Fertility rate: 'Jaw-dropping' global crash in children being born | Hacker News Reader

Fertility rate: 'Jaw-dropping' global crash in children being born

bbc.co.uk

24 pointsneverminder39 comments

We've wrung our hands for more than half a century over an exploding population, hoping the curve would peak before we overrun our own instinctual bad behavior. Now it's happening, we can fear this, too. Yeah, it means a lot of old people. The math has always been the same.

"Oh no. If I draw this trend out in a straight line, it crashes against limits!"

The hand-wringing is because people realise that humanity is not in control of a crucial variable which will affect our long-term future, namely the global fertility rate.

Just because that number is set to transition from above replacement level to below replacement level doesn't mean we're now able to set it to whatever we want.

I think people are in control of a crucial variable which will affect our long-term future, but they're women which makes some people upset.

Individual people have at best partial control over the decisions they make, and I don't think that any particular set of women, or even all women collectively, have complete control over the global fertility rate. To give just one example, some women may be infertile, despite their wishes.

There is a coordination problem here, and even if all women could agree on the correct average global fertility level, and perfectly implement a fair quota system among themselves, I think there are other stakeholders who should be considered in that process: not just the men that might be involved in the raising of some of those children, but also the future generations of humanity that will only exist (or will exist in a very different environment) if the global fertility level goes outside a band of sustainability.

The hand-wringing has been mostly among the general public. For demographers, a half-century ago is when the population boom worries ended. They noticed that as countries got richer, fertility decreased.

That touched off a population worry by connecting (a) rich country births were down, and (b) poor country births were still going up. The demographers were already worried about inverted pyramids in the 70s, and already knew the solution (immigration). But it was way easier for people to be scared.

The math has always been the same and the actual scientists have understood it for at least a half century. What to do with it is pretty complex.

I think there are several factors that are causing this:

* Gender equality. Because more women are now financially independent, they don't have to marry and/or have children and choose career instead.

* Hypergamy. There are millions of high achieving single women in their 30s who struggle to find a partner while at the same time their fertility is falling.

* Divorce statistics. Divorce rate is high, most divorces are initiated by women and most men end up losing a lot, which causes more men to abstain from marriage and/or kids.

* Ever rising cost of life and standards. In UK for instance real estate prices are growing way out of proportion compared to income.

* Culture telling women that if they desire to be a full-time mother they're inferior to career women.

"Inferior" in the sense of less highly paid - well, yeah. I don't think this is a gendered thing, simply the fact that people pay you to do work but not to have kids. Nobody can afford to have kids on a single parent's income anymore.

> Nobody can afford to have kids on a single parent's income anymore.

What? My wife hasn't worked in 15 years and we have 7 children at home. I'm not rich, we just budget.

Not rich? What percentile do you think your net worth is? That home of yours, that's big enough to house 7 kids - you own it?

Buddy - you're rich. You don't seem to realize how utterly out of reach your lifestyle is to the vast majority of people.

Dude my house is less than 2,000 square feet. I think you're making a lot of assumptions.

I don't think this is fair. I've known lots of big families at median income or lower and like the GP says, it's about budgeting and priorities. There's a big difference in the cost per kid of having two in daycare, then each with their own room, their own new clothes, etc, vs 7 kids cared for by a parent, wearing hand me downs, eating home cooked meals, etc.

Wow, you sure seem to know a lot about this person you've never met before!

Hell hath no fury like someone who thinks some other person has too much on the internet.

That isn't the reality in the USA. I know lots of people who have done this. Many of them have ordinary jobs. One with a pair of kids has the man earning about $60,000 today, with a career that switches back and forth between making concrete block walls and making picture frames. Another person is a handyman with, last I heard, 9 kids. Another person is a shift manager at a care facility for the mentally unwell, with 7 kids.

People with better-paying jobs have more of course. I know a person with 11 kids, doing technical training I believe. I have 12 kids, supported on a career involving low-level software.

The UK tax system is also hostile to families. No joint tax burden in a family makes it really tough. Lots of policies would have to change to encourage people to have children. Cost of going from a 1 bedroom apartment to 2-3 bedroom flat/house is also a large jump.

