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Comment by dragontamer | Hacker News Reader

>The University of Pennsylvania’s Hans-Peter Kohler, who studies fertility and birthrates, said the data indicated that many shifts affecting fertility are occurring “in the transition to adulthood.” The biggest recent drops in birthrate have been among teenagers as well as people in their 20s. In 2016, the teen birthrate hit at an all-time low after peaking in 1991.

This... doesn't sound like bad news to me?

It seems like the #1 "issue" is that teenagers have stopped having kids. That's a good thing, is it not?

Young 20-year-olds not having kids could be easily explained with the higher amount of people going to college, and starting life later.

If the 25+ age group has stopped having kids, that'd be a bad thing for sure. I guess its important to keep the overall fertility rate in mind for future economic reasons, but a severe decrease in teenage pregnancy seems like a good thing overall... even if it may cause an economic issue in the future.

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Is a shrinking population actually bad in the long term? I'm taking on the order of centuries here. While it does introduce the dilemma of reducing spending on the elderly or increasibg taxes to care for the latter aging population, a shrinking population seems like it'd reduce environmental impact and global resource consumption in the long run.

> While it does introduce the dilemma of reducing spending on the elderly

We live in a Democracy, and the elderly have the most free time and seem to be the biggest population right now (Baby Boomers). As such, the elderly are always going to be the most powerful voting block (doubly so now that Boomers, the biggest generation by population, is hitting retirement age).

Good luck "reducing spending on the elderly" in the coming years. Its politically infeasible on population dynamics alone.

When the "lack of children" issue starts to hit 40 years from now, Millennial are going to be retiring. Millennials are the 2nd largest population after the Boomers. So the same issue will hit us again in the long term.

The elderly may be a powerful voting block, but the percentage of people over 65 is still relatively low (~15% in the US). Even in countries with ageing populations, it's nowhere near the majority (Japan is 27%).

If taxes to pay for the elderly do become very onerous, 85-75% of the population is going to be against them politically. There are relatively fair measures to pay for their healthcare, like wealth taxes for people beyond retirement age and increasing estate taxes. Or a more politically feasible measure is to make social security means-tested.

By far the best solution would be to mandate people to pay into their own retirement funds - Singapore does this. But of course, that would have had to be put in place decades ago.

Financing isn't the real the problem here. If 30% of the population works and 50% are retired then there are simply not enough workers to produce all the things you have saved up money for which will increase prices and inflate away your money. You can't "save" food and lots of other products the same way you can save money. It will spoil. This is why a home is actually a pretty good investment for retirement. If you buy it in your 40s then you will still have it in your 80s.

More output while at the same time reducing workers means more productivity is required and to increase the productivity per worker we need far more automation. Things like truck/taxi automation might cause a temporary mass unemployment problem for unskilled workers but at the same time also solve the worker shortage that will happen when the population starts aging massively.

Automation is occurring at a hectic rate in almost every sector. The last 15 years have seen more than the previous human history combined.

The idea that, the number of human being working is important at all, is rapidly becoming an obsolete issue.

Automation yes, productivity is not necessarily improving, wages (in purchasing power) are mostly stagnant. There has been a lot of outsourcing going on in the last 15 years too, including moving a lot of factories to China, India. That can give a false premise that there has been a lot of automation going on, but in reality, globally there was little improvement.

No, outsourcing is included in the estimate. Outsourcing occurs when a process hasn't scaled up enough to be worth automating i.e. cheaper to hire overseas hands to do the process. When factories come back to America for instance, its because the process got large enough to warrant automation, which can be expensive. It bring nearly no jobs 'back'.

And productivity is funny. When folks move down the economic spectrum (from technical to office to labor etc) its called 'full employment' but almost by definition productivity of point-of-sale or labor is very low. Definitely there's no improvement for the individual.

Its pretty easy in most elections for 15% of the population to be the majority. Since in the US at least, a 20% turnout is considered good.

I dont really buy the argument that the elderly vote more solely because of the extra free time, or that the younger don't vote because of the lack of thereof. I suspect it's more to do with the different levels of understanding of the electorial process.

