Is liberalism digging its own demographic grave? (2022)
thearticle.com
thearticle.com
The correlation is with economic development and education, which suppresses birth rates across all cultures and systems of governance. The only places in the world with very high birth rates are poor with high levels of illiteracy. As they develop their birth rates are starting to fall too.
It’s funny… I remember the overpopulation panic. If we’d kept reproducing like that we may well be facing a “Soylent Green” future, but it didn’t happen. Instead of celebrating the fact that humans seem able to self regulate our birth rates to avoid Malthusian catastrophes we are now panicking about that instead.
Specifically, rates tied to female education and illiteracy. And access to birth control.
That assumes that offspring follow their parents' ideology directly. While many may, some will not.
What we've seen over time is a defection from e.g. religious right upbringing, especially as offspring move into denser urban areas.
But two parents who feel strongly about something having children will produce children with a certain biological proclivity.
It’s a lot to bet that people will deny their own biology.
Yes, but aren't there biological proclivities to certain personality traits, and then proclivities of people to certain personality traits to political ideology?
So if liberals don't reproduce, it could start selection against the "openness to experience" personality trait.
Israel basically subsidizes ultra-orthodox sects that prioritize large families. They also have general policies that subsidize families such as free child care.
I'm not making a value judgement ether way, just saying that it's a simple case of subsidizing something and therefore getting more of that thing.
If we implemented free preschool, a child tax credit, and reforms to reduce the cost of housing we could also raise our birth rate.
How...patriarchal.
When our societies are not reliant on fossil fuels, environmental destruction (farmlands, etc.), and other forms of mass pollution we might want to reconsider population growth, as we're right now and for the foreseeable future that's one of the worst things we can do for future generations.
Then who's going to be the one to tell people that having kids is unsustainable because your ancestors didn't care to implement sustainable energy solutions?
How is "being born" a bad thing for future generations? I would think that most would prefer existence to nonexistence
Those that don't exist simply don't matter.
the problem is the Haredi don't work or serve in the Army (with some exceptions), so they represent a population boom that's only really providing more bodies, not more citizens.
As far as birth rate data, as women acquire more rights and wealth they tend to choose to have fewer children later in life, and as medical care and knowledge improves, those children tend to survive to adulthood at rates unheard of a few centuries ago. Thus, while birth rates may indeed be falling, the population is stable or even growing due to the other factor the author seems to ignore, i.e. lower childhood death rates.
That's not a society that's replacing itself. It's one that isn't but has managed to kick the can down the road because it's in a position to exploit external sources of population. Those ex
> Now if the concern is that the relative ratios of different race-ethnic-religious groups is changing, why is that an issue? Children tend to adopt the societal norms they're surrounded by, even if this upsets their traditional-minded parents. That's certainly been the case in the USA, it's an assimilative process.
Assimilation is rarely that complete. And, as the OP notes, the birth rate problem reproduces itself in those who assimilate into contemporary liberalism, and doesn't in those who do not assimilate.
It's worth noting that, over the course of history, many cultures have been destroyed while leaving small cultural echos in the new replacing population. The OP stated: "On the current trajectory, there will at some point in the coming centuries be no Italians..." It would be cold-comfort to an Italian that cared about Italian culture to have it "live" on in a form akin to an Olive Garden restaurant franchise.
> As far as birth rate data, as women acquire more rights and wealth they tend to choose to have fewer children later in life, and as medical care and knowledge improves, those children tend to survive to adulthood at rates unheard of a few centuries ago. Thus, while birth rates may indeed be falling, the population is stable or even growing due to the other factor the author seems to ignore, i.e. lower childhood death rates.
No. IIRC, many places are falling below replacement rate reproduction. That means that lower infant mortality isn't fully compensating for the other changes.
Looking at https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn06..., I would eyeball net immigration at around 200K/year from 2020 to 2023. That would amount to 4.6 million people. That's over half of the 7.5 million change in population, but not all of it.
Anyone with better numbers, step right up...
