What Will the World Look Like with Less Babies?
lindynewsletter.beehiiv.com
lindynewsletter.beehiiv.com
> [#1] People do not have money for kids. [#2] The Government isn’t Providing pro-natal policies. [#3] This is happening only in societies that are not religious. [#4] Women are working and not having kids.
That seems like an incomplete list.
For example, how about this one: Industrialization lowers infant mortality with better medical care and creates alternate safety-nets to keep old people without kids from dying in a ditch. Gradually culture changes as people adjust to this, and they stop feeling the need for spare-kids as a hedge against death or to have large broods as a retirement plan.
> It feels like we’re permanently entering a time where population will shrink.
Much of the world's population boom in the last century was from lowered infant mortality [0] and people spending more time alive and being counted. [1] It should be no surprise that both of those hit diminishing returns: It is impossible to save more than 100% of the babies, and immortality is a hard problem to solve.
[0] https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/WLD/world/infant-morta...
I opine that we humans increasingly shape our living situation such that it causes friction with our nature, our primitive psychology and biology. This friction causes increasing unhappiness. When I first realized this in my early twenties I was able to vastly increase my happiness (up to a bearable level, luckily) by removing many such man-made unnatural aspects from my life.
However, I expect that the ability to remove oneself from or avoid man-made degeneracies will be extremely difficult or impossible in a matter of decades. Even my unborn children I love too much to force them into that.
Given these expectations I consider it selfish to the degree of evil to have children. Mind, I do not consider it selfish or evil to have children. Only if you do it with the expectation that they will live in a virtual hell.
I do generally enjoy life, spending time with friends and family, working on a project I am passionate about, pursuing interests, making an effort to be healthy. However, I expect that the degeneracy will increase to a point where a person's happiness would be net negative.
(How) Do you communicate this consideration with people that made children recently?
I have the same feeling but humans have a strong paternal/maternal instinct (which is great), conversation suffers as a result.
In public the only place I have communicated this consideration is right here. Privately I have communicated this consideration with family and close friends. One of these friends has started actively trying to make babies with his girlfriend after we first started discussing this topic. We have discussed it after he started trying. We have a friendly discussion about it, then move on to another topic. I find conversation does not suffer at all. That is, with the people I have carefully chosen to discuss this with. I can imagine conversation would suffer with most people I would strike up a conversation with in let's say a supermarket.
So move now to somewhere you expect to be long-term viable before the crunch...?
Of course the fact that the developing countries/ poorer immigrants / poorer past generations / poorer but religious groups within countries / you name it, have higher rates should make this obvious.
I personally don't have kids because for me, they would be a pointless boring chore. But I guess many fellow coastal bubble dwellers cannot admit it and need a cope ;)
An anecdote, someone from Russia asked me how big our house was when we bought it after getting married. Without going into the details, that was the smallest house we were possibly considering for 2 people, I said 1100sqft. They said, oooh, so you are planning to have many children then, with so much space! Nope, we are just spoiled ;)
Thank you. I'm a millionaire. I want kids. I see no near-term path to having them without their costs rivaling that of financing multi-million dollar boats [1].
The fundamental problem is children are extremely expensive, particularly for the ambitious. (I'm putting aside the enormous liabilities that arise from e.g. one's child being disabled or trans or simply rebellious in some parts of the country.)
[1] https://cpag.org.uk/sites/default/files/CPAG%20Cost%20of%20a... page 8
Even at £200k (allowing some inflation since 2012), that's leveled over two decades. Obviously that blossoms then explodes if you fall into the fashion trap of assuming price means quality, particularly for schooling. But these are largely optional costs. Relocating for better state schooling often also grants more affordable housing, at the cost of commuting. If you're already a million up, there are many option.
Even if that is somehow equivalent to your yacht, if that's the springs-to-mind opportunity cost, do you actually want children? Or would you rather have a boat?
It is fairly easy to have a lot of malnourished illiterate children, but people choose to have healthy kids they send to college, which is a lot more time consuming and expensive.
[5] People actually have some agency* and have decided to limit the number of kids they have for the good of everyone else.
