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Comment by mxfh | Hacker News Reader

So far the consesus was that migrants from traditonally child rich societies, acclimated already a generation later at local lower levels if prosperitiy and education level was reached as well. So it's the economy and social stability through the state that replaces children as the only "pension and care" provider for retirement.

FRANCE: "We show a convergence towards French standards that differs across groups of origin. Women of Southeast Asian descent deviate from the fertility pattern of their parents, while those of Turkish descent preserve their parents’ cultural heritage. These different paths of adaptation between groups partly reflect cultural distance between parents’ country and host country. They also depend on family social capital, family structure, and family values. Access to a higher level of education is a crucial factor in erasing differences between groups" https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02081758/document

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Desire to have children has been under selection only since the demographic transition. Most of the world has less than two generations of selection, most one, some none. As such we would expect to see a lot of variation in desire to have children. The only group I’d be willing to bet money have notably higher desire to have children than other human populations are the French because that’s where the demographic transition started. For everyone else on average we should expect more or less the same mean and variance.

Then the environment changes in one, or in two ways. People move to another country, or not, and their culture gets exposed to modernity/the demographic transition. If they move to another country the culture they’re surrounded by will change, which will change when their children think it’s appropriate to marry, how many children they want, etc. It will do nothing to their genes, including their desire to have children.

But all over the world the selection is ongoing. As time goes on the proportion of the population that wants lots of children increases and so do the number of large families.

Genetic and sociological explanations can both be true at the same time. Mormons have more children than average for sociological reasons. They value and honour child rearing and family life far, far more than normal Americans. People whose parents had 6+ children also have more children than average, possibly partly due to role model effects, but mostly because they like children. There’s nothing incompatible about these explanations.

I suspect that “Southeast Asian” women observed had different religion than those where “fertility pattern of their parents” is preserved.

Not all religions have the same effect on the outcomes, ignoring that in the studies is misleading.

What it is pussyfooting around is that there is not that drastic of a drop in fertility rates of muslims.

I guess it shouldn't be hard to conceive where Islamic parties start having a major voice in elections because of demographics.

By numbers, global fertility/population trends and religion are not a "muslim" one, that's a made up western "identity" problem. If anything it's catholic to evangelical sectionism, if you look at Western Africa.

Overall religion is secondary at best, but economically weak tribal/familiy social nucleus cultures vs established nation states that provide reliable social safety not just for relatives.

"It's the Economy, stupid", look at fertility rates of Saudi Arabi, Iran, UAE Poland vs Nigeria.

The post that I was replying to was talking exactly about fertility rates of second, third and beyond generation immigrants in Netherlands.

And what was found is that females from south-east Asia had a big drop in fertility whereas Turks continued to have large families, comparatively.

So, no, the above research specifically disproves your argument.

Fertility rates across better-developed majority-Muslim countries have been plummeting: https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&...

Not quite to the extent of some white European populations, sure, but very far from the "breeding like rabbits" image that politicians use to drum up fear among uninformed voters.

How is the statistic of lower dipping fertility rates inside Muslim countries of relevance when talking about:

> the "breeding like rabbits" image that politicians use to drum up fear among uninformed voters

The fertility rates of muslim immigrants are far higher than the natives which will lead to a decisive demographic and political shift, which is what those politicians are talking about.

If you want to know anything about future demographics, just look at a school. Should not be that hard honestly.

So if first generation migrants have a greater fertility, it can indeed affect demographics to a large degree. Because you need exactly one generation to do so. Obviously.

And it should also be obvious that lower fertility stems from multiple factors. Birth control is one, modern work structure is the other. I am certain there are more.

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