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Comment by hunglee2 | Hacker News Reader

declining fertility rate seems to be a universal characteristic of economic development.

The elimination of poverty requires universal provision of education, women get educated, have less (no kids), birth rate drops and keeps dropping below the threshold of population stability.

I don't think there is any example of a society that has managed to reverse this trend. Maybe Ceaucescu Romania which at one point banned contraception and abortion, leading of course to the orphan crisis of the 1980's. Counter intuitively, devastating wars / famine also lead to post-crisis population boom, perhaps because education / career are entirely disrupted.

We probably need to think seriously about making people outside of the natural womb, can't see another way to reverse this trend outside of the above mentioned measures / circumstances

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I'm not sure it's quite universal, and I'm not quite sure it's related to women being educated.

From where I sit, the relative cost of kids goes up. In major cities:

- Kids are expected to have their own bedrooms

- The cost of a 3-bedroom apartment is beyond the means of most families of child-bearing age

- For most people, life is debt-driven. Mortgage. Credit card. College. Etc.

- Work is out-of-the-house, so kids need child care, which is a major expense. With schools, kids still need child care after school. This is different from kids hanging out on a farm.

I'd like a big family, but I can't afford a big family. Ironically, my (poor) ancestors could.

A lot of this has to do with issues like zoning and building codes as well. Homes are /expensive/ to build in the US.

Child care 0-5 is like a second mortgage. I paid more for one kid than I did for mortgage- in Seattle of all places. If you have 2 it’s like having 3 houses. That’s not affordable or sustainable in Major cities

Same here. My nanny makes more than I did at my first job out of college as an electrical engineer (wasn't long enough ago for inflation to have that large of an impact either). Childcare is our highest monthly expense, more so than housing (mortgage). I consider myself fairly fortunate, I don't know how other people do it. Once the kids are both in full time school, that same monthly budget will have to be diverted to college savings too, so it's not like it's even a temporary thing (if you want your children to get an education and not be saddled with lifelong debt, that is).

2 kids in an urban pre-school was way more than my mortgage.

I hear you. It will be interesting to compare birth rate in countries with different cost-of-living, stronger welfare state etc.

> I'd like a big family, but I can't afford a big family. Ironically, my (poor) ancestors could.

It's still doable but you have to sacrifice your standards of living, a tough trade-off to make.

One parent has to give up on having a job that’s the only way for most people.

It’s worth pointing out that in a lot of countries, there’s also an inverse relationship between household income and fertility rate. Often those positioned to afford more kids choose not too. Similarly, even countries with extremely generous maternal benefits don’t see significant boosts in their fertility.

> A lot of this has to do with issues like zoning and building codes as well.

The general trend of richer countries having fewer babies holds even in countries with wildly different zoning laws and expectations around living conditions. Japan’s fertility rate fell below replacement a long time ago, and even countries like India and Mexico are now at or below replacement levels.

For any given material explanation one can point to, there are clear counterexamples of countries without that material problem which still has a low fertility rate.

I'm not so sure. I think it's a mistake to look at this on a country-wide basis:

- The cost-of-living in India in Bangalore or Mumbai -- at a standard to afford a family -- is astronomical for relatively educated individuals making $10k/year. That's where affluent people live. It's not until you get into the real elites making $100k/year that it's easy again. That's the same worldwide. Even very poor countries have areas where these dynamics kick in.

- Where many poor people live, for example, on rural farms, it's possible to have lots of kids.

"Generous maternal benefits" don't come anywhere close to filling this gap.

> "Generous maternal benefits" don't come anywhere close to filling this gap.

You would expect some effect though, yet Northern Europe and Japan continue to have extremely low birth rates despite the efforts of their governments.

Also, many European countries saw fertility rates drop a long time ago, often back when housing was much, much cheaper. IIRC countries like Sweden and Norway dropped below replacement levels in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

I don't know Sweden and Norway well enough to comment. From my experience in other parts of Europe, the situation was more complex.

In countries I've been in, that period coincided with a move from farms, where land was ample, to cities, which were cramped. Big family housing wasn't really available; those cities had apartments which simply didn't really support larger families. Cost wasn't so much an issue for having a cramped 2 or 3 bedroom in the sixties, but beyond that, you moved into ultra-wealthy territory.

So I guess my question is whether you could write a little bit more about the Scandinavian countries. That's my own ignorance speaking.

Japanese cities are super-cramped. I would not want a big family in Tokyo.

Up to a few adjustment factors, you'd expect the average nanny to cost the same as the average woman's salary, unless nannies have large economies of scale.

Those adjustment factors would be things like -- what percentage of women have children, how many children do they have, how many children does the average nanny care for...

