Comment by bhouston | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bhouston | Hacker News Reader

I think that the commonality in places that are having falling birth rates are:

- expensive housing

- very expensive to raise kids, e.g. day care.

- women expected to remain in the workforce, or they need to remain in the workforce because of the cost of living.

This makes kids seem incredibly inconvenient and also it isn't clear your kids will have a better life than yours. Kids are not a joy, but a burden.

I think we need to let the primary caregivers of children, women or man, not have to have a stressful a full-time job while raising kids.

Also we need affordable housing and affordable child care.

Big cities are not setup for this - the bigger the city the more expensive and inconvenient raising kids are. Thus the remote work trend may be part of the solution to this. I also think that living in rural areas is pro-fertility (for these same reasons) and given that this tends to trend Republican, there is likely a Republican pro-fertility advantage over the long term, at least in North America.

BTW any notice that Elon Musk says we need more kids while at the same time has cut parental benefits and also killed work at home at his companies? Also he pushes "hard core" hours that would annoying any parents. That guy doesn't make sense to me.

People keep saying economic factors dont matter, but having a comfortable home is key. It was the norm for most of human history; you could simply build one by yourself. It is probably still true in dirt-poor places with high-fertility rates. Family is conceptually proportional to a person's property and the tiny or temporary 21th century spaces just don't leave a lot of space for "let's have a kid"

(I think that 's the reason why the US has higher fertility that europe: bigger homes)

Large houses also feel empty, and then you want to fill it. Also a large house lets you get away from the kids when you or they need it, which leads to happiness. And having a yard or a street where they can play with friends is also amazing. I'd be so paranoid about my kids safety if I lived in a crowded downtown core.

Half the Swedish population lives in apartments, but 70% of the children live in houses.

As our cities grow larger, chasing higher concentration and productivity, the costs of owning a house within reasonable commuting distance soar. So instead we cram into little shoeboxes where we do not even have enough space for ourselves, let alone children.

Urban populations have historically never been able to maintain their population without people moving in from elsewhere. But this century we are going to see 80% of humanity live in cities. There won't be enough people elsewhere to fill up the empty apartments left by childless city-dwellers.

what will be the consequence of this? (deurbanization ? )

Cities have been places where people come to work, live, and die without continuing their line for millennia.

Cities generally vote Democrat, but minorities do too and they have higher fertility than rural whites, who are predominantly Republican.

But I would be wary of drawing any conclusions for future voting patterns from current demographic trends. Politics and the trends can change in mere months or years, the impact of the trends on politics takes decades to emerge.

Elon Musk has probably realized that wealthy white people like him will become a smaller and smaller part of the global population if they cannot reproduce their numbers. Naturally he doesn't include his employees in this important group.

An aristocrat worried about the nobility dying out wouldn't encourage the peasantry to reproduce.

> Cities have been places where people come to work, live, and die without continuing their line for millennia.

Has it? Interesting. I didn't know what.

> But I would be wary of drawing any conclusions for future voting patterns from current demographic trends. Politics and the trends can change in mere months or years, the impact of the trends on politics takes decades to emerge.

Can you explain more?

For example, a group such as Hispanic voters can be slowly growing over decades as a result of higher fertility.

But their voting patterns may change from one election cycle to another. Hispanic voters are not so solidly Democrat as they have been. So if in 2006 you forecast that the growth of the Hispanic community would tip the scales in favor of Democrats by 2016, you'd be in for a surprise.

I used to think that the future of the US was Democrat rule due to demographics, now I'm not so sure. I think other factors will weigh heavier.

You can do a forecast assuming everything stays static, and note the point where fertility will be the deciding factor. But because fertility is such a slow process compared to most of politics, your forecast would be quite inaccurate.

I suppose the best summary I can make is that political party messaging and voter group preferences will evolve a lot faster than group sizes due to differences in fertility. Trends in turnout are more relevant in your typical political timescale. By the time fertility has had an impact, your forecast is far enough into the future that you have a lot of unknown unknowns, and so it doesn't tell you that much.

I'm sorry if that doesn't make it clearer, it's quite late on a Friday for me but I decided to leave all explanations I could think of so you can pick which ones make sense. I might be wrong too, of course. I have no relevant qualifications in the subject.

Thanks this is informative. I understand what you are saying.

> An aristocrat worried about the nobility dying out wouldn't encourage the peasantry to reproduce.

Well-stated. And it makes me wonder why anyone wants to work for the guy.

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