Comment by Terr_ | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Terr_ | Hacker News Reader

> No one really knows why birth rates are dropping so fast. [...] Many people have theories but if you critically examine them they fall apart.

> [#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...

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/life-expectancy

I'm not having kids because I expect the world they would live in by the time they would be adults will be too dystopian. Even more dystopian than it is already.

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.

> avoid man-made degeneracies will be extremely difficult or impossible in a matter of decades

So move now to somewhere you expect to be long-term viable before the crunch...?

easier said than done; you don't get to shop around for citizenship. it's not like you can just get permanent residency most places by showing up. even with points-based systems like Australia and Canada the level of effort is high and often not guaranteed.

If the alternative is that unsavory, just show up. It works for literally millions of people.

> I consider it selfish to the degree of evil to have children

(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.

I only communicate this consideration to people I am certain of are able to be open for argumentation, despite them probably not sharing the same belief.

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.

Pro-natal policies are a drop in the bucket compared to the fact that basics like housing costs 10x more than with the previous high-baby-having generations

Also the standard of raising kids has risen a lot as well.

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.

> basics like housing costs 10x more than with the previous high-baby-having generations

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

Housing costs are much higher, but you still need to live somewhere. An extra bedroom or two isn't a ×10 increase, it's ×1.2.

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?

People have historically lived in a much severe poverty than now, yet the birth rates were much better.

Only due to contraceptions not being a thing for most of history.

Price to income ratios before covid were within normal variation, not even 25% higher than normal iirc. Easy to find sources I'm on my phone:) they are a bit higher now but birth rates were low before, too.

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 ;)

I agree. More people should know about the demographic transition theory:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_transition

My contribution.

[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 feel like a test case in what is happening even if it's cliche. Wanted to have kids around my late 20s, but had tons of trouble just dating at that time, much less finding a partner. In my mid-to-late 30s, I had multiple people I was seeing request/give ultimatums on timelines of having kids together after they'd decided they like me, but we'd barely started dating (which I obviously couldn't commit to with someone I barely knew). Now I'm over 40 and have no intention of raising children into my 60s just for the sake of checking a box.

I just don't think that many people have life go their way, at the right time, with the right person.

Me and my friend group spanning many countries of people in their 30s-early 40s all have landed on 0, 1 or 2 kids. Median is certainly below replacement rate. I don’t know anyone who has three or more. I don’t think that trend will be coming back. We’ll all become Japan eventually

Japan has a birth rate of 1.3. It's in-line with most other developed nations. The US is at 1.6.

The country you're looking for is South Korea, at around 0.8 last I checked.

https://news.ku.edu/2017/09/15/flint-water-crisis-led-lower-...

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.

There are more fertility issues - probably the main cause is that people are having kids like 10-15 biological years older than a generation or two ago. I don’t think that’s the main cause though - or it should be visible in some kind of insane spike in fertility treatments

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