The sole problem from population contraction, is replacement tax dollars for existing entitlement-type programs that are built on a ponzi scheme approach to ever larger inflows of tax revenue to support them over time.

Most of the developed world has the same problem on that front. The desperation by these countries when it comes to figuring out how to patch up the finances of those programs will increase by the year.

Robot (productivity) taxes will be one small answer. Another will be ever higher income taxes, also eventually including heavy wealth taxes (that comes last). Most of the developed or semi-developed world is starting to get hit on demographics at the same time. The weaker economic nations are being forced to respond first, as in Russia having to raise their pension ages so high it starts to cut people off at the life expectancy line (plunging Putin's popularity numbers in a rather startling fashion, which tells you how important the pension promises were). France is being forced to confront similar problems, with Macron trying to dress that up as market reforms. The US is temporarily avoiding it thanks to its ability to run absurdly high budget deficits for now.

I agree with the economic implications. Countries that experience an ageing population need to face the fact that they either have to raise taxes considerably, or reduce the care and benefits they extend to the elderly.

I also disagree heavily with the last paragraph. Creating disincentives for automation is the last thing a country needs when its workforce is shrinking. Automating jobs is a way of expanding the amount of labor available without actually needing more people in the work force. If anything, countries that are experiencing a population decline need to invest in more automation to maintain their economic output.

The US doesn't work that way. Taxes and spending have only the loosest correlation. As long as the US Dollar is the worlds reserve currency, it appears there doesn't have to be anything connecting the two.

Someday, though...

"Ponzi scheme approach ..."

Like the stock market, then. And pension funds.

> entitlement-type programs that are built on a ponzi scheme approach to ever larger inflows of tax revenue to support them over time.

Stop repeating propaganda please. Entitlement programs are just simple insurance programs. There is nothing ponzi about them.

Huh? Social Security, for example, is definitely a Ponzi scheme in the sense benefits paid out far exceed amounts previously collected, saved, and invested. Numerous government programs rely on this logic, which only works if the population of working age people is expanding.

Social Security isn't a Ponzi scheme in the sense that there was fraudulent intent. Nevertheless, a lack of political will to finance current benefits does burden future generations. "Adjusting benefits downwards" won't sit too well with people who worked 30 or 40 years and expect to enjoy a certain standard of living.

Why Was Social Security Designed Like A Ponzi Scheme? https://www.forbes.com/sites/johngoodman/2015/08/13/why-was-...

Is Social Security a Ponzi scheme? "Social Security has a funding gap equal to 0.7 percent of GDP over the next 75 years. We could wipe that gap out by lifting the payroll tax cap (right now, payroll taxes only apply to the first $107,000 of income) or by adjusting benefits downwards." https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/is-soci...

For one thing Social security’s structure is transparent, so no it’s not a Ponzi scheme at all in that a Ponzi scheme is by definition a subset of fraud and requires investors to be unaware of the fact the money coming to them is from new investors and not profits from investing in a product or portfolio of companies.

For another, it’s still not a Ponzi scheme. It makes no promises for returns, and simply requires working age people to set aside money for retired people. If the ratio changes, there is no requirement for the retired people to be paid the same money they were a year ago.

It’s not a Ponzi scheme in any fashion. It’s pretty much a direct, transparent transfer of wealth from the young to the elderly.

You pretty much ignored everything he said and meant. Congratulations.

Not really; a ponzi scheme has a very specific definition. A form of fraud in which belief in the success of a nonexistent enterprise is fostered by the payment of quick returns to the first investors from money invested by later investors.

Social Security isn't a ponzi scheme for a number of reasons, first it's not a security. Second there is no nonexistent enterprise. Instead it's structure is entirely that of an government mandated insurance program.

The other difference is that a true Ponzi scheme is fundamentally unsustainable, whereas social security is not. It may need adjustments, it’s not like you have exponentially growing divergence.

