Global fertility isn't just declining, it's collapsing | Hacker News Reader

Global fertility isn't just declining, it's collapsing

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54 pointsamin145 comments

To be honest I live in one of the most pampered eras doing the cushiest job from home. But even so I dont understand how people motivate themselves to make children, especially if they have a 1-2 hour commute and are forced by debt to take on shittier jobs than mine (probably 99% of jobs out there). Why even do this for 60 years and also condemn your kids to the same thing? It might seem like bragging but I basically won the game and I dont see anything worth it up here. I guess the struggle is what gives you meaning or something and children can be your cope because they will have a better life than yours if yours sucks.

One word - "Feelings". Kids invoke feelings, people are susceptible and ruled by them. Logic is then applied to the decision to justify.

Way to tell on yourself. Most emotionally mature people understand when feelings are driving their decision making, and don't try to justify it with self-serving logic. Only weird nerds claim to be ruled by logic and are actually motivated mostly by their feelings (the most prominent one in my experience being inadequacy).

Nothing I stated is untrue. Humans are prone to err on the side of feelings, even if they are what make us human. They are also what make us generally illogical or at least non-strategic.

The difference is people who can segment feelings from impacting making logical decisions.

I think we agree except that I believe that most people who claim to have "segmented their feelings" have actually repressed their feelings, and are far more prone to motivated reasoning than people who are overtly emotional.

Edit: Or, you know what? I deny the entire individualistic framing. I think to actually make logical decisions about anything of substance, it takes more than one person. For things that don't matter, like what to eat for lunch or what book to buy, it's fine letting your emotions take the wheel.

I think the individual logical person is a myth. We're social animals. Logical reasoning is a collective enterprise.

Feelings are part of what makes us human. We love our parents, enjoy the company of our friends, like listening to music and so much more.

Not everything in life is logical.

Are you looking for confirmation of your lifestyle here?

> I basically won the game

There are many ways to play this game, and I think it’s a bit early to declare yourself a winner if you haven’t even hit your deathbed.

Of course there are many ways. But as a consequence of this it doesnt matter how you play your game, I have won mine. If by example you think winning your game requires X children then do it. But the feeling that you need X children is as subjective as my feeling of winning my game

You don’t seem to think of children as people in your life, but as objects or objectives. That’s IMO not a healthy way of approaching this topic.

Also a bit strange to call yourself the winner when you're clearly not happy. I think OP has misunderstood the game.

How can you consider yourself to have won the game when you clearly describe being unhappy with life? Maybe introspect a bit and consider some change.

You might imply that I am unhappy because I say theres nothing worth it. However unhappiness only exists if you want something to be worth it and are disappointed by its nonexistence, you can be at peace with meaninglessness as long as you let go of desire

I don't see an implication that the parent is overall unhappy. I think responses like yours are frequently defensive when it comes to this particular topic.

Children are the greatest gift. In my opinion your life is very empty, full of materialism and selfishness. On your deathbed you will look back and wonder what it was all about, and no one will be there with you.

If your children have helped you then continue making them, I dont mind

It's possibly not obvious to you, but to me and the other commenters here, you have a depressed and nihilistic outlook. Life is full of tragedy - likely something will shake you from your comfy perch. Disability, illness, a layoff, who knows. Only the fewest people live an entire long life without the slightest pain. It would be wise to have the tools so that even if you were quadriplegic, you could still have love surrounding you and find purpose in life. I genuinely hope you get the help you need.

I'm sorry I made you so mad, it was just my opinion

I'm not mad - I'm discussing topics on the internet. How can I be mad when posting text in response to other text? We are having a philosophical discussion, and it seems to me like I'm speaking with an incomplete person, stuck in a difficult plane of existence, lacking purpose or happiness.

Every post you've made in this chain is oozing with utterly unwarranted condescension, bordering on hatred.

> Disability, illness, a layoff

I've faced all these (disability from a young age even) and as a result, I don't think there's any way I could raise children. Both because of my own issues make it seem challenging beyond possibility, but also because I wouldn't want to force a child to face the same problems I did. I very much believe to each their own on this particular subject, but if global fertility is "collapsing", then it seems like more people are coming to the same conclusion for one reason or another.

I totally understand not wanting to have children for disability and deciding you are not fit to be a parent. But the OP had a lot of projection onto people who do have kids, which is false. I think being 100% financially able to have children, and choosing not to because you like to travel and watch Netflix more, is a poor reason. But everyone is free to make their own choices.

My point about being comfy, was the OP's self description of a blessed, wealthy, pain-free life. But this state of things is temporary, so to be sure one has the mental, emotional, and spiritual tools to accept life when one isn't living a comfy existence. The description of having kids, and of life itself being meaningless, is a signal that when life throws the OP a tragedy, the response will not be healthy.

