[aemreunal]

As the article points out, having a choice, and not being pressured by society into having kids one doesn't want, certainly is a good thing. On the other hand, as the article notes:

> [...] cannot afford to have more children, or because of other policy failures, such as housing shortages [...]

the financial aspect is a huge blocker for those who want to have children. We live in a world where the majority of young people can't afford to live in a city center without 2+ roommates, let alone afford a lifestyle where they have any amount of disposable income, of which a lot is needed to have children.

This policy and societal failure of squeezing every bit of wealth out of the new generation and not giving them anything will eventually drain cities of young people and those cities will be left behind as times change with the newer generations. The cities will miss out on culture, societal change, modernity, eventually of sheer people. See San Francisco, New York, Seoul, etc. It doesn't seem like countries are treating this as the problem it is and I fear for the future of all these currently-popular cities.

[faeriechangling]

I don’t buy the hypothesis that it’s simply lack of means driving the lack of fertility. Poorer countries and poorer times both came hand in hand with higher fertility than we see today.

My hypothesis isn’t that it’s not affordable, it’s that people don’t stand to personally benefit from having kids, and birth control is available, so they don’t. If you‘re willing to tolerate any quality of life, well you might just be able to afford kids.

I also think our attitude towards education specifically is a key driver of low fertility. We have invented a system where we literally take the horniest most fertile members of the population and we have them compete in a boundless contest to accumulate more and more prestigious, time consuming, and necessarily more irrelevant accreditations.

[agent008t]

It's not about an objective level of means, but more about one's relative standing and its security.

Take a modern young couple in a place like NYC. Having to work incredibly hard in an uncertain job - both of them - never too far from being unable to pay rent (or mortgage, although that now tends to come later in life). Meanwhile bombarded by ads of all kinds (and people they see around, both in real life and online) to have consumption of a certain level just to maintain the status quo of their social standing.

Add to that a complete lack of positive vision for the 'developed' world but plenty of negative ones. A complete lack of any sort of utopian thinking. Including the fact that whoever does end up having children will end up with those children later having to support all the pensioners.

---------

So in a way, the poor are more secure in their poverty than the young people in the middle, and therefore they procreate. So do the more wealthy that are secure in their wealth.

[ouid]

what are you talking about?

[opportune]

What’s most concerning is that this might be a negative spiral. I think one reason young people these days get so squeezed financially is that proportionately more retirees/near retirees in the population means that, structurally, economic output needs to be taxed or otherwise transferred (from rents, dividends, capital gains) from those who are working to those who are retired. If this squeezing causes people to reduce their birthdates, it continues the age pyramid inversion and necessitates even more squeezing later on.

Suggesting we treat housing as a good (which should be easily accessible and inexpensive) rather than an investment would surely help and isn’t controversial here. But it does pose a systemic problem as many current and upcoming retirements at present hinge on housing prices, which is how we got into this mess.

Perhaps a more controversial suggestion: fund retirements based on taxes or other forms of “cash flow” rather than through investments. Tax policy has directly incentivized investment as a way of funding retirement. At a societal level increasing the capital base probably makes us more efficient but we are shifting so much more economic output/returns from labor to capital that you can easily be much, much wealthier in retirement than as a worker. And people wouldn’t need to save and invest so much if they knew they’d get a reasonable pension.

As good as it is for people in their 50s and beyond, I think turning everybody into an investor has created inherent age-based inequality which becomes especially impactful in the prices of housing (and probably other markets that are expected to retain value, even if not investments, like art).

[slaw]

One of the solutions is to tax wealth more and labor less.

[lynx23]

At least in my case, I moved to a city for more infrastructure, public transport and my job. I had absolutely no plans to raise kids there. In fact, most people I know move out of the city center to the suburbs once they have kids. I dont follow your analysis why less childbirth would automatically lead to deserted cities.

[klipt]

A shrinking population does eventually have to lead to smaller (or fewer) cities.

[aylmao]

IMO this is getting a bit too ahead of ourselves. IIRC, Russia and Japan are the countries with the most population shrinkage, and they've just lost 5 million and 2.5 million people off their peak.

- 5 million / 148 million is 3% down from peak for Russia.

- 2.5 million / 128 million is 2% down from peak for Japan.

