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Comment by paxys | Hacker News Reader

You are assuming that people not wanting to have kids has to do with some worldwide sentiment rather than the simple reality on the ground – it is just not financially viable anymore. Costs like housing, healthcare and college tuition have risen thousands of percent more than inflation and wage growth in the last few decades. More and more households have both spouses working full time and still not able to afford a decent house or minor luxuries. Add in childcare, education, supplies and more for 1-2 kids and the math simply doesn't add up.

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I think this way of looking at things is rather recent historically speaking, and may in fact be part of the antinatalist sentiment you are trying to refute. Globally, improved standards of living have decreased birthrates, not increased them. If the real reason was finances, this would not happen. I think you have to consider peoples' shifting priorities, and look at what is expected culturally.

Look at our recent ancestors. There was a baby boom after WWII when times were good, but before then in the 1930s, people still had a net positive birthrate. This was true throughout our history except in the very worst of times. People simply prioritized having children. Children were the luxury. People were willing to have leaner times in order to have children. They were not considered a burden or a drain. They were a gift, for which a temporary sacrifice of small luxuries was considered worth it.

One could argue that the increased availability of contraception was a big part of the cause, and that people wanted less children but couldn't achieve that. But really contraception was available long before birthrates started declining, and what changed most of all was cultural attitudes towards contraception.

If you want to talk history, people would have 15-20 kids, 4 would survive to adulthood, and would be put to work in the fields to support the family. Daughters would often be abandoned or killed at birth because they were considered a burden. Developed countries have lower birth rates because (1) they don't need the extra labor and (2) more women have careers and don't want to keep popping out kids. None of it has anything to do with children being a "gift". Practical concerns have always and will always win out.

We don't even need to speculate. Ask married couples in the US who are eager to start a family what they are waiting for, and better financial security will be #1 on the list.

> We don't even need to speculate. Ask married couples in the US who are eager to start a family what they are waiting for, and better financial security will be #1 on the list.

I understand this. My point was, almost every previous generation lived with objectively less financial security and a lower standard of living, and they still chose to have more children. We can't say people are more financially insecure than before. It just isn't true, on the whole. So, logically speaking, it must be true that those same concerns would often not have stopped this hypothetical couple's grandparents or great grandparents... Because they didn't. And I don't think you can say in good faith that they all had more children for monetary reasons like labor.

Look at first generation immigrants from third world countries. They tend to have a ton more kids than the existing populace, while at the same time being much poorer than average. Then, by the 2nd (or 3rd) generation, that birthrate difference disappears completely. I bet if you were to ask this group why, they would talk about financial insecurity. But that didn't stop their parents (or grandparents), despite being much more financially insecure.

So besides being more well off, what else changes between 1st and 3rd generation immigrants? Integration into the Western culture.

We don't even need to look back into history, right here today poorer regions have higher birth rates.

Ergo: A poorer society has more children. A richer society has fewer children.

It's a phenomenon that continues to flabbergast me.

Logic would seem to indicate that a more plentiful environment (a richer society) would lead to more children due to a surplus of life's necessities. But the reality is the exact opposite.

I don't know why this is the case, but it's flabbergasting. It almost seems like evolution strives to eliminate those that find too much success.

Perhaps - 1) The people in the richer society are exposed to more ideas and options than the people in poorer societies, which makes them evaluate having/not having children vs "have them because everyone does it" 2) The people in richer societies have a social security net/wealth to fall back on in their old age, whereas the poorer societies are always "hand to mouth" without having the luxury of any retirement savings - all their time and energy goes just for basic survival - and they need children to support them in their old age.

>Logic would seem to indicate that a more plentiful environment (a richer society) would lead to more children due to a surplus of life's necessities.

Based on seeing my wife’s experience of pregnancy, childbirth, and breastfeeding, without any complications, I would not agree the above statement.

Based on speaking to my women members of my family, friends, and the data, it is evident that childbirth/child rearing is a costly undertaking, not measurable in any “normal” amount of money.

So logically, I would expect women to have a couple kids (due to wanting to be mothers, or whatever), but each additional kid is at a very high marginal cost (on their body).

I would posit poorer regions have higher birthrates simply because women lack the knowledge and power to obtain and use contraception. Even in poorer regions, giving women freedom (economic freedom and security such that they are deciding when to get pregnant), and access to contraception will make the birthrate drop.

>>> A poorer society has more children. A richer society has fewer children. >>>It's a phenomenon that continues to flabbergast me.

Poor people can't afford hobbies, vacations, or VR headsets. So they spend what leisure time they have doing a highly-rewarding activity that is free: fucking. Do that enough times, and eventually people stop pulling out.....and boom population growth.

Also wealthier people with hobbies perhaps become inherently a bit anti-social (maybe I'm projecting...)? The value proposition of dopamine-delivering activities exceeds the perceived value of childrearing?

Just my 2 Yen...

Do the richer societies actually have surplus as in the money used to buy these things? At least on the middle-class or working class level? Sure they can afford more stuff than poorer countries, but do they have higher relative surplus? While they are richer, many things are lot more expensive in relation.