But societies don't keep getting more advanced! Once a society has become a modern post-industrial, "liberal" society, the demographic transition effect stops. After that, other factors continue to act on fertility.
And there is evidence that fertility is heritable, and positively selected for (almost by definition, i think). So we might expect to see fertility slowly rise after demographic transitions are complete. If that is the case, the current situation of declining and ageing populations is only a transient state.
I read some stuff on this a while ago, didn't save the links, and now can't find it. But digging around now, i think these papers are relevant:
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2013.256...
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstb.2015.015...
I believe key factor here is nation size. A sufficiently big corporation in a sufficiently small (but not necessarily tiny) nation may find it profitable to solve demography directly, i.e. by hiring women to have babies and paying them salaries. Simply to have more consumers for its products in the next generation. Maybe corporations can even pool their resources towards this goal.
TBH that book was rather bland and milquetoast. The same argument he makes here is made at book length by Eric Kaufmann in "Shall The Religious Inherit The Earth", which is very good.
Probably not to do with liberalism as illiberal societies are also suffering from the same phenomenon. The issue can be isolated to economic development, which itself is a result of female education and subsequent participation in the formal labour market. Turns out being a wage earner / consumer is in tension with being a parent, especially a mother. Interestingly, remote work seems to have an effect of increasing birth rate, we might be able to solve this by redesigning work around family making, rather than treating workers as atomic individuals with no social relations outside of the market
There's one major historical outlier from the whole industrialized societies not having children trend -- the Soviet Union. Like everywhere else industrialized, the fertility rate in the 50s and 60s fell from traditional pre-industrial levels (4 - 5 per woman) down to about 2.5 (just above replacement). It then stayed there until the collapse of the USSR, at which point it plummeted well below replacement in most of the successor states, and has never recovered. (Similar story in East Germany and the rest of the Bloc.)
The USSR had many problems, but employment security and time off, a basic roof and food security for young families, was not among them; it was cheap and practical to have kids.
(in the West, a mother who has a lot of children supported by the state is deemed a "welfare queen" to be scorned and vilified. It is not surprising that there aren't so many of them.)
Plus, total fertility rate was rather high in 1970s and 80s (around 2.5) only with inclusion of Asiatic republics where people effectively lived in prehistoric state with little change over 2000 years, with totemic idols replaced with Lenin's statues. In Russia proper, it was hovering at or slightly under the replacement ratio.
The state institutions were indeed revolutionary, especially compared to the BRD which was (& is) much more regressive when it came to equality (e.g. half school days weds and sat meant women couldn't hold down full time jobs). Unfortunately, as they were indeed also propaganda vehicles, that system was tossed out along with everything else.
Not everything in the DDR was a terrible idea, only almost everything. I can't really criticise the way unification was achieved (it was a big rush that hadn't been planned for) but it's OK to look back and consider what could still be learnt.
The group with the lowest TFR? White couples who make between $200k and $250k. Clearly it's not just about income because the uber poor and uber rich have about the same amount of children.
The author seemed to completely miss the point that, regardless of liberal or illiberal, when women have access to birth control, birth rates go down.
But aside from that he makes a valid point. If you actually live in a very liberal area, like San Francisco, for a while you will meet a disproportionate number of people who believe that having kids is bad for the planet or have any number of other anti-natalist ideas.
"wokeness" is a defintion-less abstract tool that exists to be applied to ideas that conservatives don't like. "woke culture" doesn't actually exist.
>But aside from that he makes a valid point. If you actually live in a very liberal area, like San Francisco, for a while you will meet a disproportionate number of people who believe that having kids is bad for the planet or have any number of other anti-natalist ideas.
Which is a great anecdote! Is it supported by literally any data? Do college-educated women in San Francisco have a significantly different birth rate than college-educated women in Chicago? Atlanta?
The idea that a women who otherwise would have had three kids will have zero because they were exposed 'anti-natalist' ideas is on its face stupid. The characteristics of someone who chooses to live in a place where it's expensive to raise a family like San Francisco are almost assuredly going to lean toward one/no children.