Most importantly, Russia's population decline (which started before Japan's) has leveled off. It hit a local minima in 2008. It has wobbled up and down, but stayed close to 143m for almost 20 years [1].

This is how populations usually work; they level off and oscillate around their carrying capacity. It's often studied in biology [2].

Shaving off 3% of the population of a country doesn't lead to deserted cities any more than other factors do. Natural resource depletion and economic factors are and will most definitely keep being bigger worries for cities (ie, droughts leading to water shortages, big employers moving out, etc).

[1]: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.POP.TOTL?locations=R...

[2]: https://www.khanacademy.org/science/hs-biology/x4c6733622308...

[volkl48]

Russia: Eh, no. That's just a temporary blip caused by a lot of the people born before 1945 not having made it that far, so the population was unnaturally skewed young. Few elderly to be dying off at the time because a large portion of those people died off 50-60 years prior.

They're set for sharp decline going forward, and changes in geopolitics look likely to dry up or outright reverse their modest immigrant flows from former USSR countries.

Japan: Is shrinking ever more rapidly, not less.

[aylmao]

You're right. Japan's population pyramid is inverted [1]. Personally, I wouldn't call the rate ever more rapid— it's seems quite linear given that fertility rate has been pretty steadily around 1.3 since the 90s [2], but it is definitely still shrinking.

Russia's population pyramid does seem to suggest a big dip once the generation born in the 80s passes away, but it doesn't look like a reversed pyramid just yet. The generation born in 2021 doesn't seem considerably smaller than the one born 20 years ago [3].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Japan#/media/F...

[2]: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?location...

[3]: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e8/Russian_...

[airgapstopgap]

Russian population decline has been compensated for with a great number of immigrants from Central Asia (plus occupied Crimea; that's not recognized internationally but is obviously a factor for their economy). It'd probably be more like 138 million modulo those and their children, perhaps less.

[aylmao]

That's an interesting point; Crimea has about 2 million people. This doesn't seem to show on the charts though, when in theory it should look like a spike around 2014, no?

[1]: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.POP.TOTL?locations=R...

[airgapstopgap]

Well Russian charts do show it, because since 2015 Russia includes Crimea in internal stats. As you can see it's also growing in 2022, despite there being consistently more deaths than births for years on end. I suppose we can infer what this means.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Russia#After_W...

[thedailymail]

In Japan (where I live) at least it doesn't seem like a carrying capacity problem, but a general lack of desire among young people to start families.

[aylmao]

I've thought about this, and I'm no expert, but I've come to be convinced this is how reaching carrying capacity is meant to feel.

It's easy to imagine it as some sort of famine, where there isn't enough food to feed children, or overcrowding so extreme that everyone lives in slums and it's simply impossible to have kids. If it ever reached that point, a population graph would show a sharp fall, not a steady leveling-off.

When I think about previous generations in my country (Mexico) they seem more care-free. They loved someone, they had babies. One single head of household could afford to buy a house. It was a house too, not some tiny apartment!

I look at my life though and it just seems a little more stressful in a bunch of small ways. The squeeze is gentle, not abrupt, but it's there. Living spaces seem smaller, which adds a little stress. Comparing vs old photos, the city just looks more crowded, more full of traffic, which adds a little stress. In their 20s my parents weren't thinking about the environment, but I am, which adds a little stress. I think about the living standard I could give my kids more than my parents seemed to; I just can't shake the thought that my kids need to stand out from the huge crowds of people there's now, which adds a little stress. At the end of the day all these little bits of stress add up and lead to me not wanting kids any time soon.

Perhaps this is what approaching a population cap is meant to feel like. Just stress here and there, leading to less fertility, rather than some hard physical limit.

[_nalply]

Very thoughtful, thank you.

In other words, we are like a mouse population. If a cap is reached, fertility sinks (but for mice also mortality rises as well. We humans are lucky in a way compared to mice.)

[citrin_ru]

> Most importantly, Russia's population decline (which started before Japan's) has leveled off

Like in many other countries Russia's population is sustained by migration from countries with higher birth rates (at least it was until recently).

[lambdaphagy]

Total population has oscillated for 20 years, but it would be mistaken to conclude that it's reached steady state because it's also been aging all the while. Meanwhile, TFR in Russia has been sub-replacement since at least 1990.

[DirectorKrennic]

Unless Japan's birthrate picks up, its population is slated to fall by a lot more than 2% from its peak. Try 50% or more. A birthrate below 2.1 children per woman leads to extinction.

