[slwvx]

I think that birth rates also drop when girls and women are educated. I would like to see such education AND lotsa child support programs and credits. I.e. I think a stable fertility rate AND educated girls are simultaneously possible all around the world

[y-curious]

I’m very passionate about birth rates and I think they’re worth improving. Unfortunately, child support programs don’t move the needle, it’s thoroughly researched. Nordic countries have tried them in various ways, and the birth rate is still extremely low. Ultimately, the benefits of female education AND lowered child mortality AND access to contraception feel inextricably linked to lower birth rates.

I wish I had a solution. As an educated woman, why should I spend time developing an employable skill just to raise >2.3 children and not thrive in my career? Most research indicates that child support programs tend to just support people that already planned to have children. As someone about to be a first time parent, I would love more support in the US. But it’s hard to imagine a world where you take on a lifelong responsibility for, say, an extra $2k (or even $20k) being handed to you by the government.

[JumpCrisscross]

> why should I spend time developing an employable skill just to raise >2.3 children and not thrive in my career?

This contains the answer: we aren’t paying enough.

Kids used to confer private, excludable benefit through their labour. Without child labour, their economic value is no longer exclusive to their parents. This transforms children, economically, from a private good to a common resource. Our low birth rates are a tragedy of a commons. A known problem with a known solution.

If we want a higher birth rate, we should have a massive child tax credit. One that can rival the rising cost and opportunity cost of childrearing.

[mitthrowaway2]

I would go further and say that the annual payment amount should be set by a feedback loop, so the incentive rises every year that the birth rate remains below whatever target (eg. replacement), and stabilizes as it reaches that target.

At some point, would-be parents at the margin decide they don't need a job to attain economic security.

This is basically a way of doing price discovery on the "market rate" of parenthood. Currently we're under-paying and getting the predictable outcome, and we're all out of ideas.

(In fact, I think this should basically be the solution to all labor shortages, of which parenting is just one example. The wage should increase until the market rate is found, even if that wage is much higher than people say it "should be").

[wat10000]

That is the solution used for most labor shortages. Typically when people talk about "shortages," they actually mean something where the market price is higher than they arbitrarily think it should be.

[mitthrowaway2]

It's the correct solution, but I'm not sure it is put into practice so universally. In some fields, yes, but in others the offered price is quite stubbornly anchored and the people with the authority to increase their offered wage seem to prefer to shrug, complain that nobody wants to work these days, and then go out of business, rather than continue increasing their bid until the market clears.

Just the other day there was a thread about how Zeiss is the production bottleneck for ASML and can't scale because they are running out of glassworkers, because nobody wants the job, because it doesn't pay enough to make up for the lack of job security.

[nostrademons]

I think the issue is that you pretty much can't pay enough.

I was reflecting, since becoming a parent, that there are basically two lenses with which to view the economics of parenting. You can children in terms of their cost and benefits in monetary terms, where money is the end and children are the means to that. Or you can view money as the means to support and provide for children, with raising them as the ultimate end goal. And people with the former worldview will most likely never have children, and if they do probably will not make good parents. Parenting is a 24/7 commitment for at least 18 years. It fundamentally changes the course of your life. And children also need to believe that they are the most important thing in their parents' lives, which is hard to do, by definition, when the most important thing is money.

I sit here trying to get some rest after having 5 days of rotating sick kids. When the baby was sick, he would wake up literally every hour; last night was the first in 5 days where I had any sleep stretch longer than an hour. (This also pales in comparison with the newborn phase, which is like this but lasts for about 4 months.) How much would you have to get paid to go without sleep for months on end? I was at a party a few months ago where someone asked "How many of you have caught vomit in your hands?" Every single parent raised their hand while every single non-parent looked on disgusted. How much would you have to get paid to catch vomit? I've been reliably sick about twice a week every winter for the last 7 years. How much would you pay to let a little germ-factory infect you all the time? (When governments have done medical experiments on this basis, it's been called abusive.)

When you have a realistic picture of what parenting actually entails, it starts to look a lot more like the economics of pricelessness [1]. There is usually no price at which people will be willing to compromise everything you give up by being a parent (usually things like liberty, experiences, security, peace) for parenthood if you don't want it. And conversely, there is usually no price at which people will give up the experience of parenthood for more money, if that's what they really want.

[1] https://ribbonfarm.com/2014/08/12/the-economics-of-priceless...

[programjames]

Why not a child tax? 10% of children's income goes to their parents, or something similar. Also solves the problem of retirement.

[ativzzz]

Why not a childfree tax instead? It's not going to be popular, but for societies with low birth rates - contribute to the next generation either via human bodies or via cash. But I doubt society's ability to put this tax towards the next generation.

[chlorodose]

I believe childfree tax is an really bad idea as there are so many examples shows how cruel parents can become when they have no intention of taking responsibility for their children. Enacting strict laws against abuse can prevent some extreme cases, but do we really want child to grow up in an hostile family?

[programjames]

Sure, that works, but I think the incentives work out better for the children with a child tax than a childfree tax. With a child tax, there is an additional economic incentive to invest in the child (food, education, wellbeing, housing when they're starting their career), while the incentive ends at birth for a childfree tax.

[lotsofpulp]

A better, cleaner solution is to remove old age benefits (Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid). A tax credit sufficient to incentivize attaining TFR would probably blow up the budget, and it would be hard to pin down the exact number, subject to tons of politics.

[Qem]

It's not better, because by the time people reach old age and understand the dangers of old age destitution and how dire is the lack of support from close family, they can't act on it anymore. Things need to be structured in a way people act while they still have opportunity.

