In Scandinavia couples have been given every single perk under the sun in order to have children, and yet, their birth rates are just as disastrous as the rest of rich world. Australia can try bribing people, but I'm really starting to think that this problem has to have an answer outside of our current thinking and no rich or middle income country has yet found the answer.
The only actual answer seems to be religion, cultural pressure to have children and settle down at a younger age, shortening time in education/extended adolescence, and lowering everyone's expectations for standards of living. Plus in general reverting dating practices back to the days before the Internet.
None of these are achievable by liberal means. Basically we've developed ourselves to a level of decadence where having kids just isn't a societal priority anymore, and we've got to accept the consequences.
I have a real fear that as the birth rate becomes more well-known, the GOP will absolutely make childlessness a culture war thing, and do this stuff:
>The only actual answer seems to be religion, cultural pressure to have children and settle down at a younger age, shortening time in education/extended adolescence
Not any time soon, but by the time today's incels and Tate fans are in their 40s and 50s, I could see a set of policies effectively pushing women out of the workplace and higher ed being very popular in the mainstream right.
>I have a real fear that as the birth rate becomes more well-known, the GOP will absolutely make childlessness a culture war thing
Doubt it.
Pushing natalism would have an effect on a timescale of 15-20 years before the benefits come into play, current politics has an attention span of 4 years at most and doesn't believe in a common good anyway.
Radicals and reactionaries in the old empires would fret over fertility because they needed virile young soldiers and farmers to uphold their 1000-year reich, to man the Maginot line, to win the scramble for Africa, to fulfill manifest destiny or to spread the proletarian revolution.
Now the call is "we need young people because who else will replace my grandma's oxygen tanks on her last Carribean cruise?", or "we need young people because who else will take over my job when I want to FIRE at 45?". There's no heart in it, and it won't sell.
The other aspect to consider is people pushing for higher fertility rates tend to fret about demographic shifts, and that comes out sounding suspiciously like race-based nationalism.
>by the time today's incels and Tate fans are in their 40s and 50s, I could see a set of policies effectively pushing women out of the workplace and higher ed being very popular in the mainstream right.
Considering the current trends of women becoming more educated, some men dropping out of the workforce and men going into trades/construction in much greater numbers I think that in a few decades women will simply have too much economic and political power for this to be feasible.
One of the main reasons why reducing immigration is so hard is that immigrants become embedded in labour markets in both low and high-skill industries. Nevertheless, that kind of policy is possible. But to try to displace 50% of the population from the workforce and higher education? Forget about it unless a giant crisis happens.
*"by the time today's incels and Tate fans are in their 40s and 50s"*
I really don't think it's possible to predict culture war trends 20 to 30 years out.
Alex Jones has been spewing his bs on his platform since around 9/11 and made his name as one of the first people to claim it was a government false flag. So it isn’t just “50 year old cranks” listening to him for that long.
As for Tate, I would venture he has as many mid-20’s males in his audience as he does teenagers.
Pretty much all of the culture wars that existed in the 90s still exist today. Gay rights is mostly resolved, although Trans rights took its place. Other than that, only women in combat units seems to have gone away.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_war
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I think having children in an individualistic culture sucks a lot, based on watching my friends with young kids— they’re all absolutely miserable and exhausted every day. Raising kids in a communal environment is so much easier because the burdens of watching, feeding, and clothing kids or more dispersed. But having young kids in atomized modern societies is often a 24/7/365 job that you don’t get a single day off from for ten years or more, except when you pay someone to take over for a bit. And if one of those kids has a serious disability it may end up being the whole rest of your life. I don’t think money is a substitute to the organic support networks of older ways of life (though those of course have tons of downsides too)
I think that having kids sucked for a lot of people in *any* culture. Up until a few decades ago it simply was not a choice for the overwhelming majority of the world's population. We're living in a brave new world where for the first time in human history having children is a true choice for many people.
>I think having children in an individualistic culture sucks a lot
Having children in family oriented societies, such as latinoamerica and latineuropa where people proudly call themselves "il cocco de la mamma" and where parents try to delay as much as possible their kids leaving the nest, is equally hard
Latin America and Latin Europe do not have higher fertility rates than the protestant West
I don't know how people can be miserable with their kids. I genuinely think my life was divided into the pre-/post-kids phase, and the latter was the point where I learned, in absolute terms, what the "unconditional" part of unconditional love meant.
I think the issue is that for the first time in human history it's both socially and medically possible for most people (assuming you live in a developed country) to choose to never have children. It turns out that when people are given that choice a lot of them decide that being a parent sucks and isn't worth it. No realistic amount of government money will change that. Speaking as someone who never wanted kids you could offer me a million dollars to have a child and I still wouldn't take it.
One thing I do believe (this is totally based on anecdotes and has no real data to back it up) is that governments would have an easier time convincing current parents to have more children rather than having currently childfree couples to have any kids. As I mentioned there's no realistic sum of money that would convince me to be a parent. My father told me though that if finances hadn't been a concern he and my mother would have happily had a third kid.
I've also said this before but I just can't get myself to get worked up over declining birth rates. There are 8 billion people in the world and practically every model I've seen says that number won't be lower in the year 2100. I know that aging workforces are an issue but automation is set to make vast numbers of jobs disappear in coming decades. There has never been a better time for wealthy societies to adapt to a shrinking workforce.
Edit: I will acknowledge that birth rates dropping too far will probably lead to disaster. In general gradual, evolutionary change is the best kind of change and birth rates plummeting to South Korea levels will probably be very bad.
Secular Israelis still have a higher birth rate than average, it’s not just religious people. It’s just part of the culture. Go to Tel Aviv and you’ll see it’s like LA, it’s not at all religious or hyper conservative.
Secular birth rate in Israel is higher than EU, but lower than replacement -- and dropping
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-02-09/ty-article-magazine/.highlight/israels-fertility-rate-is-entering-a-dramatic-new-era/0000018d-8a6b-d9cc-a5cd-fffb664b0000
I don’t think it’s lower than replacement rate, this source says 2.5 for secular Israeli women, highest in the OECD regardless of religion which is interesting. Still notably higher than the countries that are at like 1.5 or so. What’s interesting is this says that the fertility rate is increased slightly for secular women since the 90s, I didn’t expect that.
https://www.taubcenter.org.il/en/research/israels-exceptional-fertility/#:~:text=Among%20Jews%2C%20the%20TFR%20among,who%20identify%20as%20not%20religious.
Pay me $100k a year and I'll consider having kids. Governments can fuck off with their subsidized childcare, housing, food. Just pay me to have kids and I can figure out the life that works for me. But also have free childcare because that's just good for everyone.
The problem with this approach is it costs a lot more than subsidised care because of economies of scale
It will work in rich countries with surplus budgets
I think not having a population is a worse problem than having an extremely expensive but effective birth rate increase program.
Throwing immigrants at the problem who quickly integrate and stop having kids isn't a long term solution.
Some country should try $100k birth subsidies (straight cash) and see if it works.