[6] People actually have some agency and think dividing the family wealth among a lot of kids is a bad idea.
* Lot of wanna be cargo cult scientists like economists for instance start off assuming people are without agency. Because they think that's what you do with science. They are both wrong and stupid.
I just don't think that many people have life go their way, at the right time, with the right person.
The country you're looking for is South Korea, at around 0.8 last I checked.
People need access to clean water without chemicals in it that led to lower fertility rates and higher fetal death rates.
Birth control pills put estrogen in the water supply: https://www.businessinsider.com/birth-control-pills-hormones...
These could be true or maybe misleading or half true? Chemicals from medicine that people take should be filtered out of the recycled water.
It's difficult to impossible to survive on a single income like my parents did to raise me, and the cost of childcare is the same as losing one income regardless.
For better or worse the economy has been reshaped around the assumption of dual income, full time working couples.
I remember childcare being rather communal in the US, where I lived, as recently as the early 90s. Now that the media and social media has turned everyone against each other, the only way out seemingly is to subsidize child care.
There are a lot of costs increasing that exceed inflation and frankly, exceed fair value exchange, but many of us are caught between a rock and a hard place. Rent is a great example, cars are another. These things aren't true universally, and it seems other countries are able to provide higher quality of life and cheaper services. Are we just being fleeced, are companies expecting more than their fair share?
Today, strict regulations and cost of compliance and well, wages to pay the employees contribute to the exorbitant costs.
https://www.npr.org/2023/07/06/1186154271/why-parents-daycar...
If any reasonable person were to take a look at the fossil record, they’d immediately be struck by the dearth certificate carrying mammals.
Nay! Childcare qualifications are the trophy of evolutionary maladaption.
I really don't think the phenomenon of people having fewer kids or having kids later is a mystery!
As an adult with my own kid now, it would seem such an idea is a pipe dream.
My person hunch is back in the day there was a more "we're all in the same boat" feeling at the street level, where everyone had similar socioeconomic backgrounds whereas now that's not true at all.
In the past, in the UK, everyone living in a road may have had the same landlord (the local council) but now you can have multi-millionaire with a £50K car living next door to someone in an identical house who is renting privately, on housing benefit, taking the bus to their minimum wage job, and struggling to feed their kids.
People are much more willing to give and receive help from their "peers"
I grew up on a street (in the US) where many of my neighbors did have the same landlord as my family, but none of us spoke to each other; they were basically strangers like any other.
I was born in 2003, so this is more recent than the 1980s.
I don't want to denigrate any parent. It's a tough thing to do. And it is exhausting. But, at least for me, once I became a parent, I just stopped caring that I was exhausted. When that screaming pooping little money sucker comes toddling over to you with a huge smile on the face after you walk in the room from work or wherever, all those worries and fears just somehow melt away and you just think to yourself how lucky you are to have any of it.
I guess what I'm saying is that if you think you want to have kids, don't let your lack of energy due to age be a factor. Kids give you the energy.
I had my first kid at 38 and second at 41. Age didn't stop me.
Maybe it's a reduction in security?
https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/family-consequences-job-insec...
Children are a long term commitment. Being richer won't necessarily make a person have more children if they are uncertain whether the riches will continue. A $1000/month car, per the article, can be disposed of if things go bad. Children can't (unless you are in a Monty Python movie. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWWAC5ZMKeM )
Not buying a car and raising kids instead (who require more than $1000 a month) would require me either having a great parental network to fall back on (e.g. parents, a village) or having those kids taken away from me as I fail to meet their needs
(Also the article did not at all address the clickbait title that made me read it. Okay, we will have more pets maybe. Anything else?)
Another one probably is how people with kids narrate their experience , where in they mention all the sleepless nights , limitations and costs , without telling about the postive aspects like happinesss , satisfaction and a stronger sense of purpose. Can't blame them given these aspects are very subtle and difficult to tell/narrate.
This is just not true - at least if you refuse to become an extreme helicopter parent.
I have four kids. I had a ~10 year break where I very rarely made it to parties and music festivals, and my life was mostly work and kids. I had a great time and have never regretted my decision to have kids, but there were some things I missed.
