It isn't a more difficult undertaking. It was never easy, we've just been raised softly and do not value children the same way previous generations did.
An outlier in many places, but not most. Only in the Western first world is this now normal.
> Only in the Western first world is this now normal
It ain't just us, my friend. Births Per Woman:
1.64 USA
1.34 Japan
1.28 China
0.84 Korea
> we've just been raised softly and do not value children
Now that women are part of the formal economy and everyone has options for entertainment other than unprotected sex, the mechanism by which the formal economy used to offload the entire cost of child rearing while reaping all of the benefits no longer functions.
We have two paths: dust off the shitty exploitative playbook of yesterday, or build a new playbook for tomorrow.
It is - in the generation of my grandparents one income could feed an entire family AND lead to a house (no vacations though, and not much luxury)
Nowadays even if you have good jobs it really depends on a lot of circumstances if you can afford such a life (albeit mostly with more luxury and vacations) with two incomes.
Same here. To be sure, those women (i.e. my grandmothers) were definitely hard working. Raising lots of children, without "modern" appliances like dishwashers etc. in the household. But the money that came from one income was enough.
> Effectively the worth of income nearly halved.
At least the worth that reaches the worker after taxes etc.
Not really - there are various self-correction mechanisms which simply aren't active (yet?) because the low birth rate isn't actually resulting in a shrinking population (due to immigration) so there is not problem to fix (yet).
Many people mention housing and real estate as a problem, well, if there was a population problem, we'd see loads of available empty homes and falling prices of real estate - we're not, so this is a clear signal from the society truthfully voting with their wallets (no matter what they misleadingly signal verbally) that we have more than enough people.
It's similar to some industries saying that there aren't enough workers - if there was an actual shortage, we'd see loads of unfilled vacancies together with noticably rising salary offers for these positions, and if we aren't, that's a clear signal from that industry truthfully voting with their wallets (no matter what they misleadingly signal verbally) that they actually do have more than enough potential workers.
In North America / Europe, you’re correct. In Japan, China, South Korea, they’re losing population, everyone knows they’re losing population, but self-correction mechanisms aren’t working or not working fast enough. Japan been trying to throw random stuff on the wall to see if anyone sticks, but the birth rate only keeps dropping. And well, young people really don’t want children.
It all depends on what do you mean by "fast enough" - the self-correction mechanisms would trigger after the population has shrunk, not when it starts shrinking; and it would apply to the generation after that. Also, we might consider the pressure from housing and jobs as a correction mechanism for overpopulation, so it would likely stabilize somewhere much lower than the peak.
While "everybody knows that they're losing population", South Korea and China haven't even started shrinking (they've stopped growing, and have been at approximately 0 population change for the last few years, it's technically negative but the change is insignificantly tiny) so obviously any self-correction mechanisms wouldn't apply at all yet.
Japan's population reached its peak in 2010 and as of 2016 the shrinking was quite low - so we're talking about just like 7 years of actual shrinking and that's not that much time to cause any socioeconomic changes triggered by population reduction, it would seem reasonable to look at the generation which grows up in a shrinking-population regime to see how it affects them, when they actually have real estate that gets significantly cheaper due to lack of population and scarcity of workers pushing up the bargaining position of labor; Japan's demographics is "leading the world" in this regard, but even they aren't there yet. And they have time to see how it works out - Japan's population is still far above its e.g. 1950 population, and continuing the current population trends it would be as long as 2075 to reach the 1950 level (which isn't bad!) again.
I agree with you about how we probably haven’t reached the point where the governments are supposed to worry, but I don’t think looking at a point in time in the past is right. Even though we have a long way to go for the decline to reach the population levels of 1950s, the demographic pyramid is pretty much inverted. Same applies to China and South Korea in some degree. Most of the women after the age of 40 aren’t going to have a kid, yet alone 2.1+ to revert the population decline.
But you’re right, more drastic measures will be taken in political and economical senses once absolute numbers start ramping up. It’s fairly obvious our current system isn’t the best for aging population with not as many children. Unfortunately, we just haven’t come up with anything better that gives some sort of stability and peace.
For liberalism, perhaps. If the capitalists can't figure out how to grow new worker-slaves in vats or perfect AGI, future society will be very different. Might be mostly Amish and Orthodox Jews, etc. after the population crash.
