Nah, cultures that don’t have kids will just be replaced by ones that do. This process is already will underway in America, with WASPs (who have a strong anti-natal streak) being replaced by Hispanics.
Interestingly, in the US, you find that the birth rate of all races converge. Why? Educated, empowered women have less children or no children, and in general delay childbearing. Immigrant fertility is higher, but settles back down after a generation or two.
> Interestingly, in the US, you find that the birth rate of all races converge.
Because white (European) American individualist culture is inexorable in America. It’s in the water, you can’t avoid it. But the question is, as the white population collapses, will that continue to be true?
> Why? Educated, empowered women have less children or no children, and in general delay childbearing.
Why do you assume it has to do with education rather than other cultural traits? Muslim American women for example are more educated than white women, but have more kids.
At least in that culture, the difference isn’t education, it’s that having children is necessary for acceptance and respectability in Muslim society, and moreover children are socialized to care very much about those things. It’s not like with white Americans who are islands to themselves and don’t play by anyone’s rules.
> Why do you assume it has to do with education rather than other cultural traits? Muslim American women for example are more educated than white women, but have more kids.
Education and empowerment overrides cultural pressure.
> As in the rest of the world, fertility rates in countries with Muslim-majority populations are directly related to educational attainment. Women tend to delay childbearing when they attain higher levels of education.
You’re mixing up becoming more culturally white/westernized with education. There’s often a correlation, both in immigrant groups and abroad, but the two things are distinct. Among the asian immigrants I know, for example, the kids aren’t any more educated than the parents (because skilled immigration already filters for people with graduate degrees, etc.) But they’re much less likely to conform to social structures.
You and rayiner are sort of in agreement, although I also disagree with the labeling of “white (European) American individualist culture is inexorable in America.”
Specifically,
> it’s that having children is necessary for acceptance and respectability in Muslim society, and moreover children are socialized to care very much about those things.
Replace Muslim with “more orthodox or cultish Muslims/Jews/Christians/Mormoms/etc”
In any case, the current and previous older generations that had fewer kids will not feel the consequences, due to the momentum of population growth, but all these social safety net and retirement benefits like pensions and healthcare don’t come from thin air.
While one way to incentivize having kids is belonging to a tribe like rayiner described, the other could be removing those old age benefits so that the cost of not having kids is (potentially) higher. Obviously, governments can promise all the benefits they want, but there is no delivering them if there are no hands to do the work (and I doubt innovation in automation will outpace declines in labor force).
Massive family planning campaigns, heavily funded by western countries, to change the culture around having children. (My dad does exactly that for a living.) In Asia you now have multiple generations of people who associate having big families with poverty and backwardness.
Technically, it is lack of women's independence and rights that cause the higher fertility rates. This is often correlated with societal poverty, but not a necessary condition.
I doubt it will. Infact, I would be willing to bet good money that china is going to start factory farming the next generation within the next 20 years, using artificial wombs & in vitro fertilization.
> china is going to start factory farming the next generation within the next 20 years, using artificial wombs & in vitro fertilization
Enormously more expensive than producing children the natural way. Given the CCP’s history of using coercion to make people have less kids (forced sterilisation, forced abortion, some even allege infanticide), I would not be surprised if they start coercing people to have more. From an ethical perspective that’s terrible, but why expect a government which hasn’t cared about ethics in the past to start caring about it now or in the future? Coerced natural reproduction is massively cheaper than artificial wombs