What we see in others is what we have inside

If life is full of tragedy, why make more of it? So that you could still have love surrounding you when tragedy strikes? How is that not selfish but OP's view supposedly is?

Yes, I agree with you that you have to create some meaning in your life, make up something and convince yourself to believe in it, because there is hardly another option.

> In my opinion your life is very empty, full of materialism and selfishness

That’s a heck of a baseless assumption IMO. I’m not the OP, but I am in a similar position to them - in my case I have a sufficient amount of material stuff to be basically comfortable without excess; then beyond that I have friends, volunteering at community events, and working on open source projects, none of which feel particularly materialistic or selfish?

It's difficult to explain, but having children triggers something deep--primitive, even--inside of you that unlocks another level of fulfillment. And self growth, for that matter.

I too have had a rewarding career that has afforded me all kinds of comfort. I've traveled extensively, even living in a foreign country. I've met interesting people and done interesting things.

But there's something special about hearing your child say "dada" or "mama" for the first time.

Notice, though, I said "fulfillment" and not "happiness"; I find the lows are lower and the highs are higher.

I wouldn't call you "selfish" or "materialistic."

I would say that parenting requires sacrifices--time, most of all--and can cultivate a kind of de facto anti-materialism depending on the parenting style.

There's a reflection on the past where you think of yourself as less selfish now, since you are now locked into doing more for others. Never before did you have to suck snot out of the nose of a completely helpless being, clean human waste, or endure having your beard roughly tugged on because it got a giggle.

The childless thus can _feel_ "selfish" to parents since they typically don't do as much for others as parents do for their children / wives / husbands / etc.

But that doesn't make it so.

Why do you assume anyone will be there with you?

I think you're asking a pretty profound question here, a. la "What is the meaning of life?" Not all of life's work has to be such a drudge. I would argue that you certainly have not won "the game" if nothing seems worth it from where you sit.

Has it not afforded you the opportunity to pursue hobbies / travel / etc that you desire? Has your work never been interesting or given you a spark to learn new things about our world / universe / inner-workings of personal relationships? I believe it is much more about the journey than the finish line.

I have satisfied all the desires that you speak of, hobbies, travelling and so on. But in the end only an absence of desire actually helped me, realizing the arbitrary nature of my goals and desires and how they all only provide momentary succor.

There is no "meaning" of life. What even is the meaning of meaning?

Asking about the "meaning" is reallly just asking: How does this affect ME?

Even asking this question is a demonstration of our species' general lack of appreciation for how outragously improbable our existence is.

Stop worrying about your "special purpose" and start being thankful that you're a winner of the trillion-to-one lottery that lets you sit here and think about these things...

How does this apply to the birth-rate issue? Simple, we need to intelligently manage our population size, which means having many-many less people on the planet...

Life comes with a lot of suffering inseparable from it. Different paths in life we can choose result in different kinds of struggle we onboard. Meaning is defined as what makes it overwhelmingly worthwhile.

A lot of religions/philosophies - Stoicism, Buddhism, Christianity etc. - are great for dealing with these problems for yourself, assuming you are already here. None, however, inspire the creation of new life to deal with this stuff. E.g. "Virtue is the highest good and its own reward" is great, but why create new life to have to deal with this if it can be avoided? It becomes circular and meaningless.

Any kind of dopamine-based pleasures are also somewhat degrading to one's humanity once you realize you're effectively being the mouse pushing the button, and are certainly far removed from having any meaning. What difference does it make how fast you were running on the hedonic treadmill if you're going to die?

I always envisionen myself having a (large) family in the future. The future came, sooner that I thought I guess (it creeps up behind you without you noticing!)

I have a 2 year old son now. His laughter is one of the most beautiful sounds in the world! I love watching him grow. Planning to have more, soon.

This is the answer. I had a beautiful life before having a child, but what I didn’t realize is although it was finely painted, it was all black and white. My daughter introduced a whole new dimension - color - to the painting of my life. Well worth all the pain.

My own personal take:

I live my life not for enjoyment but to try and leave the world better than I found it. If I can succeed in doing so (even slightly) then teaching 2 children to do the same would be my life’s greatest contribution.

I actually think the declining birth rate is rooted in the narrative that humans are ruining the earth. I believe we are making it better and more interesting over time.

>I actually think the declining birth rate is rooted in the narrative that humans are ruining the earth

I think this is unconvincing. People may cite this in a survey, but this is not how the vast, vast majority of people make a decision like this one. In my opinion, modernity has been increasing quality of life in developed nations for a long time, and recently it's begun a downturn - nothing can increase forever. It's not dramatic, but it is enough to cause a strong conflict with expectations, and one of the first things to go is the giving of your life to children.