If one looks here,

https://www.ssa.gov/oact/tr/2015/tr2015.pdf

> Total expenditures in 2014 were $859 billion. Total income was $884 billion, which consisted of $786 billion in non-interest income and $98 billion in interest earnings. Asset reserves held in special issue U.S. Treasury securities grew from $2,764 billion at the beginning of the year to $2,789 billion at the end of the year.

This is not in any shape or form a ponzi scheme.

You’re looking at inflows and outflows, which in the early stages of a ponzi scheme can also be similar. The way that social security in the US is a ponzi scheme is that the benefits paid out are not interest or earnings on the amounts paid in by the people receiving the benefits. They are paid for by new people paying in to the system. That is almost the definition of a Ponzi scheme.

> You’re looking at inflows and outflows,

Which the generally accepted way of analyzing insurance programs is by looking at the inflow and outflows plus interest on reserves.

> which in the early stages of a ponzi scheme can also be similar

The Social Security Act passed in 1935.

> The way that social security in the US is a ponzi scheme is that the benefits paid out are not interest or earnings on the amounts paid in by the people receiving the benefits. They are paid for by new people paying in to the system. That is almost the definition of a Ponzi scheme. That is almost the definition of a Ponzi scheme.

No that is the exact definition of an insurance program. Insurance programs are not investments they are about spreading risk. Which the Social Security Program in the US does a perfectly fine job of.

No, insurance is categorically different. It protects you against a loss of some kind, and only provides that protection while you are paying for it. As such, only a difference between the predicted and actual risk covered by the insurance policy can cause an insurance program to become insolvent. A change in the number of people buying insurance from year to year will have no effect on the solvency of the insurance program, as long as the actuaries predict the risk covered by the insurance correctly.

Social security is a pension. It guarantees a future stream of income in return for payments now. It is subject to the same actuarial risk as insurance (so, predicted payout period ends up being longer than expected, or returns on payments are lower than expected), but it is subject to an additional risk if it is unfunded (which Social Security is). That risk being that inflows become insufficient in the future to cover the outflows promised 40 years prior.

There is a difference between term life insurance, which you’re referring to, and universal life insurance. Social Security is indeed similar to universal life insurance.

Thank you for providing an actual example of insurance that works this way. I actually looked at the insurance article on wikipedia and it was describing what I was describing (unless I missed something about universal life insurance). And I actually had auto, property, and health insurance in mind more than life insurance.

That being said, the important distinction still stands: Social Security is unfunded, which makes it subject to a kind of risk that funded insurance programs are not exposed to.

> No, insurance is categorically different.

No.

> It protects you against a loss of some kind,

Social security protects you against outliving your savings when you can no longer work.

> and only provides that protection while you are paying for it.

This is an argument from ignorance. And it's incorrect.

You’re still not addressing the main reason that comparing social security to a Ponzi scheme makes sense: being unfunded means that people will get royally fucked if the number of people paying in starts shrinking.

Social security is funded via FICA which is mandated by the Federal government. You aren't going to get a more sure source of funding than that.

> Social Security, for example, is definitely a Ponzi scheme

Social Security is an insurance program. That you don't understand how insurance programs work is your problem.

It's not just entitlement programs, retirement in general is a Ponzi scheme.

The only way that anyone can retire is to rely on the productivity of people who are still working. Saving up money for retirement does not avoid this. Your saved up money just lets you buy someone else's future productivity, you can't actually live on it.

Exactly! Imagine a future in which 100% of the population is in retirement. Who is going to run the farms that produce the food? The only way to get food is by stockpiling it during your working age and somehow preserving it for decades until you have reached your retirement age.

This clearly isn't viable so instead we have kids that take care of us when we become old.

>Is a shrinking population actually bad in the long term?

Technically speaking, for all known biological species, the size of population is the primary indicator of health and well-being. Shrinking population indicates either inability to adapt, or some kind of malaise.

It's not necessarily a bad thing, but it completely breaks all of modern finance.

Great!

Don’t get too excited about tearing engines off an in flight aircraft unless you have an acceptable substitute ready.