Now we start doing these things again, sometimes with the kids, sometimes because the kids are big enough to be alone or because we can afford a babysitter.
Here is one egoistic argument for having kids: the world is going to become very confusing in a decade or two. There will come the time where you can't keep up anymore. Then you will be happy to have somebody that loves you unconditionally that can make decisions for you. I trust my kids way more to take care of me when I am old and confused than any institution or person motivated by money.
Might be an atypical case here but it's my experience.
There were only 2.5 billion in 1950, since then automation has advanced leaps and bounds meaning an advanced lifestyle with fewer workers and less resource drain is entirely possible with a more sustainable population size.
Even in densely populated places like Europe there are large areas with low population density.
People are crowding in cities and then complaining that there are too many people.
Resource drain is no longer an issue once we got an economy running on photovoltaics and nuclear energy. Everything can be recycled given enough energy.
Like the proposed site for Resolution Copper, say?
Nobody there save the people that got pushed aside when Europeans arrived in the US and I guess there's no issue with pushing them on again, treaties are meaningless and 8 billion people need their appliances.
> Resource drain is no longer an issue once we got an economy running on photovoltaics
Quickly now, just how much additional copper, lithium, vanadium, iron, aluminium, etc do we need to get there?
And once we are there will this be just like building roads to fix traffic only to find that traffic increases to swamp the new roads?
Last question, do you have any actual experience with 800 million tonne per annum resource mining (that's just iron ore mined in my state alone) or is your experience of life limited to ordering stuff and having it turn up?
Your comment has the whiff of Magical Tech thinking to it.
Well, your post has the whiff of malthusian doomerism to it. Look up the Simon-Ehrlich wager. Ehrlich was wrong in every single respect. There are more people, yet they are economically better off. And nothing has run out.
And yet the ideology of Ehrlich and Malthus has prevailed in the west.
How do you intend to get rid of the surplus?
Isn't that a valid argument still (despite his Swiss semi-counter-example)? Many jobs are complicated these days and require education + experience, making it very hard for women who want to work and become economically independent to have kids early in life; when they are most fertile.
I also think his Swiss example is somewhat misleading, since he argues that Switzerland has few women working (56%), and also a low birthrates (1.4). So at least 44% of the women have time to have babies, then Swiss birthrates should be high. But a friend of mine is from Switzerland, and his wife stopped working after they had a child (she has a PhD in biology as well, so highly educated). Schools typically send children home for 3 hours in the middle of the day (lunch/siesta or whatever you want to call it). Somebody has to be home, and that very often ends up being the mother. And after you've been out of the working life for a long period of time, getting back can be difficult. I.e. it could be that one of the reasons the Swiss women are hesitant to have children, is that they know that it will most likely end their career; so the implication could go the other way.
I think the people like myself who really want to have babies are going to have babies one way or another. And it's not a question of "is it right" that they have more, or less, or quite the same stuff that I grew up with -- I didn't grow up with much, and I have even less now than I did then in some important senses, but I love life all the same if not more and I think my kids will too.
And I even think this would be true regardless of whether we were living together in a cramped apartment in the inner city together or a big mansion out in the suburbs. An apartment looks twice as big when you're half the size of an adult. What matters is whether the kids feel like they're loved and cherished and desired, desired to be there, desired to be part of the family.
In my darker moments I wonder if perhaps, when I was younger and less keen on having kids myself, it was because I was myself missing so desperately that last part. But I found it in the arms of my beloved, and I think there are many like me.
But indirectly, probably, in the form of raised expectations. You want to give your kids at least what you had as a child, ideally more, and that gets increasingly tied to high costs.
Media and politicians don't care at all.
I fail to see why this issue might be "at least as important as global warming".
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:World_population_(UN).svg
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retirement_age
It's about the survival of peoples, nations, cultures and civilizations. I fail to see how it's not important.
>I fail to see why this issue might be "at least as important as global warming".
See the previous sentences.
You shouldn't be afraid to let go of the gas pedal on the freeway, the car won't stop straight away. Especially if your speed is exponential for 300 years and everyone know keeping accelerating is gonna harm the majority life conditions.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/population?time=1500..lat...
