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Comment by thomasfl | Hacker News Reader

Will Tinder be blamed for the sudden decline in fertility rate? Is there any other plausible explanstion to South Korea’s sudden and dramatic drop in fertility rate to 0.8? No matter how bad the housing market is or the job market is, there has never in history been such a drop in population.

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Yes, dating apps turbocharge hypergamy. It is not a secret that the top 10% of men get a huge share of the likes received.

Edit:

Share of all likes received according to ChatGPT

Top 1% 16.4%

Top 5% 41.1%

Top 10% 58.0%

Top 50% 95.7%

Bottom 50% 4.3%

Male hypergamy and polygyny has been practiced by many cultures historically. They had many problems, but low birth rates wasn’t among them. I don’t think dating apps are a sufficient causal explanation alone for low birth rates

Back then you could have 10 wives and start a population of people named Khan.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_City%2C_Arizona

>you could

Could you? Are you part of the 1%?

The second factor is access to birth control, most women just dont want to have children unless in very specific circumstances

Historically they were compelled

This explains the drop from 50s not the 2000s.

perhaps religious and moral pressure not to excersize the choice available has decreased between 50s and 2000s

Cell-phones. Noone’s having sex because they’d rather watch Tik-Tok; it’s got lower friction than going outside.

Most of the drop occurred in the late 50s to mid 60s. Fertility in the US peaked at over 3.5 births per woman in the 50s before falling below 2 by the late 60s. It then stabilized for 40 years and even recovered to the low to mid 2s in the 90s and 2000s before falling post-2008 from 2.2 to 1.7.

Like which cultures?

I too have the same skepticism here. If you're using dating apps then you're at least motivated to seek physical relations.

However, I'm surprised nobody has bought up porn yet (and other equally addicting digital habits).

It was practiced by the literal 1% of men, unless we talking about Khan specifically, it's a insignificant number.

Humans are naturally polygamous like the other great apes and mammals. When men (as in, male humans) realised this, they concluded that women were entirely to blame for it and sought to control their behaviour. This eventually got woven into their religions and for some time women's behaviour was controlled, or at least became shameful and taboo. Many things have happened more recently:

* Feminism,

* Decline of religion,

* Rise of state and law, particularly around male responsibilities towards children,

* Effective contraception,

* Dating apps.

Take all of this together and we're basically reverting back to our natural polygamy, but without all the pregnancies.

This is the kind of thing that really needs a primary source instead of ChatGPT.

They are well kown many years old okcupid numbers

The only new variable in the last century of humanity is birth control. All others (hypergamy, economic mobility, migration, etc.) are recurring and have not impacted birth rates significantly in the past.

Population density and infant mortality had changed a lot too in the last 100 years. Income disparities, working hours, and climate too in the last 50.

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