One thing that makes me suspect the population crash will be much harder to fix than the previous population explosion, it's that there's no immediate fix. It takes ~20-30 years to raise a human being into a fully functional member of modern society, after the decision to conceive them was made. It's a long term investment. Back when people panicked on population explosion, some of the proposed "fixes" were brutal, like forced sterilization in India[1], or forced abortions in China[2], but they could be implemented and sometimes stopped quickly.

There's fundamental asymmetry. Time to terminate an unborn child is measured in hours to days (counting the recover time for the mother). Time to fully _raise_ a child is measured in decades. By the time people panic over it, it may be too late to avert the crisis.

[1] https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2025/6/25/india-forcibly-...

[2] https://www.npr.org/2016/02/01/465124337/how-chinas-one-chil...

[nostrademons]

More to the point, human's reproductive lifetime is usually about 30 years. So by the time you realize that you've fucked up your society, the cohort that could do something about it has now aged out of childbearing years. You're left with a much smaller cohort to fix the problem, but because there are now so many fewer women of childbearing age, increases in fertility rate lead to many fewer births.

This is actually happening with Millennials. Strauss and Howe predicted a "Crisis of 2020" that would lead to civic renewal and presumably a higher birth rate, but it now appears that 2020 was the beginning of the crisis and it won't be resolved for some time, perhaps a generation, and by that time Millennials (globally, the last big generation) will have aged out of childbearing years. Any baby boom will be led by late Zoomers, at best, and that's a small generation that's already affected by the collapse in birth rates.

My takeaway: the globalized, technologically advanced society we have now is doomed to collapse, and we should be working hard to take that advanced technology and identify simplified versions of it that can be run and maintained by a much smaller, localized workforce.

[nathan_compton]

A better, cleaner, solution that literally no civilization on earth would ever vote for or want to deal with. "Support families to raise kids" sells way better than "let old people die if they don't have kids to support them."

[lotsofpulp]

Isn’t that the global problem with democracy? What sells well isn’t what is effective, and often times is just current generations selling out future generations.

People are going to die regardless of having supportive kids. The question is who pays for their quality of life while in the final years.

[JumpCrisscross]

> People are going to die regardless of having supportive kids. The question is who pays for their quality of life while in the final years

Social Security and Medicare are equally about quality of life and survival. And even if you're okay with impoverished seniors, burdening their children of child-rearing age with a new financial obligation doesn't raise birth rates.

[nathan_compton]

It isn't so much a problem with democracy as it is with human beings. I think of democracy as averaging out things so the swings related to specific types of evil, shortsightedness, good, bad, aren't as big.

More authoritarian systems have higher variance, even if specific instances might be "better". I use scare quotes around "better" because I would argue giving people democratic power is valuable even if they do dumb shit with it, so you can't just compare democracy to authoritarianism. The latter simply lacks one key thing that democracy gives: some self determination.

This is not a defense of any particular contemporary realization of democracy.

[mschuster91]

> "Support families to raise kids" sells way better than "let old people die if they don't have kids to support them."

Part of the problem is that the decision to not have children isn't a decision for many people. Some never find a partner (and no, I'm not talking about "incel" nutcases here - I'm talking about countries and regions with a severe oversupply of males), some suffer from medical infertility (e.g. due to injuries, cancer, PCOS, endometriosis), some from genetic infertility (e.g. people with genetic disorders, being somewhere on the wide DSD spectrum or where the partners are not genetically compatible), and some have no other choice than not having children for ethical instead of medical reasons (e.g. both partners are carriers of genetically passed diseases or suffer from mental health issues that make them unable to take care of a child).

You can't just go and punish these people for not having had children in their life, that's just as unethical.

[programjames]

You also can't make general policy based on exceptional circumstances. What you do is put exceptions to the general policy for exceptional circumstances.

[stereolambda]

There is no guarantee your kids will want to support you, or, to be morbid but realistic, even survive you.

[lotsofpulp]

Wouldn't that reward raising them in a way that increases the likelihood of them supporting you? And/or raising more of them so that the odds are at least 1 supports you?

The problem societies have is reconciling both individual vs societal interest and short term benefits vs long term benefits. I don't see that being solved with any kind of legislation, especially not by a legislature that has to depend on votes today.

As a side note, some places do try to legislate it with filial responsibility laws:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filial_responsibility_laws

[vidarh]

I agree with everything you've written.

But since you mention the Nordic countries, it's worth driving home just how high the amounts are:

In Norway it's 100% of pay for up to 49 weeks or 61 weeks at 80% of pay, capped at ~$111k (based on a your salary, capped to "6G" - 6x the national insurance base rate)[1].

So not even up to $111k is enough to convince enough women to have more children to maintain replacement rates (and I don't blame them).

And this is in addition to e.g. legally mandated right to full-time nursery places with the fee cap dropped to a maximum of ~$130/month as of last year.

When people think money will be enough, they need to realise just how much money some countries have tried throwing at parents without getting back above replacement...

[1] in Norwegian: https://www.nav.no/foreldrepenger

[TheOtherHobbes]

It only takes a few percent of women to decide they don't want kids for career reasons for the replacement rate to drop below parity.

When you add those who don't want kids or can't have them for other reasons - not straight, asexual, emotional trauma, physically unable, others - getting to parity is even harder.

It's not stress. For a lot of history life was far more challenging, uncertain, and dangerous than life today.

Humans kept reproducing, aggressively enough to compensate for infant mortality, wars, and pandemics.

The big change is that the primary role of women doesn't have to be motherhood, where for most of recent-ish history it was.

I'm not saying a return to that is desirable. But I am pointing out that the causes of low birth rates aren't mysterious.

Women who do choose motherhood are more likely to have kids younger.