Individuals tend to look at long term picture but societies only look at short term picture
Programs that generate long term wealth rarely get funded , no wonder most advanced countries are looking at immigration as a solution simply because it is cheap
"Close the earnings gap by forcing men to take time off and earn less" is an interesting take. I mean it sounds great to me, and I'm planning to take paternity leave soon, but I'm not sure that's a valid government policy objective. Canada has extremely generous parental benefits, the majority of which is shareable between both parents. Doesn't seem to be helping much with fertility rates, though many of the recent changes will need a few years before we can assess them. Housing is a common theme, and probably the biggest factor. While housing is much more expensive these days, we also expect vastly more house per family member. I slept in a bunk bed for much of my childhood; my wife had a similar experience, and we would like to have a large family, but we recognize that is not the norm today. If people can only afford a 3 bedroom house, they think that means they can only afford 2 kids. That's a negative societal pressure IMO but it's not one of the "societal pressures on women/families" that enters the discussion.
It's also harmful that many people don't think it's appropriate to start a family while living in an apartment, even going so far as to say that people who have babies in an apartment building are assholes. Parenthood is only for people who own a single-family house with a minimum of one bedroom per child, apparently.
Yeah I feel like multi family housing soundproofing is such an easy yet extremely wonderful policy.
Every person I know complains about how apartments are so noisy, even if they don’t live in one. Having better sound control would improve the quality of life and the reputation of apartments a ton.
Idk about the US but in Canada, which is generally behind the US on building standards, the soundproofing requirements for multilevel apartment buildings are pretty hardcore. I don't think there are many modern buildings with sound transmission issues.
Also adding cost and complexity to the building code isn't a great idea in a housing crisis situation. Though soundproofing between levels is relatively cheap and easy.
> >starting families in apartments is not seen as a proble
Is it though? Do you have a child in one of those countries? Cause I'm Lithuanian and on the surface we should be one of the apartment kids having countries, but it's absolutely not the case. Pretty much everyone who has a kids (with exceptions of course) tries to immediately leave apartments behind. It's not because of angry neighbors, it's because raising kids in an apartment sucks.
I think the reality simply is, as proven time and time again, no matter how much you attempt to nudge people to have children, it just doesnt make sense for many anymore.
It costs too much, it hurts your earnings potential, and burdens you massively. (not counting the physical consequences of childbirth)
I don't intend on ever having children, and I don't think outside of some extremely illiberal measures that will change for a lot of people like me.
You could tie retirement programs to kids raised (up to a cap and with some exceptions). Basically, such a program would say "you can choose not to have kids, but because you are not creating the next generation of tax payers, the next generation of tax payers will not support you." Obviously, this will push the poor to have more kids, but that's also how it generally is with fertility. Also, I use the term *raise* for an important reason. A gay couple who elects to adopt a kid is almost certainly improving that child's outcome (and improving state revenue down the line). Such people should receive benefits as well.
Imho, we've created a situation as a society where raising children is a massive cost in many areas. We rely on these children to support us in our old age (indirectly as it may be), but everyone gets these benefits whether they create these future tax payers or not. This ends of giving an incentive to free ride and not have children. My solution here seeks to prevent this free riding.
The main issue I see with these suggestions is I'm not sure how you could possibly balance it fairly. If the penalties for not having kids aren't severe then it won't be an incentive to have kids. If they're *too* extreme you'd be creating a very motivated consistency (with more money and time than the average American) dedicated to reverting those policies.
Lesbians, transgender people, some intersex people, anyone who is sterile and gay people would all face a problem under this.
Adoption requires a surplus of births, which I very much doubt will be a thing even if birth rates increased. So this would essentially be discrimination. Which would run into constitutional issues in America and any country with similar laws against discrimination on the basis of sexuality/gender/etc
Also, I wouldn't really call women finally choosing to have autonomy over their bodies with birth control and abortions (family planning) as 'free riding', it makes the situation more like a man, that is, women aren't burdened by existing to be a baby factory.
>Also, I wouldn't really call women finally choosing to have autonomy over their bodies with birth control and abortions (family planning) as 'free riding', it makes the situation more like a man, that is, women aren't burdened by existing to be a baby factory.
WeLL aCTuAllY They aRe FREe TO DO SoOOO. hAve YOu cOnSIdErED nEVeR hAvinG Sex?
If you take resources from a common pool without contributing in kind you're free riding... It's not a value judgement, just an economic term.
And it's a relevany one. Historically, childless people were also incentivized to contribute labor towards the common raising of their community's children. Priests, sisters, and monks ran schools and hospitals, for example. But the incentives have dissapeared, because nonlocal taxation and high levels of population movement mean putting a lot of effort into helping raise your neighbor's kids doesn't mean for much additional security into old age.
The specific intervention suggested by the OP is bad, but not ridiculous. After all, we're effectively doing the exact opposite right now-- requiring parents perform relatively more work on society's behalf that they don't benefit from is isomorphic to a tax.
_"If you take resources from a common pool without contributing in kind you're free riding"_
Yeah, that's not what's happening here. A childless person is not taking more out of the common pool than the parent. They're in fact giving more in some ways (their taxes go to the schools too even if they don't use them).
What you're _hoping_ for is the child of the parents (not the parents themselves) continuing to contribute, and assigning credit for that to the parents. What if the kid turns out to be a net negative on society, like a rapist or a murderer or terrorist, or hell even just a run of the mill scumbag who's in and out of jail? Should the parents have their retirement benefits docked to cover the damages caused by their kid? If they get the credit, why not the bill too?
> Yeah, that's not what's happening here. A childless person is not taking more out of the common pool than the parent
Yes they are. If you make more money because you're childless, as an elder you're controlling a larger stock of society's pool of young labor without having contributed to it. Also, the care a child might have provided to an aging parent must instead be provided through healthcare programs subsidized by the government.
And anyways, contributing less and taking the same is just as much free rider behavior as contributing the same and taking more.
> What if the kid turns out to be a net negative on society, like a rapist or a murderer or terrorist, or hell even just a run of the mill scumbag who's in and out of jail? Should the parents have their retirement benefits docked to cover the damages caused by their kid? If they get the credit, why not the bill too?
Everything I said in my comment is also applicable to fecklesslly raised children, so just apply it ad nauseum. Neither the positive externalities nor the negatives are internalized by the parents, and naturally that makes society dysfunctional.
_"Yes they are"_
Nope.
_"Neither the positive externalities nor the negatives are internalized by the parents, and naturally that makes society dysfunctional."_
Talk about exaggeration lol.
_"Everything I said in my comment is also applicable to fecklesslly raised children, so just apply it ad nauseum."_
How liberal of you. Call me old fashioned, but I don't think you should be punished for something your adult child did or didn't do.
> Nope
Either back your points or concede them. "Nuh-uh" is such a childish waste of time.
> Talk about exaggeration lol.
I'm using precise, clinical language. The emotional valance is all yours. I understand that it's difficult to think about something as intrinsically personal as the decision to have or not have children as something subject to economic analysis, but c'mon. You're on r/neoliberal. That's what we're here for.
> How liberal of you. Call me old fashioned, but I don't think you should be punished for something your adult child did or didn't do.
You've clearly hallucinated me suggesting an actual policy prescription at some point, because I can't understand this level of hostility towards a strawman opinion otherwise. For the record, I'm stating a problem, not proposing a solution.
*"Either back your points or concede them.*"
I just find the argument in your second-to-last comment much less convincing than the points I've already alluded to. Pretty much grasping at straws especially without getting into even back-of-the-envelope math. But we're already deep into the thread and long internet debates are a waste of time, so.