While this may be true, it's not that much of an exaggeration to say that capitalism is a Ponzi scheme. At the very least our current economic system is dependent on continuous growth, including population growth, and when that ends there will be a world of hurt.

> and when that ends there will be a world of hurt.

First world countries' with shrinking populations aren't falling apart. Sure places like Japan, Italy, and Spain have economic troubles associated with a growing retirement population, and shrinking workforce. But they're still pretty good places to live in.

While global growth would decline, I'm dubious of the claim that per-capita wealth would go down. With the same pool of resources spread across fewer people, the opposite seems likely. The labor force would reduce in size, too, so manufactured goods and services may not see their prices go down. But things that are zero-sum like natural resources, real-estate, etc. should drop in cost as fewer people are competing for them.

I take the argument that from an economists view point negative population growth is a very bad thing indeed. But from an individuals point of view actually not. Because the economist only cares about total 'GDP' and is absolutely uninterested in quality of life. Because quality of life can't be monetized.

From an individuals point of view lower population means fix resources are spread less thinly. There is less competition for jobs so you can command a large share of the pie.

There may be less competition for jobs but when you're elderly there's more competition for people to take care of you.

Old people have resources, though, so NBD. Reasonable societal arrangements should favor new families at the expense of old folks.

Old people often don't use that many resources either at least while they are in good health. Most of the costs are associated with the last year or two of life. SO that expense is already committed to when they born.

A new equilibrium with a smaller population, after the problem of an old population had passed, would still imply less room for specialization, and therefore less per capita productivity, and ultimately lower quality of life.

Instead of more natural resources available per person, a less productive economy eventually provides for fewer resources in terms of goods, services and capital like installed infrastructure per person that are necessary to thrive.

That's a moot point for as long as we still have 3.5 billion people engaged in subsistence level farming. All of them need to be brought into the modern economy, and taught a specialty. In other words, if 50% of the human race is still wasting its time with farming practices that have barely changed since the Neolithic, then there are still a lot of ways to grow the economy, even if the population is falling.

Biologically the best age (for a woman) to have a baby is around 19 years old.

Sociologically is probably 35+.

So there is an unsolvable problem here, you have to compromise one way or the other.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/cusp/201211/whats-th...

American mothers in the 30-34 age range have the lowest rate of medical complications during labor and delivery (per table 4 here):

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4418963/

35-39 year olds have slightly higher rates of complications, but the rates are still lower than in teenage mothers. This rank ordering persists even after adjusting for demographics, type of birth, and comorbidities (table 5).

There is a significantly higher risk of birth defects in women in their late 30s.

According to the article you link to : (biologically the best age to have a baby is 19 because the...) "oocytes are fresh and the body’s reproductive and other systems are at a youthful peak"

I stopped reading after that. There's no such thing as 'fresh' oocytes. The author is just making stuff for his purpose as he goes along.

The ideal age for having kids lies somewhere in the range of late 20's to early 30's. Here both biological and sociological advantages convene.

Well, you are wrong about that.

> Mitochondria in oocyte aging: current understanding

> The oocyte is the largest cell found in multicellular organisms. Mitochondria, as the energy factories for cells, are found in high numbers in oocytes, as they provide the energy for oocyte maturation, fertilization, and embryo formation via oxidative phosphorylation. Failure of assisted reproduction is mainly attributed to oocyte aging and increased aneuploidy.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5506767/

Actually, and I didn't read the article, but responding to your last sentence... Apparently the primary oocytes in a female human body are all created before she is born, and available evidence says it's likely no more are produced after that:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oogenesis#Oogenesis

Once I read otherwise, that highest chance of a healthy baby is more like 30ish.

Men are biased towards younger women because they don't bear the risks of pregnancy.

>So there is an unsolvable problem here, you have to compromise one way or the other.

This seems addressable by biotechnology, artificial wombs and so on. At a certain level of technological sophistication, all problems become engineering problems.

Depends on your culture of course. Teens get pregnant so readily because they're designed that way. The US obsession with avoiding teen pregnancy causes problems of its own I'm sure.

