All the reasons they cite are no where near the main reason for the collapse in birth rates.
Look at charts of birth rates in any country. Easy enough to google.
Look at the decline and when it declines.
There was a decline due to the global recession, yes. This pales in comparison to the decline that came precipitously decades earlier.
It’s: birth control and family planning.
Look at birth rates in: the US, the UK, Italy, France, Germany, Japan, South Korea…now overlay it with when birth control became widely legal and family planning initiatives took off.
Look at countries that continue to have high birth rates and how they treat birth control/family planning.
Look at communities that continue to have high birth rates: the poor, the religious, the Amish.
Even today, something like 50% of births in the US are unintended or mistimed. Imagine what the birth rate would be with even MORE access to birth control.
Fact is: humans procreate by and large unintentionally. It’s enough to evolve a desire for sex, and the babies follow. When you introduce technology that severs this connection, you expose the shortcuts nature took all along.
If we want to fix this in the short term, it’s not clear how to do it. We can’t uninvent birth control, and heavily restricting it would be very unpopular and likely impossible. Baby stipends don’t seem to cut it.
In the long run, this fixes itself. Cultures, sociological conditions, genetics that result in more children will proliferate and the others will die out.
The future is either babies in incubators, or it’s Mormon. Maybe both.
toofy · 1d ago
the reason for people rushing to engage in birth control is mostly economics. everyone i know who prevented birth at an early age explicitly did so because it would have fucked their life up to have a baby--financially, career dreams, and education dreams.
again, anecdotal, but every single person i know who prevented birth at parents young age, did this for those specific reasons. sure, sti protection are a piece as well but it pales in weight to the economics.
if we remove those barriers i have zero doubt the birth rates would rise almost overnight. and by remove those barriers, i dont mean like the ridiculous "thousand dollars to have a baby" or whatever laughable amount they're putting forward now.
narratives1 · 20h ago
Are the economic conditions now the worst they’ve ever been in human history? By all accounts they seem to be among the best: your food is stable and cheap, shelter is affordable for the vast majority and it’s good shelter, a/c, electricity, etc
We’ve never had more pampered living conditions.
If the only economy in which people decide to have kids is the rarefied air of America in the 1950s when min wage could afford a home, then that’s far too narrow of living conditions for a species to propagate.
The reality is humans have always been costly, but people had them anyways for unintended + cultural reasons. When you have a child, they’re a massive productivity loss for 5+ years, so even subsistence farmer humans or hunter gatherer humans found them incredibly costly.
And the people today making great salaries in major cities could easily afford multiple kids while still being comfortable, but their lifestyle would be more modest than otherwise. People far poorer have far more children.
I could personally afford kids and I’m slightly above median household income as my wife is starting her own business. I don’t have them though, because there’s more I want to push to accomplish. That’s a very common sentiment, and it’s more to do with cultural priorities than economics.
bigbadfeline · 15h ago
First, I call BS on UN's "the sky is falling" propaganda. They asked if people are "having fewer children than they would like"? Hello, even Elon Musk would answer "yes" to that question, 50 kids are still too few for what he (or I, for that matter) would like to have.
Also, birth rates aren't a UNIVERSAL problem, vis-a-vis pollution some countries may benefit from less population and falling birth rates. World's population has TRIPLED in the last 75 years... Overpopulation itself is a huge disincentive for more children. The demographic issues must include overpopulation as a factor on a country-by-country basis, anything other than that is dirty politics.
I'm done with generalities, on to your comments:
> Are the economic conditions now the worst they’ve ever been in human history?
Spare time and pollution wise - yes. Both chemical and cultural pollution, both are tightly related to economics, I must add.
> And the people today making great salaries in major cities could easily afford multiple kids while still being comfortable, but their lifestyle would be more modest than otherwise.
You're missing an absolutely major and deciding factor - the rat race. It means all or nothing, it hasn't been a smooth curve for a long time. Income isn't like the volume control of your grandma radio, it's a two-way switch now - sound all the way up (no time to sleep) and sound all the way down - out of a job with unforgivable (by employers' standards) holes in your resume.
> When you have a child, they’re a massive productivity loss for 5+ years, so even subsistence farmer humans or hunter gatherer humans found them incredibly costly.
