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Comment by hdlothia | Hacker News Reader

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Shy of paying living wages for jobs with decent work life balance and building sufficient housing, of course.

Over and over this is repeated, but wages are not the reason for decline in birth rates IMO.

Talk to your friends, they might verbally say 'money', but then you see them go on trips and buy food at restaurants. Its much easier socially to say 'money', than 'I don't like/want kids'.

The only reason I have a ton of kids, is because I am planning on setting them up for political purposes as I play Dynasty. Its selfish, and I hope to make lots of money and power from them.

No one else has this mentality. The better question is: "Why does someone want kids?"

Given most people are hedonists(assumed). Would a hedonist want kids? Maybe. They are cute which is dopamine inducing. But less fancy food and lots of crying pains.

> Talk to your friends, they might verbally say 'money', but then you see them go on trips and buy food at restaurants. Its much easier socially to say 'money', than 'I don't like/want kids'.

Going on trips and eating out are luxuries some can afford because they don't have children...

Is this a novelty account? The comment + username makes it feel like it, but I'm not used to seeing this type of poster on HN.

There was a time, not that long ago, when going on trips and eating at restaurants was not mutually exclusive with having kids.

Depends on the restaurant. I'm apparently the only white family that will bring my kids to an Indian restaurant in this city. Once in a while I'll see kids with their India family, but all the other customers are adults who seem to think Indian restaurants are not for kids. (the staff seems to agree that they are serving family friendly food - it is what they ate growing up)

That sounds less like a money issue and more a cultural thing.

exactly, many places are not welcoming of kids.

There was a time, not that long ago, where going on trips and eating at restaurants were not affordable for 90% of people, but they still had kids.

This is clearly a multifaceted topic.

No, these are two different topics. Travel and food became less expensive because technology advances. This is what we'd expect to happen and has nothing to do with kids.

We got to the point where travel, food, and child rearing were all readily affordable things. Now it is no longer the case.

Our technological ability to travel or produce food has not diminished, indeed these things are cheaper than ever. The cost of child rearing, relative to people's earnings, has gone up.

I think that's an interesting thought, but would frame it a little bit differently. I'm not sure the true cost of child rearing has increased in the bare minimum requirements are still quite cheap. Instead, I think there's been an escalation of expectation or perceived minimum around both child rearing and material life.

It would be fascinating to read or perform a study looking at what it would cost to obtain the median material conditions of life from say 1924.

I would expect it would be quite cheap. I imagine a tiny house smaller than modern apartments located in a rural area. There would be no healthcare, cell phone, Electronics, or car.

If these were the expectations, I think it is still very possible to support the family and children on a single income.

Edit: I found this awesome USDA guide from 1934 for how to set up a substance farm on 1 acre.

https://www.nal.usda.gov/exhibits/ipd/small/exhibits/show/su....

Im partial to layout 1, for land north of the Mason-Dixon line, where average quality farmland is about 11k/acre: https://www.nal.usda.gov/exhibits/ipd/small/files/original/5...

Sure, it probably wouldn't be too expensive to achieve a typical 1924 quality of life, it would be even cheaper to achieve an 1824 quality of life, but it should be deeply alarming that a typical 1994 quality of life is out of reach.

Again, you used to be able to have healthcare, and a cellphone, and electronics, and a car, and all these other things (all of which were much more expensive to produce at the time) while simultaneously comfortably raising a family. A nice home in a good area was once a staple of the middle class, not a luxury for the elites.

We didn't sacrifice having children to improve our quality of life elsewhere, technological development has allowed us to keep our material possessions as we get poorer and poorer, while the costs of life that can't be reduced through technology - real estate, education, child care, etc - skyrocket.

What do you think stops us from going back to 1994 material conditions and costs?

Population is a big one that is a pretty big non-starter. Urbanization would be difficult. Housing and zoning codes might be possible. Childcare regulations is possible but unpopular. Lowering taxes to 1994 levels is possible, but unpopular.

I think you hit the nail on the head with hedonism as a root cause, particularly happiness utilitarianism in my mind.

There are lots of sentimental reasons a romantic might have kids even if it makes them less happy. In our current culture, sentimental and romantic are synonymous with stupid or foolish.

Birth rates fall when societies get richer, not when they get poorer. Additionally, rates are falling all the same in the states with the most generous welfare policies.

Birth rates fall when infant mortality falls, which tends to coincide with societies getting richer.