I'm not sure I follow. A piece of plastic, or a pill is all it takes for teens to explore their sexuality without getting pregnant.

Are you American? If not, its easy to see why it seems like common sense like this would work. But in America, especially the Southeast, those are taboo things.

The shape of the human penis is 'designed' to scoop out the sperm that competing males may have recently left, but I rarely hear arguments that monogamy is unnatural and 'going to cause problems of its own'. I don't find the appeal to biology and 'design' particularly convincing. Perhaps you could give some examples of the problems you foresee, while keeping in mind than avoiding teen pregnancy is not the same as delaying having children until the age of 45?

> The shape of the human penis is 'designed' to scoop out the sperm that competing males may have recently left

That's myth ( or we don't know for absolute certainty ). If that was true, it would scoop your own semen out better than your competitors. The shape has more to do with arousing females and making it easier for your sperm to reach the eggs than anything else.

> but I rarely hear arguments that monogamy is unnatural and 'going to cause problems of its own'.

Monogamy or polygamy is a far better male competitive "design" than the shape of the human penis. The best way to ensure you impregnate a woman is through monogamy or polygamy rather than semen displacement. Most male sex competition is geared towards preventing other males to mate with a female rather than scooping it out after your competitor mates with a female.

> Perhaps you could give some examples of the problems you foresee, while keeping in mind than avoiding teen pregnancy is not the same as delaying having children until the age of 45?

The best time for a female to procreate is 19 to 26. It's their peak biological fertility years. When they're most fertile and when their children are least likely to suffer from defects. Starting from 30s, it gets harder for women to get pregnant, it's more dangerous for the mother and it's when poorer quality of offspring are born.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-112136/The-female...

A woman waiting til their 30s to have offspring is like an nba player waiting til they are 40 to join the NBA.

> That's myth ( or we don't know for absolute certainty ).

I think there's a rather big difference between myths and things we don't know with absolute certainty. If you're open to the possibility that something is true, while knowing there isn't absolute certainty, calling it a myth seems misleading at best.

> If that was true, it would scoop your own semen out better than your competitors.

I haven't done a poll, but I suspect many males stop thrusting after orgasm. Assuming that is true then there isn't really any downside to scooping out your own old semen if you only do it in situations where you're just going to make a fresh deposit 30 seconds later.

> The shape has more to do with arousing females and making it easier for your sperm to reach the eggs than anything else.

I'd be interested in seeing the research supporting this idea. I'm not saying I think it's false, but I've heard the 'sperm-scooping' theory before, but never the 'arousing females' one.

> Monogamy or polygamy is a far better male competitive "design" than the shape of the human penis. The best way to ensure you impregnate a woman is through monogamy or polygamy rather than semen displacement.

By polygamy I think you specifically mean polygyny? Because polyandry sounds like the kind of situation where the sperm scooping would be pretty effective. And just because one mechanism to achieve something exists does not mean that other mechanisms are useful. The best way not to die of poison is simply not to consume poison, but I'm pretty happy the body is able to vomit if you (accidentally) consume poison anyway.

> The best time for a female to procreate is 19 to 26. It's their peak biological fertility years. When they're most fertile and when their children are least likely to suffer from defects. Starting from 30s, it gets harder for women to get pregnant, it's more dangerous for the mother and it's when poorer quality of offspring are born.

To quote your own article:

> Team member Dr David Dunson explained: 'Though we noted a decline in fertility in the late 20s, what we found was a decrease in the probability of becoming pregnant per menstrual cycle, not in the probability of eventually achieving a pregnancy.

So it sounds to me that although women in their late twenties are slightly less likely to get pregnant on any given menstrual cycle than women in their early twenties, the effect does not seem to significantly affect their odds of procreating.

> Starting from 30s, it gets harder for women to get pregnant, it's more dangerous for the mother and it's when poorer quality of offspring are born.