I will admit that I was a bit off-the-cuff in terms of the Western aspect of my comment.
There are lots of factors, of course, and the trend isn't limited to only the west. Though it has certainly become a more normal trend in developed and developing countries than those with a higher level of poverty and poor.
I still contend however that it has never been easy. My grandparents had four children starting at age 20. My grandfather's first job was sweeping floors in a factory at age 13, making $0.30 an hour. When he asked for a raise, he was fired. He said he didn't have two nickels to rub between his fingers.
His father before him went into World War 1 at 15 years old. And his father (my great-great grandfather) falsely signed the documents affirming that he was 18 years old, to allow his own 15 year old son to go to war.
They struggled, but didn't complain. Some part of it is cultural expectation, and that has changed greatly over time. In spite of all odds my grandparents raised four fairly middle class children in these circumstances, but had a good few decades of strife. Whether or not they would create a family and procreate was taken for granted. It was assumed, at their own economic expense. But long-term family wise, today my grandfather has a tree of descendants who love him.
I think today we are more conscious of the economic equation. We ask whether or not we can afford to provide for children, rather than letting them exist and then asking how we can provide for them. There is an aspect of this that I appreciate, but I worry that it's mixed with some amount of narcissism. Though I am an atheist, there is some unreason to our existence in the first place, and there is hope in the continuance of ourselves that we should value beyond economics. There is a romance and some type of spiritual value in being able to put aside the cost-benefit analysis and simply bear new life that is part you, to have and to hold, to love, teach, and reciprocally learn from.
We have so much bounty today that the idea of "sacrificing" ourselves for something that only has potential value is an alien concept. As our material wealth has increased, and as our understanding of personal economy has evolved, I think we've lost a bit of our primal, but beautiful, nature that wants ourselves to persist at a biological, cosmic level.
You, here, right now reading this are the absolute last leaf, the most extended branch, the most outstretched and sun-bleached arm of a tree of life that has been proceeding for four billion years. You are the last link in a chain that has not been broken for four billion years. Can you believe that? Every time I consider that, I think of my parents. And I ask, who am I to be so conceited that all of that history, that fourth of a fraction of the universe, should end with me?
I'm not sure where I'm going with this, and, I will confess that I got a little tipsy for the super bowl. Don't judge me too harshly. But life is beautiful, and beauty is always difficult to sustain. We do it because beauty contains a truth and a promise for the future. And I think that's something we need to put effort into re-evaluating, and re-valuing, in our current world.
One line of inquiry might be why there is a correlation between bounty and the general wealth of an economy, and the fertility rate. Many parts of the world that are poorer are more fertile, and reproduce more unquestionably. Korea is rich and the rate is 0.84. In the Congo the rate is 6.21. It is not about economics. And if you counter that it is about poor education or care, I don't believe that's the reason either. It's culture, and values.
Paul Revere had 15 children. 5 of them died young, and he still had 10. He had a horse and a rifle and a small wooden house you can still tour in Boston. Today we have DINKs, and people who are in what is considered to be the low-income range with multiple rooms in big cities, an education, and combustion-engine vehicles who say it's too expensive to have children. Maybe your tastes are too expensive. Maybe you've been raised softly, and don't know how to set yourself aside to rear and participate in a family that is spiritually worth more than just yourself.
One of the other comments said I ranted so I thought I'd actually provide one. Sorry HN, I hope I made some sense here.
> And I ask, who am I to be so conceited that all of that history, that fourth of a fraction of the universe, should end with me?
Nobody will remember us in just 100 years. Nobody.
> Maybe you've been raised softly, and don't know how to set yourself aside to rear and participate in a family that is spiritually worth more than just yourself.
Is it really worth more, though? I always wondered if having kids is just so that somebody finally listens to you at an age where your peers really only listen if they're deep friends, or if you have something actually exceptional to say. And to relive childhood, and then again when you have grandchildren. You don't get these two things if you don't have children. But they're not that deep, you can e.g. teach to actually intelligent peers, research deep topics, and relive childhood curiosity in different ways. For the benefit of all of society, not just your little gang.
The human population is expected to peak at ten billion, and that's in the latter half of his century. We have no reason to fear declining birth rates in an existential sense.
