3 ms·

There are so many factors. I think the biggest one is that the developed world looked at women and said "hey, they are just as smart and capable as men and if t

There are so many factors. I think the biggest one is that the developed world looked at women and said "hey, they are just as smart and capable as men and if they work at companies we have 2x the workers" which is obviously true but what it leads to is a DINK society - and it locks you in. It is just much, much harder to raise children when both parents work and they don't live near their parents and other familial support. Add that into your observation that the world is more fun and selfish and it multiplies. A lot of the decrease is also correlated with access to birth control which drastically reduced accidental pregnancies which were a decent amount of the fertility rate. Then we attacked teenage pregnancy with a vengeance. In 1957 it was 96/100k teen women had babies, 62/100k in 1991 and now down to the current rate of 11/100k. The postponement of births expands the time between generations which compounds the problem. An 18 yr old could have a baby that has a baby at 18 before a 36+ year old mom has their first child. All this leads to exponential decay of humanity. In the near term we don't have to worry about extinction but we do have to worry about the pyramid schemes we have to support non-workers (like social security). This will all play out much sooner in Asia where the TFRs can be half of the US/EU. Imagine due to China's one child policy a young working person will soon have to support 2 parents and 4 grandparents somehow. There will be some kind of reckoning and some of the speculation around what it will look like is quite grim.

just_mc 4mo ago
> A lot of the decrease is also correlated with access to birth control which drastically reduced accidental pregnancies which were a decent amount of the fertility rate This was my first intuition.
- pjc50 4mo ago
  This is so obvious it's barely worth mentioning, table stakes for the debate? British TFR was about 3 when Marie Stopes got started, and malthusianism had not yet been conquered.
em-bee 4mo ago
if they work at companies we have 2x the workers i don't think that's what happened. i believe women wanting economic independence (rightly so) and thus pushing into work was a bigger factor.
trumpdong 4mo ago
Fortunately this exponential decay is very unlikely to continue forever. The present structure of society will not survive a 90% reduction in population. Abundant resources (especially housing) and insufficient humans to run a tight bureaucracy will probably lead back to people having babies for fun again and not coddling them to the extreme detriment of their own lives, and human population will stabilise.
- Qem 4mo ago
  > Abundant resources (especially housing) and insufficient humans to run a tight bureaucracy will probably lead back to people having babies If well managed I think this is possible. But it's not given. Another scenario is houses in the countryside, small towns and far suburbs getting empty and soon uninhabitable due to lack of maintenance/infrastructure degradation, and remaining people packing close to core areas that remain high cost.
  - bombcar 4mo ago
    Small towns survived for millennia before industrialization; and they could likely survive again, if anyone wanted that life.
    - antasvara 4mo ago
      The Venn diagram of "people that want traditional small town life" and "people that currently live in a small town" has a smaller overlap than you'd think. The small towns in my area are desirable not just because they're small, but because they're small and have the same amenities as a bigger town. These towns are also increasingly relying on debt to fund decades of deferred maintenance just to keep the amenities they already have alive. This would become dire if (for example) property values fell, as residential real estate taxes make up the majority of tax revenue. This might happen if demand for the town fell (perhaps due to fewer people), which would quickly become a catastrophic cycle (revenues fall, roads and schools deteriorate, which makes the town less desirable, repeat ad infinitum).
linkregister 4mo ago
I agree that women's employment is the common factor in all societies with reduced birth rates. > In 1957 it was 96/100k teen women had babies, 62/100k in 1991 and now down to the current rate of 11/100k That's per 1k, not 100k [1]. 96/100k would be an insignificant amount. 96/1000 of girls and women ages 15-19 means that any given year, 10% had a baby, which is a substantial contribution to overall birth rates. 1. Teen Births in the United States: Overview and Recent Trends, https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R45184 https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R45184
- spullara 4mo ago
  oops! yes, per 1k.
decidu0us9034 4mo ago
I love how the original post says this happens across vastly different societies regardless of all these different variables people are offering as possible explanations. For example, in India (which this article is about), women have a much lower rate of workforce participation than other industrialized countries. I think a lot of people who are replying are men and don't understand how physically tasking and painful pregnancy is. It seems like most women are fine having two if there's a high chance they'll make it to adulthood and they have access to family planning/contraceptives. That makes sense to me. Not sure why this is so confounding to people. Not much more of an explanation needed than that lol

just_mc 4mo ago

> A lot of the decrease is also correlated with access to birth control which drastically reduced accidental pregnancies which were a decent amount of the fertility rate This was my first intuition.

pjc50 4mo ago
This is so obvious it's barely worth mentioning, table stakes for the debate? British TFR was about 3 when Marie Stopes got started, and malthusianism had not yet been conquered.

em-bee 4mo ago

if they work at companies we have 2x the workers i don't think that's what happened. i believe women wanting economic independence (rightly so) and thus pushing into work was a bigger factor.

trumpdong 4mo ago

Fortunately this exponential decay is very unlikely to continue forever. The present structure of society will not survive a 90% reduction in population. Abundant resources (especially housing) and insufficient humans to run a tight bureaucracy will probably lead back to people having babies for fun again and not coddling them to the extreme detriment of their own lives, and human population will stabilise.

Qem 4mo ago
> Abundant resources (especially housing) and insufficient humans to run a tight bureaucracy will probably lead back to people having babies If well managed I think this is possible. But it's not given. Another scenario is houses in the countryside, small towns and far suburbs getting empty and soon uninhabitable due to lack of maintenance/infrastructure degradation, and remaining people packing close to core areas that remain high cost.
- bombcar 4mo ago
  Small towns survived for millennia before industrialization; and they could likely survive again, if anyone wanted that life.
  - antasvara 4mo ago
    The Venn diagram of "people that want traditional small town life" and "people that currently live in a small town" has a smaller overlap than you'd think. The small towns in my area are desirable not just because they're small, but because they're small and have the same amenities as a bigger town. These towns are also increasingly relying on debt to fund decades of deferred maintenance just to keep the amenities they already have alive. This would become dire if (for example) property values fell, as residential real estate taxes make up the majority of tax revenue. This might happen if demand for the town fell (perhaps due to fewer people), which would quickly become a catastrophic cycle (revenues fall, roads and schools deteriorate, which makes the town less desirable, repeat ad infinitum).

linkregister 4mo ago

I agree that women's employment is the common factor in all societies with reduced birth rates. > In 1957 it was 96/100k teen women had babies, 62/100k in 1991 and now down to the current rate of 11/100k That's per 1k, not 100k [1]. 96/100k would be an insignificant amount. 96/1000 of girls and women ages 15-19 means that any given year, 10% had a baby, which is a substantial contribution to overall birth rates. 1. Teen Births in the United States: Overview and Recent Trends, https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R45184 https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R45184

spullara 4mo ago
oops! yes, per 1k.

decidu0us9034 4mo ago

I love how the original post says this happens across vastly different societies regardless of all these different variables people are offering as possible explanations. For example, in India (which this article is about), women have a much lower rate of workforce participation than other industrialized countries. I think a lot of people who are replying are men and don't understand how physically tasking and painful pregnancy is. It seems like most women are fine having two if there's a high chance they'll make it to adulthood and they have access to family planning/contraceptives. That makes sense to me. Not sure why this is so confounding to people. Not much more of an explanation needed than that lol