But since we're linking studies, I would like to refer to some research by the CDC [1] that shows that infant mortality is lowest for mothers between the ages of 30 and 34 (inclusive), and the infant mortality for mothers younger than 20 is the highest of all, significantly surpassing that of women over 40. Based on a report from Australia [2] which includes some information about the risk of mortality for the mother it also looks like having children before the age of 20 is inadvisable at best. Risk of death for the mother is lowest in the 20-24 range, but mysteriously the 25-29 range is at a higher risk of death than women in the 30-34 range.

Regardless, based on the data I don't think it's self-evident that the best time for women to procreate is between the ages of 19 and 26. I'll admit I haven't included numbers about birth defects. Another thing we haven't examined is the ability of the parents to raise and support their children. I suspect a 30 year old women may have the advantage over one 10 years her junior in that particular department. It is short-sighted to consider only biology when discussing the 'best' age to have children.

> A woman waiting til their 30s to have offspring is like an nba player waiting til they are 40 to join the NBA.

I don't think the numbers support that conclusion at all.

[1]: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr58/nvsr58_17.pdf (table 1, page 14) [2]: https://www.aihw.gov.au/getmedia/a8ff4563-b8f6-43b4-826e-a86... (figure 3.1, page 22)

> I think there's a rather big difference between myths and things we don't know with absolute certainty.

Except when we have a preponderance of evidence indicating otherwise. Your claim is akin to someone claiming that the pinky was evolved to pick your ear and your index finger to pick your nose. We have preponderance of evidence indicating otherwise, but it's nearly impossible to prove it with absolute certainty.

If your myth was true, then there is no benefit to the penis shape. The only benefit is have sex last in orgies. That's not how human mating happens. Ever.

> Assuming that is true then there isn't really any downside to scooping out your own old semen if you only do it in situations where you're just going to make a fresh deposit 30 seconds later.

It's a bit of a downside. There certainly isn't any upside.

> By polygamy I think you specifically mean polygyny?

Obviously because polyandry hardly exists.

> Because polyandry sounds like the kind of situation where the sperm scooping would be pretty effective.

Except polyandry is practically nonexistent and in a few fringe communities it exists, the woman isn't engaging in orgies. The dominant form of mating is monogamy with a small bit of polygamy.

> So it sounds to me that although women in their late twenties are slightly less likely to get pregnant on any given menstrual cycle than women in their early twenties, the effect does not seem to significantly affect their odds of procreating.

I didn't say women in their thirties couldn't procreate. I said it was more difficult.

> But since we're linking studies, I would like to refer to some research by the CDC [1] that shows that infant mortality is lowest for mothers between the ages of 30 and 34 (inclusive),

And? Infant mortality is lower for wealthier fathers and mothers too. What does that matter in biological terms?

> Regardless, based on the data I don't think it's self-evident that the best time for women to procreate is between the ages of 19 and 26.

It isn't a matter of debate. It's a matter of science. Biologically that's a woman's prime reproductive years. Societally, things might be different.

> I suspect a 30 year old women may have the advantage over one 10 years her junior in that particular department.

Which has nothing to do with biology. And this is also why historically, women married established men 10 to 20 years older with the means to provide.

But my point was, biologically, women's prime birthing years are 19-26 or around that time range. It's science and biology. You are arguing about society. Which I wasn't.

Children are public goods with massive positive externalities. I think it would be a shame if the population declined.

My favourite policy to increase birth rates is to give parents a percentage of their children's income tax revenue. Standard econ says we just need to internalize some of these positive externalities. This has the advantage of scaling with the wealth of the parents, as economic productivity has a significant heritable component.

Though this policy triggers an intense moral disgust response in everyone I've proposed it to, so likely not possible unless things get very desperate. But I think it has a chance of working, which is more than I can say of most natalist policies I have seen.

Evolution will take care of falling fertility. Probably won’t take that long, either:

https://jasoncollins.blog/2018/10/11/an-evolutionary-project...

I'm not sure I understand. How would the state calculate a child's future income tax revenue?

You don't. You wait until they grow up and then you give the parents a commission on their income tax.

That's certainly an interesting proposal. I voluntarily do this with my parents by helping them out with their living expenses. I imagine this would be difficult to implement with people who have strained relationships with their parents/ step-parents.

