Comment by thmsths | Hacker News Reader

Comment by thmsths | Hacker News Reader

I have come the conclusion that kids have basically gone from asset to liability over the last century. And even if they may not express it in these terms or have hard numbers to back it up, people know this intuitively.

In the 1920s there was no social security so having kids to take care of you in your old days was a must, expectations were somewhat low. You could get a lot of kids because making them all share one room was considered fine, they were expected to do a lot of chores, sometimes helping with the family's business even. Contrast that to today: we have financialized everything so you don't need kids, you just need someone to have them, not you specifically. The expectations are high: they need their own bedroom, you have to constantly be behind them (otherwise some busybody will call the cops for neglect), pay for expensive hobbies, tutor them so they can go to a good college (that you're expected to help pay for). Is it really surprising then that people get less or no kids?

Of course this quality over quantity approach may actually be a good thing, I certainly appreciate having been raised that way, unfortunately we have structured our societies to expect infinite growth so until we find a way to resolve these conflicting needs we will keep feeling the pain.

> kids have basically gone from asset to liability over the last century

This has happened in virtually every country that has moved from the farms to the cities.

In farms, kids are added labor - in the city, not so much.

Totally agree, I am not trying to single out specific countries. Now we just need to figure out how to deal with the consequences of that, because so far we have only been relying on bandaids: exhort people to have more kids, offer subsidies (that don't even come close to offsetting the extra costs of course), making it up with immigration.

In Victorian England children were still an asset to rent to industries and mining operations

Entrepreneurs like Restaurant owners can amortise their children.

Other than that, your kids will make other people rich

>kids have basically gone from asset to liability

Peter Zeihan said the same thing. we need kids when the majority of society works on farms. today's kids are more expensive and less helpful.

China is following the same path as the Asian Tigers (Taiwan, South Korea...etc.) and Japan as the Chinese got more wealth. Chinese are unwilling to have more kids plus the One Child policy works too well.

You have it half correct. It's more like Chinese cannot afford to have more kids. There's a reason, as China got poorer the last 3 years, the birthrate dropped sharply

China Tries To Censor Data About Nearly 1 Billion People in Poverty

In his article for the business outlet Yicai, Li cited data from a 2021 research paper by the China Institute of Income Distribution at Beijing Normal University, which placed the number of people living on less than 2,000 yuan ($300) a month at 964 million, or nearly 70 percent of the population.

https://www.newsweek.com/china-article-censorship-1-billion-...

Not saying you're wrong, but I really think you've overlooked the cultural shift towards individualism.

Maybe not so much in the 1920s, but in WW1 men would lie about their age so they'd have the opportunity to fight for the empire. Family, nation and duty came before self-actualisation and security.

I would not dismiss the link with individualism but I am not convinced that it is a cause, if anything I see it as a consequence. When you are raised as part of a large family with several generations in the same house you probably have a much stronger sense of community than a single kid raised by just two parents.

As with a number of other things of a similar nature, if societies want to boost birth rates they will ultimately have to subsidize it.

In the US we could increase the child tax credit, provide subsidized day care, reduce higher education costs, and build more housing.

Not sure how you’d go about it in China as their costs and structure is different.

> go to a good college (that you're expected to help pay for)

Either don’t send your kids to college or don’t expect society to pay for them then

Checking in briefly as a person whose parents paid for college: I feel as though I owe these people 9/10 or more of everything I own and if push came to shove, I would be happy to pay all of their bills until they die.

Put otherwise, these two people have created quite an asset in me and we aren’t even considering their other children. I doubt very much that any one of their financial or physical assets would go to the lengths to which I would go to protect and aid them.

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