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Comment by mustafabisic1 | Hacker News Reader

Low birth rates are definitely becoming a mainstream problem.

I wouldn't discount us from finding a solution, but looks like a tough one.

The underlying problem is that having kids is sort of irrational, and the strong cultural pressure to do so anyway that used to be there is gone (there's still some pressure, but a far cry from what it used to be).

I say this as a dad: having a kid, especially the first few years, is like having the world's worst second job.

You get paid? No, you pay to have the job! Set hours? No, you're always on call! You might get an occasional break for a few hours, if you pay up for it! Decent working conditions? How does constantly cleaning up shit and piss sound? Ah, but you could get out of it if you change your mind, right? Sure...after your 18 year long contract is up.

Obviously I'm glossing over the emotional angle, but yeah, from a material perspective having kids is fucking dumb, and for all you know spending that time and money with existing friends and family would've actually left you happier overall. It's a big irrational gamble in a lot of ways.

Anyway, you can't fix all of that, but it would be possible for society, via the government, to fix some of it. For example, you could implement subsidies to the point where having kids had a net zero impact on your finances, so that you wouldn't be looking at lowered standard of living or reduced retirement savings from having children.

Of course many would object to this, because culturally we believe that parents should be people who accept a worse standard of living with a smile on their face. That's stupid, of course, which is exactly why birth rates are below replacement in pretty much all the developed world, and beyond. People may be okay with the emotional effort involved in raising children, but telling them to throw away going out as a couple, abandon most of their nicer vacations, blah blah blah isn't gonna sell the idea.

But in the great scheme of things, that's fine: because developing nations crank out many, many more bodies than they could ever feed. The worldwide rate of population growth is still massive, the only way to make things stable is to allow countries to slow down once they're wealthy enough.

Only Africa is growing. While their population is booming they can't replace the world.

Aside if wealth is a negative for evolutionary fitness then humanity won't stay wealthy for long.

> While their population is booming they can't replace the world.

I wouldn't be too sure about that. Global population is growing at an astonishing pace, and Malthus continues to be very popular (even here on HN, where people should know better).

> if wealth is a negative for evolutionary fitness

Wealth will eventually take us to other planets, which is arguably the pinnacle of evolutionary fitness.

Developing nations are supposed to develop themselves, not to replace our failures in enticing people to breed.

How are these nations supposed to develop when we lure their best of the young away every year, and lots of them don't even make it but die along the route in the Mediterranean or end up in a slave camp in Libya, Italy or Spain?

> How are these nations supposed to develop when we lure their best of the young away

The same way other countries did it (and still do): remittances.

Now, I'm not saying the current state of things is acceptable (it isn't), but it's not about stemming the flow as much as allowing it to be a net positive for the source countries.

Well, in theory some people will go back to their home country with skills, capital, and connections developed while in the richer countries, sensing opportunity in a faster growing market. I know I've read articles about this with Indians coming back from the states.

That said, many of these countries have issues with hilariously poor governance and civil society which handicaps growth and strangles the young's ambitions, so I don't blame anyone for leaving and not coming back either.

>the strong cultural pressure to do so anyway that used to be there is gone (there's still some pressure, but a far cry from what it used to be).

These days, the cultural pressure is to have 1-2 kids, not a whole bunch.

So, with the people who do sign up for this "world's second worst job" only having 1-2 (occasionally 3), and a bunch of others refusing, we end up with birthrates between 1.2 and 1.8, roughly, which isn't enough to sustain the population (this would require a rate of 2.1).

People still want to have kids, but how many people want to repeat all the worst parts of childrearing 3-8 times? Most couples do it once or twice and they've had enough.

>you could implement subsidies to the point where having kids had a net zero impact on your finances,

Honestly, I don't see how this is possible without severely taxing people who don't have any kids, and that's not going to go over well (plus it would screw over all the people who haven't had kids yet, so they're unable to save any money for when they do).

I think the ultimate solution to this is going to look like the novel Brave New World: we're going to have to resort to raising the next generation in institutions.

You think people will accept a Brave new world scenario before they would accept slightly higher taxes?

"Slightly" higher taxes isn't going to bring up the birthrate substantially.

Yes

Many people will celebrate a population crash back to 2 billion as long as it’s not via war or pandemic. The problem will be that getting back to 2 billion is likely to raise the average age so high that you actually do have to raise children in bottles because it’s medically dangerous or impossible for the existing population to have offspring.

One set of data points to look at might be the relative stress levels of new parents who have given birth to the child versus ones who adopted an infant. The act of childbirth is exhausting, and then you’re sent home with a tiny lizard full of self destruct buttons that you have to take care of. Showing up on day one well rested has got to be a factor.

We won’t do it until there aren’t enough young people to employ at retirement homes, but we are going to have to treat parenting as a profession, which is going to ruffle people who have made a hobby out of complaining about welfare queens.

We’ve increased parental leave in parts of the first world but I think we are going to have to increase the deductions for dependents and may have to make childcare expenses tax deductible, because otherwise you have people working for essentially no net income just to stay relevant in their career and funneling all of the money to daycare.

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