[arcticbull]

> Rising wages (basic supply and demand) lead to an increase in the fertility rate as people feel more financially secure to have children.

That's actually the opposite of what happens. As a country develops, wages go up and fertility goes down. Check out this chart of GDP per capita vs fertility rates. [2] It's a well known and extremely strong effect.

Fun and very poignant quote: In a 1974 UN population conference in Bucharest, Karan Singh, a former minister of population in India, illustrated this trend by stating "Development is the best contraceptive." [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_and_fertility

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_and_fertility#/media/Fi...

[clairity]

that fertility rates correlate inversely is, strictly speaking, true, but many confounding factors mean that a causal relationship is harder to pin down.

for instance, wealth disparity creates economic vortexes that suck people (women particularly) into unproductive economic outputs, like finance rather than childcare, not to mention a comfortable home life is increasingly out of reach for relatively more and more people. increasing corruption and general unfairness lead people to lose faith and opt out of productive life altogether.

gdp is certainly gamed as well, and leaves out some very important productivity measures, again, like childcare and homemaking, because these are historically seen as "free".

[arcticbull]

> for instance, wealth disparity creates economic vortexes that suck people (women particularly) into unproductive economic outputs, like finance rather than childcare, not to mention a comfortable home life is increasingly out of reach for relatively more and more people. increasing corruption and general unfairness lead people to lose faith and opt out of productive life altogether.

In some places, sure, but certainly not in all, and the correlation holds everywhere. For instance, New Zealand's birth rate is 1.8, and is the worlds's least corrupt country on the perception of corruption index, a much lower GINI coefficient than the US, and much better childcare, mat/pat leave policies and so on. Finland is another example, with a birth rate of 1.49

[clairity]

that's why i included the bit about the skew built into the gdp itself, but the larger point is that the correlation is so macro-broad that it's loaded with all sorts of confounding factors.

if we want both high (and growing) gdp and fertility over replacement, we need more economic fairness, particularly around wealth and income, which has all sorts of unintuitive distorting effects. that requires capital to be loosed from captive greed and spread more broadly and deeply into the economy.

immigration in place of high reproduction is fine too for growth, which is one of the points of the article.

you can't get prosperity and choke off sources of activity and innovation, which is what the US (and similar) is doing. those in power, along with the lower classes clinging to the scraps of privilege trickled down to them, want neither economic fairness nor immigration because it potentially dilutes their power and influence, others be damned.

they'd rather have most of a smaller pie (the current situation) than a proportionally-smaller but absolutely-bigger piece of a bigger pie (the zero-sum thinking). that's the conundrum in a nutshell.

[Jommi]

You've been provided data that wealthy, equal societies have low birth rates, yet still you hold on to not only that "there are other confounding factors" but that actually the effect is the opposite?

I'm having a hard time grasping what evidence you have that even tried to suggest this.

[toomuchtodo]

Control-F “Economics matters for birth rates” for various citations backing a thesis that increasing wealth correlates with higher birth rates.

https://www.brookings.edu/research/half-a-million-fewer-chil...

[arcticbull]

This is an extremely well studied and well documented effect. One-off extreme situations such as WWII and COVID aren't counter-examples of a global trend. Development leads to a reduction in fertility. The only dispute globally is what happens once incomes rise after the birth rate falls below replenishment (i.e. whether there's a J-curve effect).

I read your article, and nothing there tracks the correlation between birth rates and income in a greater-than-replenishment situation. I conceded that in the tail end, rising wages may lead to more births, but I have not seen (including in your citations) an indication it would lead to an above-replenishment birth rate. Just some micro-level changes.

[toomuchtodo]

The citations are recent and pre COVID (2013, 2014, 2018, 2019).

I agree that educated, empowered women delay having children and have less children overall. Yet, the data shows income plays a part as well. Economic insecurity acts as an arrestor on the fertility rate (rightfully so), and economic security increases the fertility rate.