[hollasch]

“The most common reasons people gave for not having more children were concerns about the economic, social and climatic outlook, cited by 30% of those polled. Some 28% said raising children cost too much.”

It occurs to me that this could be the fuel for a vicious cycle in countries where the government assumes high responsibility for social care: low birth rates create a population skewed older, which requires greater taxes on younger citizens, which places them under greater financial stress, which further suppresses the decision to have (or to have more) children.

[MasterYoda900]

Why can’t seniors living in long term care simply take care of one another?

These discussions about the tax burden of seniors are about two things in the end: health care and assisted living.

Assisted living means: workers to cook meals for seniors, to help them dress, to remind them to take their pills, etc. In our advanced industrialized societies, we offload that burden to young workers in their prime. In more traditional societies like Japan, senior communities don’t need young workers because they rely on one another. Let seniors cook for one another, help one another get dressed, etc. And let young workers go start businesses or work on cancer cures or build software and help society get richer as a whole.

https://www.wionews.com/entertainment/lifestyle/news-_-secre...

There’s still the health care aspect to deal with (seniors can’t do heart surgery on one another), but we could decrease the tax burden of over 65s by switching to a Japanese model.

[michael1999]

You see the same sort of thing at the other end. In something like Montessori, older children will make lunch for the younger children. Or in Japan, children will clean their classrooms at the end of each day. When I was in elementary in Calgary, the crossing guards were 3-student teams selected from volunteer students in grade 6. Instead, we dedicate paid adult labour to all of that.

I don't understand all the causes. Some is labour rights history (freeing children from the mills was a social victory), some is weird labour bargaining (a child doing a union job is a scab), and some is class anxiety from parents (only servants should wash a floor). Not to mention that given a choice, the young and old alike will chose free servants over doing their own chores.

For seniors, another cause is the novelty of mass retirement. North America was very young until recently, and we could afford to extend retirement benefits to people who'd never paid a dime in because there were so few of them.

My instincts are egalitarian, so I believe it doing for myself. Silver plate is for suckers, unless you like to cosplay as the help for an afternoon. But the world is full of people who just _must_ have servants.

[nostrademons]

Japan's eldercare system has been held up recently as something Western nations should aspire to, but the reality is complicated:

https://www.historyandpolicy.org/policy-papers/papers/the-ca...

Basically - having supportive family take care of you is great, when you have supportive family. Not everyone does. Even in Japan, with a long Confucian culture, they had problems with elder care being too much for younger family members; with elderly being neglected and left to fend for themselves; and even with elder abuse and homicide. Now try applying that to America, where the social fabric is frayed, the norm since WW2 has been for children to move away from their parents in adulthood, and many people don't even have functioning intergenerational relationships at all.

[fomine3]

Looks good thesis. supportive family is important factor. In 1990 to around 2015, Japan had been in notorious deflation, so there were no enough jobs for everyone, hiring women full time wasn't popular in early 90s (especially for not young people), and full-time housewife was somewhat popular. That's part of why supportive family existed. Now it's time to inflation finally, salary haven't increased much so women need to go work, we understand that we might live long and pension may become poor so retiring age is increasing, and worker shortage is now becoming a serious problem. Family support model no longer work.

[Arnt]

Basically: The ones who are healthy enough to take care of others prefer to stay at home (where they often take care of a spouse).

[wharvle]

Yeah, US model is that we prefer independent living for seniors as long as possible, then living with family, and only then assisted living (not that it always goes that way, but that tends to be the ideal) at which point not enough seniors in assisted living are capable of helping others for the Japanese model to work.

It’s a bit of a chicken-egg problem in the US—we try to keep seniors out of assisted living because it’s incredibly expensive and has a reputation for poor quality; those things are the case because they require lots of paid labor, but also don’t pay great, resulting in high costs but also often-not-great quality; so seniors who have other options tend not to enter assisted living, so capable seniors aren’t around to do any of the work that might reduce reliance of the system on paid labor…

[zwieback]

Not just US, saw that in Germany with my grandma and now my parents.

[johnea]

"The Japanese Model", you mean old people dying alone in tiny apartments?

[supertrope]

The French government just rammed through raising the retirement age from 62 to 64. Macron cited the long term demographic and knock on economic risks of not doing it.

In an economically declining country that prioritizes social spending on pensions to the point of crowding out investment in the future, the young might just emigrate.

[lotsofpulp]

Another instance of short term cost/benefit ratios not matching up with long term cost/benefit ratios (for the individual and the collective), and in this case the long term spans many decades.

[mytailorisrich]

France has many, many benefits for parents.

I think people feel the pinch because growth has been at best very low for a long time while inflation has accelerated in the past few years.

On the other hand, population has to stop growing at some point and, say, immigration has already been causing huge problems in France.

[sylware]

... and since the economy cannot give pertinent jobs to all households, many need a social accomodation... and the french gov is unable to provide enough "decent" ones (this is a very, VERY, complicated matter, a very slow process). French president Macron did acknowledge openly and recently that France has an immigration issue. Things may start to be uglier: immigrants (1st/2nd gen) are now competing for this resource with natives.

[mytailorisrich]

It's like in the UK. They say that immigration is a problem because people are unhappy about it but they do nothing about it and, in fact, push for more.

[retinaros]

no there is literally none if you earn more than the lower middle class. if you poor yes you have lot of benefits

[mytailorisrich]

The French do not usually realise how good they have it.

Income tax depends on number of children.

Nursery fees depend on income.

I believe cost of school meals depend on income.

Child benefits payments. I think this is now based on income but it used not to be.

Cash payment at beginning of school year to help pay for school stuff, etc. though I think this is also depending on income.

So sure lower earners benefit more but everyone gets something.

Many countries would think this is very good.

I am French and I moved to the UK a long time ago. My income tax actually went up. In the UK income tax depends on... income. Your children are irrelevant.

[vidarh]

I had no idea about the family quotient stuff. I'm actually considering moving to France some years down the line, and assuming my partner and I marry and have kids, then based on the current income difference between us, being able to rebalance that (which you may know you can't do in the UK) and the reduction for a child, we'd pay significantly less than we do in the UK..

[retinaros]

so the only thing you get is 0,5 person tax deduction per children. everything else is for lower incomes. you are right its not nothing but knowing these children will pay for the current generation retirement this is a very small upside

[orwin]

0.5 for the first and second child, 1 for the 3rd? Also you get "free" retirement semester per child (4 for giving birth for the mother, 4 for taking care of a child for at least 9 years, to be divided between both parents (biological or not). Free education is for everyone, as is free healthcare. Really cheap meals if whatever your income is, almost free to cheap music classes, almost free club participation (even if you have a QF of 10, 50% of the cost is still paid by the relevant state echelon, or the CAF). And let's be honest, if your QF is 8 or more in a big city with a single child, you aren't middle class: it mean your monthly revenue (pre income taxes, since those are influenced by your QF) is higher than 8k.

A lot of benefits do disappear when your QF is higher than 6 to be fair with you, but still.