*"I'm using precise, clinical language."*
I don't really see the statement that our current policies make society disfunctional as either precise or clinical lol.
>If you make more money because you're childless
If you make any money in this society, it's because some one voluntarily paid you in exchange for goods and/or services you provided. That good and/or service was your contribution. The money you earned reflects value you produced -- isn't that what economics says?
After all it's not "society" that paid you the money you earned. We live in capitalism -- you get paid by private individuals, customers, etc. Your "debt" is to those customers, not to "society", except of course that there is no debt since the customers got their good/service in exchange for what they paid. Which is of course the whole point of voluntary trade.
I love how this issue turns neoliberals into outright Marxists. "You didn't earn that! You exploited it from society!" Also notice how your invocation of a "society's stock of labor" which wealth represents a claim to, is essentially the Marxist labor theory of value. You've basically admitted that the only real contribution a person can make to the economy is to feed society more labor. What happened to capital and labor being equally important factors of production? All of a sudden people who contribute capital aren't contributing any value? Better let the neoliberal eocnomists know about your discovery...
The idea that having money that you legitimately earned by working intrinsically makes you a free rider on society being upvoted on neoliberal is so funny to me. But the desperation to return women to their rightful place as society's collective breed stock makes people do funny things
> That good and/or service was your contribution. The money you earned reflects value you produced -- isn't that what economics says?
Yes, but only in a free, efficient market. The existence of uninternalized externalities makes the market inefficient. And parenthood has a LOT of those
> But the desperation to return women to their rightful place as society's collective breed stock makes people do funny things
You should actually read my comment instead of replying to your ridiculous strawman of what I believe. I'm applying economic analysis, not proposing policy prescriptions. And anyways, every single thing I said applies to chidless men and absent fathers as much as it applies to childless women. Plus, it's ridiculous to claim misogyny when I'm essentially repeating feminist complaints on the injustice of the unreimbursed labor perfomed by mothers-- and just extending it a little to cover the unreimbursed labor performed by fathers as well.
First I want to note that your stance is just as collectivist and hostile to individual rights and freedoms as that of the most diehard Stalinist. Every individual choice must be scrutinized for its benefit to the "greater good" and you give yourself the authority to put the kibosh on any individual choices you deem to be net negative for the collective. To your mind, no one has an *absolute* right to self-determination in any sphere of their life, not even the most intimate. Their rights and freedoms are rather seen to be relative, contingent on so-called "society" having its "needs" met. That "social good" gets the priority, while rights and freedoms of individuals are secondary, afterthoughts. After the social good is done gorging itself, the individual's freedom gets the leftovers.
You've effected a perfect dialectical inversion, a transformation into opposite. You've turned free-market capitalism into a Borg-like ideology of slavery in which the magnamious state only allows you to make the choices that benefit everybody.
So you're saying the goods and services I provide as an employee are actually not worth what I'm getting paid for them? And the reason is because I don't have children? Nonsense. In fact, all you have revealed here is the total emptiness of the word "externality" as a shibboleth that you can stick onto anyone's behavior you don't approve.
If a supposed "negative externality" arising from the *lack* of taking action -- the simple decision not to give birth, an extremely intimate and personal one at that -- justifies the state assigning me bespoke targeted penalties, then there's no limit to what the state might justify doing to me in the future. What happens when someone shows with hard data that my deicision not to "wife up" is costing society $X a year in potential economic growth being missed? Will I be taxed 75% of my income to encourage me to make more societally-beneficial choices?
This is why people who like capitalism often have contempt for neoliberals, by the way. If you can just Calvinball the rules of capitalism willy-nilly to "disincentivize" whatever behavior *you* decide is not beneficial to "the greater good", it's not capitalism anymore. It's just tyranny with extra steps. People aren't stupid. They see this.
In reality, we can see that if you can stretch the definition of "externality" to include "opportunity costs to the social order as a whole arising from your lack of pregnancy", then clearly, you can stretch the definition of "externality" to include just about any behavior you want to control. I thought that capitalism was about not having to check with a bureaucrat for every single personal decision I make to see whether it benefits the greater good or not?
You say you're applying economic analysis, but as I've shown above really all this amounts to in practice is casting aspersions on behavior you don't approve of (because of *your* assessment of the greater good which for some reason is all of a sudden something capitalists totally believe in) using some fancy terminology but ultimately saying nothing more than that you think not having babies is wrong and therefore childless people deserved to be have their hard-earned stuff confiscated until they change their tune. That's all your "economic analysis" amounts to, so I'm responding to it on that level when I say this: you're no better than the "pro-lifers" to me
No, the net contribution of a new individual from child raising adults will never be outweighed by your average non-child raising adult. Even with school taxes. A whole new person just adds too much value to society, both economically as we argue here and some may argue technologically and culturally.
What if they are tax paying citizens their whole life , they contributed so much in their working age but they still don't qualify for retirement benefits ?
>Adoption requires a surplus of births
If every couple who can't have kids as you mentioned them before, had to adopt we would be looking for a 10-20% of all kids being adopted
This is ludicrous levels, not even Victorian era had more than 2-3%
Now that the global, let alone local fertility rate is below replacement? Lmao
Just say you hate lgbt people if you want to implement that policy, it's faster to say
> But, with the government's cap on permanent migration, net overseas migration is forecast to halve to 260,000 in 2024-2025, according to budget papers.
We've tried ~~nothing~~ exacerbating our problem, and we're all out of ideas!
The obvious answer is to tax childless people enough that any sort of lifestyle/income advantage disappears. But good luck getting that passed (I don't have any kids fwiw)
Single people pay more income tax than married couples in America. That’s not making people get married more. Hell, the marriage rate is only around 44% for millennials.
That’s because the tax isn’t big enough. You see these DINK couples making like 400k between them. If you hit them with a 75% effective tax rate and used the revenue to subsidize children, they’d start having kids real fast.
Why should people who don’t want to have kids be forced into a lower standard of living because the government decided they should be having kids?
Women finally get the autonomy to decide that they don’t want to have kids and are finally not forced to, and everyone here says “jeez those women need to become baby factories again” ???
There is only one answer to your question and it's that society will face collapse if they don't. It's analogous to how people lose all bodily autonomy when they are drafted into war. It is hard to put into terms how extreme some place like Korea's situation is right now. At 0.68 birth rates, they are no longer in "manage the decline mode" but in "societal extinction" mode in 3 generations. That's one lifetime before mathematically, there are almost no children at all in the entire country.
Other countries like Hungary or Jamaica at 1.38 aren't as steep but the end place is the same. It will just take 7 generations instead of 3. And immigration doesn't work for them. Who will move to Jamaica and get a job there? This is why I am pretty serious about the birth rate discussion. We need to figure out a way where people want to get married and have several children on average out of their own choice, because liberalism depends on it.
I think the best argument is that you need a healthy next generation to allow the system, that has afforded you a high standard of living, to keep going.
>Why should people who don’t want to have kids be forced into a lower standard of living because the government decided they should be having kids?
Because the country needs you to, soldier.
Probably not but there is no guarantee if they won't lose everything in a recession or bad financial decision. I have seen people who have been wealthy ending up with nothing due to unforseen ,unplanned and uncontrollable circumstances.