But if given a choice, a significant proportion of women will either not choose motherhood at all, or will delay it significantly, which lowers fertility and raises infant mortality.

It doesn't need to be a majority of women. A fairly small percentage is enough to shift the numbers.

[mitthrowaway2]

I'm not sure. I think there's a lot of people out there who want to be parents, but who put it off in favor of employment because they feel like they need money, and end up having fewer children than they wanted to have. I don't think they're all delaying motherhood because they prefer delayed motherhood.(Or fatherhood for that matter).

[forgotaccount3]

People think money is enough because they look at their lives and think 'how could I afford kids? Clearly I need money to do that.' and they don't think 'if I had extra money, would I spend it on someone else or on myself?' and the majority of people choose spending it on themselves instead of that potential child someone else.

Those people often don't even consider the time cost either. Which makes sense, if reason A is sufficient to say 'no' then why continue dwelling on other reasons? But even if there was more money and they were willing to not spend it on themselves, they now need to accept giving up roughly 90% of their non sleep/work time to someone else as well. That's not giving away something new you didn't have, that's giving up something you've been using and are accustomed to having.

[Balgair]

Most of the people in the pro-natalism space have moved over to the idea that you're not going to be able to convince folks to have a first kid. Instead, you might be able to convince folks to have a third kid. That seems to be where the space is moving towards.

[JumpCrisscross]

> not even up to $111k is enough to convince enough women to have more children to maintain replacement rates (and I don't blame them)

What is the lifetime private cost of raising a child in Norway? The $111k sounds like it's just offsetting the opportunity cost of birth, not the opportunity cost nor direct costs of raising a kid.

[vidarh]

High in absolute terms, but lowered significantly by monthly child support payments and heavily subsidised nursery costs. As such, the total cost relative to the also relatively high incomes are better than in most developed countries.

Your right it doesn't offset opportunity cost. The point is that even providing assistance a high multiple of most other countries has been insufficient to get above replacement.

I'm sure there's probably a number that is high enough, but it clearly needs to be higher than Norway, and even scaling for cost of living differences very few countries are near Norwegian child benefit levels, so it seems likely it will be exceedingly expensive.

[JumpCrisscross]

> sure there's probably a number that is high enough, but it clearly needs to be higher than Norway

There are three cost buckets: cost of birth, opportunity cost of birth, cost of child rearing and opportunity cost of parenting.

Norway is solving the first and probably the second while subsidizing the third. That leaves the opportunity costs untouched and direct costs, still, a net negative. Norway would need raise its annual payment to parents to completely cover the actual cost of raising a child, and then something for the career hit. I don’t know what those numbers are, but given it would directly increase the tax base, it’s almost precisely what one should borrow for.

[wolfhumble]

Two things I’d think about here:

1. Maybe this isn’t mainly a money problem?

2. And if it is a money problem, there might still be trade-offs. If you give people enough support, some may decide it makes more sense to stay home with their kids. That could mean fewer people working, less tax income, and then less money available to solve the problem long term.

(And yes, I know Norway has the wealth fund, around $400k per inhabitant or something like that. But I’m keeping that out of it here, because otherwise it becomes harder to compare Norway with other countries.)

There are also other things to think about.

For example: Do we want a system where one part of society has more kids and stays more at home, while another part has fewer kids and focuses more on careers?

I’m saying this because earlier in Norway, families had more freedom to choose between staying home with kids with financial support, or sending kids to kindergarten. Some political parties didn’t like that model because:

a) They saw it as bad for gender equality.

b) Immigrant women were more likely to stay home than Norwegian women, which could make integration harder.

So I think there’s probably more going on here than just money, even though money obviously matters too.

[vidarh]

Yes, but again, the point is to illustrate just how high a multiple of current benefits elsewhere you can reach without it being sufficient.

[modo_mario]

So basically they probably don't lose their wage for the duration of their absence but it's likely still a net negative to them (financially aside from the physical and time burdens) and in line with societal expectations created over decades?

I say crank up the numbers then. Give them a bigger tax credit too. Hold it long enough for societal expectations to slowly adjust.

[vidarh]

The issue is how many places can afford that. Norway can afford what it does now in large part because of an enormous sovereign wealth fund that owns more than a percent of all publicly listed companies by market cap worldwide, on top of other assets. Despite that, Norway also has some of the higher tax levels.

Elsewhere even reaching Norwegian benefits levels would involve an extremely sharp tax rise or very significant priority changes.

Unless we find other means of driving up the fertility rate, it's not clear most places will stomach the financial adjustments it will take.

[modo_mario]

You can get that from the rich as the other person said but that kind of redistribution should be considered on it's own regardless of this matter.

What i'm advocating for is simply internal child related distribution. You don't take it from the states coffers. You for example simply carefully raise the taxes of the childless and lower the taxes of those with kids (probably not directly proportionally to the number of kids) in the process retaining your original government revenue.

You don't have to go overboard with it because realistically any effect drags drastically but you do slowly keep upping the difference in benefits untill you reach either replacement rate or something slightly below replacement in a way that doesn't constitute an outright crisis.

[mschuster91]

> Elsewhere even reaching Norwegian benefits levels would involve a very sharp tax rise or very significant priority changes.

The answer is wealth redistribution. The rich simply hoard too much for society to keep working.

[newphone733]

Wait, is that supposed to be a lot? Sounds just like a paid maternity leave, so mother can spend some time with her children without worrying about having a roof and food. 111k is the cap, but in practice this is just a long paid leave.

In my (much poorer than Norway) country we have that, and also women can't be fired for that duration and I think two years more and employer can't refuse then remote work if it's technically possible and parents get some money directly (~around 1/10 of average monthly salary per month is automatic, but also there are other programs for example for women who decide to return to work). And, as a young parent, this is still nowhere near the cost of takes to actually raise a child.

