[salmonfamine]

There is no highly-developed country with replacement-level fertility. And, in fact, the only places left with fertility rates that are above replacement (and not rapidly dropping) are sub-saharan African countries with a median income below 5k USD. On the other end of the spectrum, you don't see fertility rates tick up again until you get to the 500k USD and above bracket.

My personal hunch is that this is a form of market failure. If you're a young woman, delaying childbirth in favor of more education and a higher income makes perfect sense, on an individual level. But the more young women take that path, the fewer are available to form communities of care. Consider the economic cost of replacing that network -- neighborhood moms, grandparents, immediate and extended family. Raising a child with one parent working is strenuous, with both it's only possible through expensive and sub-optimal childcare programs.

One typical response is that we should simply subsidize those childcare programs. Fair enough, but the countries that have taken this idea the farthest -- the Nordics -- have still not achieved replacement-level fertility.

Another response is that the earth is too overpopulated already, and we should have fewer children due to climate change. However, we know exactly how many people will be alive in the latter part of this century -- given relatively static mortality rates -- because those people have already been born. Crashing the population after 2100 won't really help anything, and will in fact only introduce more economic challenges and crises for our descendants.

[throwaway03635]

> One typical response is that we should simply subsidize those childcare programs. Fair enough, but the countries that have taken this idea the farthest -- the Nordics -- have still not achieved replacement-level fertility.

Childcare is built around taking care of the kids only when their parents are at work. When they parents comes home from work, they have to find time to take care of the household chores (dinner, cleaning) in addition to taking care of the child's needs. Today's societies put a lot of pressure on parents that were not there before. Nobody want's their child to be a loser, so they have to follow up on homework and after school activities. The pressure is much higher than 20-30 years ago, and many opt out.

Childcare programs in the Nordic are a necessary first step, but they only cover working hours. We either need to reduce social pressures that forces parents to push their children to be "perfect", or just face the fact that we need to pay for organizing the after school activities (no more volunteer work at the soccer clubs or driving kids to swimming practice). This will make sure that the parents can focus on spending quality time with their kids and still have time for a personal life.

[salmonfamine]

Yes, exactly. This is what I'm trying to get at with "market failure" -- the total economic cost of doing all of that is drastically higher than even the cost of just childcare.

In the past, many of those duties would be distributed throughout a community. And on isolated farms, parents would intentionally have big families so that the eldest could help raise the younger kids.

Doing it all with two people is a huge burden. Doing it with just one is a heroic act. Throwing in the extra burdens and expectations of the upper-middle class professional world -- homework help, extracurriculars, etc -- makes it virtually impossible.

So it makes sense that only the 500k+ income crowd is having big families. That's probably a good approximation of the income required to afford the total cost of replacing all of the childcare benefits of an informal community with paid labor.

[throwaway22032]

The idea that men and women should operate independently from each other i.e. not be mutually reliant is the root of the market failure.

We should unapologetically be celebrating long term monogamous heterosexual relationships where the duties are shared.

The other stuff (hook ups, childless, LGBT, etc) is all fine and dandy as long as it's consensual, but it's a distraction - and it's taking up far too much of the societal conversation given its' relevance.