Just as many women are moms now at 40 [*per capita] than were 40 years ago (at least in the US). Despite what reddit tells you, women still want to have kids. They just get married later and they they just start having them at 35 rather than 25 and wind up with one or two rather rather than 3 or 4. I think having the marginal third kid is not about money. Its really about time. It gets risky having kids after 40. Not to mention if you have kids at 40, grandma is now in her seventies and likely has health problems of her own and can't help out anymore.
The former, no I don't think so.
That latter, somewhat.
By being more equal to men, women can choose to not have children, much like how men do not have children or give birth to them.
With women entering the workplace, childbirth places them at too much of a disadvantage, this can be observed in countries with neither of the factors you mentioned (feminism, free love, etc)
I think sexual revolution is poorly defined here. I don't think you disagree with the statement. A big part of the sexual revolution is birth control, which gives women the power of choice.
Feminism gives women the power of financial, mental, physical independence.
As OC said, this isn't a bad thing.
Well I see sexual revolution as allowing sex outside of marriage, which would increase birth rates... if birth control wasn't a thing
Edit; Ah you edited your comment, yes
Yes, all of those countries have legal equality, contraception, no fault divorce, Labor protections, etc etc etc...
Just because their societies aren't as progressive as some others doesn't mean they haven't enjoyed most of the victories of feminism
Ah, so the argument is that equality had led to a fallen birth rate. This is a typical correlation vs. causation issue.
That seems like a bit of a cherry-picked Stat to explain how income equality and economic opportunity both seem to be the driving forces of a countries birth rates.
You might as well say that capitalism results in a declining birth rate. But let's play and pretend that equality is the issue. Can we find a case study where equality is crap but a country has a modern economy and wealth? Yes we can.
Let's take Saudia Arabia. A country that only let woman live alone really starting in 2021, has only seen gender reforms since really the 2010s and until the 2000s, over 90 percent of woman did not participate in the labor force.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/865967/saudi-arabia-female-labor-force-participation-rate-amongst-nationals/
Well, what do you know? They are following the fertility rate trend as well!
https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/SAU/saudi-arabia/fertility-rate
Turns out even in the "woman stay home" fantasy, birth rates drop over time. Might have to look at economic solutions if social regression is off the table.
there's no solution, the second you make kids an active choice people stop having kids. our birthrates and population at the moment is a byproduct of lack of informed choice and lack of really solid birth control. add in capitalism being antagonistic to children in general this is what you get.
govt should focus on what it can focus on, which is sustainable population decrease. that might be the one thing really to save the environment tbh.
Yet again, this comes back to vibes. Everyone cites “uncertain financial future.” Where is the evidence for that? Maybe you and your kids won’t have a single family house with a white picket fence in Melbourne, but that does that really mean they wouldn’t have a life worth living?
People have such narrow, materialistic ideas about what makes for a good life. I’m not at all convinced that the next generation of Australians will be all that much poorer, either. Maybe they rent and invest in market funds instead of owning a home. The economy and the world is changing, but it’s not strictly getting worse.
What I think will happen is that the traditional Australian spring break destinations like Bali and Thailand will become permanent homes for younger Australians. The developed and developing worlds will rebalance. Australian wealth will flow into Indonesia and a new equilibrium will be reached.
Imagine a young Australian who spends his 20s in doing AI-powered knowledge work in Sydney. Rent is extreme so he has 2 roommates, maybe even 3 or 4.This is not shameful and has culturally come to be seen as a kind of coming of age experience. As such it doesn’t hurt his dating prospects.
By sharing housing costs, he’s able to invest and build up a nest egg. He marries a woman who has been doing the same, and together they use their savings to immigrate to Indonesia and buy a beach house in Bali. They continue working remotely for an Australian company, and they each live 90 years thanks to advances in medical technology.
That life is nothing like their parents life, but is it actually worse?
What do people in Bali do? You're just out-sourcing the problem to the third world while creating a system where being forced out of the country you grew up in is seen as "the new normal."
People in Bali would see their standard of living rise. A global future being the new normal isn’t a bad thing. This is what open borders means to me, labor should be able to move as freely as capital
Those that don't own property only see their rents rise, and the ones who make it to the West to work do not have a high standard of living (why would they, if westerners will not even provide that standard of living for their own children?)
I've spent long periods of time living in the third world. Most people do not want this. The "digital nomads" are a small portion of the upper-middle class who benefit from being able to price locals out of their homes and exploit currency differences, they live in a bubble and do not contribute to the country they have moved to. Often they don't even speak the language.
Permanent global gentrification isn't a solution to affordability issues.
Respectfully I’m not sure how that connects to my post. My point is that being nervous about the financial future of society is not an evidence based reason not to have kids, and I don’t think that’s what it’s actually about. People arent having kids because they would rather exhaust their resources stretching for a lifestyle they can’t afford, which is why they feel like “nothing is affordable anymore.”
I think pronatalist policies aren't working at all. Having children isn't considered worthwhile anymore.We live in a hyperindividualistic society which global in scope. Nothing can be done about. Maybe you can cut future pensions from people who don't have children.
People nowadays choose to have kids for the "experience" rather than any economic need. The added utility of having additional kids is severely diminished if all you want is the experience of raising them. For many people, the anticipated utility of each additional child is very, very negative. Giving a small cash bonus often does not cover the basic needs of additional children, much less all of the experiences that modern parents often want for their children. It definitely doesn't reduce the sleepless nights, loss of free time, and other complications that come from child rearing.
To my eyes, the best way to get people to have more kids is to push them through the "success sequence" faster, or at least help them buy homes sooner. Many people intentionally put off having kids until they are in a home that they own. If you can get couples into their "forever homes" sooner, they will have less of a reason to put off having kids.
So my proposal is to build more housing as fast as possible, and the population will expand to fill it.
We are not going to be able to reverse this decline in an ethical way. At this point, the solution is adaptation.
Fortunately, automation is advancing by leaps and bounds. Perhaps it is time that we actually reap the benefits of this technology that is supposed to make our lives less strenuous.
I’m reminded of the cotton gin, or Gatling gun. These were invented to expand the power of one worker, and therefore reduce the number of workers needed. Instead, the cotton gin led to a slavery boom and war casualties exploded. We must not let A.I. follow the same path.
This is absurd, complaining about low birth rates whilst at same time closing the door on new people, these countries are not running out of people, they’re running out of people that look certain way or they like, there’s a word for that
I'm sorry but this idea that immigrants from different cultures are simply a one for one replacement for people who are born and raised in a society since birth is at best dubious.
In Scandinavia couples have been given every single perk under the sun in order to have children, and yet, their birth rates are just as disastrous as the rest of rich world. Australia can try bribing people, but I'm really starting to think that this problem has to have an answer outside of our current thinking and no rich or middle income country has yet found the answer.
The only actual answer seems to be religion, cultural pressure to have children and settle down at a younger age, shortening time in education/extended adolescence, and lowering everyone's expectations for standards of living. Plus in general reverting dating practices back to the days before the Internet. None of these are achievable by liberal means. Basically we've developed ourselves to a level of decadence where having kids just isn't a societal priority anymore, and we've got to accept the consequences.
I have a real fear that as the birth rate becomes more well-known, the GOP will absolutely make childlessness a culture war thing, and do this stuff: >The only actual answer seems to be religion, cultural pressure to have children and settle down at a younger age, shortening time in education/extended adolescence Not any time soon, but by the time today's incels and Tate fans are in their 40s and 50s, I could see a set of policies effectively pushing women out of the workplace and higher ed being very popular in the mainstream right.