On the other hand, all those programs are still not enough to raise number of children significantly, so your main point stands.

[ghssds]

Why does low birth rates need solution? Low birth rates are already the solution to countless issue like ressources depletion, climate changes and real estate high cost.

[Qem]

If you want to reach the ground floor in a tall building, it makes a lot of difference if reaching it by elevator, or jumping from the window. Speed matters! A _very_ slow transition probably could be managed without disruptive impacts on the individual level. But we slam the brakes in ~2 generations, such a way a large share of people alive today will be still be alive to become destitute and unsupported by lack of replacements, both on macroeconomic level, and in the micro level. If a single kid today go childless itself, he/she is very likely to become a lone senior with no close family, eventually.

[chlorodose]

I believe it's the natural result of PAYG pension system. Let's be honest, they choose PAYG just to get votes immediately. (Or stabilize the society immediately in non-democratic countries, like china)

[regenschutz]

A constant stream of young workers is required for a sustainable economy.

In order to pay for pensions, the government borrows money from young, working adults. This is effectively what happens in pay-as-you-go public pension systems (which is most of them, to my knowledge, apart from the US, I'm not 100% sure how pensions work in the US). The money you put in actually goes to pay for another person, with the government guaranteeing that they will do the same for you.

If the percentage of retired people increases, the percentage of working adults naturally decreases. Eventually, you'll hit a turning point where the government can no longer borrow from working adults. The government is now in a debt crisis and has to loan money from banks or foreign investors at a significantly higher interest rate, which becomes even more unsustainable if the percentage of retired people increases even more.

This is what is happening in e.g. South Korea and Japan. There are too many old people, and too few working adults. This is caused ny low birth rates over a long period of time.

[ryandrake]

It's going to be painful, but at some point the bandaid has to be ripped off. This idea of sustaining our economic system infinitely through simply breeding more bodies is going to naturally fall apart in a world with non-infinite resources.

[traderj0e]

They don't need the population to increase, just stay the same or not decrease too fast.

[regenschutz]

Or like the US solves it, through immigration. In the US, the fertility rate is at roughly 1.6 children per woman (which is below the 2.1 children per woman required for a stable population), and yet the US population is steadily increasing thanks to immigration. One can talk all day about pros and cons of immigration, but it is ultimately the only solution we have to a falling fertility rate (other than trying to increase it, of course).

[alexey-salmin]

What's the point of sustainable resources, stable climate and affordable real estate in a society that fades away? What difference does it make whatsoever?

[toast0]

What if the sustainable population is half of what we have now? A lower than replacement (global) birth rate would move things in that direction in a more palletable way than stochastic murder.

But, Logan's Run could solve population control and balance the Social Security budget. I always wanted to live in an underground city that was a Texas mall. The original mall is gone, but the Houston Galleria has an ice rink, so maybe we can setup there.

[yoyohello13]

You're assuming fertility rates wont rebound once there is less population pressure.

[alexey-salmin]

I think think fertility rates will rebound once the current culture of self-destruction gets, well, self-destructed. But incidentally this means that people who value sustainable water sources over having kids won't be there anymore.

So it's kind of pointless in my opinion, to maintain a strategy that can't achieve its stated goals because all it can do long-term is to give way to other strategies with other goals.

[traderj0e]

It doesn't even take loosening population pressure. 1.6 birth rate in some country is only an average; some are still having 3+. If children start taking after their parents again, 1.6 birth rate now could mean 2.1 next generation and 2.9 after.

[yoyohello13]

Also true, and whatever genetic component contributes to 'fecundity' will proliferate as those people have more children. Yet another mechanism that will cause populations to rebound. Fertility rates falling really seems like a short term problem, and we have plenty of those to worry about so it seems like it should be pretty low on the list of concerns.

[imtringued]

The reason why women stop having children in wealthy nations is that the pension system is based around forced collectivism of parental investment.

When you have a working age child in Germany the child's pension payments are added to a common pool that anyone, including the childless can draw from. You might argue that people have contributed their own payments to their pension, but this only works if most people have children of their own. The way the pension system is set up rewards free riders and discourages parental investment from both father and mother including step parents. One of the biggest reasons there is a single mother epidemic is that there is only a biological incentive to reproduce and no economic incentive to raise children. This means as a man you are better off sowing your oats since that maximizes the biological incentives and minimizes economic costs. Due to the defective pension system there is a strong incentive to avoid child support payments since they do not contribute to the pension of the father even though this should be a logical consequence. Hence you see extreme cases e.g. fathers prefer go to prison to avoid paying rather than work and have everything taken.

Women have to abandon their careers to take care of children which represent a pure economic loss to them, especiallyin the form of power pension contributios, when in reality the future pension contributions of their childre. are what makes their pension possible in the first place. The pension system considers their essential reproductive labor to be worthless despite it being an existential concern for the functioning of the pension system. No wonder you have women complain about gender pay gaps and the double burden of work and child care and female pensioners living in poverty.

Then there is the whole step fathers thing. Being a step father sucks, but men have a choice here, so they obviously decide to avoid single mothers in face of the irrationality of the pension system. If step fathers could gain a higher pension for raising step sons and step daughters, then the economic incentives would reduce single parenthood through more step fathers or through more parental involvement of the biological father who will obviously lose out on his pension due to absenteeism.

The ideal pension system allows parents to receive a portion of their children's pension contributions as their own contribution. This means there has to be a free for all pool and a parents only pool. If you are childless you will get a pension, albeit a lower one. If you have many children, your pension will be higher if they are economically successful.