Is the surplus actually enough to feed, house, cloth, entertain etc. the children? Maybe poorer have cheaper costs thus their surplus can better afford this as the quality desired is lower?

AKA Education

Financial security is the reason - if people don't have financial security, they'll expect their children to care for them in their old age when they're unable to earn. That's the case in most (all?) immigrants cultures - children are expected to, and do, take care of their parents in their old age (exceptions are always there ofc).

After families are established and have financial security, they no longer need to rely on their children in their old age - at which point it becomes a choice.

>Look at first generation immigrants from third world countries. They tend to have a ton more kids than the existing populace, while at the same time being much poorer than average.

The data below indicates otherwise.

I assume it is because contraception is far more available.

See figure 3, showing foreign born vs native born statistics for US. Both show big drops in fertility rate between 1990 and 2019:

https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2022/04/fertility-rat...

This website has graphs showing steep declines in birthrates for immigrants:

https://cis.org/Report/Fertility-Among-Immigrants-and-Native...

>In 2019, immigrant fertility dropped below 2.1 children on average, which is the level necessary to replace the existing population.

>But really contraception was available long before birthrates started declining, and what changed most of all was cultural attitudes towards contraception.

The important statistic would be birthrates after women gained access to convenient and obtainable (cheap or subsidized) contraception.

Did women really have access to effective contraception before the sharp drop in this graph? Or were they having kids because they did not have control over it?

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SPDYNTFRTINUSA

It seems to me, anecdotally, that the number of kids you have is inversely correlated with the amount of money you earn. My blue collar friends have the third kid in the oven, my DINK attorney friends are worried about "financial viability" while they watch their fertility window slip away...

Is your blue collar friend religious and the dink is not? In my personal experience that has been a better indicator because the religious educated people have kids and the non religious blue collars tend to have less kids

Is it possible your blue collar friends are more financially secure than your DINK attorney friends?

An attorney could be 26 and hundreds of thousands in debt and effectively earning $30 per hour working 60 hour weeks earning $100k per year, while a plumber/hvac/welder/electrician/etc could be earning $100k per year with no debt by the time they are 25.

1) Healthcare and college tuition are a much bigger problem in the USA than e.g. in Europe, and yet birth rates have fallen more in Europe.

2) Citation needed for housing vs wages for the "last few decades". Price-to-income ratios have increased only a little bit before 2020 compared to either 1950 or 2000, as far as I remember.

3) If you take a given region (e.g. Europe, or East Asia) birth rates have fallen more in more affluent countries.

Note how the GP says "worldwide", not "in Palo Alto" ;)

> Healthcare and college tuition are a much bigger problem in the USA than e.g. in Europe, and yet birth rates have fallen more in Europe.

Immigration is a huge confound here: for many years the U.S. had a younger population for that reason but since the rise of nativism that’s been changing.

Europe is also far from a monolith. I’d have to search for an article I read a few months back but they found that while healthcare is important the main differentiating factors were basically support for families with very young children and helping mothers go back to work. IIRC, France was doing pretty well because they had things like gap childcare so it’s not a question of, say, someone having to only consider jobs which allow them to be available to pick a 5 year old up every day at 3:30.

That goes back to the rational actor explanation: if women are marginally employed, as was often the case historically when many jobs excluded them outright, the tradeoff for having another child was lower. If women can have full careers, the desire to have more children is forced into conflict with the professional and financial rewards for alternatives (especially if it’s hard to later re-enter the workforce).

What if the problem is the cost of degrees? I think it's possible that many degrees are not worth the money and maybe we should stop encouraging people to get them. In most cases that seems like a reasonable conclusion. Degrees are also probably creating a lot of social problems I won't discuss.

They laden people, in particular women, with debt. Women have more student loan and other debt than men. This makes them feel obligated to work for corporations that don't care about them in mediocre jobs. Some degrees are necessary but many I think are completely superfluous.

The push to go to college/university "just because" is by far one of the biggest ripoff lies told in our time.

You go into higher education when your life goals require it, eg: you get a medical degree because you need one to become a doctor.

The way most people go about higher education today is bass ackwards, going to college/university and then figuring out what you want to do. That more than likely isn't going to amount to anything besides useless debt and precious time wasted.

This is a US-centric view. Even in countries where higher education is free (and you even get a living stipend), birth rates have dropped

Yeah, after moving to Finland which is a fantastic place to raise kids financially, and seeing the birth rates around here I'm actually much more convinced it _is_ a global vibe shift moreso than a straight economic concern.

My conspiracy theory is that kids used to inject a lot more novelty into the lives of adults, but now that hunger for novelty is now much more readily filled by books / videos / interesting work.

ya I agree. I was talking about the affordability of living for couples especially since I know people who are in this situation. The fertility decline is a much bigger issue that I think obtaining degrees is one particular symptom of. That topic is probably not a good one for HN discussion unfortunately.

I have a hard time believing that it is financial because even high earning SWEs are skipping it. Feels a lot more like both parties want a career than an inability to afford.

Also an issue is, that most newly constructed apartments are just one bedroom, the ones with two or three bedrooms are mostly unaffordable, so where to put the kids?

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