[smallmancontrov]

> 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.

[steve1977]

One could argue that women being part of the formal economy is also out of an exploitative playbook.

[pyrale]

> One could argue that women being part of the formal economy is also out of an exploitative playbook.

That's the whole point. Now we have two solutions:

- make the playbook less exploitative, leaving to time and resources being shared more equally among people

- get back to a caste system where half of mankind is barred from non-family-related activities.

[the_gipsy]

No. Women working AND rearing children (or taking on the majority of that work), is.

[steve1977]

Yeah maybe I should have worded this better. "Forcing (potential) mothers to have a job" would probably have been more clear.

[lotsofpulp]

Who is forcing them? Women want financial independence, for obvious reasons.

[steve1977]

For many women, it's not about financial independence, but about surviving as a family.

[lotsofpulp]

Seems like you are claiming women being part of the formal economy is exploitation, and preventing women from being part of the formal economy is exploitation?

[oblio]

> Who is forcing them?

The alternative being horrible.

[lotsofpulp]

What alternative? Are you suggesting society give women financial independence without them having to work?

[OtomotO]

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.

Effectively the worth of income nearly halved.

[steve1977]

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.

[OtomotO]

In the case of my grandmother she was the only one working, so yeah... but still, one income could raise two children.

[spencerflem]

For sure - with both parents working and no societal support really where do you find the time

[nox101]

Maybe this is the great filter.

[PeterisP]

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.

[kredd]

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.

[PeterisP]

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.

[kredd]

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.

[tivert]

> Maybe this is the great filter.

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.

[beaned]

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.

[the_gipsy]

> 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.

[esafak]

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.

[beaned]

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.

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

> 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.

[vsolina]

A common and understandable misconception.

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

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

The country you live in doesn't have the machines to make those goods.

The country that has the machines, wants cash. Where will you tax the revenue from? Are you hoping for some sort of technological charity? The Chinese will just ship us 10 million ass-wiping robots for the nursing homes for free, because they're a kind and benevolent people?

I understand things perfectly well.

[nostrebored]

At what scale? There are definitely countries that will cease to exist on this path.

Immigration is zero sum and soon everyone will be competing for the same pool of people.

[esafak]

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.

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

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.

[defrost]

> 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.

[beaned]

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?

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

> 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"?

[vidarh]

> 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.

[defrost]

> 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.

You might perhaps ask yourself why you do not.

[Aerroon]

>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.

The graph: https://infogram.com/20221003_gygi_vanessa_calder_fertility-...

[defrost]

It would appear that we both agree that population changes rates can alter over time and that it's happened in the past and can happen in the future then.

Unlike the other commenter who has claimed that once a rate has been set it cannot change.

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

> 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.

[defrost]

> Are you daft?

No. I still recall studying population dynamics, predator | prey cycles, etc as part of non linear dynamics in mathematics classes back in the 1980s.

> But once they dip below the magic number of 2.1, then population declines.

That magic number can change.

It's relatively easy for anyone to find observational examples of populations with adaptive reproductive rates.

> I don't know any other way to explain it.

Perhaps you might try studying mathematics.

> Because I don't belong to a death cult that hates humanity.

The question was about life on earth, not specifically humanity, the notion that you belong to a humanity hating death cult is frankly one that would not occur to most people .. but here you are going straight there.