[neofrog]

> why should I spend time developing an employable skill just to raise >2.3 children and not thrive in my career?

Ultimate purpose of any biological entity is to survive and reproduce. I don't see the logic in exempting humans from this reality. People with these luxury beliefs will get culled by nature in couple generations anyway, so at least nature will sort this out over time. People who prioritize continuity will inherit the future.

[y-curious]

Nature vs nurture though. I don’t think these fertile people choosing to not reproduce/failing to find a mate are genetically predisposed to not reproduce. I think it’s very much society-based. I argue this with the extreme: if they were put in a Handmaids Tale situation, I don’t think they’d have any problem producing enough children. I think in many ways society has failed them by making it appealing not to reproduce.

[chlorodose]

* Gene who prioritize continuity will inherit the future.

You as a man will only live for ~70 years(~75 if you are a woman) no matter how you eager for continuity.

[zozbot234]

I thought there was a broad consensus among social scientists that sub-replacement birthrates in the West are linked to the expense of new household formation, especially wrt. real estate prices. Child support programs can help quite a bit at the margin, but not enough to make a dent in that particular issue. It makes no sense to conflate this situation with Nigeria's, they're polar opposites in many ways.

[vidarh]

Everywhere except sub-Saharan Africa and parts of the Middle East have sub-replacement birthrates at this point. Including India and China. China has started seeing contraction, India will start seeing contradiction in ~20-30 years since the measures lag.

It is by no means an issue just in the West.

You're right the situation is different with respect to Nigeria, but the birth rates are also falling in all of the remaining countries. Nigeria's is still high but also falling.

[chlorodose]

That's not an good example. China has even higher real estate prices(due to land grant fees).

[y-curious]

Well, real estate pricing doesn’t help but the reason there used to be high birth rates in India, China and SS Africa is because of child mortality. Even still, the replacement rate in poor countries is >3, not the 2.3 I quoted for the West.

[jjk166]

> Most research indicates that child support programs tend to just support people that already planned to have children.

I mean that's the point. We don't want people who have no interest in being parents to become parents for a paycheck. What we want is for people to have the financial freedom to live as they wish to live. In the US 46% of parents of young children report they have fewer children than they'd like due to financial constraints, and 23% of gen-Z report financial concerns as a primary motivator for not having kids. We don't need to go from 0 to 2.3, we need to go from 1.6 to 2.1. That extra half child is gonna come from tipping the scale for someone who is already on the fence, not paying people to be incubators.

[cloudie78]

I think it’s a cultural thing - society seems to value careers above all else and I don’t understand why

[y-curious]

Well, because we now need 2 people in a relationship to be working. I do not mean this to be sexist, but women entering the workforce has been a huge culprit to lowering birth rates.

Most people don’t see a problem with not reproducing because 1. “It’s not their responsibility to save society” and 2. The effects on the pension system are long-term. It’s like eating burgers and smoking every day, you don’t see the fatality of your decision right away.

[pjc50]

This subthread has people using "improve" to mean "increase" and "improve" to mean "decrease". Maybe you guys should stop talking past each other and converge on replacement rate?

Up until very recently, and especially in Africa, huge amounts of effort went into reducing birth rate to avoid locally-Malthusian situations with high child death rates and occasional famines.

[Take8435]

Birth rates would also improve when boys and men are educated. Both genders need education and child support programs. Men/Boys need to understand what responsibilities they have, if they choose to have a child. They also need to understand the effects that having a child has on a woman's body.

Governments around the world would benefit their society by investing in family planning, family support (esp. child care) to enable parents to work and provide for their family.

An educated and healthy populace (from infant to old age) benefits everyone.

[bhagyeshsp]

This is almost the opposite of what happens.

The more educated/developed a nation, the lesser their birth rate is going to be.

I understand the "shoulds" but that's not what the data suggests.

In essence, we can't have the pie and at the same time eat it.

The most useful thing education does for children is reduce child-mortality rate.[1]

Sources: https://raphael-godefroy.github.io/pdfs/mali_final.pdf

[1] https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED503923

[Take8435]

This is misleading. Education is not the panacea. I am saying it's a "whole of family" approach. Governments need to also provide more support to families. This is clear to any parent.

[bhagyeshsp]

Let us take your previous comment as the basis

> Birth rates would also improve when boys and men are educated.

There is no evidence of this being true. This is certainly a narrative peddled by many ideologues.

> Both genders need education and child support programs.

Poorest of poor and illiterate people happen to have more children than the rest.

> Men/Boys need to understand what responsibilities they have, if they choose to have a child.

If men are educated on responsibilities of alimony and child support, with almost no rights, they would neither marry nor have legitimate children.

> They also need to understand the effects that having a child has on a woman's body.

This maybe your personal dream and that's fine. But this has nothing to do with the topic at hand.

> Governments around the world would benefit their society by investing in family planning, family support (esp. child care) to enable parents to work and provide for their family.

Family-planning is euphemism for reducing children per woman. There's no benefit of having less children -> leading to less economic activity in the future. The family support you keep touting about is moot point. Government does not have their own money. People pay taxes which are used by government.

> An educated and healthy populace (from infant to old age) benefits everyone.

Agreed on this point. The definition of benefits are subjective but overall, it is agreed that it is a net positive.

[Take8435]

> Poorest of poor and illiterate people happen to have more children than the rest.

Just curious, why do you think this is? Please elaborate.

> If men are educated on responsibilities of alimony and child support, with almost no rights, they would neither marry nor have legitimate children.

