- rr808 4mo agoI know its not an acceptable view in 2026, but if women had to leave school at 16 and thus couldn't have a professional career I'd think many more women would have multiple children, like 5+ would be normal.
- MortyAnvil 4mo ago[flagged]
- nemomarx 4mo agoAt that point, you might as well formalize requiring them to have children or punishing them for not? Preventing them from working isn't any kinder.
- kixiQu 4mo agoBelieving "if X, Y" is not unacceptable in 2026. That was the analysis of the recent FT article too, pointing to the fertility rates in different countries with different success in expanding education to women. The difference is what you did not state, which would be to say "Therefore, we should not allow girls to attend school beyond 16 or women to have professional careers". That would be quite a take in 2026 (or in, frankly, 1926).
- paradoxyl 4mo agoTotalitarian societies of the future will solve this with technology, with all the unfortunate side effects that will entail.
- gsaines 4mo agoFor anyone interested in really digging deep into this trend, I recommend picking up the book “After the Spike” by Dylan Spears and Michael Geruso. It opened my eyes to the mathematical inevitability of short-term population contraction. Seriously, there is no way to avoid short term population contraction at this point. None. Zilch. Zero. We made our proverbial bed in the 1980s. They convinced me that population contraction is almost certainly bad for people alive today, but also probably for our species as a whole. Finally, they present a dozen or so hypotheses about what might be at the root of declining birth rates and what we might be able to do to stop reverse current trends. The thing that made the book a true 5/5 for me is that they end with questions, not false certainty. Basically, demographers aren’t completely sure what’s driving the trends nor do they have fully baked conclusions about how it can be solved or if that’s even possible.
- thelastgallon 4mo agoIn a farming culture, children are a profit center: 1) Production of children costs nothing. People married young and children just happen, there are no expensive fertility treatments, etc. 2) children are free labor for decades, helping their dad (family?) expand the acreage. More land = high status for dad. Even today, children can work in the family business without any pay. A child can be free labor, but only for family. 3) After the children become adults, they don't automatically get any share of the land, they have to wait and be loyal to get their share of the inheritance. 4) Children are expected to take care of elders until they die. (free caregiving). Compared to taking care of an infant, which just lasts about an year or so, taking care of old people is extremely resource intensive. People used to do it because thats how social/cultural expectations were set. 5) Religions/culture standardize this by creating the culture/religious texts/etc -- women must produce more children (more followers for the religion) and children (specifically young) must obey their parents. Now, children are a cost center. They cost a lot to produce, raise, don't confer high status (no free labor to expand production or acreage), and most critical factor no more free caregiving. Adults in these generations are realizing they are on their own when it comes to taking care of them when they are old. Then, why children? The second thing is divorce is extremely punitive on men. Children happen, a man needs to be punished for the rest of his life and lead a significantly degraded life for decades. Decent men suffer the consequences of the toxic/abusive partners who are enabled by the state to steal as much as they can. When the laws change to be a bit more fair, magically divorce rates plunge. Divorce Plunged in Kentucky. Equal Custody for Fathers Is a Big Reason Why: https://www.wsj.com/us-news/law/the-equal-custody-experiment-41e1f7a6 https://www.wsj.com/us-news/law/the-equal-custody-experiment... Some people point to poor people have lots of kids --> kids don't cost anything. Yes, poor people do have more kids, because divorce is divorced of disastrous consequences. If you have nothing, the state can't transfer/take much from you. As soon as you surpass the subsistence levels and have a job that pays above min wage, you have to worry about the inevitable consequences of divorce. You lose the primary home, pay a TON in child support, alimony, lose half your assets, pay for childcare, childrens health insurance and activities and still be the bad guy who gets to see his children only for a few hours. Women get most everything. Charlie Munger's on incentives: "Show me the incentive and I will show you the outcome." This site has some examples: http://www.realworlddivorce.com/ http://www.realworlddivorce.com/ If there is one thing Americans need to think about, work with your elected representatives, change the divorce laws. Young men are watching whats happening to their dads and Note: Some of this is US specific, but largely applicable to most countries. Other countries are copying the worst divorce laws of US.