I don't think it works this way. It is more aboit things that stop family formation amd offspring creation from 15 to 35ish, of which earth ruining marratives and the trend in living standards no longer being your friend are part of it. Childhood being extended into mid to late 20's by post secondary is another, overly expensive family housing is another. among many other contributors.

If these things succeed in delaying child creation then you end up like me (if you are lucky) and pop out two kids in your late 30's with many miscarriages and discovering the third probably isnt happening with very expensive ivf and even then it is a crapshoot. If you are unlucky you find out you waited too long and indadvertently optedout of the gene pool, at which point the environmental thing is a c(nvenient excuse to use when asked.

I don't have data on this, but I've got a lot of friends who are trying to have kids right now and really struggling. How much of a declining birth rate is tied to disruptions in average human fertility?

There's the part you mention, with the supposedly derogatory term of "breeders" applied to people who have the temerity to produce children.

There's also the dramatic cultural shift toward self-centeredness and self-fulfillment. "Follow your heart!" "Me time." "Self-care." In terms of caring for one's mental and physical health, this used to be framed such that you prepared yourself to be a useful and productive member of your family and society, not that you were doing it for yourself. The "follow your heart" nonsense emphasizes feeling over thinking, and seems to be aimed at much more, but also weighs in here.

Humans have been ruining the earth. But we need to raise better humans to fix it.

Being a father has been the most meaningful thing I've ever done.

It gives me a deep sense of satisfaction and joy to raise them, protect them, provide for them, guide them, and get to know them as they grow up.

Like you, I also work remotely. My career is fine. It pays the bills. I've been successful. But that's not where I find satisfaction now, and when I leave the workforce eventually it'll go on without me. The deeper, meaningful part of my life is what I've built outside of work - with my wife and kids, my family, my friends, and my piano and bass guitar.

I'm thinking of fatherhood & terrified at how much children would outsource my motivation. Taking my own purpose & goals & meaning, and throwing them in the garbage to commit myself to doing whatever the kid needs, endlessly.

It's horrifying & I hate hate hate how here in the US at least parents get no support, how impossible and expensive childcare is to manage. Being a parent feels like a huge overwhelming full time commitment.

And it terrifies me how many good interesting do-er adults the world loses to parenthood. Adults that would find interesting satisfaction & growth, that would bring meaning to the world, are wrapped up in miserable jobs they can't quit and running their child around.

Yes, it has huge personal meaning. And it's important in a macro sense for the species. But I feel like so much of the interestingness & possibility of the world is also lost to parenthood, that being a parent very quickly strangles out other transcendental journeys & questings that tend to be the best most inspiring parts of humanity.

My wife and I haven't found that to be the case. We've been mindful to continue to keep our own interests, hobbies, and friends. My wife started a business when she was pregnant with our third child. I started taking bass lessons weekly last year. I play D&D twice a week.

It's important for children to see their parents have a healthy relationship with life that is independent of them. It shows them a model and gives them space to grow as their own person.

Childcare is definitely expensive. I'll have to work a few extra years because of it. That gets a lot easier after the first five years though, once they're old enough for public school.

And honestly, the transcendental journeys and questing you mention... I don't think that's really where satisfaction is found. I find the most inspiring parts of humanity come from the relationships we form and the people we help and love.

Question: what was the answer for the thousands of generations ahead of you? It's possible that things were worse for all of your ancestors. If not all then definitely most.

What a sad outlook on life. If you find so little enjoyment and consider life something that you _condemn_ people to, then it's probably an incredible win for everyone else that you don't have kids.

subtly nihilistic and misanthropic. is this what winning looks like?

>It might seem like bragging but I basically won the game and I dont see anything worth it up here.

That's called depression, seek therapy.

Nature gave us libido to avert questions like this. As such, many of us are unplanned or unwanted.

I don't understand this space of what I can only term ecological or economic antinatalism. Can you share your thoughts on the following? Do you think unbeing is preferable to a potentially miserable life that would still likely result in them having their own children that didn't experience their own level of suffering? How many generations of potential suffering is required before having children is off the table? How many n+ future generations of having potentially joyful and regenerating lives would offset the former generations of suffering?

What level or type of disaster would trigger it? Would you have had kids if you knew that the Black Death was coming or, being a Roman citizen, that the Roman Empire was going to fall? If you were a European in 1920, fully knowing the outcome of WWII, would you intentionally have kids? What if you only had models that these things were coming in a fuzzy way?

My father-in-law told me don't have kids. My brother-in-law sees climate change as catastrophic to any progeny, and my best friend views human life itself as an involuntary evil inflicted on children, but I have difficulties understanding their positions on an intuitive level. I get the reasoning on a rational level, but I don't have the gut-sense of it and it hurts my relationship with my family and friends.