I think this is probably true. Historically children would provide for their elders, but that role is fulfilled now more by technology, so in practical terms, they are less needed. It's an emergent trend of humans+technology that acts as a natural limit to our growth, so that as a species we don't just eat all the carrots and die like the rabbits would.
I do fear that Idiocracy might be a little accurate though. The people reproducing currently are the ones who do not consider their future or economics, while the smart ones who do, have less children.
> Historically children would provide for their elders, but that role is fulfilled now more by technology, so in practical terms, they are less needed.
You weren't watching the magician's hands closely enough.
The role is fulfilled by tax dollars that come from the youngest working generation. Might be tech involved, but the revenue still pays for the tech.
It's the machines that actually pay for most things we enjoy today.
The keyboard you're typing your responses on, display you're reading this message from and virtually everything else in our silicon worlds* were not touched by human hands during production.
Money is just an accounting method to allocate the production output.
Interestingly even the keyboards don't need that much of a human touch to type these days.
* other notable examples are almost 100% of the energy we use (electricity, hydrocarbons), majority of the global human caloric intake (grains, fats, sugars, potatoes, etc.), most raw materials (metals, fibers, hydrocarbons again, etc.), tools
And for the remainder, at this point it's just a matter of time before Humans Need Not Apply
Which countries did you have in mind? The countries with the highest population decline are not the countries with the lowest birth rate. People emigrate from the former, and choose not to reproduce in the latter.
The places with above-replacement fertility are seeing theirs decline too.
We convert them to childlessness faster than they can replace the children we're not having. Less than 25 years away from universal below-replacement fertility.
> You, here, right now reading this are the absolute last leaf, the most extended branch, the most outstretched and sun-bleached arm of a tree of life that has been proceeding for four billion years. You are the last link in a chain that has not been broken for four billion years.
It's 3.7 billion, not four.
More importantly it's a vast tree of life, not a chain and not a hierarchy with humans at an upper lever with only royalty, priests, and God above.
If the sapiens go the stromatolites will still remain, with a lineage far older than apes.
Humans aren't about to go extinct but it's high time their population numbers stabilised, perhaps even reduced a bit.
The case can certainly be made by those that care that should the human branch be pruned the remaining mass of the tree of life on earth might very well thrive and surge in breadth and depth after a rather large number of other prunings at the hands of humankind.
4 was rounding from 3.7, so I think that seems like a bit of a petty correction.
Humans will not go extinct (I hope), but HN is full of some of the smartest people and these are their trends, and I hope that of the people who do reproduce, the techno nerds are among them. The future will need them.
I worry that the Great Filter is not about technology at all, but that in every planet with a species that has evolved into a higher intelligence, that at the cusp of being able to seed their galaxy, they willingly do not pursue it, because the level of analytical thinking required to achieve it also leads them to disinterest and abstinence.
In regards to your last sentence, that is true. But I would ask, who would be around to appreciate that fact?
> Humans aren't about to go extinct but it's high time their population numbers stabilised, perhaps even reduced a bit.
There's little evidence to support the theory that at some point in the future, little girls will all suddenly decide to buck the trend set by their mothers, grandmothers, great-grandmothers, and all the adult women they see around them in the world, and have 2.1 children themselves.
But, if they do not all do this, if only some of them decide to buck the trend, they those girls would need to have 3 or 5 or 8 to make up for those who do not.
If neither of these things happen, population cannot stabilize. Mathematically, there has to be an average of 2.1.
Fertility rate declines are future extinction. They've run the experiments, and the results are always the same... despite having all the food and water and entertainment they might want, the mice either do not fuck or they just murder whatever offspring they do (rarely) have. And it happens more quickly than one might expect, because the rate of decline increases with each generation.
> the human branch be pruned the remaining mass of the tree of life on earth might very well thrive and surge in breadth and depth after a rather large number of other prunings at the hands of humankind.
And why should any human ever give a shit about whether these non-human organisms thrive, especially when hypothesizing a future where humans no longer exist? Sounds like some death cult nonsense. Will you be one of those lamenting how you think the most beautiful planets of all are those with no life whatsoever to "mar their beauty"?
> There's little evidence to support the theory that at some point in the future, little girls will all suddenly decide to buck the trend set by their mothers, grandmothers, great-grandmothers, and all the adult women they see around them in the world, and have 2.1 children themselves.