We could work through the various supply and demand factors, but, basically, whether compensated formally or not, if you hold the fertility rate fixed, then you also hold the amount-of-childcare fixed. There's some kind of conservation rule at work.

You can make the model a little bigger by including all the raising-of-children in those countries that are net exporters of people. Which there will be fewer and fewer of.

I understand Israel has a booming population: https://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/israel-populatio...

Israel is also booming economically as it is the 24th in terms of GDP per capita now and rising: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi... Israel has the 2nd largest per capita VC investment in the world: https://news.crunchbase.com/news/countries-most-startup-inve...

What are they doing that others are not?

Combination of religious groups that favor big families plus immigration from low income countries where large families are still commmon?

Iirc Israel's large Orthodox community is responsible for most of the growth

https://www.timesofisrael.com/haredi-population-growing-twic...

two factors in Israel might explain

1) immigration - of course Israel grants the right of every Jewish person to live in Israel, in fact paid an incentive to relocate. Presumably there a constant inflow from the Jewish diaspora and their descendants which might supplement the population

2) orthodox families, I'm guessing, have outsized families. Where women do not participate in the market economy, they end up having lots of kids instead

Again, no idea on the percentage contributions of either of these cases, but it might go some way toward explaining Israel's countervailing trend!

> Where women do not participate in the market economy

It's not just women. Somewhere around half of Haredi men do not work.

> Somewhere around half of Haredi men do not work.

Or, stated less pejoratively, somewhere around half of Haredi men devote their lives to scholarship.

Scholarship which has produced what findings?

Or stated more practically, somewhere around half of Haredi men are given handouts by the state to do no productive work.

Israel is a lifeboat not an office.

Well the boat won't be able to go anywhere if an increasing number of the occupants refuse paddle. Also, gentle reminder that more Jews live in the US than in Israel.

I mean I'm not a huge fan of Israel due to their history, but to say that the religious scholar class in Israel does no productive work is strange. Just because they don't make anything you can sell for a profit, doesn't mean they don't add very real value to people's lives

How do they get money?

Handouts from the state. Haredi tend to be very non-consumerist so they make do with little money.

I encountered (but did not shake hands with! ;) a lot of conservative women with 5+ kids in the workforce while in Israel. Much more than men, where I encountered less strict observance. It was a pretty interesting culture difference.

Israel has a large and growing ultra-Orthodox population, with an average of 7.1 children per woman among the ultra-Orthodox Jews: https://en.idi.org.il/articles/25385

The US has a similar fertility-focused religious movement, but it's much more fringe and relatively smaller. Religious beliefs can drive super-high birth rates in pretty much any society, but aside from Israel, higher education has been associated with lower rates of religious belief. Declining religious participation and intensity of belief may well be contributing to the fall in global birth-rates.

People are quick suggesting it is Orthodox, but in reality non-religious women in Israel have a fertility rate of 2.5, and overall contribution mounts over time as generations pass.

At the expense of growing and ultimately suffocating population density. Eventually, they will have to make adjustments to offset this problem.

Couldn't they just expand into neighboring countries and push the others out? Israel has a super well equipped military.

Oh man, don't lure me into this political flamewars, esp. the most vicious of all the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

Georgia and Israel. In Georgia's case, in 2007 the patriarch of the Georgian Orthodox Church offered to personally baptize and become the godfather to every third, fourth, fifth, etc. child born to married Georgian Orthodox couples. Birth rates subsequently went from ~1.5 to ~2.1, and have remained above replacement since then.

https://ifstudies.org/blog/in-georgia-a-religiously-inspired...

how very interesting. Religiosity definitely seems to be a common factor in high birth rate groups. Does not bode well for the atheists!

Atheists are made not born.

Worldwide, religiosity is increasing despite declines in the west because of birth rates in Africa and Latin America and robust growth of Christianity in China: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/aug/27/religion-why-is.... There are now more Christians in China than there are people in Germany and Spain combined.

There's a reason these major religions have lasted thousands of years, making the history of a country like America look short in comparison. Say what you will about them, but they obviously have value in that many of the most prosperous civilizations in the world today came from these traditions and still follow their general moral guidelines.

If a society wants to fix a population decline so badly, it should make having and raising children free or as low-cost as possible. I suspect most people avoid having kids due to the economic impact of their own lives, which shows that the wider society could really give a damn.

> If a society wants to fix a population decline so badly

But is it something that needs to be "fixed"?

It’s not a problem to be fixed. It’s a success story.

Each of my children have required some extra medical attention. As well as my wife's pregnancies. Total cost per child hovers around $100k so far.

