I don't understand how any species escapes logistic growth without strict population control or interstellar travel.
As people get more wealthy, there seems to be less incentive to have lots of children. Perhaps due to better healthcare (less deaths in childbirth) and more securities for old age (eg. pensions).
Seems Africa is at the moment the only continent that still has population growth (and quite massive).
https://www.statista.com/statistics/272789/world-population-...
And I predict that as the cost of labor goes up, people will want to have more kids again because it will be profitable, not unlike subsistence farmers wanting kids to work on the farm.
It's easy to see that in poorer countries with minimal or no pensions or social security having more children leads to greater productive capacity for the family, and a better chance of the parents being cared for in old age. Family connections are crucial support networks everyone relies on. Each extra child is another insurance policy for the future. In wealthy countries with pensions and social security none of that is an issue.
My interpretation is that there are innumerable cultural things that are popular nowadays which discourage people from having children, whether that be TV shows that make "family values" seem outdated and backwards, urban housing that's too small for families, and so forth.
My general point is more that the problems with birth rates are more of a contemporary cultural issue (largely an exported Western one) and not something that just automatically comes with technological/economic development.
I really don't but the corporations pushing an agenda theory. Like all conspiracy theories, people doing the conspiring would have to actually conspire. They would to communicate about it, lots of people would know, some of them would change their minds, there would be leaks, especially for a conspiracy that has broad reach and engages with huge swathes of public culture communications.
Honestly if your immediate jump is to accuse someone of conspiracy theory thinking, this isn’t a conversation worth having, because you’re not willing to think slightly deeper about the situation.
Even beside that I don't see how that works even from an incentive point of view. Lots of corporations sell things to children, or to parents for their children. There are huge swathes of industries organised around that. How is it to the benefit of companies to have fewer customers?
It doesn’t seem that far fetched to me that corporations care about more people being in the workforce and as consumers, than as family units with only one earner and spender. Whatever can be monetized will be monetized.
And if that wasn’t the case, why weren’t companies pushing for more flexible jobs (part time, etc.) that would accommodate working women and motherhood?
Maybe it’s an oversimplified to say corporations “push” stuff into the media; and more of a cyclical process of culture and corporate interests, but I find the examples I mentioned (popular TV shows, etc.) to be pretty obvious and undeniable.
There are several major factors here. One is more women having access to higher education, driven by increased social independence and the feminist movement in the 60s and 70s. Women want education and careers, I have two daughters so I know this. No corporation is telling them to do it.
Another is competition for middle class jobs requiring an education, there are more jobs like this now in the developed world than ever before, and more educated people people seeking them out so competition is huge. This includes international competition, hundreds of millions of people in the developing world getting added to the global middle class has had a huge effect. It's meant a precipitous collapse in poverty, but devalued middle class jobs so that wages have stagnated.
Another is housing competition. Everyone wants the nicest house they can get for their family, but supply isn't keeping up with demand. As a result all those people with dual household incomes are competing with each other, bidding up the prices of houses. As a result the older generations are now pretty well off overall, but most of their net worth is tied up in their house.
>It doesn’t seem that far fetched to me that corporations care about more people being in the workforce and as consumers, than as family units with only one earner and spender. Whatever can be monetized will be monetized.
How are they expecting to get more individual consumers if people aren't having children? That makes no sense to me. The incentive structure is all wrong, particularly for the whole swathes of industries that cater to families and children.
>And if that wasn’t the case, why weren’t companies pushing for more flexible jobs (part time, etc.) that would accommodate working women and motherhood?
Every company I have worked for has done. The company I'm with now offers flexible hours, subsidises child care and offers far more generous parental leave than required by law. My previous company also had a specific hiring programme to recruit and retrain women returning to work after having children.
People make TV shows to make money. They'll make the show that sells, not ones that push some nebulous economic agenda that wouldn't even have any effect until a whole generation later.
If this was a conspiracy, your point about not having consumers would make sense. But it’s not a conspiracy, it’s merely entities acting in their short term interests - which they are incentivized to do by the nature of the stock market.
Also remember that this is during the era of increasing globalization, when global corporations are in many ways more concerned with international markets than with local ones.
You also vastly underestimate how social attitudes have changed in the last 70 years, and how this is not at all just something that “naturally” happened.
People aren't all just corporate puppets having all their strings pulled by shadowy overlords. It's not like China with the one child policy, which I'm familiar with as my wife is Chinese. Sometimes people just make their own decisions. They make them for reasons sure, that's why there is a trend because people in similar situations tend to make similar choices overall, but nobody planned for all of this to happen.
Nothing to do with consumerist media, just letting women know how to prevent 5th child.
This is a consequence of our economic and cultural systems, not because women working somehow become incapable of having children.
Women with part time jobs and time for childcare still have easier time with 3 children rather then 5.
Abundance of food, and local peace is clearly the common denominator for demographic transition. The reason it did not happen in continetal europe is the amount of warring that took place there.
Never heard of that, any sources to recommend on the topic?
> Abundance of food, and local peace is clearly the common denominator for demographic transition
That sounds really suspicious as description of France in the eighteenth century…
18 to 20 millions in a smaller territory than modern France. I also read that northern Italy demography was the same density, and only reach the same density circa 1850, but i'm not sure if it's from Fournet or a criticism of Fournet (I love reading historians' criticism, but the majority are academic papers or thesis)
[edit] > That sounds really suspicious as description of France in the eighteenth century…
Yeah, I was adding to the argument, I'm 100% in agreement.
Merci (ça ne va pas poser trop de problème ;))
People in developing countries tend to have children in order to boost the family's income. As the economy develops, this turns out to no longer be beneficial.
Generally, people choose to have less children as infant mortality goes down. Introduction of better medical care leads to a temporary spike in population, as more people live longer. But, lower infant mortality means that people don't need to have as many children in order to have some survive, and so they typically choose to have fewer children. The adjustment period can be a problem, as we have seen in the developing world.
How would an economic phenomenon (requiring a typical form of green leaves to guarantee a happy life at old age) precisely counter a biological phenomenon (a desire to procreate)?
It seems more likely that readily available birth control and a particular willingness of women to join the labour force is the cause here.
What is stopping extremely rich narcissists from creating thousands of children once technology allows for it? We're in for a horrible population growth if you ask me.
Why?
(See also several other comments on this topic in this thread.)