There is some speculation - and some data which may or may not support it - that fertility may follow a "J" curve where it declines sharply with increased development and then slowly rises again above a certain level.
There is also some data to suggest that within a population, if a subset sees an increase in wealth, it can predict an increase in fertility within that subset.
Combined, a suggestion that does not seem unreasonable is that we develop certain expectations based on societal expectations, and as they increase it becomes harder and harder to justify additional children, but when people find themselves able to meet those expectations, the number of children goes up.
If that holds, then that would suggest the rate can be brought back up with sufficient societal assistance, which may or may not come as fertility rates becomes enough of a political issue. Whether that will actually work remains to be seen - we've already of course seen some pretty significant attempts, such as the escalating Hungarian family support scheme (total support for 3+ children amounts to over 300k Euro, of which about 1/3 is a non-refundable grant and the rest subsidized house loans), so we should start to get an idea of what a realistic cost to drive the rates back up will be, if it is viable, over the coming couple of decades as more countries experiment.
> There's little evidence to support the theory that at some point in the future, little girls will all suddenly decide to buck the trend set by their mothers, grandmothers, great-grandmothers, and all the adult women they see around them in the world, ..
What nonsense.
The very evidence you seek is right here, right now, all about us - a world in which men and women have a reproduction rate lower than than their grandparents and great grandparents. They have clearly bucked the trend of those in times past. Q.E.D.
BTW, this focus you have on breeding "little girls" is distasteful to say the least.
> those girls would need to have 3 or 5 or 8 to make up for those who do not.
Only if the world is to return to the present 8+ billion after a fall below.
Should numbers slowly decline down to, say, 1950s world population levels and mean reproduction rates go to 2.1 then things will stabilise.
> If neither of these things happen, population cannot stabilize.
Faulty logic, as already explained.
> And why should any human ever give a shit about whether these non-human organisms thrive
My response was to a human who was waxing lyrical about 3.7 billion years of life, an infintesimal number and tonnage of which was actual humn life ... you should ask them why they care about other lifeforms.
>The very evidence you seek is right here, right now, all about us - a world in which men and women have a reproduction rate lower than than their grandparents and great grandparents. They have clearly bucked the trend of those in times past. Q.E.D.
From the graph I saw the total fertility rate in the US has been falling since 1800 (start of the graph). It briefly improved after WW2 for a bit and then started falling again. There was another brief increase at the end of the 90s and it's been dropping to historical lows ever since. It's not just two generations - it's 200 years and possibly longer.
> he very evidence you seek is right here, right now, all about us - a world in which men and women have a reproduction rate lower than than their grandparents and great grandparents. They have clearly bucked the trend of those in times past. Q.E.D.
Are you daft? If fertility rates were high in the past, if they were 6 or 8 or 9.7... they could fall for a long time with no decline in population.
But once they dip below the magic number of 2.1, then population declines. That's how this works. That's the number of children a woman (every woman, on average) must have for population to remain the same from one generation to the next.
I don't know any other way to explain it. You probably think you're intelligent. You followed the teacher's instructions and got an A on math, but you never really understood it. If you follow the recipe, it just poops out correct answers... but here we have a novel problem, and you just can't get it.
> Only if the world is to return to the present 8+ billion after a fall below.
No. For the population to plateau out and stay the same, they'd need that many. It's how fucking averages work.
Either all of them have 2.1, or if only half have children, then they need to have 4.2.
And this isn't for the population to grow again. It's for it to plateau out and remain the same as it is.
> Should numbers slowly decline down to, say, 1950s world population levels and mean reproduction rates go to 2.1 then things will stabilise.
That's the fucking point. If population declines, it's already below 2.1
And if it's below 2.1, that becomes the norm and it never goes back above 2.1. No little girl grows up in a world of childless adults, of the rare "only child", and "only child" herself and says "I think I will do what ever woman I ever knew wouldn't do, and have 2.1".
It's a simple fucking idea.
> You might perhaps ask yourself why you do not.
Because I don't belong to a death cult that hates humanity. I mean, I shouldn't have to say it out loud, but there it is.
Sub-Saharan Africa is the only part of the world where the fertility rate is still over replacement (~2.1 children per woman), and it's rapidly dropping there too. The first African country has dropped below replacement (Mauritius), with 10 more (of 55) having dropped below 3 already as of 2020.