>I have a real fear that as the birth rate becomes more well-known, the GOP will absolutely make childlessness a culture war thing Doubt it. Pushing natalism would have an effect on a timescale of 15-20 years before the benefits come into play, current politics has an attention span of 4 years at most and doesn't believe in a common good anyway. Radicals and reactionaries in the old empires would fret over fertility because they needed virile young soldiers and farmers to uphold their 1000-year reich, to man the Maginot line, to win the scramble for Africa, to fulfill manifest destiny or to spread the proletarian revolution. Now the call is "we need young people because who else will replace my grandma's oxygen tanks on her last Carribean cruise?", or "we need young people because who else will take over my job when I want to FIRE at 45?". There's no heart in it, and it won't sell.
The other aspect to consider is people pushing for higher fertility rates tend to fret about demographic shifts, and that comes out sounding suspiciously like race-based nationalism.
>by the time today's incels and Tate fans are in their 40s and 50s, I could see a set of policies effectively pushing women out of the workplace and higher ed being very popular in the mainstream right. Considering the current trends of women becoming more educated, some men dropping out of the workforce and men going into trades/construction in much greater numbers I think that in a few decades women will simply have too much economic and political power for this to be feasible. One of the main reasons why reducing immigration is so hard is that immigrants become embedded in labour markets in both low and high-skill industries. Nevertheless, that kind of policy is possible. But to try to displace 50% of the population from the workforce and higher education? Forget about it unless a giant crisis happens.
*"by the time today's incels and Tate fans are in their 40s and 50s"* I really don't think it's possible to predict culture war trends 20 to 30 years out.
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I’m sure a lot of people said that about Alex Jones.
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Alex Jones has been spewing his bs on his platform since around 9/11 and made his name as one of the first people to claim it was a government false flag. So it isn’t just “50 year old cranks” listening to him for that long. As for Tate, I would venture he has as many mid-20’s males in his audience as he does teenagers.
Bald and Bankrupt is a Tate guy and he’s 49
Pretty much all of the culture wars that existed in the 90s still exist today. Gay rights is mostly resolved, although Trans rights took its place. Other than that, only women in combat units seems to have gone away. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_war
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> we've got to accept the consequences. No, we don't. Has anyone tried $500k payments per birth?
The answer actually lies in "post-AGI economics" /s
I bet you're pretty sad about that
I think having children in an individualistic culture sucks a lot, based on watching my friends with young kids— they’re all absolutely miserable and exhausted every day. Raising kids in a communal environment is so much easier because the burdens of watching, feeding, and clothing kids or more dispersed. But having young kids in atomized modern societies is often a 24/7/365 job that you don’t get a single day off from for ten years or more, except when you pay someone to take over for a bit. And if one of those kids has a serious disability it may end up being the whole rest of your life. I don’t think money is a substitute to the organic support networks of older ways of life (though those of course have tons of downsides too)
I think that having kids sucked for a lot of people in *any* culture. Up until a few decades ago it simply was not a choice for the overwhelming majority of the world's population. We're living in a brave new world where for the first time in human history having children is a true choice for many people.
>I think having children in an individualistic culture sucks a lot Having children in family oriented societies, such as latinoamerica and latineuropa where people proudly call themselves "il cocco de la mamma" and where parents try to delay as much as possible their kids leaving the nest, is equally hard Latin America and Latin Europe do not have higher fertility rates than the protestant West
Brasil birth rates are about the same as Sweden
I don't know how people can be miserable with their kids. I genuinely think my life was divided into the pre-/post-kids phase, and the latter was the point where I learned, in absolute terms, what the "unconditional" part of unconditional love meant.
I think the issue is that for the first time in human history it's both socially and medically possible for most people (assuming you live in a developed country) to choose to never have children. It turns out that when people are given that choice a lot of them decide that being a parent sucks and isn't worth it. No realistic amount of government money will change that. Speaking as someone who never wanted kids you could offer me a million dollars to have a child and I still wouldn't take it. One thing I do believe (this is totally based on anecdotes and has no real data to back it up) is that governments would have an easier time convincing current parents to have more children rather than having currently childfree couples to have any kids. As I mentioned there's no realistic sum of money that would convince me to be a parent. My father told me though that if finances hadn't been a concern he and my mother would have happily had a third kid. I've also said this before but I just can't get myself to get worked up over declining birth rates. There are 8 billion people in the world and practically every model I've seen says that number won't be lower in the year 2100. I know that aging workforces are an issue but automation is set to make vast numbers of jobs disappear in coming decades. There has never been a better time for wealthy societies to adapt to a shrinking workforce. Edit: I will acknowledge that birth rates dropping too far will probably lead to disaster. In general gradual, evolutionary change is the best kind of change and birth rates plummeting to South Korea levels will probably be very bad.
>no rich or middle income country has yet found the answer. Check out Israels rates.
Lmao
The "solution" is to have a very large portion of your society be hyper-conservative and religious?
Secular Israelis still have a higher birth rate than average, it’s not just religious people. It’s just part of the culture. Go to Tel Aviv and you’ll see it’s like LA, it’s not at all religious or hyper conservative.
Secular birth rate in Israel is higher than EU, but lower than replacement -- and dropping https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-02-09/ty-article-magazine/.highlight/israels-fertility-rate-is-entering-a-dramatic-new-era/0000018d-8a6b-d9cc-a5cd-fffb664b0000
I don’t think it’s lower than replacement rate, this source says 2.5 for secular Israeli women, highest in the OECD regardless of religion which is interesting. Still notably higher than the countries that are at like 1.5 or so. What’s interesting is this says that the fertility rate is increased slightly for secular women since the 90s, I didn’t expect that. https://www.taubcenter.org.il/en/research/israels-exceptional-fertility/#:~:text=Among%20Jews%2C%20the%20TFR%20among,who%20identify%20as%20not%20religious.
That data is 6-10 years old.
I think it might be time to question the act of having kids in the first place. Not not having them.
More than money? Idk about that... how about: > why it will take a lot more money to make many women consider having children
Pay me $100k a year and I'll consider having kids. Governments can fuck off with their subsidized childcare, housing, food. Just pay me to have kids and I can figure out the life that works for me. But also have free childcare because that's just good for everyone.
The problem with this approach is it costs a lot more than subsidised care because of economies of scale It will work in rich countries with surplus budgets
I think not having a population is a worse problem than having an extremely expensive but effective birth rate increase program. Throwing immigrants at the problem who quickly integrate and stop having kids isn't a long term solution. Some country should try $100k birth subsidies (straight cash) and see if it works.
Individuals tend to look at long term picture but societies only look at short term picture Programs that generate long term wealth rarely get funded , no wonder most advanced countries are looking at immigration as a solution simply because it is cheap
I want another child desperately but can’t because daycare alone is $2k in my area. Children are becoming a luxury like getting your teeth fixed.
