[challenger22]

I would argue that the primary mechanism is cultural changes effecting the fertility rate. Japan suffers a declining population not because of its technology, but because of its culture. Population growth rate peaked in 1968. Up until 1968, lots of evidence social scientists had to work with indicated that technological and social advancement increased the fertility rate (notwithstanding life expectancy changes and rich vs poor countries). Just because cultural changes over the past 51 years have been toward lower birth rates, does not mean that this will continue.

You cannot predict the direction that culture will change. Any predictions I make about this are extremely speculative, but it is easily imaginable that 20 years from now the zeitgeist reacts against the corpus of current culture to be more family-oriented. Think about how much you hear people complain against "the machine." Whether it's on r/latestagecapitalism, or r/the_donald, everyone hates the piss out of broad society, and may find solace in tight-knit families.

[raducu]

There's nothing "cultural" about birth rates. Raising children is hard, sex feels good, given the option to have sex and not have children, most people choose to have sex and not raise children.

Atheist women choose not to have children, christian women choose not to, muslim women choose not to.

Give people the option not to have children, remove the stigma and maybe they have 1-2 children, but no more.

Given how many single people there are, how tight the fertility window is for women who have careers, how tight schedules are in big cities, how expensive it is to have children today, there's nothing we can reasonably do to increase birth rates.

[challenger22]

You state that there is nothing cultural about birth rates and then list several cultural factors influencing birth rates. And then you state that there is nothing we can reasonably do to increase birth rates, even though most of the factors you mentioned are not set in stone.

I'm not even sure what you are trying to say.

[Certhas]

I don't think the person being replied to necessarily meant that, but cultural is often used in this context as a racist term, as in: "Africans will always have many kids, it's their culture", where before the more overtly racist "nature" might have been used.

The implication being that the cultures of (some) people are unchanging and fixed. I think you'd agree with a statement like: Cultures and family values do change all the time, due to a variety of factors like better medical care, and economic empowerment, in reasonably predictable ways.

So it's not unchanging cultural differences between Africa and Europe that drive the different fertility rates, but rather different socio-economic factors that drive a different family culture. Changing the socio-economic factors will change the culture surrounding families, just as much in Africa as it did in Europe, the Middle East, Asia, etc... at various times in the last century and a half.

[raducu]

My argument was that all modern, technologically advanced civilizations will face these exact issues, so there is no point in calling those factors "cultural", because cultural facts are meant to distinguish between cultures.

I'm sure an alien species or a computer simulation having a few of the same basic drives as humans do (sex is very pleasurable, contraception exists, raising educated children is extremely expensive and hard, state provides pensions in old age, people are free to have or not to have children, child mortality is low, work provides money, money satisfies needs, quality work is abundant only in high density cities and a coupe of others) will arrive at same fertility problem we have arriven at.

My second point was that there is nothing we can reasonably do without a major overhaul of human traits or shutting down the technological advanced world we live in.