That, in my opinion, is taken for granted more than anything else.
But I'd also hesitate to call it "top-down" influence. That would drastically downplay the autonomy we have in first-world countries. Nobody is forced to prioritize their career over everything else. In most countries, I'd say it's the complete opposite - tax incentives and benefits are usually structured to encourage child-rearing.
It's too easy for everyone to blame "the man" or "society" for a mindset that is entirely self-inflicted - with the exception of the US system tying healthcare to employment. That is definitely a top-down influence.
The truth is that most "toxic culture" issues are systemic, so dumping blame on individuals for following systemic incentives doesn't make any sense.
Nobody is forced to prioritize their career, but a lot of people don't exactly have a choice to pursue leisure either. Lot's of people working paycheck to paycheck with no savings. How can you start a family in this country under those conditions?
Aside from tying healthcare to employment in the USA, what systemic issues are there?
> Nobody is forced to prioritize their career, but a lot of people don't exactly have a choice to pursue leisure either. Lot's of people working paycheck to paycheck with no savings. How can you start a family in this country under those conditions?
Yet birthrates decrease with income - lower income households have higher birthrates [0]. This suggests that a lower fertility rate is indeed a choice, rather than economic necessity.
[0] - US statistics, but this is broadly the same across the world https://www.statista.com/statistics/241530/birth-rate-by-fam...
top down to me equal some secret cabal of people that push an agenda
systemic to me means the way the system is but how the system got that way would be the random inputs of thousands or even millions of individual and uncoordinated actions.
People living paycheck to paycheck seems like it's always been a thing even when they had larger families. In fact the largest families in the modern world come from the people with the least amount of money (not judging, just stating what I've read). So having a paycheck looks like it has the opposite effect of encouraging family. No I'm not arguing that we should therefore get less pay. Just arguing against that idea that if everyone had a paycheck large enough to support a bigger family that they'd start having bigger families.
> People living paycheck to paycheck seems like it's always been a thing even when they had larger families.
Different eras, different issues. In agrarian times a large family was an investment in future labor, and as a retirement/continuity strategy. In modern society, adding children is a significant expense, and with the easy availability of birth control, it's far more of a choice. In both cases, people were following the rational incentives that society has created for them.
We can argue about whether the current economic circumstances are random or top-down, but in either case, if you change the incentives for having kids (universal healthcare, affordable childcare, food/housing security, etc.) then you will get more kids.
I do not agree with that. In my opinion, technology advancements (say, driverless cars) will make reduce the amount of young people needed to support for older people.
What is more concerning is loneliness, but maybe VR NPCs or something.
Obviously that won’t happen overnight, but it could definitely happen gradually.
To the best of my knowledge, the correlation is somewhat negative--that is, rich people have lower average birth rates than poor people.
How can it be economics "plain and simple" if even people who can easily afford to raise large families choose not to? Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan could afford more kids than the Duggars. But they have two.
My calculus is not at all that society will support me. In fact, it’s the opposite. I anticipate no support from society, but I also don’t want to burden my family or society so I hope to be able to go out on my own terms once I am no longer self sufficient.
You forget that old calculus also included "Eh it's barely worth learning their names until they're 5 years old".
In 1900 child mortality under 5 was 35%! In 1800 it was almost 40%. -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_mortality#/media/File:Gl...
You needed 3 babies just to make 2 toddlers. Let alone adults.
New calculus: "Between retirement accounts and welfare, society will support me in my old age. Children are really, really expensive."
It's economics, plain and simple. Of course there's a "top" and the "top" does dictate the structure. If you doubt that, ask: what percent of your income do you pay in taxes, and what percent of his income does your CEO pay in taxes (assuming you work at a typical bigcorp)?
I'm not saying that "yolo all the way to carrying capacity -- and beyond!" would be a better policy, but it clearly used to be the policy and isn't anymore. Personally, I think we dodged a big bullet and took a little one. The "little" bullet is still going to hurt quite a bit, though.