I'm not sure if it would be stable or not. After a couple generations I sort of feel it would be, as even if you hate your parents if you have kids you would still benefit from the policy. In fact, if economic growth continues you would benefit more than your parents did. And most people do love their parents.

Is it a truly a bad thing for teenagers to have children and then remain within their extended families and communities for support? Not forever, of course, but for a handful of years. I'd say that the claim 'teen pregnancy is bad (or not good)' requires a lot of evidence to back it up, rather than taken as a given.

This issue probably has very little to do with sperm quality or the availability of abortion, but with our culture in general. The assumption that teen pregnancy = bad, the stigma around it, etc. In your comment, the mentality that life starts later. Like, life starts at birth.

I'd imagine that same mentality is responsible for the loneliness epidemic written about in the same places. This idea that life is some achievement to be gained after doing things like going to college. Like, you can't live your life until you've completed some rites of passage, except they get increasingly more detached from reality every decade. And as we read about in the WaPo and other sources, has the college rite of passage really served the amount of people who have gone through it? Student loan debt, bad job prospects, starting life later...

Another interesting fact, younger couples have healthier children. Not like, 13 young, but late teens early 20s young. As couples age, the risk of genetic faults and things like autism rise.

tldr, it's not sperm count or abortion. Our rites of passage into adulthood suck.

There is abundant evidence that teen pregnancy has a severe negative impact on the economic prospects of young women. Many of these women will drop out of high school and almost none will complete college degrees.

And yet, we’re having a discussion about a fertility crisis. A discussion that is happening in parallel with a discussion about whether or not the benefits of a college education are worth the costs, for either gender. And a political climate where a demagogue rose to power on a promise to return to a time when these weren’t discussions. A general lack of respect for tradesmen and blue collar workers - despite the many benefits they provide to the economy. An epidemic of loneliness, the destruction of communities all across the country. For a great number of people in the US, there’s a longing for a return to traditional values. The answer is somewhere in between both extremes. Not every man or woman need to start life later. Economic outcomes would be a lot better for a lot of people (and the US in aggregate) if that wasn’t the narrative being sold to them.

Of course, for a lot of other people, college, and starting life later is absolutely the right answer, economically, socially, etc. I’m not saying that everyone needs to strive for the traditional nuclear family and forego college, I’m saying that there’s an incredible lack of respect for the people that do, much to everyone’s detriment. Does a woman who enjoys the idea of being a mother and a homemaker really need to go to college? Is it ok for women to want to be president, or to bake cookies for their family. It seems like we’ve really told them ‘no, if your goal is to bake cookies and make a warm home, then you’re pretty much a garbage proletarian.’

Disclaimer, I’m a man, talking about what women can or can’t do, so take it with a grain of salt, hopefully a woman can provide a perspective based on experience.

Now of course the question is what exactly are traditional values and who would loose if we returned to them. And who would win.

Because for all the nostalgia, teenage girls who got pregnant and their children were heavily stigmatised and paid the price. People who married as teenagers divorced more often. When divorce was not available due to laws, the nad marriage remained bad including domestic violence and such.

It is not just that she won't get education even if she had brain for it. She will have hard time getting and keeping job. She will be completely dependent of help of other people and such situation royally sux. Which does not mean she won't be lonely, because when you depend on people they are less likely to treat you like an equality friend.

Lack of respect toward blue colar translates into much less respect for both pregnant teenager and homemaker. The reality is, the warm homemaker happily making cookies is largely rose colored fiction. It kind of ignores reality of it all, for both genders. Men prefered being with male friends over warm home anyway and women were butt of joke anyway.

Speaking about loneliness, being stay at home mom can be loneliest experience ever. Lonely guys who have jobs and online games are not nearly as lonely as homemaker situation.

Edited to add: you know the stereotype of women being on the phone so much and being extremely talkative? Both are because homemaker is completely alone whole day doing everything alone except when she is on the phone and thus talks more in social situation or when husband comes home.