China is seeing a population decline not caused by famine for the first time in modern history.
India's fertility rate is at or below replacement at this point, and India is a couple of decades from population contraction unless they increase immigration.
Having 3 children at a young age is an outlier in the vast majority of the world at this point.
Scroll down the World Bank's fertility numbers on this page [1] to get to data by region. You can add the entire Arab World, Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia as having sustainable fertility rates. And places like Latin America are in decline, but still in the realm of realm of being saved at ~1.9. The only places currently in catastrophic collapse at the EU (1.5), North America (1.6), and East Asia (1.5).
For those who don't understand why 1.5 is so much worse than 1.9, it's because fertility is an exponential system. Every generation's (~20 years) size is (fertility_rate / 2) times as large as the one prior that gave birth to them. So after 5 generations (~1 century), a fertility rate of 1.9 would see the next generation's size go from 100 to 77 (100 * (1.9/2)^5). A fertility rate of 1.5 would go from 100 to 23. South Korea, at 0.78, would go from 100 to 0 - extinct, in a century.
And most people, across the world, do have children at what you'd call "young" ages. Female fertility rates start to decline rapidly as they age, obviously hitting zero at menopause which tends to happen in their 40s. Even when successful, an older parent results faces exponentially increased odds of seeing a variety of issues with the child, such as Down Syndrome.
> Scroll down the World Bank's fertility numbers on this page [1] to get to data by region. You can add the entire Arab World, Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia as having sustainable fertility rates.
You can use metrics from different groups and slice and dice sections and find ways of getting above 2.1 (replacement), sure, but it's not affecting my main point at all, which was that it's not contained to the Western world, and that 3 kids is now an outlier in most of the world.
To your specifics:
South Asia is listed as 2.2. But India has hit 2.1 and is declining, and Bangladesh and Nepal are even further below replacement - the World Bank metric is I presume buoyed by Pakistan, which has hit 3.1 (3.47 in the 2021 numbers on Wiipedia), and is declining, and Afghanistan, which is in even steeper decline - the other countries in the region are mostly rounding errors in terms of population.
It's a difference of whether it's already hit replacement as a region already, or will within 2-3 years at most. I'm perfectly happy to accept the World Bank numbers for the sake of this argument, as it's not relevant to the argument.
With respect to MENA and the Arab World, you're double-counting. The bulk of the countries that are part of the Arab World vs Middle East /North Africa are the same.
The largest non-Arab MENA countries are Iran, which is well below replacement (1.7) and Turkey, at 1.9.
The Arab World also includes several countries considered sub-Sarahan by some or all of other groups (Somalia, Mauritania, Sudan) which pulls it up, and MENA curiously includes Sudan in some statistics, even though it's considered sub-Saharan and/or East Africa by other groupings.
Once you actually exclude the sub-Saharan countries from those groups, the rate lowers significantly. Taking Sudan alone out of MENA brings MENA close to replacement. If you choose to look at the Arab World alone, then, sure, even excluding the sub-Saharan countries they're still above replacement. I'm again, fine with choosing to slice the numbers that way - they do not affect the argument I was making in any meaningful way, because then the remaining MENA countries are below instead.
What we're left with no matter how we slice it, is that roughly half the worlds countries are below replacement, accounting for well above half the worlds current population (but that balance will shift rapidly), and leaving the world average at ~2.3 and declining even by World Bank numbers.
> And places like Latin America are in decline, but still in the realm of realm of being saved at ~1.9.
There's no "being saved" here. Short of economic collapse, we don't know of any reliable measure to drive these numbers back up again, and they've been consistently trending down since the 1960's. China appears to be poised to be the country likely go hardest in trying, now recommending 3 children per family, and given an extremely restrictive immigration policy. That's fine - they don't need to be "saved".
> The only places currently in catastrophic collapse at the EU (1.5), North America (1.6), and East Asia (1.5).
I was not, and is not, and will not be, arguing any "catastrophic collapse" - to me at least that notion is meaningless to most people other than "great replacement" type people.
The world as a whole is headed for a relatively gentle flattening of population growth, and a period of decline, but no "catastrophic collapse" in population. But we are headed for a fairly dramatic shift in politics and economic development as this happens and the countries facing the steepest drops become more dependent on actually courting immigration as a consequence. There will still be enough growth to do that for decades to come.