Like, my position is that I'd like to think that I'd undergo torture for my kids, and that my kids would do so likewise for theirs recursively until the number of generations outnumbered the stars. From what I can see, living-on is the only thing that actually lasts--everything else will fall away, improve, and fall away again, including what we mean by being human itself, but procreation is forever.

How can I understand your perspective? Can I understand it? It would help me build stronger bridges if you (or anyone else) could help me intuitively picture it.

This question seemed authentic and caring enough that I wanted to try and answer it from my point of view, as I greatly share your desire to build stronger bridges with people and understand others.

> Do you think unbeing is preferable to a potentially miserable life that would still likely result in them having their own children that didn't experience their own level of suffering?

It would depend on my confidence levels that N recursive generations would have better or worse outcomes. This may sound heartless, but knowing my kid has a better life than me only goes so far in making me feel like suffering is worth that. To me at least, humanity and the world is in a context that I don't see the problems that have caused suffering in my life improving, and while I've never been actively suicidal, the thought that eventually I will un-be again is extremely comforting, to the extent that I don't think I'd regret never-having-been, even outside the tautological that I wouldn't be alive to regret it.

> How many generations of potential suffering is required before having children is off the table? How many n+ future generations of having potentially joyful and regenerating lives would offset the former generations of suffering?

To me at least this question only relevantly includes "those alive while I'm alive." Whether my great great great grandchildren have an amazing time of it has very little bearing on my ability or desire to withstand suffering to achieve it. I realize this is philosophical and subjective.

> What level or type of disaster would trigger it? Would you have had kids if you knew that the Black Death was coming or, being a Roman citizen, that the Roman Empire was going to fall? If you were a European in 1920, fully knowing the outcome of WWII, would you intentionally have kids? What if you only had models that these things were coming in a fuzzy way?

It's less about a specific disaster and more "how much of your life will you get to spend on things that bring you fulfillment and happiness vs. things that cause suffering." If I had reasonably high confidence those specific things you listed were coming I would not have had children, and given my own family's history through those events, I would find myself rather justified in hindsight in doing so. (multiple prisoners of war, multiple international displacements, multiple individuals killed as civilians due to who or what they were.)

In the current context, it has more to do with the holistic "how much of human societal effort do we spend on improving our ability to find joy, actualize ourselves, pursue art, science, and betterment of all human life." And while I recognize that on many absolute measures (e.g. murder) we're better off, it seems to be in the sense of, yes, a society of individuals optimized to serve a relentless machine of efficiency operating a scale far beyond what human group psychology is well-built to interact with, will likely see those same outcomes, but I'm not sure it leads to a net-positive world. A reasonable rebuttal would be if I would ever in history have found life sufficient, given these constraints, and I'm not honestly sure. I can't put myself in a world where I don't have the knowledge and context I do now without feeling I'm lying to myself, but I do think that the presence or absence of the hope that things are going to be "better" vs "more of the same/worse" plays into it heavily (in which sense, innocence may have been bliss), but for better or worse in the current world I do not see the things I value coming any more into the fore.

(I had previously worked jobs that were much more relaxed, to try and leave me more time for the things I value, but finding out I had a chronic condition requiring regular surgery meant that this was effectively not an option, and in the long-term, I would have been in a precarious financial and life position sooner or later had I not anyway.)

> Like, my position is that I'd like to think that I'd undergo torture for my kids, and that my kids would do so likewise for theirs recursively until the number of generations outnumbered the stars.

This gets to the core of the difference between our perspectives, I think. I don't see any inherent good in this outcome. In fact, knowing what I do about human nature/human psychology, that outcome scares the hell out of me. If anything I see "I don't want to have kids" as the one real lever I have to push back against or not be a part of the perpetuation of systems that have gotten us to the point we're at. (While things like climate change are certainly important, to be clear, my lament is largely along things like consolidation of power, the iron law of oligarchy, capture of systems by special interests, and the overarching paperclip-maximizer/"angry tribes of apes" tendencies of humankind)

I disagree with your myopic depressed outlook except for the first part: how do you motivate yourself to take on the insane roller coaster ride of having kids? You don't, and nobody is.

That's why the future is transhuman clones grown in pods by the state.

The number of low-quality responses that basically go "you're misanthropic, you're depressed, you're nihilistic" (exact adjectives) on HN is gobsmacking to me. It is bonkers that this topic brings out those horrible, shallow emotions even in a (relatively speaking) shrewd and open-minded place like this. It really is like people's brains are short-circuited by even the vaguest "negative" (in the broadest possible sense of the word) opinion on having children, even if that opinion is quite tame and curiosity-minded, and isn't even in the same universe as something like an assertion that you, the reader, shouldn't have children.

