America's Baby Bust | Hacker News Reader

America's Baby Bust

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36 pointstokenadult52 comments

Only a conservative bastion like the WSJ would describe a declining fertility rate as a crisis: "The root cause of most of our problems is our declining fertility rate."

That's true only if we accept the model where growth must be constant and unending. Doctors call that cancer, but economists call it healthy growth.

How is it that all these intelligent people don't understand that population growth cannot be constant and perpetual? That eventually we run out of land to put all those happy consumers?

I didn't read it that way. I read it as "the crisis of our current economic structure is rooted in demographic trends". One way to avoid problems is to push the fertility up, as discussed in the article. The other way, not discussed there, is to change the economic system. I wouldn't begrudge the author exploring just one possibility out of two, the one he believes to be more likely.

Also, it would be better if you skipped the adhom, and addressed the argument directly. It always leads to a more polite, more constructive conversation, the likes of which we all prefer to see here on Hacker News.

> I read it as "the crisis of our current economic structure is rooted in demographic trends".

I couldn't have realistically exaggerated their over-the-top way of putting the issue, so I simply quoted theirs.

> I wouldn't begrudge the author exploring just one possibility out of two, the one he believes to be more likely.

In an essay it's always best to address all the options, not just one, even if the author intends to discuss only one of them in depth.

Also, regardless of how we address or analyze the demographic issues, the only truly catastrophic outcome would be continued growth.

> Also, it would be better if you skipped the adhom ...

Not really an ad hominem. To a reader unfamiliar with the WSJ, it's simply context.

Your comment was the first on this article, and it set the tone for the entire discussion. Do you like what became of it?

My comment was both germane and consistent with the tone of the linked article.

> Do you like what became of it?

Who cares what I like? The conversation will do just fine without checking with me or my tastes.

Look at Japan, they've been getting crushed over the past few decades by low fertility and a disproportionally older population.

Actually they're getting crushed by lousy spending and monetary policy, and regulations that dampen local competition. The next leg down for Japan will, however, be demographic, as retirees turn the nation's savings rate negative and the bills for the past 20 years come due.

It's a crisis because the ratio of workers to retirees has been almost flipped on its head. by 2030 two individuals payroll taxes (SSI, medicare) are supposed to support each retiree, down froma opstware ratio of about 16 to 1. That means either benefits have to be slashed, or taxes on the employed have to soar. In practice there's a bit of both and more savings from reducing waste, but there's still a big gap to close. The boomers were a big generation, but they had far fewer children than their parents and lived far longer. This is a pattern that has already appeared in many other countries.

You'll see movement on immigration reform this year, because it offers the best way of correcting these imbalances without massive tax hikes or benefit cuts, and and can get us through the hump to a longer-term population equilibrium after 203 or so. See this elegantly-explained summary of the issue: http://www.ssab.gov/documents/immig_issue_brief_final_versio...

Your concerns implicitly depend on productivity per worker remaining constant over time. As that is not true, it's not clear that the changing retiree to worker ratio is as big a problem as you claim.

Wages have not risen in proportion to the worker:retiree ratio, nor have revenues since things like payroll taxes are capped. Many productivity gains are the result of capital investment and automation and are thus captured by the employer.

I'm afraid that's because the wages are linked to cost of living, rather that outcome. Even software developers with some serious pricing power on today's market are often reluctant to switch jobs unless they can't afford something "essential", be it simple rent increase, or another Hawaii trip. I call this "tragedy of employment" - people being paid at cost rather than value.

One solution to that problem might be replacing payroll tax with another tax that is closely correlated with productivity rather than wages.

>Wages have not risen in proportion to the worker...

Employers are paying more per worker except on the lowest tier, it's just that the increases have all gone into paying greatly increased health insurance premiums.

For unskilled labor wages haven't gone up because the job market was flooded with ten million illegal aliens. That's just a question of supply and demand.

As long as the money is somewhere in the economy, it's a very simple problem to tax it to fund benefits.

> You'll see movement on immigration reform this year, because it offers the best way of correcting these imbalances without massive tax hikes or benefit cuts ...

Yes, I agree, but that doesn't address the population-growth issue, it only relocates it. I agree that immigration policy needs to change, but it's only a stopgap measure -- it kicks the can down the road. Someone else will have to deal with catastrophic overpopulation.