Agreed, traditional values are often seen through rose-colored glasses. We trade one set of problems for another. Domestic violence, unhappiness, worse economic outcomes absolutely necessitated women’s empowerment. I agree with all of your points, but wonder if we threw out the baby with the bath water in some ways. Like, in the past, traditionally defined gender norms left little choice for people who wanted something else for the lives. And now, maybe our newly constructed gender norms are restricting the choice for people who might want something else - something more ‘traditional’.

My whole point is that people, men and women, shouldn’t be stigmatized for following traditional gender norms any more than they should be stigmatized for creating new ones, and I feel like that may not be the case today.

All of this hinges on my initial point that lowered rates of fertility are caused more by culural reasons than lowered sperm count or the availability of abortion. I’ve got no real evidence to back that up, maybe it’s just plastic in our water. Doesn’t seem like any of the researchers in the article know either.

My points were not about what who wants, but what happens after they get it. A guy may want traditional marriage, and still may grow resentful when it leaves him stuck in job he hates while wife does less and have additional demands on him at home. The wife at home won't really appreciate his issues, because she has zero experience with any of that.

The traditional roles split worked as long as there was a lot of real home work and not much choice. Then it worked as status symbol for a while, but it was status wifes who eventually rebelled.

Unmarried teenage pregnancy is not what people generally means when they talk about traditional role of gender. Unmarried pregnant teenager is better off now compared to whatever you means by traditional time.

Large reason for lowered teenage pregnancy rates is sexual education - kids know about contraception and know to use it. Conversely sexual discussion being taboo in the past meant more teenagers pregnant.

Having children at all is a severe negative impact on the economic prospects of women of any age. Once you have children you're out of the career grind for a few months and you get back into the game with a lower participation rate (fewer hours, for example).

The impact on education is easily avoidable by doing exactly what the parent commenter suggested: having children in extended families so the mother isn't the sole or primary caregiver for the new child. This frees the mother up to finish school, continue her career, etc.

Economic prospects aren't everything. Life is more than that, and many people place a high value on family.

Lots of the trouble with "teen pregnancy" is really not about age. It's about not having a stable marriage with a decent breadwinner. Pregnancy in the mid-late teen years is biologically ideal.

Dropping out of college or even high school isn't so bad. It makes perfect sense if you value children and think that family comes first. You have to start early if you want to have a big healthy family.

I’ll wager the vast majority of teenage pregnancies don’t come from a stable marriage with a decent breadwinner. This reads to me as practically naive to make a worldly claim.

Because there are different issues at play and you're only willing to look at the economic impact.

And if that family does not work out the way old school romance books write about, then you are f-ed along with children. The father is f-ed too for that matter. Parental stress is game change for children who are more likely to become target of parental frustration. The divorce rates for young marriages are higher then those for people who marry older.

High school drop outs with or without children do very badly in this economy. But when you have children while relying on unstable minimum wage income from irregular hours, then it is all triple harder.

Lastly, teenage years are not biologically ideal. Teenagers have more pregnancy complications, including expensive ones and dangerous ones. As in, having child during your twenties is healthier for you and child. Both under 18 and over 35 are associated with more risks.

The situation is normally happily-ever-after for people who choose to make it so. FWIW, I know a pair of couples who started dating in middle school and married as soon as legally possible, and they are happy decades later. It helps to have a strong sense of duty and responsibility in your culture.

Not that the current economy is bad, because it isn't and many high school dropouts are getting jobs now, but I'm not seeing how that relates to the economic well-being of a full-time mother. The father could be a decade older, settled into a career as a petroleum engineer or stock trader.

It's a given that a study of pregnancy age will fail to compensate for factors unrelated to age. The big and obvious one: on average, there is something different about the personality of a person who gets pregnant at that age. (and thus unhealthful choices, etc.) I do not accept any claims to have properly accounted for non-age factors. The ideal age is going to depend on your DNA (when do you reach full size where it counts?) but FWIW that is likely near age 16 for many people.

Because American society punishes pregnancy. There is no practical reason why teenagers who get pregnant can't have a full education.

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