Well, maybe you didn't win the game? Maybe you won by your criteria and you don't see the meaning in life because your criteria was wrong. Maybe winning the game is enriching your life with love and family, no matter how easy your day to day life is. Or not, I don't know, I just know that if you feel like having kids is condemning them to something that sucks you didn't win.

Why not just read the parent as written and engage with their writing honestly? Their usage of the phrase "won the game" is obvious and plain. There's no need to pretend they should have meant it in a broader or more emotional sense. It's a pointless word game.

I'm not, you're misreading what I said.

Why does the global population need to grow? What is wrong with only having 9 billion people instead of 10 billion?

It helps the economy, more people = more demand and bigger markets. Now one might ask why the economy needs to grow.

Cuz the old billionaires

More people is more demand and higher prices and depressed wages equals higher profits. Natalism is being pushed by corporatism. Plus the modern economy is a giant ponzi scheme and people don’t want it to collapse on their watch.

Owners of land, and operators of various Ponzi schemes, demand it.

Those Ponzi schemes include practically everyone's retirement plans. Whether it's a tax-funded benefit or a private fund levered to the market it needs growth.

The assumption of continued economic growth is what makes the numbers in dodgy ponzi economic theory work. Society will have to go to ever increasing extremes to make it work. At some point the cost of that will exceed even the imagined gains and the economy will implode. Politically people don’t want their dose of reality so we’re stuck in a boom/bust business cycle of ever increasing amplitude. The rollercoaster we can’t get off. I think we’re already at the limits of what can be done and the social fabric keeping things together does appear to be at a breaking point.

Cuz the economy

We do not have a good way to run a society where elderly people substantially outnumber young people.

A shrinking population is not necessarily a problem. A rapidly shrinking population is.

"A wild Correct Answer appears"

Speaking as a "rapidly becoming old person" myself, something we always dodge around is that old people aren't good for a whole lot. I mean, you'll see, but I'd estimate I have about fifty percent the hustle, physically.

Mentally, I'm just not as . . eh . . exuberant? I guess I'm slower, but I'm also not crazy. I don't work as hard on other people's dumb ideas - I mean, sure, I'll help out, sure, do what I can, but I'm not spending a week without sleep on it. I guess you get a good intuition for what's going to crash and burn and what's got legs. That's actually a negative in your employables. The Overlords want people to jump when they say jump, even if it's off a cliff.

Funding pension and institutional investment on a pyramid scheme of infinite growth is definitely the problem.

But this isn't something that can be gradually fixed. Capitalism —at least this version of it— has to go.

How do you take care of non productive old people with very few productive young people? You call it a pyramid scheme, I don't see how you socialize caring for old people in away that cannot be classified that way. Perhaps the solution is to take care of your parents and if someone didn't have the foresight to have kids they're on their own? Pyramid scheme averted.

That's not the pyramid I mean. It's too expensive to have kids because housing (and to a significant but much lesser extent fuel) prices are out of control.

The infinite growth pyramid that's the problem is that banks, governments and pensions all rely on real estate doubling in value every 10 years. They have for decades but we're at a point now where people can't even afford rents in some places. The Welltodos in their 50s and 60s have hoovered up a large bank of properties in the past few recessions with a view they can sit back and make their 8%.

It can't carry on. This euphemism, "global fertility" is the side effect that our economics is utterly unsustainable. And no, I don't have a solution.

Projections and forecasts for entire sectors use the data to make decisions, for example China built so many homes in projections of population / census estimates, their source data turned out to be incorrect that’s why you see a situation like Evergrande.

:facepalm:

Our society was based on population growth. It's not that it needs to grow or doesn't need to grow.

It's that the change to our way of life and economy is as big as ww2.

Peter Zeihan does a good lecture explaining the impact.

I like Bezos's argument for this. He always talks about "1000 Mozarts and 1000 Einsteins". If you consider that for every million born 1 will be a genius, and that having more geniuses is better than not, then it makes sense to max out your population.

But what is the point of new Mozart or Einstein if the child cannot get proper education and realize their potential? Next Mozart could be born a slave in Mauritania or work 12h in McDonald's to barely afford some food.

Oh yeah you're right. In fact I just remembered the sun is going to explode in 5 billion years so it's all pointless anyway.

My point is we as society should focus on quality, not quantity of everything and everyone.

That's not a point, that's dull edge. Quantity vs quality is a false dichotomy, both can and have increased over time. Further, a 1000 monkeys on a typewriter could never come up with general relativity. One genius can improve quality of life for everyone.

And 10000 geniuses could improve nothing if they are born in slavery and have no education.