What is this assumption? The pyramid should look like… a pyramid? Don’t you see the elephant in the room: the population can’t infinitely grow on a finite universe.
GDP, dept, income… anything that is virtual can grow as long as you find a way to describe and write them. Ressources and space can be optimized within the boundary of what the known science let us do and what the humans tolerate.
Don’t get me wrong, I’d love a future with 100s Billions humans eating delicious and healthy meals made of pure fusion energy in a Saturn orbit cafè. Let’s find out solutions of the problems caused by the current demography before increasing it, otherwise it’s betting our descents future on the retirement system.
So the operation succeeds but the patient is dead? The survival of people and cultures trumps GHG emissions. Unless you prefer an empty planet with no GHG emissions.
The incentives will change as population decreases to where having kids is profitable at some point in the curve
Here in Finland, a female child born today has a >50% chance to live to an age of 100. That means our new children will probably still be alive in 2123. The projections for worst-case climate change over that time span are terrifying. You can't blame people for not wanting that kind of future for their children.
If you want people to have more kids in the West, doing something about climate change is part of the solution, not a separate issue.
Imagine deciding to have kids in the 80s where the two superpowers were pointing insane amounts of nuclear weapons at each oter. Or in the 70s when people feared a new ice age. Not to mention 1910 or 1930.
You may say "but this time it is real". The nuclear threat in the 80s was very real as well. As was WW1 and WW2.
Finland has done it's part against climate change. They built a large nuclear power plant, and can run the rest of the economy using PV and wind. Retire ICE vehicles, and then be proud of yourself and be more optimistic.
Even in the worst case scenarios the climate in finland will be just fine...
Do you think the majority of people are into that ideology?
The dependency ratio of workers to people on pensions may get to the point where it breaks.
What matters is productivity and the workers share of it.
Fewer workers with higher wages have the same effect on pension payments.
Lower economic growth doesn't have to be. Fewer people means less supply on workforce means higher wages means higher purchasing power. The existing people would like to be more, but can't afford because of low wages. Fewer people will give them leverage.
Japan is a country to watch, it has an aging population but historically good support for middle class services through lots of small businesses. If that changes for them it is a bad sign for the West, as we generally have greater wealth divides to begin with.
Japan and Fukushima come to mind. Russia does too.
Russia and Ukraine both have abysmal fertility rates. I don’t see less conflict there. Or between China and Taiwan.
And Fukushima was an accident caused by a natural disaster and human errors. More babies wouldn't have prevented that.
Global warming is irreversible, low birth rates are not.
That's a whole lotta damage done in under 200 years since we industrialized.
Weird Al, too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGWiTvYZR_w
Honestly, I could not care fewer.
https://www.quora.com/Which-is-correct-less-people-or-few-pe...
But what happens when the elders start drawing down that money, and there isn't a base to replace it?
Going forward, we could actually see such values shrink, I think? The uber rich aren't Bogleheads, after all.
I mean, as much as interest rates have dramatically risen recently, real yields on 30 year UK government debt (as measured by the inflation-linked gilt yield) are at ~1%. That's just not going to cut the mustard given how little people are able or willing to save in to their retirement fund.
To give you an idea, the difference between a 1% real return and a 4% real return, investing monthly over a 30 year horizon, is having 64% more in retirement.
Did anyone think to ASK THE PEOPLE why they choose not to have children? Or that would be too difficult for today's journalists and bloggers?
My case:
1) It's very difficult to raise even one child. It would degrade my quality of life a lot.
2) I hate children. I see around me lots of parents who love being parents and I simply can't understand them. This would probably make me a bad parent.
3) [The main reason.] If I had a child I would want him/her to have a better life than mine. EVERY parent wants that. But that's not possible, because my life is great!
Let me focus on 3), because this explains the difference between countries.
When the parent's life sucks (Africa), there's lots of hope and possibility of a better life for the child.
When the parent's life is great (Europe, America, Japan) with very grim predictions about the future without oil, why would anyone have children?
It mentions the developed world, but then continues to suggest that birth rates are falling below 2 everywhere when they most certainly are not.