Birth rates are falling everywhere women have access to birth control. The whole article is crap, the 'woke' comment was just the icing on the drivel cake.
Well woke culture does seem to exist since so many people talk about it, and it has its own term in our lexicon. I could give you a million examples of it, but I think you already know what it is.
>great anecdote
You are right, all I have are anecdotes. I'm just a normal person with regular every-day experiences; my opinions are formed after living there for many years. But I will tell you, that I have had a lot of conversations with people that have these ideas in the Bay. Like, the majority of my friends in the Bay have this opinion that the future is too bleak, the planet is doomed, having a kid is bad for the planet, blah blah. It seems significant to me because these are people who can definitely afford to have kids, but choose not to because of their ideas about our horrible doomed future.
Lots of people talk about a flat Earth but that doesn't mean a flat earth exists
Also, 'people talk about it' is hilarious. The only people who talk about it are right-wingers who are trying get their base riled up. There is no serious academic work that supports the idea that 'woke culture' exists. It's clowns like Tucker who profit off the culture war that continue to talk about it.
> and it has its own term in our lexicon.
It's an undefined term.
>I could give you a million examples of it, but I think you already know what it is.
That's literally the point of the term. You could give examples of ideas and things you don't like, and because 'woke' has no definition, it's just based purely on your opinion.
Like the game of baseball is well-defined. If I asked you what you consider the game of baseball to be, it would be mostly the same as what I consider baseball. We'd agree that there are nine players on the field. We'd agree that it's played with a ball, etc. We might disagree on strategy, or what the rules should be, but the basics are well defined.
That's not the case with 'woke'. Your definition of the basic parameters of 'woke culture' would probably differ from even other people who believe in 'woke culture'. That's why you are defaulting to examples, because it's just going to be a list of things you don't like, which is the essence of the word.
It's a empty box for which intellectually lazy or unable people put all the ideas they don't/can't understand or don't agree with.
>You are right, all I have are anecdotes
Forming huge ideas about the nature of the world based on our personal experiences is generally a pretty terrible idea.
>Forming huge ideas about the nature of the world based on our personal experiences is generally a pretty terrible idea.
Basing ones understanding of the world on lived experience is the only way humans learn anything. That's how we as humans live our lives and make decisions. I'm not even talking about the world, I'm just talking about a city in which I spent a lot of time.
I'm guessing you have very similar views.
> You asserting that the thing we're talking about doesn't exist is just you being a bigot.
Look bud, you don't need to have an emotional reaction to this. I'm not saying you can't call things you don't like 'woke', I'm just saying its intellectual gibberish. It's a fill in word that only means you don't like something. It has no larger meaning or even a static definition.
The idea that just talking about something means it exists is the level of thought I'd associate with people who also buy into the idea that 'woke culture' exists.
>Basing ones understanding of the world on lived experience is the only way humans learn anything.
That is astoundingly untrue. Like painfully untrue.
If there are people who care about civilization surviving into the the future, making it economically advantageous to have children would be a good plan.
By income, the lowest TFR group in America are Whites that make between $200-$250k[1]. The poorest Americans have the same amount of children as the uber rich Americans.
Don't look for scapegoats: people are not having children because they can. They never wished to procreate enough to sustain population, they only did because they had no way around it. It's incredibly stupid to portray achievement of progress as some kind of curse or even moral failure.
I mean, it's not cultural: it happens across all cultures and religions. Atheists aren't even in the forefront: Czechia and Denmark have relatively decent fertility rates. It's not political: happens both in authoritarian and liberal countries, even worse in authoritarian, both pro-Western (Singapore) and anti-Western (China). Only thing it seems to depend upon, is level of development, the richer the country is/becomes, the lower birthrate is. It's simply that people get the actual ability to choose, nothing else.
They have for many decades been working toward reducing the world population. Many policies are intentionally designed around reducing world population. This has been working effectively on the former 1st world countries.