> "The world as a whole is headed for a relatively gentle flattening of population growth"
You know something that's really weird to think about? In 1950 Africa's population was 227m! [1] The US at the time had about 160m, nearly as many people as the entire African continent! Fertility rates are hard to intuit because they're not only exponential, but systems where the effect is delayed from the cause by several decades, but then once it starts - it starts rocketing off uncontrollably, be that in loss or gain of population.
The world's population may start to level off at some point, but sub-replacement rates will cause Western nations to start losing population at an exponential rate. It will be the equal but opposite of what happened to Africa over the past century. And this doesn't level out or even slow down, except when people start having children again. So for instance many people know Japan now has > 10% of its population over 80, but I think a lot of us have this sort of concept that 'Well sure, but as they start to die off - then things will probably start to look a bit more sane.'
In reality, it's the exact opposite. As this group dies off, they're going to be replaced by an even larger group of 80+ year olds, leaving Japan in an even worse state, as one can immediately see just glancing at Japan's population pyramid. [2] Right now Japan's losing about 1 in 200 people per year, and this will never stop until either they go extinct or they start having children again. And it will actually get substantially worse until they hit their 'fertility equilibrium point' where all living generations have/had comparable fertility rates (picture the sides of the population pyramid having a constant slope). And that's what's waiting for the entirety of the Western world, if we don't turn things around.
And this is also likely a vicious cycle because as age ratios and demographics get all screwed up, economies will start to collapse, which will make it even more uncomfortable to have children.
Fertility rates do indeed have that effect, but it's buffeted most places by immigration that will continue to soften the effect for decades to come, so I think it'll be hard to predict how that exactly will play out.
We can already see some differences quite starkly.
E.g. Italy's fertility rate hasn't been above replacement since ca. 1975, and started seeing population decline a few years ago and is already back at the population level it was at around 2007, because it struggles to attract (and want to attract) enough immigration.
Meanwhile, the UK dropped below replacement in 1972, and yet UN projections suggest the population is unlikely to decline until the 2050's at the earliest, and isn't projected to drop down to present-day levels at any point this century, largely buffeted by a far more aggressive immigration policy (including by politicians claiming to want the opposite - neither of the major party in the UK believes in reducing immigration, but some of their voters do, and that is likely to become a rising conflict).
So while I agree some nations probably will see rapid falls, it really comes down to in part to what extent they are able to open their doors and find means of becoming attractive to immigrants fast enough while finding ways of integrating them in a working way.
And this will reshape the political and cultural landscapes both within countries, and international influence.
(one minor example, since we've discussed the UK and Africa: The UK is likely to soon drop from the 2nd to 3rd largest native English-speaking population worldwide - both India and Nigeria already have far more people speaking English as their 2nd or 3rd language, but Nigeria seems to be more rapidly closing the gap to have more people who speak English as their 1st...)
> And this is also likely a vicious cycle because as age ratios and demographics get all screwed up, economies will start to collapse, which will make it even more uncomfortable to have children.
Well, we may unfortunately in that case get to test whether fertility is inexorably linked to poverty or whether once it's declined it won't rise again.
The other option is that as fertility becomes even more of an issue, we'll see a significant escalation in measures like the Hungarian (ramping up grants and subsidised house loans for families that get more children), but of course we don't yet know whether - or at what level - that will work... But I suspect many desperate attempts.
Also, expect reproductive rights to become an issue, with more countries seeming movements to push back on abortion rights etc. using fertility rates as a reason.
Earlier you expressed skepticism about the ability of nations to carry out actions to get their fertility numbers back up. And I agree with you. There's quite a lot of evidence, historical and present, that it's really not so easy. And especially for nations that only act once a problem becomes catastrophic, or politically convenient, we'll probably be well into a death spiral before we start acting. So the most probable outcomes aren't looking very hot.
But I'd say here that you're not carrying forward that same reasoned skepticism when offering immigration as a solution. Because the exact same holds true. There are countless examples of mass migration throughout history, and they generally don't come with a happy ending. Rome, over the centuries, became an empire of immigrants, in some ways akin to the United States. Yet it was also ultimately destroyed by immigration. The Goths, fleeing the Huns, were take in as refugees by the Roman Empire. Those same refugees would ultimately go on to destroy the Roman Empire.