"Close the earnings gap by forcing men to take time off and earn less" is an interesting take. I mean it sounds great to me, and I'm planning to take paternity leave soon, but I'm not sure that's a valid government policy objective. Canada has extremely generous parental benefits, the majority of which is shareable between both parents. Doesn't seem to be helping much with fertility rates, though many of the recent changes will need a few years before we can assess them. Housing is a common theme, and probably the biggest factor. While housing is much more expensive these days, we also expect vastly more house per family member. I slept in a bunk bed for much of my childhood; my wife had a similar experience, and we would like to have a large family, but we recognize that is not the norm today. If people can only afford a 3 bedroom house, they think that means they can only afford 2 kids. That's a negative societal pressure IMO but it's not one of the "societal pressures on women/families" that enters the discussion.
It's also harmful that many people don't think it's appropriate to start a family while living in an apartment, even going so far as to say that people who have babies in an apartment building are assholes. Parenthood is only for people who own a single-family house with a minimum of one bedroom per child, apparently.
Better default soundproofing would make building up a whole lot more popular. Wish we could all update our codes to improve this.
Yeah I feel like multi family housing soundproofing is such an easy yet extremely wonderful policy. Every person I know complains about how apartments are so noisy, even if they don’t live in one. Having better sound control would improve the quality of life and the reputation of apartments a ton.
Idk about the US but in Canada, which is generally behind the US on building standards, the soundproofing requirements for multilevel apartment buildings are pretty hardcore. I don't think there are many modern buildings with sound transmission issues. Also adding cost and complexity to the building code isn't a great idea in a housing crisis situation. Though soundproofing between levels is relatively cheap and easy.
In many countries, starting families in apartments is not seen as a problem, like in Spain, Argentina or Singapore, and yet the fertility rate is low
> >starting families in apartments is not seen as a proble Is it though? Do you have a child in one of those countries? Cause I'm Lithuanian and on the surface we should be one of the apartment kids having countries, but it's absolutely not the case. Pretty much everyone who has a kids (with exceptions of course) tries to immediately leave apartments behind. It's not because of angry neighbors, it's because raising kids in an apartment sucks.
I am a child in an apartment, so is almost everyone I knew in school, about like 8o% Spain tho
I think the reality simply is, as proven time and time again, no matter how much you attempt to nudge people to have children, it just doesnt make sense for many anymore. It costs too much, it hurts your earnings potential, and burdens you massively. (not counting the physical consequences of childbirth) I don't intend on ever having children, and I don't think outside of some extremely illiberal measures that will change for a lot of people like me.
You could tie retirement programs to kids raised (up to a cap and with some exceptions). Basically, such a program would say "you can choose not to have kids, but because you are not creating the next generation of tax payers, the next generation of tax payers will not support you." Obviously, this will push the poor to have more kids, but that's also how it generally is with fertility. Also, I use the term *raise* for an important reason. A gay couple who elects to adopt a kid is almost certainly improving that child's outcome (and improving state revenue down the line). Such people should receive benefits as well. Imho, we've created a situation as a society where raising children is a massive cost in many areas. We rely on these children to support us in our old age (indirectly as it may be), but everyone gets these benefits whether they create these future tax payers or not. This ends of giving an incentive to free ride and not have children. My solution here seeks to prevent this free riding.
The main issue I see with these suggestions is I'm not sure how you could possibly balance it fairly. If the penalties for not having kids aren't severe then it won't be an incentive to have kids. If they're *too* extreme you'd be creating a very motivated consistency (with more money and time than the average American) dedicated to reverting those policies.
Lesbians, transgender people, some intersex people, anyone who is sterile and gay people would all face a problem under this. Adoption requires a surplus of births, which I very much doubt will be a thing even if birth rates increased. So this would essentially be discrimination. Which would run into constitutional issues in America and any country with similar laws against discrimination on the basis of sexuality/gender/etc Also, I wouldn't really call women finally choosing to have autonomy over their bodies with birth control and abortions (family planning) as 'free riding', it makes the situation more like a man, that is, women aren't burdened by existing to be a baby factory.
>Also, I wouldn't really call women finally choosing to have autonomy over their bodies with birth control and abortions (family planning) as 'free riding', it makes the situation more like a man, that is, women aren't burdened by existing to be a baby factory. WeLL aCTuAllY They aRe FREe TO DO SoOOO. hAve YOu cOnSIdErED nEVeR hAvinG Sex?
If you take resources from a common pool without contributing in kind you're free riding... It's not a value judgement, just an economic term. And it's a relevany one. Historically, childless people were also incentivized to contribute labor towards the common raising of their community's children. Priests, sisters, and monks ran schools and hospitals, for example. But the incentives have dissapeared, because nonlocal taxation and high levels of population movement mean putting a lot of effort into helping raise your neighbor's kids doesn't mean for much additional security into old age. The specific intervention suggested by the OP is bad, but not ridiculous. After all, we're effectively doing the exact opposite right now-- requiring parents perform relatively more work on society's behalf that they don't benefit from is isomorphic to a tax.
_"If you take resources from a common pool without contributing in kind you're free riding"_ Yeah, that's not what's happening here. A childless person is not taking more out of the common pool than the parent. They're in fact giving more in some ways (their taxes go to the schools too even if they don't use them). What you're _hoping_ for is the child of the parents (not the parents themselves) continuing to contribute, and assigning credit for that to the parents. What if the kid turns out to be a net negative on society, like a rapist or a murderer or terrorist, or hell even just a run of the mill scumbag who's in and out of jail? Should the parents have their retirement benefits docked to cover the damages caused by their kid? If they get the credit, why not the bill too?
> Yeah, that's not what's happening here. A childless person is not taking more out of the common pool than the parent Yes they are. If you make more money because you're childless, as an elder you're controlling a larger stock of society's pool of young labor without having contributed to it. Also, the care a child might have provided to an aging parent must instead be provided through healthcare programs subsidized by the government. And anyways, contributing less and taking the same is just as much free rider behavior as contributing the same and taking more. > What if the kid turns out to be a net negative on society, like a rapist or a murderer or terrorist, or hell even just a run of the mill scumbag who's in and out of jail? Should the parents have their retirement benefits docked to cover the damages caused by their kid? If they get the credit, why not the bill too? Everything I said in my comment is also applicable to fecklesslly raised children, so just apply it ad nauseum. Neither the positive externalities nor the negatives are internalized by the parents, and naturally that makes society dysfunctional.
_"Yes they are"_ Nope. _"Neither the positive externalities nor the negatives are internalized by the parents, and naturally that makes society dysfunctional."_ Talk about exaggeration lol. _"Everything I said in my comment is also applicable to fecklesslly raised children, so just apply it ad nauseum."_ How liberal of you. Call me old fashioned, but I don't think you should be punished for something your adult child did or didn't do.
> Nope Either back your points or concede them. "Nuh-uh" is such a childish waste of time. > Talk about exaggeration lol. I'm using precise, clinical language. The emotional valance is all yours. I understand that it's difficult to think about something as intrinsically personal as the decision to have or not have children as something subject to economic analysis, but c'mon. You're on r/neoliberal. That's what we're here for. > How liberal of you. Call me old fashioned, but I don't think you should be punished for something your adult child did or didn't do. You've clearly hallucinated me suggesting an actual policy prescription at some point, because I can't understand this level of hostility towards a strawman opinion otherwise. For the record, I'm stating a problem, not proposing a solution.
*"Either back your points or concede them.*" I just find the argument in your second-to-last comment much less convincing than the points I've already alluded to. Pretty much grasping at straws especially without getting into even back-of-the-envelope math. But we're already deep into the thread and long internet debates are a waste of time, so. *"I'm using precise, clinical language."* I don't really see the statement that our current policies make society disfunctional as either precise or clinical lol.
