[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.