Niger: 6.89
Nigeria: 5.31
Mali: 6.04
Somalia, Chad, DR Congo are all over 6.
There are going to be young people around when you get old, they’re just going to originate from different parts of the world. Assuming you don’t die suddenly then when you get to the end of your life someone is going to have to care for you whether you have children to do that or not.
If someone writes an article about cats would you complain it's not saying anything about dogs?
People are getting told from an early age that humans are a pest and that the world would be better off without them.
Why 2.1 and not 2?
Ancient, tribal cultures, absolutely raised children in a communal way as you say. There's even a saying, "it takes a village to raise a child..." But I'm not aware of any modern cultures that still do that in reality.
So another way of saying this is that the extended family participates in raising children.
Not long ago, children were allowed to roam freely in the neighborhood, walk to and from school, and have some essentially unsupervised time to play and be children. The reason this worked well is because they were known to the neighbors, and at least some of those neighbors were looking out for the children, albeit discreetly and not actively. Me and my sister roamed the neighborhood, and at least one Mom on each block would know who to call if we got into an accident or something. There was a creepy guy who invited us to his hot tub, but my sister wisely turned him down, and nothing more was done.
Furthermore, in an extended family, you'll have grandparents to babysit, and cousins who are peers, and in a family with enough children, you'll have older children effectly supervising the youngest ones, changing diapers, doing basic tasks like that. This happens all the time at church, and I see it. It's a matter of Mom and Dad setting good examples and instilling good discipline.
If instead you have a situation of high divorce rates, single moms and single dads going it alone, everyone lives in a separate little dwelling, we barely know our extended family, we live in neighborhoods full of strangers, we all work two full-time jobs, well your support system will consist of paid child care, if you can find it, and if you can afford it. So children are high-maintenance.
And in a family of one or two children, the children won't be learning the basics of changing diapers and feeding applesauce, so if you do raise children, you're raising children who are unprepared to be parents.
Yeah, I see that almost every day where I live. Young kids even take the subway across the city all by themselves. This is normal life in any decent, developed nation.
You've never been outside the United States, have you?
Why is this personal to you?
In fact, re-reading my post, I don't see anywhere that I contradict what you claim. I agree with you, my post agrees with you, case closed.
They still are in most safe modern nations.
> so if you do raise children, you're raising children who are unprepared to be parents.
That is such an astute observation!
Having children is prohibitively expensive.
For example, Australia has like, what is it, 2.1 children for every 1 unit of child day care available.
There’s these things called “childcare deserts” - places where childcare isn’t available within a reasonable distance.
And a market shortfall of something like a million homes.
Don’t blame me, I voted for the other party. Oh wait, they’re greedy landlords too. Oops.
I would assume because you had massive amounts of money you could treat raising a child like a recreational activity.. and even then i am betting there is a lot of pink glasses looking in the past involved
Everyone’s experiences are different and true to them. I’m not trying to tell you that your experience or ideas of raising children should be the same as mine. But I’d be careful assuming that people who don’t think the same way as you about it are delusional or privileged.
this is why i also said having massive amounts of money helps make it one treat it like a recreational activity, like having someone to help clean the house, cook etc
Quoting from memory, so it may not be word for word. And I forget who I stole it from, but plausibly it was someone here. If so, sorry I don't have the source handy to be able to give you proper credit.
But, yeah. I agree with the parent. Money matters, but it's not what matters most. If money is your bottom line, then you are impoverished in a way that more money cannot fix.
How do you think your childhood teachers feel about your attitude (of not being interested in going into the teaching profession)? Lucky for you that they didn't share it, right?
How about working in local government, as a mayor or alderman for instance? Did you ever do that? Lucky for you that someone else did, right?
Do you feel bad for not doing these jobs that are essential for society?
My parents forgoing having children, however, literally makes my existence impossible. And practiced on a society-wide level it ultimately leads to the extinction of the human race. Anyone who thinks that humans are better off pursuing their own fulfillment and enjoyment out of life instead of bearing and raising children is some combination of hedonist, nihilist, and misanthrope. And anyone who promotes such views should be shamed for what they are.
On what do you base this thought ?