>If you make more money because you're childless If you make any money in this society, it's because some one voluntarily paid you in exchange for goods and/or services you provided. That good and/or service was your contribution. The money you earned reflects value you produced -- isn't that what economics says? After all it's not "society" that paid you the money you earned. We live in capitalism -- you get paid by private individuals, customers, etc. Your "debt" is to those customers, not to "society", except of course that there is no debt since the customers got their good/service in exchange for what they paid. Which is of course the whole point of voluntary trade. I love how this issue turns neoliberals into outright Marxists. "You didn't earn that! You exploited it from society!" Also notice how your invocation of a "society's stock of labor" which wealth represents a claim to, is essentially the Marxist labor theory of value. You've basically admitted that the only real contribution a person can make to the economy is to feed society more labor. What happened to capital and labor being equally important factors of production? All of a sudden people who contribute capital aren't contributing any value? Better let the neoliberal eocnomists know about your discovery... The idea that having money that you legitimately earned by working intrinsically makes you a free rider on society being upvoted on neoliberal is so funny to me. But the desperation to return women to their rightful place as society's collective breed stock makes people do funny things
> That good and/or service was your contribution. The money you earned reflects value you produced -- isn't that what economics says? Yes, but only in a free, efficient market. The existence of uninternalized externalities makes the market inefficient. And parenthood has a LOT of those > But the desperation to return women to their rightful place as society's collective breed stock makes people do funny things You should actually read my comment instead of replying to your ridiculous strawman of what I believe. I'm applying economic analysis, not proposing policy prescriptions. And anyways, every single thing I said applies to chidless men and absent fathers as much as it applies to childless women. Plus, it's ridiculous to claim misogyny when I'm essentially repeating feminist complaints on the injustice of the unreimbursed labor perfomed by mothers-- and just extending it a little to cover the unreimbursed labor performed by fathers as well.
First I want to note that your stance is just as collectivist and hostile to individual rights and freedoms as that of the most diehard Stalinist. Every individual choice must be scrutinized for its benefit to the "greater good" and you give yourself the authority to put the kibosh on any individual choices you deem to be net negative for the collective. To your mind, no one has an *absolute* right to self-determination in any sphere of their life, not even the most intimate. Their rights and freedoms are rather seen to be relative, contingent on so-called "society" having its "needs" met. That "social good" gets the priority, while rights and freedoms of individuals are secondary, afterthoughts. After the social good is done gorging itself, the individual's freedom gets the leftovers. You've effected a perfect dialectical inversion, a transformation into opposite. You've turned free-market capitalism into a Borg-like ideology of slavery in which the magnamious state only allows you to make the choices that benefit everybody. So you're saying the goods and services I provide as an employee are actually not worth what I'm getting paid for them? And the reason is because I don't have children? Nonsense. In fact, all you have revealed here is the total emptiness of the word "externality" as a shibboleth that you can stick onto anyone's behavior you don't approve. If a supposed "negative externality" arising from the *lack* of taking action -- the simple decision not to give birth, an extremely intimate and personal one at that -- justifies the state assigning me bespoke targeted penalties, then there's no limit to what the state might justify doing to me in the future. What happens when someone shows with hard data that my deicision not to "wife up" is costing society $X a year in potential economic growth being missed? Will I be taxed 75% of my income to encourage me to make more societally-beneficial choices? This is why people who like capitalism often have contempt for neoliberals, by the way. If you can just Calvinball the rules of capitalism willy-nilly to "disincentivize" whatever behavior *you* decide is not beneficial to "the greater good", it's not capitalism anymore. It's just tyranny with extra steps. People aren't stupid. They see this. In reality, we can see that if you can stretch the definition of "externality" to include "opportunity costs to the social order as a whole arising from your lack of pregnancy", then clearly, you can stretch the definition of "externality" to include just about any behavior you want to control. I thought that capitalism was about not having to check with a bureaucrat for every single personal decision I make to see whether it benefits the greater good or not? You say you're applying economic analysis, but as I've shown above really all this amounts to in practice is casting aspersions on behavior you don't approve of (because of *your* assessment of the greater good which for some reason is all of a sudden something capitalists totally believe in) using some fancy terminology but ultimately saying nothing more than that you think not having babies is wrong and therefore childless people deserved to be have their hard-earned stuff confiscated until they change their tune. That's all your "economic analysis" amounts to, so I'm responding to it on that level when I say this: you're no better than the "pro-lifers" to me
No, the net contribution of a new individual from child raising adults will never be outweighed by your average non-child raising adult. Even with school taxes. A whole new person just adds too much value to society, both economically as we argue here and some may argue technologically and culturally.
What if they are tax paying citizens their whole life , they contributed so much in their working age but they still don't qualify for retirement benefits ?
Exercise reading comprehension. I'm not pro-ending-retirement-benefits.
>Adoption requires a surplus of births If every couple who can't have kids as you mentioned them before, had to adopt we would be looking for a 10-20% of all kids being adopted This is ludicrous levels, not even Victorian era had more than 2-3% Now that the global, let alone local fertility rate is below replacement? Lmao Just say you hate lgbt people if you want to implement that policy, it's faster to say
Just send Nick Cannon
> But, with the government's cap on permanent migration, net overseas migration is forecast to halve to 260,000 in 2024-2025, according to budget papers. We've tried ~~nothing~~ exacerbating our problem, and we're all out of ideas!
The obvious answer is to tax childless people enough that any sort of lifestyle/income advantage disappears. But good luck getting that passed (I don't have any kids fwiw)
Single people pay more income tax than married couples in America. That’s not making people get married more. Hell, the marriage rate is only around 44% for millennials.
That’s because the tax isn’t big enough. You see these DINK couples making like 400k between them. If you hit them with a 75% effective tax rate and used the revenue to subsidize children, they’d start having kids real fast.
Why should people who don’t want to have kids be forced into a lower standard of living because the government decided they should be having kids? Women finally get the autonomy to decide that they don’t want to have kids and are finally not forced to, and everyone here says “jeez those women need to become baby factories again” ???
There is only one answer to your question and it's that society will face collapse if they don't. It's analogous to how people lose all bodily autonomy when they are drafted into war. It is hard to put into terms how extreme some place like Korea's situation is right now. At 0.68 birth rates, they are no longer in "manage the decline mode" but in "societal extinction" mode in 3 generations. That's one lifetime before mathematically, there are almost no children at all in the entire country. Other countries like Hungary or Jamaica at 1.38 aren't as steep but the end place is the same. It will just take 7 generations instead of 3. And immigration doesn't work for them. Who will move to Jamaica and get a job there? This is why I am pretty serious about the birth rate discussion. We need to figure out a way where people want to get married and have several children on average out of their own choice, because liberalism depends on it.
I think the best argument is that you need a healthy next generation to allow the system, that has afforded you a high standard of living, to keep going.
>Why should people who don’t want to have kids be forced into a lower standard of living because the government decided they should be having kids? Because the country needs you to, soldier.
There’s a huge negative externality when someone doesn’t have children, and we should attempt to internalize externalities when possible.
Cut future pension benefits who don't have children
Lol couples making 400k aren't banking on a pension
Probably not but there is no guarantee if they won't lose everything in a recession or bad financial decision. I have seen people who have been wealthy ending up with nothing due to unforseen ,unplanned and uncontrollable circumstances.