[aylmao]

This is true, Japan's population pyramid [1] looks way more dire that Russia's [2]. Russia's does seem to suggest shrinkage after the big generation born in the 80's passes away, but oscillation afterwards. Japan's is an inverted pyramid.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Japan#/media/F...

[2]: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e8/Russian_...

[r00fus]

More likely - dried out husks of small cities that shrivel up and die. Look to the US rust belt as a historical indicator.

For modern times, climate change has made it impossible to insure some areas of the US (Norther CA fire country, Florida hurricane corridor, etc). Insurers are going out of business or just not paying claims.

[bequanna]

Small cities died because of increased crop farming efficiency, factory livestock farming and decreased heavy industry/manufacturing in the US.

I absolutely love the doomerism in your second paragraph. If you listen to those who buy into the whole climate armageddon thing, you would think that by 2030 large swaths of the US are going to be uninhabitable or under water.

No, the West isn’t going to burn away. We just need to resume good forestry practices and not build houses in precarious places.

Similarly in FL, this has little to do with “climate change” but rather an elimination of Government subsidized risk taking so the full insurance cost is bore by the property owners and not taxpayers.

[lynx23]

Why? What if those left alone in rural areas end up moving to cities for the exact reasons they already do? At least that is what happens right now. Rural areas do nothing to make the young stay. If you don't own a car, you are lost. Most jobs are mechanical in nature, software almost nowhere to be found. And the cities are growing, slowly, but they are. What maes you think this effect would be changed just because overall, population goes down?

[klipt]

Math? City population has to be smaller than total population. If total population eventually shrinks to zero, city population must eventually too.

[lynx23]

Haha, if we are talking about the final outcome of zero population, of course the cities are empty. But until then, there is still some way to go. And I am pretty convinced people will flock together in cities instead of withering away lonely in the countryside.

[pyuser583]

All it takes is people moving from rural areas to cities.

[airgapstopgap]

Those economic explanations are searching for keys under the lamp post. As Tanner Greer notes[1]:

> Structurally the arguments in both countries go like “life is so hard, and things generally so depressing, that I have no desire to bring children into the world.”

> In both cases generations previous, who lived through events far more harrowing and whose material circumstances were far worse, did not express similar beliefs at any scale.

Improving living conditions is always nice, so it is shoehorned into every conversation. What arguments could he raised against improving the atrocious housing situation (at least on the level of vague sentiment, "time to build", not necessarily YIMBY activism)? None at all, the very attempt amounts to a political suicide.

Yet when you see basically the same trends and very similar absolute values in countries as dramatically distinct as Argentina, Belgium, England, Iran and Russia [2], it becomes increasingly clear that no economic variable suffices, no charitable materialist analysis can account for the cultural shift. The real answer is simply the perceived value of children and lifestyle amenable to their existence plummeting worldwide. Now, even minor (by the standards of our predecessors) inconveniences and contrived long-term considerations like climate change can be cited as legitimate reason to not have any (or not have more than one).

Modernity sees no point to children. And as nations age and budget decisions are weighted in favor of older and childless people, as urban infrastructure itself evolves to make children more of a labor-intensive chore a working person would not be expected to afford, any possible remaining point becomes even less compelling. But to begin with, rationalizing the child-free lifestyle with material excuses is just a vestige of old normative morality, token respect for traditional natalism.

In fact, we would advance the discourse more if we paid attention to outliers both in terms of fertility and in terms of its trend, those being, to my knowledge: Israel, Mongolia, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan. And no, it's not entirely about low-education traditionalist groups, certainly not in Israel.

1. https://twitter.com/Scholars_Stage/status/165885018362973389...

2. https://twitter.com/BirthGauge/status/1662234743851700224

[lotsofpulp]

> And no, it's not entirely about low-education traditionalist groups, certainly not in Israel.

Yes it is, Israel’s high fertility rate is driven by tribes that either explicitly or implicitly influence how many children they want by restricting their financial independence. Same story with all the other countries you listed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Israel

> The ethnic group with highest recorded TFR is the Bedouin of Negev. Their TFR was reported at 10.06 in 1998, and 5.73 in 2009. TFR is also very high among Haredi Jews. For Ashkenazi Haredim, the TFR rose from 6.91 in 1980 to 8.51 in 1996. The figure for 2008 is estimated to be even higher. TFR for Sephardi/Mizrahi Haredim rose from 4.57 in 1980 to 6.57 in 1996.[30] In 2020 the overall Jewish TFR in Israel (3.00) was for the first time measured higher than Arab Muslim TFR (2.99).