What was discovered was the conservatives/republicans/whatever realized what was happening and decided on a unique strategy never normally used in politics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Give_'em_enough_rope
Left wing politicians feel unopposed, and without opposition they roll ahead with terrible decisions. Often feeling enabled to implement policies which are going to hang themselves. Absolutely what's happening and they don't realize it.
Even at prices and hours like this, there are year long wait lists for spots in these. I've several times had to take my kid out of childcare (kicked out, or they went out of business) and had to hire a nanny full time for 6 mo to 1 year before I could find another childcare spot. At the time I was paying 110% of my take home income to have a nanny despite having a PhD in a high demand field, burning through my savings with hopes of finding another childcare spot without ending my career. Not sure how anyone else does this.
As of now, I WFH while watching my son alone about half of the hours, which is really hard. I feel like I am not giving him the attention he deserves, and it's really hard to focus.
Looking at the families I know, the mother (or grandparents if they're local, willing, and able) make child-rearing their top priority. Either that or they live in a country with dirt-cheap childcare due to cheap labor.
I am a single dad with shared custody. The mom helps when she can but her career is very demanding and a top priority for her. Neither of us have any family support- we both had to move to the only city where we were both offered jobs in our respective fields, far away from family.
Compared to my colleagues and co-workers deciding to have kids is seen as an eccentricity. The only people I know that do it in my field are men in their 50s that have cashed out on startups and have stay at home wives. Professional Women having kids is virtually unheard of nowadays... the few that are lucky enough to cash out do so at an age where it's no longer biologically possible.
I'm making things work, but it takes all of the energy and time I have, I couldn't even fathom doing it with 2 kids. And I feel I'm super lucky having a flexible schedule and a strong income. If I couldn't possibly leave work until 5 but had to do child pickup at 2, it would be impossible.
We've seen this over and over and it's blatantly obvious what the problem is - too few people control the wealth of the world and that wealth is used to buy control and power in ways that continue to erode the power and comfort of the working class.
President Teddy Roosevelt, who died a socialist who wanted to live like his porters [1], led America at the turn of the century by attacking the robber barons, breaking the trusts, and generally crushing unethical business across the nation, leading the way for a revitalized society (he wasn't perfect but we're looking at the issue of oligarchies here).
I'm not sure that's possible anymore like that, and I think peaceful revolution inside the system is possible. We do it by building mutual voluntary employee owned cooperatives that create products and services and DENY the capital class the ability to continue to accrete wealth and power.
[1]https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/03/10/east-afric...
There are many theories of why we have "lowest-low" fertility:
* The gender transition has left women juggling jobs and family ("gender equity theory") [1] * Elite norms changed, originally among population planners, who pushed societies to lower their birth rate; [2] * Increasing individualism (the "second demographic transition") [3]
Inequality is not one of them.
[1] e.g. McDonald, P., 2000. Gender equity, social institutions and the future of fertility. Journal of population Research, pp.1-16. [2] Caldwell, J.C., 2006. The globalization of fertility behavior. Demographic Transition Theory, pp.249-271. [3] Van de Kaa, D.J., 1987. Europe's second demographic transition. Population bulletin, 42(1), pp.1-59.
When it is too crowded people don’t have the instinct to make more people. Places like the UK and Japan are way too crowded and of course people don’t want to have kids, it is entirely exacerbated by the problems with housing.
The problem will take care of itself if the population drops enough, if you want to be proactive the important thing is to reduce the perception of crowding which could be some combination of (a) dispersion (just tax people 200% of the median income if they want to dogpile into London or Tokyo and if rich folk complain there are no service workers they’re going to have to pay them more), (b) better housing and (c) psychological tricks that reduce the perception of crowding.
I don't think this is true, least not in the way you're saying it. Countries with low population densities (e.g. Canada, the US, Russia, Australia, Brazil) have equally low fertility as the denser countries like the UK and Denmark.
Often a good bit lower - Canada has both lower fertility and an older median age than the UK, despite being massively bigger, with more immigration and comparable house prices (all while having way bigger houses).
There are many people living in single bedrooms in former family homes in London and paying half of their wage in order to do so. I couldn't do it, but they do.