Most geniuses cannot prosper in today’s world. Genius correlates strongly with disagreeableness and disagreeable people have a very hard time in modern organizations where sociability and rule-following are crucial. Not least in academia. We should cultivate the geniuses we do have rather than spam the earth with more people - especially people from countries with low general intelligence.

Who said anything about geniuses prospering? It's about the world prospering as a byproduct of genius work. And from my POV there is already plenty of that given the dizzying pace at which tech is evolving.

Am I the only one seeing the intricate relationship between population growth and the housing market? When the population grows, the housing price increases, and at some point it becomes too difficult for young couples to have extra rooms to raise kids (many still live with their parents). When the population decreases or collapses, the housing market crashes, and then, one or two generations later, the population increases again. The thing is that we've been accustomed to a quick and unprecedented population growth since the end of WW2, and the housing market of big cities are reaching its limits all over the world. My take is that it won't be a problem, au contraire, the population will stabilize around 10B, and this is a good thing on many dimensions. Think about it.

People just move further out.

Yes, this is what they do, up to a point.

Thanks to modern transportation (cars and good roads) and telecommunication (phones and internet) we've been able to expand our cities to levels that were unachievable during ancient times.

But with current tech, there are still practical limits. The undeniable proof is the huge pressure on the housing market. If it was practical to simply build houses in the middle of nowhere, people would do that instead of fighting for small space in large cities.

Population growth isn't the only variable, there's also housing regulations and zoning that influence how much gets constructed. For example, if property taxes increased quadratically based on property size, then there would be a very strong incentive against mega mansions and towards denser housing.

The housing market is complex and driven by many factors. But the main one, long-term, is population density.

The regulations and zoning are side effects of the fact that the housing market is used as a stable investment, precisely because population growth as been so steady for many decades now.

Ultimately, speculators and finance are acting as pricing agents, and they also skew the market to extract as much juice as possible from it. But in the end, the usefulness, and thus the value, of houses, is determined by the good old market rules, supply and demand, everything else is high-frequency noise, not the signal.

This model assumes constant housing stock, or at least, housing stock that grows slower than population. But this is not a given, so we need to ask, why is housing stock growing slower than population? And no matter what the answer is, it tells us that the problem here is not population growth. More people means more hands that can build houses. Even if construction efficiency weren't gaining in terms of man hours, it would mean at least that housing could he built to keep up with population. There's no shortage of land, most land is uninhabited. So where's the bottleneck?

As the trend continues the book children of men becomes more and more prescient.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Children_of_Men

So, looks like the "problem" is that by 2080 we'll be back to the same global population we have now? Perhaps that's good news, we'll have to learn how to live sustainably instead of basing everything on constant growth.

Also, global surface temperature will probably be around 2°C higher, sea levels will have risen maybe a metre, and we'll have been really lucky if large portions of the planet aren't a nuclear wasteland by then. At least we won't have to worry about overpopulation!

I'm not sure why this gets flagged, because it's very interesting and concerns all of us.

I think it's great, in my mind, there's too many people on the planet already, and we're stressing the biospehere near the breaking point in multiple ways.

9-10 billion people is plenty. This news is a welcome bit of good news in an otherwise scary future.

Agreed, it's curious the article never mentions sustainability or benefits of not having uncontrolled population growth, but uses negative language for the trend (collapse, doom, disappearing..)

Yeah, some people are very alarmed that population growth, and thus economic growth might slow down. Elon Musk for example, is very alarmed about it.

I think we have to find a sustainable future, or it will find us on terms we won't like at all. This is a good thing.

I believe that it is actually just a racist / eugenics dog whistle because if you look at who is actually making babies, it is Africans

There's always one moron who wants to bring race into the discussion

I want you to ask yourself, how scary would it be if the population was 70% over the age of 60? You have three scenarios: old people working themselves into a grave, starving in the streets, or you're being taxed like a slave at 70% just to feed them. That sounds like a really scary future to me.

It beats the alternatives. Their children will have to help, as is common in many parts of the world.

How does it beat the alternatives?

The alternative is poluation grows unbounded until we destroy the biosphere and the wars, famines, and disease that follows finally limit the growth of the human population in a way we're unable and unwilling to do.

Infinite growth is incomaptible with a finite world.

This is so much better than that.

So at what point can we point at the few percent that are stacking wealth while the rest is too busy surviving to keep the species alive? I'm ready.

My wife and I make good money, by no means riches, and I'm all but done with the idea of trying for a second child. I don't even know how to take care of the first one if things keep getting shitter at this pace.

> There were 134 million babies born in 2023.