But you don't need endlessly growing population. If the fertility rate stays around 2.1 (IIRC) then eventually you end up with an equilibrium, where gains in lifespan can be offset by gradual increases in the retirement age. You don't need endless growth; if you look at the paper I linked to you'll see that they expect things to settle down to a steady state.

World population is expected to stabilize at around 9bn by 2050. The UN's millenium development goals are succeeding extremely well, eg a 50% drop in under-5 childhood mortality (from 12m/yr to 6m/yr) over the last 20 years. That sort of thing is a great constraint on fertility.

> You don't need endless growth; if you look at the paper I linked to you'll see that they expect things to settle down to a steady state.

Yes, but it's that "steady state" that the WSJ article is complaining about. To a system reliant on growth, the end of growth is a catastrophe.

> World population is expected to stabilize at around 9bn by 2050.

That would be nice, but I doubt it will happen. I suspect those who make such predictions underestimate human reproductive fervor, for lack of a better term.

I was more annoyed that he didn't see immigration as the answer. If we can't expect more immigrants from Mexico, we can still welcome millions from India and Africa.

It's Wall Street. Wall Street is all about growth. Look at how Apple stock got hammered because -gasp- they didn't grow at the rate expected.

OMG! America is under attack by birth control pills! Yes, women in the US freely choosing to use birth control is just like forced abortions and house raids in China.

"The root cause of most of our problems is our declining fertility rate."

Global warming, terrorism, droughts, hurricanes... all caused by birth control pills.

"The replacement rate is 2.1. If the average woman has more children than that, population grows. Fewer, and it contracts. Today, America's total fertility rate is 1.93... it hasn't been above the replacement rate in a sustained way since the early 1970s."

Let's just ignore the immigration from countries with replacement rates far above 2.1 that has increased the US population by 100 million since the early 70s.

"First, global population growth is slowing to a halt and will begin to shrink within 60 years."

Overpopulation isn't a problem because the spread of birth control and women's rights will solve the problem in 60 years. So let's block birth control and women's rights.

"...growing populations lead to increased innovation and conservation."

Horrible droughts lead to increased innovation and conservation of water. Yay horrible droughts!

I have considered raising my children in the US - I had the chance to do so, and I was comparing it with Europe and Asia. Settled on Asia because not only are there no incentives to raise Children in the USA, there are actually huge disincentives. - highest education costs - lowest quality public education - highest college costs, compare this to the EU and England where high quality colleges like Cambridge and Oxford are free. In the US, having 2 kids pretty much determines where ALL the money of a typical middle class family will go for the next 20 years. - Few facilities in cities, eg parks and so on, vs EU - High cost of hired labor vs Asia, nanny and so on - Dont expect the state, or anyone, to help you. - Society as a whole hostile to children vs Asia where children are loved by everyone.

Given the circumstances, I am surprised the birth rate is as high as it is; I guess a lot of it is down to immigrants...

Its very hard to raise children in the US. As long as that remains so the birth rate will remain low.

> highest college costs, compare this to the EU and England where high quality colleges like Cambridge and Oxford are free.

British universities are anything but free, unless you manage to get scholarships (which don't exist for undergrads, as far as i know) for everything. However, in that case, the same would apply for the US...

edit: For an overview over the undergrad fees (p.a., for home students) as of last year, have a look at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-12880840

This is not really correct.

Although the government has recently raised the maximum tuition fees that Universities may charge (from around £3000 to around £9000 per year), this has not affected the financial provisions available to first-degree (i.e. undergrad) home students.

The government supplies student loans for both tuition fees and maintenance (i.e. living) costs, which (supposedly) only garner interest at the rate of inflation.

In addition, there is extensive means-tested financial support available from both the government and from Universities. I went to Oxford a few years ago and received full financial support. My income (in addition to the ~£3K tuition fee loan the government paid the university directly) from loans/grants was in the region of £9000, with about £5k of that being non-repayable. Although this was the maximum possible, it was hardly uncommon for people to get it, or to get some proportion of it.

There are also numerous smaller grants handed out by both the university and its constituent colleges on the basis of financial need and otherwise.

(In response to the increase in tuition fees, Michael Moritz (Sequoia Capital chairman) donated £75m to Oxford, with the express goal of keeping tuition fees low for disadvantaged students: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-18785041)

The original claim was that UK universities are free, which they are not.

Just because you don't pay for it immediately does not make something free. And even if you end up not paying back the full amount, you still end up paying something back.