In the present day, mass migration doesn't seem to be fairing much better. Prior to the migrant crisis throughout Europe, many expected that the migrants would integrate, become part of the normal mass of people, and it'd ultimately be a win-win situation for everybody. That belief was not well supported by history, and ultimately proved to be false. And in the US today, cities that express an extremely positive attitude towards immigration tend to rapidly express a different view once faced with large numbers of immigrants.
And immigration on the scale we're talking about would be absolutely massive, and never-ending. And I'm not even getting into the countless social/cultural/political problems this would all entail. I'm merely focusing on the most extreme - would this destroy the countries engaging in such? And it seems to me that the most probable answer is simply yes. Well actually in modern times I don't think it'd destroy them. The most likely outcome is what we're seeing happen in much of Europe - parties that oppose the immigration would rapidly come to power, and end up working to mitigate the damage, and end such a population strategy.
Part of this is that South Korea was practically closed to immigration until around 2004 outside of the "usual" workarounds (marrying a local, or significant investment), and so it's become increasingly urgent.
They've liberalised a lot since, but it'll take a long time for them to develop a reputation as somewhere people will think of as a destination to migrate to.
I’m fairly certain this is just misaligned expectations. You can absolutely live in a 30sqm (or less) space with 5 children, raising them on plain rice, and send them to whatever public school you can get for free. And they’d very likely still have a better life than just 100 years ago. It’s just that nobody wants to do so because the standards are so much higher.
i agree with this. in a world where everyone (except a very few) has the same kind of life, it all just seems normal so you would not consider changing that. but as some people have less kids, more and more people learn from that, so the idea spreads (as does the education around how to avoid having kids).
Let’s be a little charitable here- having and raising children has been a much, much more dangerous proposition health wise even at your parents generation to say nothing of your grandparents generation.
Expensive relative to expectations. Not in terms of what most people could provide.
That's not bad. It's fine that people expect more and want to be able to provide more before having children (and I do agree the commenter who argued this is somehow confined to the Western world is way out there).
But we need to understand that across most of the developed world - there will be exceptions in pockets here and there - it is not the ability to afford children that has dropped, but that we're not willing to give up what we have to have children at a living standard that was considered good before.
E.g. when I grew up we always had food, but the food we had was dictated by cost in a way I never think about, and wouldn't want to deal with. We lived in less space, and I want more space, not less. Our living standard when I was a kid was fine; far above average for most of the world, about average for where I grew up. But if what it took to have more kids was to go back to that, I wouldn't.
The commenter above can call that soft all they want - I don't feel bad for wanting to enjoy life more than I want more children (I have one son; I might well have another child, but because I'm at a stage where my girlfriend and I can afford it without sacrificing our standard of living and that does place me in a privileged position)
First generation immigrants (in Europe) have higher birth rates than second generation immigrants despite being poorer. It's not just about costs - it's about cultural expectations.
In the past, if you could not afford to feed your family, you could literally starve to death. And people saved money by doing things like crafting clothes out of feed sacks. [1] It became common enough that companies would start selling their feed in sacks with floral designs, specifically with the intent of then being reused as clothing.
And that's just one among a vast array of lifestyle differences. Now a days the worst case scenario is that you end up on government assistance and have a less pleasant life. As for Asia, don't make the mistake of conflating Asia with just China/Hong Kong/Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea. Asia's big, and those places are outliers in terms of fertility, with China's issues being entirely self inflicted. The average fertility rate across Asia is 2.3 [2], which is not great - but at least sustainable.
2019 data is fairly out of date. 2023 shows India is below replacement now (2.1 and dropping). china drastically so (1.2 and dropping). Those are the biggest populations by a large margin. Projections
for the region show continued declines, not sustainable at all.
It ain't just us, my friend. Births Per Woman:
> we've just been raised softly and do not value childrenNow that women are part of the formal economy and everyone has options for entertainment other than unprotected sex, the mechanism by which the formal economy used to offload the entire cost of child rearing while reaping all of the benefits no longer functions.
We have two paths: dust off the shitty exploitative playbook of yesterday, or build a new playbook for tomorrow.