> There were 61 million people who died in 2023.

https://ourworldindata.org/births-and-deaths

Those numbers reflect events thirty to eighty years ago. It’s a strongly lagging indicator, and doesn’t mean we aren’t below replacement right now.

Fertility doesn't mean 'population' though? OP is somewhat about rate of change in the first figure, second is irrelevant.

It's not everywhere. North Korea has higher fertility than South Korea, for instance. See population pyramids:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_South_Korea

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_North_Korea

Why should we care? We can supplement a new tax base with removal of the border. I won't fall for the nationalist trap that, "my people being born on soil is magically better than people from over seas". Its never made sense to me why we need more children. Additionally we probably need a degrowth mindset in general in order to combat over consumption, and man-made climate change.

> I won't fall for the nationalist trap that, "my people being born on soil is magically better than people from over seas".

It's not a matter of "better" so much as assimilated vs. not. A country is shaped by the voters. If you change voter demographics too quickly, the new voter base won't have any innate familiarity or respect for the laws that make your country work. It's a basic system stability problem.

Consider this oversimplified scenario: the US has 300m people, do you agree or disagree that bringing in 200m Taliban would be a problem?

If you disagree, then you're living in a dream world. Otherwise you too agree that there's some limit to the rate of immigration that can ensure the stability of the country, we may simply disagree on exactly what that number might be. People who have much lower thresholds just think there are undesirable second and third order effects that push that number lower.

Is fertility being conflated with birthrate / desire or ability to have kids? I do believe fertility is declining due to environmental factors (pesticides, seed oils, etc) and autism is spiking out of control ... but I also think that a lot of younger generations are just choosing not to have children.

This is a common misunderstanding, one which I was fairly confused by until recently. "Fertility differs from fecundity, which is defined as the biological capacity to reproduce irrespective of intention for conception [...] In demographic contexts, fertility refers to the actual production of offspring, rather than the physical capability to produce which is termed fecundity. While fertility can be measured, fecundity cannot be" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fertility

I can’t help but to think about the Population Bomb hysteria. This time in reverse!

Just a remark about birth rate *85 method: the author isn't taking into account that women are having children later.

Sadly real fertility statistics are doomed to be late by 40 years, which is way too late, so we have to be satisfied by birthrate, but if I had to calculate the real fertility rate of a country, I would take the number of children per infertile women over 16 or something like that.

Its not political, I'm not saying anybody's right or wrong, I just wanted to geek on fertility statistics

To clarify for myself… humans aren’t losing the physical capacity to reproduce? It’s that we aren’t reproducing as much due to choice/circumstance?

This is pure speculation, but I wonder if endocrine disrupters present in plastics are leading to a decline in testosterone and therefore decline in fertility (I also wonder how those disrupters affect women)

Not only is that pure speculation, but it replaces a simple sociological explanation (changing gender roles) with a crackpot "scientific" one.

How is your explanation simple and where is the data to back that? This theory isn’t crackpot, global sperm rates are declining, the average testosterone of men is lower than it was during your grand-fathers time. Certain plastics have been shown to be endocrine disrupters.

Your theory might work in westernized countries but this trend is global according to the article, certain countries enforce more traditional values for men and women and those countries are also seeing a decline.

I'm a novice, but from the research I've done, the evidence is far from conclusive. There is growing evidence of the negative impact of microplastics on human health in a number of ways, but it is a massive leap to claim it is the primary cause for the phenomena you're describing.

In fact, the biggest contribution to declining birth rates is people have fewer children, not men being incapable of having children. And there are plenty of great sociological explanations for that. Changing gender roles, economic mobility, access to birth control, etc.

Edit: As somebody else said, it's a birthrate crisis, not a fertility crisis. "Fertility" is a loaded and inaccurate framing.

PSS: Even crisis is loaded. It just leads to people channeling their existing personal insecurities into large scale social phenomena.

Global sperm counts are also dropping, so eventually the physical ability to reproduce might be affected: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/human-sperm-counts...

"Birth rate" probably would have been the better term to use in the article title if you ask me, but then I suppose it wouldn't have the whole alarmist children of men angle behind it.

That's the same thing.

... except the difference in rate.

Finally some good news!

I never understand this argument, we have lots of space on this planet for humans, it’s the industrialization that’s harming the planet not more people

Industrialization is done in support of human populations. As populations get bigger more and more space must be industrialized.

Your existence (eating, drinking, living) requires X acres of farmland, Y acres of ocean, Z acres of landfill, N tonnes/watts of energy, etc etc etc. No matter how "ethical" you eat or how much housing density you can tolerate, the resources much be spent or you will die.

I suppose it is true that we could all stand shoulder to shoulder connected to IV drips like some kind of sci-fi nightmare (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mark_of_Gideon) but I view this as a bad outcome.