Additionally, relying on loan reduction schemes or scholarships does not mean education is free. The Scandinavian countries would have been a better example, because education is truly and actually free there, i.e. you do not pay anything (and as a citizen, you will probably get money -- which is not a loan and does not have to be paid back -- from the government as financial aid, further enabling students).

On top of that scholarships for Masters degrees (depending on subject) are exceedingly rare (and not means-tested), with few loan options available (none of them government-funded, if I remember correctly).

At least in "developed" Asian countries (China, Korea, Japan), everyone I've talked to seems to describe their school experience as miserable. The universities aren't known to be that amazing either.

There are also pretty good public school systems in the US (Texas' is in particular quite good at being well funded and offering all available classes). Like with many things in the US, there is a large gap between worst and best.

And yet Europe near-universally has lower fertility than the US. Whilst I have the same experience, not just with America but with English countries in general, something does not add up.

Even though childcare is free or very cheap in most of western Europe, fertility is 1.23 in some locations, now. That means only 1 in 5 couples have children at all on average. Replacement fertility levers are nowhere to be seen, inside or outside of the EU, and even amongst fresh immigrants fertility is very low.

And when I am there, I have to say, I miss my country when it had lots of children, and I was one of them. There was much more activity everywhere. There were much better playgrounds and more of them. There was constant presence of children in every village, and as an American you probably can't imagine just how many villages there are everywhere in Europe. You could get into pretty much any house for dinner, and yes, it did mean that you had to go to church on sunday (that was actually possible, nobody, and I mean nobody, ever worked on sunday), and afterwards the adults would dine in groups with the children playing in the gardens, or going out into the village or to the YMCA. Sport events would mostly be between neighbouring villages, and they were as much about getting together for a beer and a show as about sport, and pretty much everyone participated at some point. Now many villages look deserted, but they aren't, not yet. There's old people locking themselves into their houses watching TV. The central cities are expanding, and the bigger they get, the more hostile they are.

Realistically, it won't be long before we're artificially breeding humans. Japan has researched this option, generally called "ectogenesis" and they have controversially produced a 14 days old feutus before stopping the program (getting it to survive after 7 days is apparently difficult because it requires blood flow to the feutus to start). We could present this option as "we allow gay couples to have real children of their own" "treatment".

The numbers seem to dictate that unless some massive change in fertility occurs, mass-production of humans should start in about 8 years to keep population numbers from declining rapidly. That's an outcome nobody wants, but the question is if people are sufficiently convinced that they really, really don't want this to start programs like this. Also it won't be like children with real parents at all. Still, it probably beats the crap out of no children at all. I shudder to think what effect government policies will have on people who have no parents to defend them though.

World population doubled in last 50 years and most likely will double again in the next 50 years:

https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&...

Evolution and natural selection takes care of problem with declining fertility rate: if people or cultures or countries have high fertility rate - they survive and reproduce.

That's assuming you don't mind subgroups of society to disappear and fringe groups to achieve dominance (at least when it comes to population numbers and democracy).

The way it's looking, it means that Christianity will once again control the US at some point in the not-so-distant future.

And of course there's the "if someone else does it first we may be screwed" factor.

Where in Asia?

Might I suggest looking at Canada?

And people in Silicon Valley look at me weird when I say the thing I want most is to leave SV, move back out to the country, and start a family.

Yuppies. Pfah.

Edit:

This subject dovetails into the thread about remote working (for me anyway). There are a few number of people that would like to work with me but if they're not willing to do so remotely (previously my main way to work) then it's no dice.

My freedom is the cost for my labor.

Another indication that we should seriously pursue life extension and preventing the effects of aging. Overpopulation is unlikely to be an issue, and we really don't want to have a large portion of the population incurring high medical costs and unable to be economically productive.

I'm also wondering if there aren't deeply ingrained subconscious feelings about raising children that come from a natural even evolutionary response to crowding in our immediate environment. A species which naturally reduces fertility in response to crowding will be less likely to experience explosive growth followed by terrible crashes as all available food sources are exhausted for mere survival. The fertility rates were really low in the NIMH mice utopia studies when population density was high. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_B._Calhoun

The US ranks #184 among countries in terms of population density. I don't think your theory is borne out by reality when you consider that lots of other countries have higher fertility rates and much larger cities with greater overall population density.

Well if you want to live anywhere you can actually find a job youll live in a densely populated area in the US. Sure there's a lot of land in the US and I actually believe it will benefit the country in the long term - but at the moment, nobody lives there.