Look at the graph here of the fertility rates of different types of Jews:

https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2022/08/18/...

[airgapstopgap]

What motivates people to provide sources that refute their own argument? The Bedouin (Muslim), Google says, make up 200,000-250,000 out of Israel's 9,3 million people. Or as your source puts it:

> Of Israel’s population of 9.5m, Israeli Arabs, mostly Muslim, make up about 21% of the total, while Jews account for roughly 74%.

> Though Haredim are just 13% of the population, their offspring make up 19% of Israeli children under the age of 14, and 24% of those under the age of four.

So the majority of modern Israeli population are Jews, mainly secular and moderately religious (61%). It seems most children there also belong to those categories, although somewhat less than their parents' population share. And as stated in the headline, Muslims are in decline and have already converged to the average national rate. So there is strictly no way for Israel's fertility rate to be driven only by traditionalist minorities. They explain the increase.

> Look at the graph here of the fertility rates of different types of Jews:

I did. For convenience: https://archive.is/8FAsi/4ca20b298a776c0318c24337c475fa4dce0...

As can be seen, secular Jews are roughly at 2 children per woman and "religious" (but not Haredi) are at 4. Once again, other OECD countries are roughly between 1.0 and 1.7 and falling. And they, too, have a share of religious traditionalists.

All that said, a good article. Some interesting bits:

> If an Israeli woman has fewer than three children, she feels as if she owes everyone an explanation—or an apology.” That, at any rate, is the view of a leading Israeli demographer. When she visits London she is struck by its dearth of toy shops.

> …But it is harder to explain why secular Jewish Israelis also have more children than the norm. Most work; paid leave for Israeli parents is not especially generous. Nor is child care cheaper than in other rich places. Some argue that Jewish Israelis make more babies because they foresee a rosier future: Israel ranks among the world’s top ten countries in happiness.

> Another reason may be that the state encourages baby-making by, for instance, bankrolling fertility treatment. It subsidises in-vitro fertilisation to the tune of $150m a year. Tiny Israel has about the same number of frozen embryos as America. This may have only a slight effect on Israel’s birth rate, but it signals that the government wants its citizens to procreate.

> One more explanation may be that Israeli grandparents tend to help out more than their peers in many other rich countries. Since Israel is small and densely populated, grandma is never far away. In one survey 83% of secular Jewish mothers aged 25-39 said they were supported by their child’s grandparents, whereas only 30% of German mothers said the same. In Israel the traditional family structure is still strong. In France and Britain more than half of babies are born out of wedlock. In Israel it is under 10%.

So, no, this isn't about "tribes" restricting financial independence. This is about a modern secular society that isn't blatantly antinatalist, plus coexists with sizable non-modern groups. Perhaps we could learn something from them, on both accounts.

For more in-depth research: https://www.taubcenter.org.il/en/research/israels-exceptiona...

[lotsofpulp]

>What motivates people to provide sources that refute their own argument?

I do not see how the data I offered does. This quote specifically seems to support my claim that tribes that "restrict" or maintain certain "expectations" of women are disproportionately responsible for pulling the fertility rate up (which is 3 compared to other countries of being less than 2).

>Though Haredim are just 13% of the population, their offspring make up 19% of Israeli children under the age of 14, and 24% of those under the age of four.

>As can be seen, secular Jews are roughly at 2 children per woman and "religious" (but not Haredi) are at 4. Once again, other OECD countries are roughly between 1.0 and 1.7 and falling. And they, too, have a share of religious traditionalists.

I agree that it is notable that secular Jews are at a higher fertility rate, but note that it is not much higher. There are 2 factors at play here, the biological costs of having children, which are immutable, and the "economic" costs of having children, which are mutable. You make a good point here:

>In one survey 83% of secular Jewish mothers aged 25-39 said they were supported by their child’s grandparents, whereas only 30% of German mothers said the same. In Israel the traditional family structure is still strong. In France and Britain more than half of babies are born out of wedlock. In Israel it is under 10%.