This seems like a culture-war projection, rebuttable from the difference in fertility rates between places like the US (high divorce, expensive divorce, minimal social safety net, higher fertility) and places like Japan or low-fertility European countries.

Eh, we've long had a supply glut, and labor glut in particular. I think this won't be as bad as they say, based on the out of date theories based on a more supply-constrained past.

It's hard to find good people in this world. The economics make it harder for more good people to be finding themselves.

Just doing it anyways & bearing your lack of fulfilment has a certain dignity, but I think the overall push & desire to manifest oneself & know oneself before springing forth a next generation is a great & wise push, is a powerful form of earnesty.

I'm having a hard time finding a potential mate myself. There's lots of wonderful, smart, nice people. But I have a hard time imagining long term compatibility, don't see the kind of excited engaged open mix of disposition & opportunity that I feel so lucky to be getting to live. The wavelenghts to share & witness each other are narrow. I don't know a source or what not, but the "you're not competing with other people to date me, you're competing with my alone time" idea rings strong, I think, for many. I love humanity & other people a lot, but the social disconnect between people is real, and I'm glad to see people working much much harder being much more picky about finding each other, seeking connections. Even though it has problems. Even though, ultimately, much of the purpose is kids, kids we're raising, who we'll near certainly end up fairly disconnected from us, living their own lives, in many ways.

We also have a much more world-conscious outlook today. What we can imagine ourselves as being, becoming, takes place on a much bigger stage than it used to for most. This is, for sure, coupled closely to the journey of finding ourselves & recognizing each other that I talk about above.

I just struggle with women actually wanting to date. Online dating nowadays just feels like texting but i somehow have to be capable of it all. Like, I'm human. I have failures and didn't live a perfect life. Just kinda irks me when most women seem to be the ones not wanting to commit just cause they've got a wealth of options.

> Some countries have tried policies such as enhanced maternity and paternity leave, free childcare, financial incentives and extra employment rights, but there is no clear answer.

At least maternity & paternity leaves are a different beast altogether and shouldn't be included in the equation. They should be a basic human right as parents need their time to take care of their child. If you remove that, you create many problems for the young human. Many Europeans take it for granted they can take care of the bayby for a year or so not realizing there are countries where the mother has to go back to work after a couple of weeks or the state doesn't guarantee any leave - I have no idea what these poor parents do in such a situation.

People are broke, government isn't helping. Surprised?

pretty much the reverse is true. Families are large in countries that are broke and have weak states (the only ones still growing) because family equals insurance and welfare. This dynamic is also true within rich societies. (marginalized migrants living outside of state support systems have large families, educated affluent citizens fewer)

In countries with extremely supportive states and low inequality like Finland the birth rate is very low still. (1.4). It's simply a matter of choice.

That would usually mean birthrate goes up; fertility tends to decline both with overall prosperity and, at any level of prosperity, strength of social safety nets. Both collapsing would not explain declining fertility.

It wouldn't surprise me in the least if, upon closer inspection via a study, it turns out that one of the reasons is people don't want to bring children into a world that's as broken as this one currently is.

Declining infant mortality rates are a big factor, too. People used to have big families because you could expect a third of them to die.

also because of

- lack of birth control - child labor - children used as retirement support for elderly parents

> children used as retirement support for elderly parents

also known as living in a loving family

Sure, but this not known at time of conception

And this is from 2020, I guess post covid the numbers will be even more dire. Maybe investing massively in ectogenesis is the solution.

Pretty much every environmental problem we have will be reduced if not solved with less people, especially in the first world.

But many 1st world populations continue to increase, despite (for some time now) sub-replacement fertility.

Immigration.

The economy steadily shrinking because of a graying population is going to put environmentalism on the back-burner indefinitely, making our environmental problems much, much worse.

It won't keep graying indefinitely, that's mathematically impossible.

This planet makes no sense without humans.

It makes perfect sense with less humans though. There wouldn't be anything wrong with settling on a billion people.

Why does it need to make sense

Because life is progress. The universe would make no sense without anyone utilising it from gametheoretical accounts.

The easiest way to stop the ,,inverted pyramid'' structure is to reverse aging, which will probably happen in the next 20, at most 30 years. We just started to create aging clocks in the last 5 years, it's much easier to reverse what you can measure. Many people would happily go back to work if they could get back their youth in return.

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