At the same time, countries tend to get richer when their birth rates fall, as people are spending their time working to produce economic value instead of having kids.

Compare say France, with a fertility rate of 1.82 and a GDP per capita of $43k to South Korea with a fertility rate of 0.88 and a GDP per capita of $42k.

Do not mistake correlation with causation. And do not mistake society getting richer with the individuals in a society having more access to the time and space necessary for raising a family.

Well, there is this quote, "Dr Peng said throwing money at people was not enough to convince them to have children." https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-05-04/asia-spending-million... It is more of a culture thing.

At least in the US, I think children are perceived as a nuisance right now, and adding special rules for them for airlines doesn't really change that. If anything it makes it worse. Some campaign like "don't get a dog, get a child" might have more appeal. E.g. one could point out how you can't bring a dog on a plane except in a carrier but a child gets their own seat.

The government needs to reform its support systems if it wants more children.

The correlation between government support systems as a thing which exists, and number of children per couple, is decidedly negative.

I don't think that's causal in any way, but that lack of causality applies to your statement as well.

Ah yeah, I didn't mention the foster care system. If you think adopting a pet is hard, try adopting a child...

Adopting a child is generally much harder than having your own. "Normal" kids rarely end up in foster or adoption situations. You see abused kids - you need a degree in psychology to help them recover from their background, or you see kids defects (genetic, mental, or otherwise) who need special care that is much harder than normal to give - while this could happen to you by random change, odds are it won't. Once in a while a "normal" kid has their family die (not just parents, extended family as well) and end up in the system, but this is rare. I'm glad for those parents who do take on foster kids, but it is not easy.

Adopting overseas is not a good answer - there is a lot of fraud (most countries will not even allow it anymore - it is too easy to kidnap a baby and by the time the rightful parents can get to authorities the baby is in a different country and impossible to trace down). There is still some opportunity, but make sure you are not unwittingly kidnapping a child.

That's certainly one of the issues - if having children was separate from raising them, like how pet breeders are generally not pet owners, children would be more of a fungible commodity and everything would be a lot simpler. I'm not saying it should be like that, just that economically it's one of the reasons the child business is not an efficient free market.

Do we? Is the global population about to collapse? Isn't an increase of global population going to cause more issues?

Define collapse. The world population is on track to start declining starting in the next few decades. However with 8-9 billion humans how large a loss would you require before you call it a collapse is a debatable question.

Increase in global population will continue for a few decades, but there are more old people than young people and it seems unlikely that we will get to a phase where births are high enough to counteract coming the death by old age in the near future.

I believe this is a good thing even if it will cause many issues. Humanity will have to live on earth for a long time and infinite growth is not sustainable. So at some point the population has to fluctuate. We will have to accept this reality.

May I ask why we should do that?

If the status quo continues, the population pyramid inverts and you get too many pensioners trying to cash in retirement investments whose value is backed up by too few people still in work.

How much of a problem this is depends how close your economy is to replacement level, the closer the better. And I say "economy" rather than "country" because if (for the sake of argument) 100% of your investments and suppliers* are in the Bay Area then that's what you need to care about even if (like me) you're not American.

* I'm still oversimplifying, but take the gist

Next let's encourage them to move those children around by burning kerosene in the atmosphere! WCGW?

Sure. Let’s start with universal free childcare and healthcare.

Tax paid-Childcare is the biggest win win win.

Your laborers are working which is good for GDP. They are taxed. The laborers are earning experience which produces some sort of multiplier of efficiency.

For the right: More workers are good for economies

For the left: More workers leaving the home mean higher social/political awareness and education. More children getting preschool/pre-k education.

For the children: I cannot tell you how many times I've heard things like, "My kid doesnt talk" or some other delay, only to find out they have been at home spending all day with a parent for years. I've further seen this as my 3rd child pretends to be the same age as my 2nd child, speech and physical abilities.

The worst thing is having a person stay at home for 5 years, watching a single child.

While I'm certainly pro free childcare, it is worth noting that even countries with both free child care and generous paternity leave, like Sweden, still have very low birth rates. So while these things are probably good in themselves, they are no guarantee that they'll significantly improve brith rates.

I agree that in general, there can be economic benefits to specialization of labor.

However, I also think there is deep hesitancy and real risks when domestic work to a government entitlement.

I would also think that if the left makes inducing "higher social/political awareness" a primary goal, the proposal would be dead on arrival.

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