It takes a village to raise a baby, and it may be true that given enough familial support, a woman would be more likely to have ~2 children rather than 0 or 1 as is being seen in other developed countries that lack the familial support system for myriad reasons. However, even with familial support, I think few women would opt for 3 children, and a very small minority would opt for 4 or more.

[airgapstopgap]

> note that it is not much higher

1,5 (or 1,2) vs 2 is a lot. It is close to 3 so confidently above replacement for the whole secular+non-Haredim religious group (reminder that nominally the US is nearly completely "religious") and very close to replacement rate for secular Jews only; they will not experience significant population contraction in the next 100 years even if left on their own. This is important in that it means they also will never run into dependency ratio problems and necessity of mass immigration to prop up the failing economy, at the current rate; they will also never experience the cultural impact of extreme geriatrization of the society (some European nations are at average age 45 and higher now). Trends are also completely different, there is no precipitous decline (in fact it looks like a slow wobble and their TFR may return to 2+). If secular Jews were their own country they'd have been doing fine, arguably better than now and clearly unlike the rest of OECD TFR-wise.

> the biological costs of having children, which are immutable, and the "economic" costs of having children, which are mutable.

While the biological costs are not trivially mutable, there is a world of difference between having a child at 21, 27 or 35. The toll childcare takes on the body ramps up rapidly with age, while the ability to provide care declines. Older people fail to function well in a sleep-deprived state. We are doing everyone and especially women a disservice by suggesting that this decision is most wise to postpone.

[lotsofpulp]

>We are doing everyone and especially women a disservice by suggesting that this decision is most wise to postpone.

Absolutely! Another component of all of this is before the costs of pregnancy and birth and raising the kid, which is matching up two people to procreate and create a life together.

I have numerous cousins and friends who would rather be single than commingle their life with a partner who they think would make their life worse, a phenomenon with many causes, but one particular one that sticks out to me is the lack of social pressure to pair up, and especially on women's side, a safe society with the ability for them to live alone without needing a man makes the compromise not make sense.

[speby]

Affordability is a factor, but also one of several. Affordability, among other issues, certainly would lead some couples to decide to have fewer children than they otherwise might (1 instead of 2, or 2 instead of 3).

Besides affordability, more recent generations focusing more on career, quality of life, freedom, overall thrill- and experience-seeking, has led people to make lifestyle choices that do not involve children, as children can be a hindrance to some of those lifestyle choices. Because of those choices, many of these same people simply don't value children [of their own] as much and thus have fewer or none at all. Career aspirations, increasing wealth/income, and keeping a majority control over one's time and obligations has become more important than accepting the stresses and challenges of raising one's own family, even when considering the special kind of joy that also arises from pursuing that endeavor.

Adding onto that, say what you will about organized religions, but the increasing level of secularism is perhaps also a factor in leading to a declining birthrate, as most organized religions tend to "bake in" a kind of enthusiasm and social "nudging" to have more children.

[hnick]

I think that as the number of choices and opportunities in life go up, the opportunity cost of giving up a portion of this naturally increases. You might end up with "more" overall than past generations even after having kids, but loss aversion makes you feel the part you're giving up more keenly which steers some people away.

It's the same reason some people can't just relax and turn off. We're able to be so efficient/productive now, 30 minutes "wasted" costs a lot more now than it did in 1990 or earlier.

[glitchc]

That's just a function of changing economic conditions. Do you care about Detroit the same way you care about SF? It had a roaring culture in the 40s-60s, but is now little more than a derelict husk.

[lumost]

> This policy and societal failure of squeezing every bit of wealth out of the new generation and not giving them anything will eventually drain cities of young people and those cities will be left behind as times change with the newer generations. The cities will miss out on culture, societal change, modernity, eventually of sheer people. See San Francisco, New York, Seoul, etc. It doesn't seem like countries are treating this as the problem it is and I fear for the future of all these currently-popular cities.

Or.. we will have smaller populations. It's difficult to cite new cities. The US ostensibly has a lot of land area to make new cities - but if you get into the details there are a variety of reasons that the existing cities are where they are (including wildfire/water risks).

[tomcar288]

the material standard of living has been dropping and it's now getting to the point where people can't afford shelter any more and thus no more kids. CA's birthrate has already plummeted to a level lower than in the great depression several years ago.