- cadamsdotcom 4mo agoThere are a few constraints facing policymakers who try to incentivize people to have babies. People can only drive or commute a few hours per day without being unable to care for children due to schedule. But the best opportunities cluster in small urban districts. Throw money at the problem and it just gets used to fund housing, driving up costs and absorbing the money, leaving things back where they started. This combination chokes population growth.
- smarm52 4mo ago> But demographers have long shown that what really counts is girls’ education. Interesting, they mention JUST education as the deciding factor. Would it not be education AND birth control?
- illiac786 4mo agoI think the point is, birth control usage is dependent on education rather than how hard it is to get. And maybe it is easy to get in India, I have no idea.
- tuatoru 4mo agoDifficulty accessing birth control is greatly overstated by UN and other development agencies. In surveys by far the dominant reasons for not using it are "my husband does not want me to" or "my family does not want me to". Those are included in "unable to access".
- tuatoru 4mo agoTraditionally, female years of education, child mortality, and GDP per capita (in order of importance) explain 85% of fertility, and the residual is not biased in either direction. source: Lant Pritchett, long-time development economist. Edit: I don't think anyone outside the Taliban seriously wants to reverse the trends in any of those 3 factors.
- Vecr 4mo agoRobin Hanson on the first, incentivized with the ability to sell shares in your child.
- sirwhinesalot 4mo agoThe real reason why nobody is having kids can be summarized by the sentence: "It takes a village to raise a kid". Look up how much time a mother actually used to spend holding their own child vs other people holding that same child. It was something like 40%. When you lived surrounded by your tribe, you had an extremely strong support network that no longer exists in industrialized society. Add to that all the other factors like: - both parents working often without the grandparents nearby or even willing to help - unnafordable housing, even when renting - effectively delayed adulthood (university) into the 30s - falling fertility from whatever chemicals we're poisoning ourselves with - anti-natalist messaging - etc.
- Voultapher 4mo agoHonestly that resonates with me. I haven't made up my mind 100% about the topic, but I can say it would be an easier decision if there was a stronger support network. Watching single children be bored and play with their semi-enthusiastic parents makes me sad. But it's not all doom and gloom, there are plenty of areas where families live and you see gangs of kids of various age-groups roam the streets and parks.
- lurking_swe 4mo agofeeling sorry for single children is just weird, not going to lie. I was a single child. Yes i had many boring days as a toddler. I’m not a sad adult because of that, i’m happily married and expecting my 1st soon. One of my parents passed lately, that had a much more profound impact on me than any boredom during toddlerhood. Playing by myself as a toddler fostered a lot of creativity and imagination… you need that to play by yourself after all. Eventually my mom set up a “play date” up the street with a neighbor around my age, and that was the start of proper friendship and fun. And when i learned how to socialize and share better. It sounds like you see many “semi-enthusiastic” parents. Children should ideally live near other children so they can make friends. Or be enrolled in some type of pre-k so they can make friends. That’s a (parent) life decision problem, not a “i have no siblings problem”. There’s also plenty of siblings who don’t get along anyway so that’s a poor reason to have a 2nd.
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- epolanski 4mo agoOne thing that is often not discussed when talking about declining fertility rates in the world is the change of the role of women. I've seen multiple numbers showing that women 26+ have as many kids as they had 50 years ago. It's the teenage or very young pregnancies that are disappearing. But if you start having kids much later, you're likely to have much less.
- alangibson 4mo agoIf you invert the question "why aren't people having kids" to "why did people want kids in the first place" then the fertility crisis makes more sense. Kids were free labor and old age insurance. Now they are extremely expensive pets. Materially they are a net negative in a modern society.
- imtringued 4mo agoThis is almost correct. The way the pension systems are set up, you're donating your children's labor to the pension system as a whole. This means any investment into your children is purely an expense. Meanwhile if you don't have children, you can save money for retirement and let other people's children work for you. This means children are a net positive to society as a whole, but a net negative to the parents raising them.
- alangibson 4mo agoKids are definitely a net positive for society. They're future taxpayers. But that's not relevant to couples choice to get pregnant. I've never heard a parent say they had kids so they can pay into Social Security.
- trumpdong 4mo agoI'm sorry your kids hate you so much they wouldn't support you if you needed it?