Here's the corollary. A woman's body is absolutely ravaged by pregnancy. Her career outlooks suffer. There's a historical reasons why men have to pay child support or alimony. Because many men just don't want children, I guess, but they seem perfectly OK with not using contraception. Those men helped create a situation where an entire legal system that was created to prevent such situations. Because all men have to worry about is financial issues. Imagine it being your physical health instead (like a woman) or your career (like a woman). Maybe, just maybe, men should work together to not be absent and show up for the family they help create. Peer pressure should be stronger by men and men's circles to have respect for women. If you are a good father, great. You have nothing to worry about.

Governments, society and individuals all need to understand the effects _on everyone_. I'm not saying men shouldn't have respect or dignity or whatever. But let's be real, women have not _historically_ had that luxury men have had and still have to fight for their rights too (to this day). The mere fact that you seem to totally miss ALL OF THIS indicates to me that the system of alimony/child support is still very much needed. Because men can't seemingly understand anything beyond financial pressure. Gee wiz.

Your comment is entirely "have children as much as possible" and just doesn't seem to have any consideration for the opportunity, physical or emotional costs of that decision. Like, at all.

> Government does not have their own money. People pay taxes which are used by government.

Yes, this is what society does. An educated and prosperous society builds safety nets for each other. You seem to only care about birth rates but not .. supporting people after they are born. Terrible. We need better policies for family planning. That's what I'm advocating for. You seem to not want any of that. Am I mistaken?

[bhagyeshsp]

Looks like I mistook an ideologue zealot for a rational being.

Bbbye

[lelanthran]

> Birth rates would also improve when boys and men are educated. Both genders need education and child support programs. Men/Boys need to understand what responsibilities they have, if they choose to have a child.

How are you defining "improve"? Is it "increase" or "decrease"?

I feel that informing males beforehand about the responsibilities of fatherhood would decrease the birth rate. Maybe you consider that an improvement? Many people in this thread consider increasing the birth rate an improvement.

[Take8435]

I want to know, "I feel that informing males beforehand about the responsibilities of fatherhood would decrease the birth rate", why do you feel this way? Increased responsibilities should only fall on the mother? Please explain your rationale. If I misunderstand, please explain.

[lelanthran]

> I want to know, "I feel that informing males beforehand about the responsibilities of fatherhood would decrease the birth rate", why do you feel this way?

Because telling someone "$FOO comes with all these responsbilities which you did not know about" can only decrease their desire for $FOO, whether $FOO is "becoming a father" or "becoming a beekeeper".

> Increased responsibilities should only fall on the mother?

Which part of my post addressed allocation of responsibilities? My post deals with awareness of responsibilities, not with the actual allocation of responsibilities.

And it's not just with pregnancies, or with men; it's with everything and both sexes - giving people mandatory obligations for anything is going to reduce their desire for that thing.

[y-curious]

Not the person you’re writing to, but a lot of our birth rate was propped up by unplanned, unmarried pregnancies pre-2000. There is a large subsection of men that simply never want to have children, but will step up and father them due to societal pressure. It’s like the military draft: many people that don’t want to be soldiers end up being adequate soldiers when the rubber meets the road.

[jazz9k]

"Men/Boys need to understand what responsibilities they have, if they choose to have a child. They also need to understand the effects that having a child has on a woman's body."

This will only reduce birth rates. I have two kids and it's hard. I would still have them if I knew just how hard it would be (especially during winter, when everyone is sick).

There are also many men that just don't care if they have a child, what it does to a woman's body. This won't change with more education.

[Take8435]

So, the solution is to... not provide education? The logic doesn't make sense. You say this yourself: "I would still have them if I knew just how hard it would be"

If it reduces birth rates, that's not due to education alone. That's due to a lack of investment by governments to support those families.

You should know this with two kids. Any help is better than no help. Women want to work. Women want to go to school. That's what this topic is about.

[filoleg]

> So, the solution is to... not provide education?

Where did the parent comment say that? This is about as bad faith of a take as it gets.

They said that providing more education is not going to help with increasing birth rates, and is likely to do the opposite. That doesn't mean that more education shouldn't be provided. Those two things are not contradictory.

Another example in the same category: increasing quality of life and wealth of the citizens is negatively correlated with birth rates. But it would be extremely silly to suggest that someone stating that actually means "we should not be increasing our quality of life and wealth."

[Take8435]

> Where did the parent comment say that? This is about as bad faith of a take as it gets.

I'm asking a question. It's not a bad faith take. How else should I reply to it? Just accept it and move on? I don't agree and want to know more (from the OP, not from you, by the way)

Parent comment talked about having kids. Guess what, I have kids. My opinion matters too.

[traderj0e]

You'd be surprised how much people "want" to do something has to do with what they're told or pressured to do growing up. Ask kids why they're going to college and you'll see.

[giantg2]

"That's due to a lack of investment by governments to support those families."

Please show the evidence for this being true. Birthrates are low even in countries that provide a lot of support.

[acdha]

No country provides a lot of support. Some countries provide more but inevitably if you poll people they’ll mention that they mention significant financial deterrents, not to mention things like climate change, all of which are valid. People only need one of them to be true to decide to have fewer children, while society needs to help address all of them.

For example, if your government provides housing and childcare support—and say that’s the unicorn where those are consistently available, high quality, and cover the full cost—but still culturally tends to mommy-track careers into dead ends, despite doing those other things well you are going to have a lot of women decide not to risk multiple decades of lifetime earnings.

[giantg2]

"No country provides a lot of support."

The evidence suggests this is not true. The rest of your comment points to non-financial issues.

https://www.newsweek.com/norway-birth-rate-fertility-rate-pa...

[liveoneggs]

countries with high birth rates right now have government support for families?