See my explanation above, there was no rat race back then, the work-time/income curve was a smooth slope. In fact, even serfs in the middle ages worked less hours - with nothing better to do, why not make kids? It's a no brainier. I guess, Africa on foreign aid is in the same basket.
nsh66 · 1d ago
Birth rates arent falling in poor countries so immigration fixes the problem
yorwba · 23h ago
There's literally only one country where the fertility rate has been stable since 1960, the Central African Republic: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?most_rec... Some countries have higher fertility rates still, but all of them have been experiencing a large decline.
NoahZuniga · 1d ago
Such a bizarre title. Are there a lot of claims that birth rates are plummeting due to infertility that need to be debunked?
toofy · 1d ago
its not something i follow closely, but i have seen a lot (i mean it, A LOT) of conspiracy types claiming the UN, pharmaceutical companies, and "them" are intentionally lowering our birth rates. for the usual conspiracy nut reasons: one world gubment, replace us with brown people, to kill god, easier to control, commienism, and on and on.
Look at charts of birth rates in any country. Easy enough to google.
Look at the decline and when it declines.
There was a decline due to the global recession, yes. This pales in comparison to the decline that came precipitously decades earlier.
It’s: birth control and family planning.
Look at birth rates in: the US, the UK, Italy, France, Germany, Japan, South Korea…now overlay it with when birth control became widely legal and family planning initiatives took off.
Look at countries that continue to have high birth rates and how they treat birth control/family planning.
Look at communities that continue to have high birth rates: the poor, the religious, the Amish.
Even today, something like 50% of births in the US are unintended or mistimed. Imagine what the birth rate would be with even MORE access to birth control.
Fact is: humans procreate by and large unintentionally. It’s enough to evolve a desire for sex, and the babies follow. When you introduce technology that severs this connection, you expose the shortcuts nature took all along.
If we want to fix this in the short term, it’s not clear how to do it. We can’t uninvent birth control, and heavily restricting it would be very unpopular and likely impossible. Baby stipends don’t seem to cut it.
In the long run, this fixes itself. Cultures, sociological conditions, genetics that result in more children will proliferate and the others will die out.
The future is either babies in incubators, or it’s Mormon. Maybe both.
again, anecdotal, but every single person i know who prevented birth at parents young age, did this for those specific reasons. sure, sti protection are a piece as well but it pales in weight to the economics.
if we remove those barriers i have zero doubt the birth rates would rise almost overnight. and by remove those barriers, i dont mean like the ridiculous "thousand dollars to have a baby" or whatever laughable amount they're putting forward now.
We’ve never had more pampered living conditions.
If the only economy in which people decide to have kids is the rarefied air of America in the 1950s when min wage could afford a home, then that’s far too narrow of living conditions for a species to propagate.
The reality is humans have always been costly, but people had them anyways for unintended + cultural reasons. When you have a child, they’re a massive productivity loss for 5+ years, so even subsistence farmer humans or hunter gatherer humans found them incredibly costly.
And the people today making great salaries in major cities could easily afford multiple kids while still being comfortable, but their lifestyle would be more modest than otherwise. People far poorer have far more children.
I could personally afford kids and I’m slightly above median household income as my wife is starting her own business. I don’t have them though, because there’s more I want to push to accomplish. That’s a very common sentiment, and it’s more to do with cultural priorities than economics.
Also, birth rates aren't a UNIVERSAL problem, vis-a-vis pollution some countries may benefit from less population and falling birth rates. World's population has TRIPLED in the last 75 years... Overpopulation itself is a huge disincentive for more children. The demographic issues must include overpopulation as a factor on a country-by-country basis, anything other than that is dirty politics.
I'm done with generalities, on to your comments:
> Are the economic conditions now the worst they’ve ever been in human history?
Spare time and pollution wise - yes. Both chemical and cultural pollution, both are tightly related to economics, I must add.
> And the people today making great salaries in major cities could easily afford multiple kids while still being comfortable, but their lifestyle would be more modest than otherwise.
You're missing an absolutely major and deciding factor - the rat race. It means all or nothing, it hasn't been a smooth curve for a long time. Income isn't like the volume control of your grandma radio, it's a two-way switch now - sound all the way up (no time to sleep) and sound all the way down - out of a job with unforgivable (by employers' standards) holes in your resume.
> When you have a child, they’re a massive productivity loss for 5+ years, so even subsistence farmer humans or hunter gatherer humans found them incredibly costly.
See my explanation above, there was no rat race back then, the work-time/income curve was a smooth slope. In fact, even serfs in the middle ages worked less hours - with nothing better to do, why not make kids? It's a no brainier. I guess, Africa on foreign aid is in the same basket.