40% of all bioavailable nitrogen produced on this planet is produced industrially. Most human beings exist only due to industrialization, they would not exist if industrialization wasn't a reality. Feeding people and having people cannot be separated. You can't have an earth with this many people without industrialization, short of razing all forest land and farming on it, which seems to me to be much more destructive than industrialization.

Interested to know the following: 1) The delta change over time for the regions. As countries with typically larger familes have access to better healthcare, it should have increased. 2) the delta change for countries plotted with covid vaccination acceptance.

OK and ?

In the US, having kids is for the top 1% who can afford it or the bottom 5% who have always been poor.

Want to fix this in the US? Offer stable child-rearing families FREE housing, and I mean in decent neighborhoods. I don't mean a stipend or low-interest loan, I mean FREE including utilities, maintenance and property tax. You will see strollers everywhere within two years.

You must be joking, we don't get free healthcare, let alone free tape at the post office.

Healthcare is just one piece of the puzzle. Birth rates are collapsing in countries with socialized healthcare as well.

Solve declining populations with this one simple trick!

Population declines in rich countries and increases in poor. Make world poor again and that will resolve the issue! /s

There is also something seriously wrong with what we’re consuming or being exposed to. I’m a millennial and it seems like more of my friends have had trouble conceiving than the opposite. Just in my small friend group a couple of people are unable and the ones that have had them tried for quite a long time. I’m currently at a year of trying at 31 years old (partner is 30.). We are all otherwise healthy.

As Clinton famously said: "It's the economy, stupid." (I'm not calling you stupid.)

Housing, healthcare, education, and transportation are all generally unaffordable, and those are precisely the costs most associated with having children. Add in the tradeoff of one partner staying home vs making money but paying it to childcare for several years, and it's much easier to say "maybe next year".

I'd suggest that the main issue might not be housing, but rather childcare. The cost of childcare is incredibly high, more than many (most?) mortgages or rent payments. Unlike previous generations who settled in the suburbs close to family support, many of us are now gravitating back to city centers away from relatives who could help with childcare.

Raising children requires a substantial commitment of time – they're undoubtedly rewarding for many who choose to have them, but it's completely reasonable why some people would be hesitant or even opposed to the idea.

What about Finland or Sweden? 2.1 children per woman is the steady "not declining" rate... and Scandinavia tends to have people pointing there and saying "this is how you do support for new families..."

Sweden is at 1.66 children per woman and Finland is at 1.37.

United States is at 1.64 and Canada is at 1.40.

No one thing will be sufficient, but eliminating obstacles to child rearing is the only solution governments have short of nonsensical interventions (or just accepting the situation).

But what is the outcome? Children in families where people are getting everything for free from the government. They will not be an active working class, because why should you work if government is giving everything for free?

But more affordable child care and more tax brakes for families with kids is a key.

These days having a kid is like going to prison: woman destroys career and burns savings.

Everyone used to be able to afford it until states and corporations worked together to convince everyone that a mother's time is better spent in a corporation generating tax revenue & profits for shareholders so that she can take some of that money she earns to afford childcare & home services because she doesn't have the time to care for her children or maintain her home because she's working so that she can afford childcare & home services because she doesn't have the time to care for her children or maintain her home because she's working so that she can afford childcare & home services because she doesn't have the time to care for her children or maintain her home because she's working

I’m an old dad (by my standards, 41 with two toddlers), and this is the reason. It took me most of my young adult life to even get to a stable configuration where kids felt remotely possible. No regrets over here, but I have less energy than I did when I was 30!

Birth rate decreases as income increases. The highest income earners have the lowest birth rates.

> Offer stable child-rearing families FREE housing, and I mean in decent neighborhoods.

This has been done, often abused, and the neighborhoods don't always remain decent.

How about just a UBI instead?

lol

socialism is youth tax so what are you accomplishing taxing the youth to pay the youth (minus bureaucrats hefty cut)? we really need to stop taking money from kids to give to boomers, and take money from boomers to give to kids, unpopular political suicide changes like delete medicare

As others have pointed out you should really do some research, in the United States birth rates are inversely correlated with income. [1] If anything, if we wanted to dramatically raise birth rates we would want a poorer population, not a wealthier one.

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/241530/birth-rate-by-fam...

That trend is reversing. https://medium.com/impact-economics/rich-families-are-having...

Discovering the unintended consequences of this policy is left as an exercise for the reader.

How do you offer free housing in "decent neighborhoods"? "Decent" is not an immutable quality of a place, its a property that emerges largely from the people that live there. Decent people are decent neighborhoods.

I for one welcome our new childless overlords.

Our planet is seriously overpopulated (with humans), so this is good news.

Doomer logic without evidence.

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