[traderj0e]

More educated men have fewer children on average, but it's less of a difference than with women. It could even just be because they're marrying educated women.

[AdrianB1]

> They also need to understand the effects that having a child has on a woman's body.

I thought they were built for that. For tens of thousands of years women had on average 7 children or more, it looks like the process is very reliable. These days birth-giving mortality is very close to zero, also post-birth care is quite good, so we are in a better place than ever and still concerned?

[lotsofpulp]

Read this thread:

https://www.reddit.com/r/TwoXChromosomes/comments/1t6akt4/id...

Just because women used to birth 7 kids with high morbidity and mortality rates does not mean they wanted to.

[habinero]

We are not "built for it" lol. Humans evolved to have huge brains for thinking and a narrow pelvis for running, and those two things historically kill a reasonable fraction of women. Not so much that the population can't grow, but something like a 1%/birth rate. Roll that dice 20-30 times and you get a lot of dead people.

Mortality aside, pregnancy is incredibly hard on the human body. Demineralized bones, anemia, vaginal scarring and fistulas, etc etc. Whole lot of stuff can wreck your body without killing you.

[y-curious]

Well, again you are proving the point that education (knowledge of how pregnancy and delivery are actually traumatic) is discouraging reproduction. Many women won’t do this because they’re educated to the detriment of society, and it sucks because women deserve to be educated.

[habinero]

My dude, do you really think people didn't know about this in the past? I assure you they did lol.

[y-curious]

I think they knew it sucked, but I don't think they had statistics on, say, maternal mortality. Also, they didn't really have a choice, but that's besides the point. The more you read, the less you want to have kids.

[Qem]

> These days birth-giving mortality is very close to zero, also post-birth care is quite good

Also reliable and affordable DNA testing makes much easier collecting pensions from fathers that before would just vanish, or outright deny paternity. An underrated breakthrough in women and children rights enforcement.

[stackskipton]

Historically, women started having children around 16-18 years old so that 7 was much easier.

Societally, almost everyone would argue we shouldn't encourage women to have kids that young.

[habinero]

That doesn't seem to be broadly true.

For example, in Tudor England, women generally got married in their early 20s and men on their late 20s. People absolutely knew pregnancy was dangerous for girls who weren't full grown.

[stackskipton]

It's varied throughout history obviously but if you look at average marriage age now, it's still in low 20s in many places.

[Take8435]

I'm not talking about mortality. You injected that and glossed over what I said.

[saltyoldman]

Does this increase in birth rate happen before or after the various classes teach you to switch genders? I imagine maybe when you get into your phd level classes, it starts going up again, but definitely a big dip in highschool and undergrad college.

[neofrog]

If men/boys truly understand the current situation, they wouldn't want to marry nor have children at all. Legal system is essentially rigged against them. Paternal scams, alimony/divorce laws all are essentially designed to protect women at all times with no regard to the concerns of males.

[watwut]

Men do financially better off after divorce. They report higher loneliness, but then tend to find new partner sooner.

Women get poorer in divorce. They report higher hapiness after divorce and tend to stay single longer. And also, women file for divorce more often.

[aetherspawn]

Yeah that’s just because there are more narcissist men than women. Maybe maternal instinct slightly offsets narcissism or something.

The narcissist partner never wants to leave, but the victim wants out as soon as they can afford to do it.

How do you tackle narcissism as a problem when virtually everything (internet, social media, celebrities, politics) prolifically promotes a narcissistic way of life as a successful one?

[Take8435]

> How do you tackle narcissism as a problem when virtually everything (internet, social media, celebrities, politics) prolifically promotes a narcissistic way of life as a successful one?

This is what a government and/or society need to figure out. But no one really wants to ask or deal with those hard questions which is why the proverbial can keeps getting kicked down the road.

[s_dev]

Can you point to any examples of this:

>I think a stable fertility rate AND educated girls are simultaneously possible all around the world

i.e countries with a very high education attainment rate or high ranking in the human development index coupled with a high fertility rate? There was HackerNews discussion a while back that alluded to the fact the more developed a country becomes the lower the fertility rate.

Because its suggested that solutions like affordable housing, more free time, child care may help in a few situations but largely don't bump the fertility rates.

Developed countries are currently getting by on their immigration rates but as the rest of the world becomes more developed this isn't a lasting solution.

[tialaramex]

What if you're wrong? What if, all else being as it is but with "lotsa child support programs and credits" and education, on average people who could give birth decide they're not keen and we do not hit replacement reproduction rates?

Because humans are so numerous even if we hit 1.0 rates (ie population halves each generation) we've got a long time before that's a pressing issue.

[AdrianB1]

If the population halves each generation the biggest problem is total societal collapse. The children and the elder cannot be sustained by a small number of people of working age and the infrastructure cannot be maintained by a dramatically dropping population: even with AI and robots, roads don't fix themselves and train tracks don't get fixed by robots. We will not even have enough doctors and nurses to care for the seniors and no economy to make retirement possible (money will be worth their value in paper as there will be no people to provide services and goods for it).

If someone things the population on the planet is too big, then plan for a reduction that is manageable and change the pay-as-you-go pension system that exists in most of the world, that is based on working age people paying the pension for retirees. Even at replacement rate the pension systems will collapse, they were built in a time when the average number of children per woman was around 7 and the age of retirement was higher than average life expectation.

[tialaramex]

> The children and the elder cannot be sustained by a small number of people of working age

No, the children are fine in this scenario, there are even proportionally fewer than now and so there are any number of available carers.

The elderly are screwed. But, that seems OK?

