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Comment by dylan604 | Hacker News Reader

Until you have kids

Population replacement rate is 2.1 children per woman--meaning, in order for a population's size to remain the same, on average child births have to come out to 2.1 for every woman. All Western countries have been well below replacement level, for many decades at this point.

Taking the example of One brother and one sister, the sister would have to bear 2.1 children, while the brother would have to have 2.1 children with another woman, in order to merely keep the population size level.

The reason for this is obvious: two sets of parents=4 people, the same number as the 2*2.1 children (minus premature deaths, etc.).

Fertility rate is calculated as number of children per woman.

So the sister must have 2.1 children to sustain, but the brother’s “contributions” don’t matter.

Any working person in our modern industrialized society can have a productive output that can support many people. Productivity has sky rocketed, as well as population.

That’s played itself out, and there’s only going to be one between my sister and myself.

So 2 grandparents, two kids, and one grandchild.

Definitely not a Ponzi scheme. Not a good one anyway.

right, that's why the system is failing

I don’t think it’s “the system.”

Common sense says: “Having a higher proportion of the population not working reduces economic output.”

And economics is saying: “Modern economies grow so quickly and reliably, we can increase economic output while caring for an increasing number of dependent people.”

For example, we have retirement communities and nursing homes instead of each offspring caring for their own parents. This reduces the downward pull on output. But the pull is still there.

So common sense and economics say that more dependents reduces output.

I can’t imagine a system where a high number of dependents doesn’t create a downward pull on economic output.

Can you describe a system like that?

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