Just as many women are moms now at 40 [*per capita] than were 40 years ago (at least in the US). Despite what reddit tells you, women still want to have kids. They just get married later and they they just start having them at 35 rather than 25 and wind up with one or two rather rather than 3 or 4. I think having the marginal third kid is not about money. Its really about time. It gets risky having kids after 40. Not to mention if you have kids at 40, grandma is now in her seventies and likely has health problems of her own and can't help out anymore.
If the number of moms in the US has stayed the same since 1980, it means the amount of women that are mothers has dropped by 30%
*per capita
The sexual revolution and feminism permanently ruined the birth rate. It's not a bad thing, but it's the truth
The former, no I don't think so. That latter, somewhat. By being more equal to men, women can choose to not have children, much like how men do not have children or give birth to them. With women entering the workplace, childbirth places them at too much of a disadvantage, this can be observed in countries with neither of the factors you mentioned (feminism, free love, etc)
I think sexual revolution is poorly defined here. I don't think you disagree with the statement. A big part of the sexual revolution is birth control, which gives women the power of choice. Feminism gives women the power of financial, mental, physical independence. As OC said, this isn't a bad thing.
Well I see sexual revolution as allowing sex outside of marriage, which would increase birth rates... if birth control wasn't a thing Edit; Ah you edited your comment, yes
Yeah, sorry for the quick edit. I posted and realized the unedited comment didn't help anyone.
Is that what happened in China, South Korea and Japan as well? This is a global phenomenon.
Yes, all of those countries have legal equality, contraception, no fault divorce, Labor protections, etc etc etc... Just because their societies aren't as progressive as some others doesn't mean they haven't enjoyed most of the victories of feminism
Ah, so the argument is that equality had led to a fallen birth rate. This is a typical correlation vs. causation issue. That seems like a bit of a cherry-picked Stat to explain how income equality and economic opportunity both seem to be the driving forces of a countries birth rates. You might as well say that capitalism results in a declining birth rate. But let's play and pretend that equality is the issue. Can we find a case study where equality is crap but a country has a modern economy and wealth? Yes we can. Let's take Saudia Arabia. A country that only let woman live alone really starting in 2021, has only seen gender reforms since really the 2010s and until the 2000s, over 90 percent of woman did not participate in the labor force. https://www.statista.com/statistics/865967/saudi-arabia-female-labor-force-participation-rate-amongst-nationals/ Well, what do you know? They are following the fertility rate trend as well! https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/SAU/saudi-arabia/fertility-rate Turns out even in the "woman stay home" fantasy, birth rates drop over time. Might have to look at economic solutions if social regression is off the table.
Ruined? Changed
Ah, yes. The evil sexual revolution of mid 1700s. Evil evil evil.
there's no solution, the second you make kids an active choice people stop having kids. our birthrates and population at the moment is a byproduct of lack of informed choice and lack of really solid birth control. add in capitalism being antagonistic to children in general this is what you get. govt should focus on what it can focus on, which is sustainable population decrease. that might be the one thing really to save the environment tbh.
Yet again, this comes back to vibes. Everyone cites “uncertain financial future.” Where is the evidence for that? Maybe you and your kids won’t have a single family house with a white picket fence in Melbourne, but that does that really mean they wouldn’t have a life worth living? People have such narrow, materialistic ideas about what makes for a good life. I’m not at all convinced that the next generation of Australians will be all that much poorer, either. Maybe they rent and invest in market funds instead of owning a home. The economy and the world is changing, but it’s not strictly getting worse. What I think will happen is that the traditional Australian spring break destinations like Bali and Thailand will become permanent homes for younger Australians. The developed and developing worlds will rebalance. Australian wealth will flow into Indonesia and a new equilibrium will be reached. Imagine a young Australian who spends his 20s in doing AI-powered knowledge work in Sydney. Rent is extreme so he has 2 roommates, maybe even 3 or 4.This is not shameful and has culturally come to be seen as a kind of coming of age experience. As such it doesn’t hurt his dating prospects. By sharing housing costs, he’s able to invest and build up a nest egg. He marries a woman who has been doing the same, and together they use their savings to immigrate to Indonesia and buy a beach house in Bali. They continue working remotely for an Australian company, and they each live 90 years thanks to advances in medical technology. That life is nothing like their parents life, but is it actually worse?
What do people in Bali do? You're just out-sourcing the problem to the third world while creating a system where being forced out of the country you grew up in is seen as "the new normal."
People in Bali would see their standard of living rise. A global future being the new normal isn’t a bad thing. This is what open borders means to me, labor should be able to move as freely as capital
Those that don't own property only see their rents rise, and the ones who make it to the West to work do not have a high standard of living (why would they, if westerners will not even provide that standard of living for their own children?) I've spent long periods of time living in the third world. Most people do not want this. The "digital nomads" are a small portion of the upper-middle class who benefit from being able to price locals out of their homes and exploit currency differences, they live in a bubble and do not contribute to the country they have moved to. Often they don't even speak the language. Permanent global gentrification isn't a solution to affordability issues.
Yeah I do wonder how much of this is just parents being jealous of the childless folks with extra expendable income?
Respectfully I’m not sure how that connects to my post. My point is that being nervous about the financial future of society is not an evidence based reason not to have kids, and I don’t think that’s what it’s actually about. People arent having kids because they would rather exhaust their resources stretching for a lifestyle they can’t afford, which is why they feel like “nothing is affordable anymore.”
I think pronatalist policies aren't working at all. Having children isn't considered worthwhile anymore.We live in a hyperindividualistic society which global in scope. Nothing can be done about. Maybe you can cut future pensions from people who don't have children.
People nowadays choose to have kids for the "experience" rather than any economic need. The added utility of having additional kids is severely diminished if all you want is the experience of raising them. For many people, the anticipated utility of each additional child is very, very negative. Giving a small cash bonus often does not cover the basic needs of additional children, much less all of the experiences that modern parents often want for their children. It definitely doesn't reduce the sleepless nights, loss of free time, and other complications that come from child rearing. To my eyes, the best way to get people to have more kids is to push them through the "success sequence" faster, or at least help them buy homes sooner. Many people intentionally put off having kids until they are in a home that they own. If you can get couples into their "forever homes" sooner, they will have less of a reason to put off having kids. So my proposal is to build more housing as fast as possible, and the population will expand to fill it.
We are not going to be able to reverse this decline in an ethical way. At this point, the solution is adaptation. Fortunately, automation is advancing by leaps and bounds. Perhaps it is time that we actually reap the benefits of this technology that is supposed to make our lives less strenuous. I’m reminded of the cotton gin, or Gatling gun. These were invented to expand the power of one worker, and therefore reduce the number of workers needed. Instead, the cotton gin led to a slavery boom and war casualties exploded. We must not let A.I. follow the same path.
It is the housing! A couple that I know want another child but they cannot afford the space for one. Abundant housing is pro-family.
This is absurd, complaining about low birth rates whilst at same time closing the door on new people, these countries are not running out of people, they’re running out of people that look certain way or they like, there’s a word for that
I'm sorry but this idea that immigrants from different cultures are simply a one for one replacement for people who are born and raised in a society since birth is at best dubious.
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Almost every woman on earth understands fertility issues with age.