> If someone things the population on the planet is too big,

This isn't a centrally planned thing, it's just an exaggeration of the observable reality. On the whole humans who could carry a baby to term but understand exactly what's involved are not keen and if they're willing to do it once or twice draw the line there. The assumption that we're just not compensating them financially enough to reproduce more is let's say, not well supported by available evidence.

I think we should choose to be entirely OK with that until there's risk of a real population bottleneck, e.g. 1000x fewer people -- in the expectation that conditions change and it might sort itself out without action.

[Qem]

> The elderly are screwed. But, that seems OK?

Remember, these elderly will be most of us. IIRC many 20 and 30-somethings today will be still alive by the time shit hits this specific fan. How old are you?

[tialaramex]

Oh I'm much older than that. I'm definitely screwed, but I don't see why that means this is a bad idea ?

[kelvinjps10]

Yeah but in poor/developing countries raising birth rates are not something they're looking for but the opposite, (the most important thing is reducing teenage pregnancy). I lived in Colombia and they had programs where they have free antibcoceptives, free antibcoceptives implants that last a few years, like a lot of effort is spent in preventing birth rates, since a lot of people without the resources have a lot of kids. I don't think the problem of birth rates is related to financial reasons when in poor countries you see people with multiple kids without being able to afford It. I know personally people that have 10kids.

[giantg2]

Birthrates at or below replacement rate are ultimately a good thing as we improve automation and AI. Infinite population growth is not a realistic model. We can't even prove the current population level is sustainable.

[bcjdjsndon]

> We can't even prove the current population level is sustainable.

Everyday we prove it slightly more. To exhaust the nutrients in all the mud in the world would take a lot more farming, but we thought that ip4 addresses would never run out either, so maybe it will happen.

[noitpmeder]

If anything every day we prove the current setup is NOT sustainable

[traderj0e]

They've tried this in several countries, and it's never resulted in birth rate near replacement. And it'd be even lower if they didn't have immigrants from more family-oriented countries.

[neofrog]

Care to give some examples where women's "empowerment" led to stable birth rates? Pushing people too far away from their biological baseline is wreaking havoc in almost all developed countries. And nobody seems to be happy with their new found freedoms as indicated by mental health indicators.

[MSFT_Edging]

> wreaking havoc in almost all developed countries.

This isn't a given. This is due to the continuous growth cycle without effort made towards long term stability. A pyramid scheme will fall apart if they can no longer scam new members to join.

A system where you need to increase those at the bottom for the top to succeed is a pyramid scheme.

Invest now in elderly care training. Reallocate resources from wasteful corn subsidies into healthcare, edible crops, and renewable energy. This will soften the blow from the inverted pyramid and society will be able to work through it over a period of 20 years.

Or, continue investing in war, divest from education, ensure wealth trickles up, and cry about the problem we all caused. It's not the woman's duty to keep this meat grinder going.

[neofrog]

Ultimate purpose of any biological entity is to survive and reproduce. I don't see the logic in exempting humans from this reality. People with these luxury beliefs will get culled by nature in couple generations anyways, so at least nature will sort this out over time. People who prioritize continuity will inherit the future.

[MSFT_Edging]

> Ultimate purpose of any biological entity is to survive and reproduce.

Yes, but not to infinitely grow. Any animal population with unchecked growth will eventually be culled by their own outgrown presence if their environment cannot support them. Humans have deemed current society cannot support their children in the ways they deem important.

Thus we've culled ourselves, not by over-grazing, but by using our own reasoning.

In this case, Humans are capable of supporting as large or small population as we'd like. The planet would support it. What the greater challenge is, is resource allocation. We've collectively decided society-by-combat is the most efficient way to allocate resources and because of that, some people have checked out and used what power they have to not continue that game.

The people deciding not to have children will be the same that suffer in their old age. That is their vote.

[neofrog]

This is a fundamental issue with current economic system which borrows from future generations to keep going, often with dire consequences as we are seeing these days. Infinite growth is literally the core concept of modern economics. We need drastic changes to our economic models if we need to change any of these. But even then, you need above replacement rate to sustain a stable society which is unlikely to happen with current narratives around gender and social matters.

[fl4regun]

real world ecology contains both rising and falling populations over time, why should humans be an exception?

[mschuster91]

> Reallocate resources from wasteful corn subsidies into healthcare, edible crops, and renewable energy

Multiple problems with this:

- converting farms from one type of crop to another is often enough outright impossible (because climate and/or soil conditions don't allow other crops), very expensive (e.g. need to replace specialized machinery and buildings) or takes decades (if you shift to anything based on bushes and trees, that shit needs time to grow)

- rebalancing agricultural subsidies is a very, very fine line to walk. as a country, you want overproduction of at least core crops, even if it means excess going to biofuel, and you want to isolate farmers from wild speculation swings on global markets so that they don't call it quits and you suddenly end up with (far) less than you actually need. famines haven't been an issue for the Western world precisely of the artificial oversupply situation for many, many decades.

- healthcare doesn't need more budget. The US, Germany and many other Western healthcare systems have more than enough money - their issue is waste, corruption and perverse incentives.

- corn subsidies aren't automatically wasteful. the corn is needed to provide bio-ethanol as a synthetic fuel, and there are more than enough usecases that foreseeably cannot be converted to electric.

- letting farms just die out or go fallow and no one take over is also bad, especially in areas where soil erosion is already an issue. Once soil dries out and there is no plant material to tie it together, it either can get blown away by the wind or in the worst case it can compress all the way down to the nearest layer of bedrock, making it all but impossible to restore.

[tracerbulletx]

If I pull up a list of countries ranked by happiness and correlate by the women's rights measures the exact opposite is true.

[habinero]

I don't know why you're blaming women. Clearly men have failed society and the solution is go back to sending boys to war so only the high value ones survive.