But obviously no one can pay that so either it's insurance or it goes to collections. In my case it's insurance. Only I've got a high deductible plan. 5k deductible. And because pregnancies go 9 months there's a chance that any given pregnancy costs 10k.

Meanwhile I asked my mom how much her pregnancies cost (all three c sections). Apparently insurance basically picked up all costs such that only trivial amounts were left over.

We've been extremely lucky to have ways to afford our children's births so far. Nothing we planned for just things that happened that saved us a ton of money. I honestly am not sure how most people handle this financially.

> We probably need to think seriously about making people outside of the natural womb, can't see another way to reverse this trend outside of the above mentioned measures / circumstances

At this point, its pretty clear that naturally starting and carrying a developing fetus is not an issue. Its the cost of the child after its born that's the issue. Having a bunch of babies coming out of artificial wombs is a recipe for disaster if they have no parents.

Have you learned nothing from the single parent household pandemic? Single parent children have much worse life outcomes than dual parent households. Zero parents? I'd imagine that would be worse.

Yes, possibly dire consequences I agree. Two things not in a way of a rebuttal but to advance the dialogue

1) Artificial wombs ≠ no parents. Kids might just be handed over to folks who want to parent but don't want the pregnancy / birth.

2) Kids could be raised by the state. Has been done before, though generally as a form of military service, thinking specifically of the Ottoman devshirme system; granted they did abduction, but are a decent example of state managed child rearing

3) Maybe robots could do the parenting. Eventually they may be able to make a passable attempt at it. Reminded of the movie 'Mother' - a dystopia obviously but still...better than no be at all!

> We probably need to think seriously about making people outside of the natural womb, can't see another way to reverse this trend outside of the above mentioned measures / circumstances

Find a way to make the cost to parents zero over the lifetime of the kid for all the basics (child care, healthcare, food, clothing) and I bet rates shoot way up.

Having a kid is an extremely expensive luxury good right now. No wonder people are hesitant to do it.

If it wasn’t so cost prohibitive and so difficult to balance with work obligations I’d have 2-3 but one is hard enough

good point!

though having a kid being a luxury good is likely a persistent condition regardless of how strong the welfare state is, unless you actually go to the point of paying women to have more children (something we should try btw). Right now the incentives are weak - cash bonus in some countries, some form of income support in others - all pretty small beer, not enough to make a difference!

We don’t even understand the placebo effect, I’m not sure we should put our hopes into engineering biology.

> devastating wars / famine

These lead to people postponing kids for years, so they all have them at the same time after. People in general don't want to have babies in high risk high danger situations.

The fertility rate in the U.S. in the 1960s was around 3.5 and it wasn't exactly Afghanistan back then.

i guess its brave new world time, we should just make incubators and control the fetus oxygen according to the iq needs

yes! we need to embrace this, probably only way to keep population numbers stable

Serious question: Why do we need population numbers to be stable? Declining doesn't mean extinction. 8 billion people are doing a lot of damage to this planet that wasn't being done when we had 1 billion. A lot of people have publicly said they won't bring a child in a world that is dying.

extinction is indeed the risk. Population collapse is slow decline, steep fall, then exponential decrease. Agree with you on danger to the carrying capacity of the earth, but moderating population size seems instead to set an irreversible trend

There is no proof it is irreversible as we have ever better means of control.

> Population collapse is slow decline, steep fall, then exponential decrease.

You make it sound like this progression is inevitable like every slow decline is followed by a steep fall and then finally exponential bust which seems not very convincing.

Funny thing is impacts of austerity often constrains economic growth. People have their reasons for or against economic growth so it’s not an unadorned good. Someone like me with retirement savings wants economic growth so I support pro-natal and pro- immigration policy.

Less births -> less potential workers -> less workers -> less growth. Less growth is the one thing that sets almost every government off, be it micro- or macroeconomic.

It also creates friction politically, as the burden on the working populace increases due to a shift in working/non-working and almost no one wants to change for the worse. See the young vs the elderly and retirement ages, where the elderly will often vote for the young to carry the burden, and vice versa.

Long story short, it creates a situation where things have to change fundamentally or someone has to bite through the sour apple. Governments don't want to do either of these things.

This, then, just sounds to me like a great thing: to put pressure on changing things dramatically, through ultimately an existential crisis.

What, really, is humanity doing? What is the point? The idea that our existence itself is ultimately grounded in economic growth feels pretty thin; I imagine it is to even the staunchest capitalists on any reflection.

There to me, is something ultimately embarrassing about this "problem". Its kinda like we invested a lot of time and resources to throw a party, and when only a few people show up, we start to diagnose what's wrong with those people that didn't come, and never once consider that it was a shitty party.

The comment above was most likely sarcasm. Are you serious?

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