What i don't get is why decreasing fertility is always presented so negatively in the media. falling fertility is a huge blessing in the long run. we can't keep growing our population exponentially.. there's already way more people on the planet than the planet can support (see overshoot theory; climate change, earth mineral shortages, shelter shortages, etc). Humans outnumber other animals (non-domesticated) by orders of magnitude: it's not natural or sustainable.

[faeriechangling]

Because the population decline isn’t evenly distributed, it’s happening as the article points out, to rich people. Who of course complain the problem is that they simply don’t have enough money and that’s why they don’t have more kids.

[bitcharmer]

So those millions of young people in developed wealthy countries who can't afford their own place to live are rich?

Please explain

[rayiner]

> As the article points out, having a choice, and not being pressured by society into having kids one doesn't want, certainly is a good thing.

Why? If elevating individual “choice” and doing what you “want” results in a society that literally cannot perpetuate itself, I struggle to see how that’s a “good thing” much less “certainly” so. To me, it sounds like the sign of an evolutionary dead end—one that’s sustainable in the short term only by arbitraging a world order where wealth inequalities drive many people to leave their homelands for these otherwise terminal places.

[namaria]

To me all this just sounds like price mechanisms are working and overpopulation is a self correcting problem. As labor grows scarce over time automation will take over. We all know society is an enormously complex system, yet we spend hours upon hours of our limited waking lives fretting about things we can't possibly, as individuals, understand or change.

[seydor]

They dont seem to leave the cities. they just stop having kids. If the world wants more kids though, it should allow cities to expand

[valleyer]

> will eventually drain cities of young people and those cities will be left behind

Where are they going to move to? Or are you saying that there simply won't be any young people anywhere, because they were never born?

[bombcar]

Exactly that, it can very quickly snowball and then you just don't need as many buildings anymore.

Or look at it this way: https://www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/2020/08/20/facts-on-u-s...

> There were a record 44.8 million immigrants living in the U.S. in 2018, making up 13.7% of the nation’s population.

If the USA was net neutral on immigration (as many people entered as left), the birth rate would be too low, there would be some tens of millions of dwelling units either empty or never having been built.

[AnimalMuppet]

This is a very important point that gets almost no discussion. Two classic "liberal" policy objectives, immigration and affordable housing, are at war with each other.

This is not an "own the libs" comment. Both policy objectives can be morally right, and still work badly with each other.

Immigration makes it much harder to fix affordable housing. That's just reality. It seems to be completely ignored by politicians, though - including those on the right, who seem to have ignored this as a club for beating up politicians on the left.

[andrewjl]

There is a simple solution to fix unaffordable housing that is effective regardless of immigration levels. And that's to allow more housing to be built by relaxing zoning restrictions.

Support for both immigration and zoning reform are in no way incompatible.

[dabbledash]

> Immigration makes it much harder to fix affordable housing. That's just reality.

Wasn't overall population growth higher back when housing was more affordable?

[jojobas]

Not having children at any particular level of "poverty" is still a choice. African women have >4 children in conditions that makes a food stamp life look like king's.

[bitcharmer]

This is for a very different reason. It's about mortality rate before reaching adolescence.

[FreshStart]

To offer a escape from the clutches of the global renteering uperclass could provide a vital avenue to a vibrant future for many countries.

[nazgulnarsil]

the balance on this is pretty clear afaik, people are consistently undershooting their desired fertility outcomes.

[mostlyreadertom]

One of the issues you mentioned is inherent to city living itself. Although we have been led to believe that city living is more efficient, let's examine whether this perception holds true. The cost of constructing single-family homes in non-dense areas is significantly lower, averaging around $150 per square foot. In contrast, high-rise buildings can cost five to ten times more, with an average of $800 to $1500 per net rentable square foot. Infrastructure costs, including roads and utilities, typically range from $30 to $60 per square foot for a 1500 square foot area, with sewer systems being the most expensive component. Yes, you don’t get paved road in rural. But gravel road is just fine there.

Considering these figures, it becomes evident that city living cannot be deemed cheaper based solely on the cost per square foot.

However, the lower cost of construction in non-dense areas doesn’t translate to ample of low cost housing because it has its own zoning and regulation that prohibit from happening.

Drawing from my personal experience as a software engineer turned builder/developer, these observations are rooted in real projects and data.