Even densely populated parts of the US are not densely populated. We have huge yards, giant parking lots, and long drives from place to place. Aside from a handful of cities, the US is designed to resist density.

> A species which naturally reduces fertility in response to crowding

If almost every member of a species is doing this, you need to explain what stops the rare mutant genes that don't give this behaviour from rapidly becoming more common.

Another option is age segregation. If you don't see old people in your life, you might subconsciously assume either resource shortage or some other detrimental factor in the environment.

TL;DR: Will everyone start having more babies already? Because otherwise we're going to be overrun with coloreds, education, and quality of life.

Sincerely, Bill "Genocidal Dominionist Warlord Antichrist" Kristol

Sure, because people have many kids as an economic strategy. If you believe you'll need your family to take care of you in your old age, you'll have more kids.

Of course, the reason why people don't believe they need their family's support in their old age has a lot to do with government spending on programs like social security - which requires a lot of younger taxpayers to sustain, taxpayers we're no longer producing.

Eventually something will give, since situations that can't continue forever won't. Our social safety net will weaken, and fertility will increase accordingly. I hope this happens smoothly, and not all at once.

I suspect that this attitude directly collides with the notion that there are just fewer jobs to go around because of automation. If they're both true, both problems solve each other.

Machines don't pay taxes. Companies won't be donating the lost wage taxes to the government either. :P

When social security triples (due to number of dependants), which it will do in less than 20 years, it will require a 100% tax rate.

After that, costs will increase further.

Not if productivity also triples. The mistake is having a separate payroll tax earmarked for social security. If the government just eats the liability, drops payroll taxes, and raises income taxes to compensate, it'll be fine. Alternatively they could just supplement payroll tax out of the general fund. It's not nearly as dire as the doomsayers make it sound.

This is addressed in the article, specifically calling out a reduction in the fertility rate of 0.5 or less.

The (inverse) correlation between life expectancy and fertility rate is quite apparent[1].

[1] http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&#...

So, let me see if I get their recommendations right: gut social security and medicare, gut education and build more roads? Brilliant.

The solutions won't be cheap, nor will they be culturally or politically easy to swallow in this country, but it's where we'll wind up - one way or another. Life extension/youth preservation/immortality research (what kills more that diseases of age, eventually? We also use "old" as a synonym for "decrepit", but when we decouple "years alive" from "likely level of health/ability to be independent", this problem goes away), mass roboticization (to care for the infirm, do all the menial work, etc.), and of course, a reworked economic system where everyone is guaranteed a basic income.

It won't be an easy road, and it's not coming any time soon - too many are too inured to our current systems because of ideology (particuarly ideologies informed by the Just World fallacy, Social Darwinism, the belief that starvation is better than sloth, and mindless anti-Utopianism) will fight tooth and nail against anything that might lead to a world like this. In the end they'll lose, but perhaps history will credit them for making sure we don't go too far too fast.

Someone sent this to me, and I wrote about its non-, half-, and full-truths here: http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2013/02/02/a-fools-errand-and-... .

The problem isn't declining birth-rates. It's societies that are structured upon ever-increasing populations.

With respect to where and when declining birth rates -- and older parents, presenting greater health risks -- are considered to be a problem. (Such as, individual impacts upon well-being and quality of life, and the health of the child.) I agree with several other comments here that the contemporary U.S. is creating significant dis-incentives, particularly for those in positions where they are trying to prevent a decline in their own and their family and children's socio-economic status and opportunity -- and, again, health.

The U.S. is a democracy, so I'm not trying overly to blame "someone else".

One of these predicted dire consequences is not like the others:

"Low-fertility societies don't innovate because their incentives for consumption tilt overwhelmingly toward health care. They don't invest aggressively because, with the average age skewing higher, capital shifts to preserving and extending life and then begins drawing down. They cannot sustain social-security programs because they don't have enough workers to pay for the retirees. They cannot project power because they lack the money to pay for defense and the military-age manpower to serve in their armed forces."

I'm surprised the author did not complete the circle of irony and claim we need to project power because of low birth-rate China.

> Second, as the work of economists Esther Boserups and Julian Simon demonstrated, growing populations lead to increased innovation and conservation.

Well I'll just bet that a shrinking population could also lead to innovation! It may mean innovation in different areas, but when pushed to their limits, humans seem to respond more often than not with a solution.

Not likely. There are several problems with an aging population. The two big ones in regards to innovation is a shrinking economy and a lack of energy. Both being driven by the young.

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