- sensanaty 4mo agoI'm in the Netherlands, and my partner and I don't want kids for a multitude of reasons, but the biggest one for us and many other friends of ours is the obscene costs of having a child. Even the ones that really want kids simply cannot afford to have one, because the price of living is simply absurd. I'm extremely fortunate to be working at a large tech company and I have good money, but even with my income having a kid would be financially ruinous for us. Daycare costs alone are ludicrous, somewhere in the region of 2000-3000 euros PER MONTH. Now, most people get some form of gov't support for things like these, but we definitely wouldn't due to my income, and while I'm well off, I'm not that well off to be able to afford an expense like that. Not to mention all the other costs associated with having a child, both material like the ludicrous price of housing but also mental.
- koolba 4mo ago> Even the ones that really want kids simply cannot afford to have one, because the price of living is simply absurd. Perhaps the price of living to which you are accustomed to is absurd. > I'm extremely fortunate to be working at a large tech company and I have good money, but even with my income having a kid would be financially ruinous for us. Would it though? Couples having been raising children with much less for millennia. > Daycare costs alone are ludicrous, somewhere in the region of 2000-3000 euros PER MONTH. Children have a lot of economies of scale. If one spouse stays home to watch them, that covers as many kids as you have. Spending time with grandparents is also common. This is both cost effective and facilitates generational knowledge and culture transfer.
- inglor_cz 4mo ago> Perhaps the price of living to which you are accustomed to is absurd. That is not really an actionable observation. The Netherlands is an extremely dense country already, what is OP exactly supposed to do to make their cost of living non-absurd? > Couples having been raising children with much less for mill It wasn't just couples then, though. It was the entire village or neighbourhood: cousins, aunts, neighbours, godparents. Nowadays our society is so fragmented that you indeed usually are alone to tackle everything. This change from extended family to nuclear family model definitely has some impact on total fertility. > Children have a lot of economies of scale. If one spouse stays home to watch them, that covers as many kids as you have. Which also means that there is no spouse's income anymore. Unless your spouse makes really little money, you will end up in a similar financial hole either way. > Spending time with grandparents is also common. This is both cost effective and facilitates generational knowledge and culture transfer. If people have kids in their 30s, the grandparents are quite often too old and sick to help. They may also live way too far to be able to visit daily or even weekly.
- chrismorgan 4mo agoOne interesting factor about India is the minimum age of marriage. For males, it’s 21. For females, it’s 18. There have been attempts since at least 2021 to increase the age for females to 21, and I’ve talked with some that thought it was 21. Marriages below the legal ages definitely do sometimes occur. Personally, I think setting it to 21 for males is unwise, and setting it to 21 for females would be sheer madness. There are definitely some men and women that are quite ready for marriage before 21, and not many will marry at that age even if legal. It feels to me (a white Australian who moved to India a couple of years ago to marry an Indian) like they’re reacting too strongly to some of the problems that have historically existed with child marriages. But I definitely don’t grasp the full complexity of the situation.
- ivell 4mo agoIt's not only reaction against child marriages. Thr prevailing culture is to marry off girls as early as possible, affecting their higher education. It also causes lower workforce participation among women as at the point of marriage they typically neither have higher education nor they are employed. Then immediately after marriage there is demand for bearing child, after which they no longer have time to look for employment. Early marriage basically kills job opportunities and subsequently female workforce participation is lower.
- cnd78A 4mo agoa non popular theory: the more people become civilized (not using the traditional meaning) the less basic / animal they become. Animal are programmed to follow one goal : replicating one genes. Some (few) human manage to follow more elaborate (and less selfish) goals than replicating their genes.
- rldjbpin 4mo agoa true outlier in this, even though other developing countries are mentioned in the article. most of society is not in productive labour nor have significant female participation in non-agricultural work in the macro level. almost any theory we apply for population slowdown melts down here. also, there are few regions (also populous) which have still significantly high birth rate. in urban areas, a lot of asian peers go through a similar situation. crazy high costs to raise a family to stay "competitive": from inception to job market. handouts will not help as the current social net is not sustainable nor effective. probably for the first time in recorded history would food availability not determine population growth.
- tarun_anand 4mo agoIndia is a vast and complex country with many communities - the TFR is falling even lower for some communities as there are others who believe that having a lot of children will promote their community. A census is underway in the country as we speak - the numbers will make the point clear.
- OhioMan2943 4mo agoIf you don't find this suspicious I'm worried
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