Before having kids people want a family structure and to be able to provide for a child's needs. Those two things are intertwined. At the same time if you have those things by the time your fifty you don't have kids because you're fifty - and honestly you're either thinking about retirement or death, not kids.
So for most people who aren't prodigies of one sort or another there's a windows from 30 to 40'ish where if they set things up straight kid or kids seem realistic. If you had to tack on the price of an artificial womb I think the window would get marginally smaller not larger.
>Before having kids people want a family structure and to be able to provide for a child's needs. Those two things are intertwined. At the same time if you have those things by the time your fifty you don't have kids because you're fifty - and honestly you're either thinking about retirement or death, not kids.
I completely disagree. People in their 50s thinking about their retirement or death? In my country retirement age (for men) is 65. Being fifty is very far from retirement for many people.
>So for most people who aren't prodigies of one sort or another there's a windows from 30 to 40'ish where if they set things up straight kid or kids seem realistic.
This 30 to 40 age bracket you chose is also where many women experience physical issues due to having children. My sister had her first kid at 32. Now years later she is still dealing with health issues as a result.
I think the best age when most people are not just economically, but mentally prepared for having children is 30-50. For women in their late 30s and 40s the health risks start to outweigh the benefits of having a child.
>If you had to tack on the price of an artificial womb I think the window would get marginally smaller not larger.
Who says you wouldn't have people choosing to have children the traditional way? I bet an artificial womb would mean large number of people in their 40s and 50s would decide to have children. If the cost was for example comparable to a cost of a new mid range car many people in that age group could afford it.
How do you solve that when society is built around "getting a degree, get a job" first and then think about the children.
Speaking for my country, the State always has money for everything that is redundant but there's never money for the basics such affordable housing programs for young couples or kindergardens and all similar institutions to help parents.
In Soviet sphere of influence in Europe there was sudden drop in fertility rate after fall of communism. The fall of communism meant that we went from empty shops and lack of opportunities to full shops and plenty of opportunities. So exact opposite happened to what you predict.
Additionally, recently e.g. Polish government introduced very generous child support in a program known as 500+. There is no noticeable change in fertility rate.
IMO the biggest reason why women decide to not have children is the perceived opportunity cost. Loosing on studies, career and freedom of being young. Communist countries did not provide young women with opportunities and did not demand high competitiveness, so perceived opportunity cost of having children was a lot lower.
1. Actually the fertility rate was falling quietly but steadily alongside the rise of urbanization.
2. In many countries such as Ukraine the production of consumer goods has fallen in the 90's yet there were no deficit (empty shops) due to even greater loss of purchasing power. Basically in Soviet times they had more cash but goods production was lacking and after that situation reversed. Shock doctrine - liberalization of markets - pushed most of the people into poverty.
From what I've read about Poland - shock doctrine also contributed negatively to socioeconomic factors (at least initially). There was a decrease in GDP in 1990 of 7 percent and the same decrease -7% in 1991. So drop in fertility wouldn't be that sudden after all.
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?location...
Economic crash in Poland, Czechia or Hungry was nowhere near to what was happening in Ukraine and Russia [0].
Also, after crash in 1990 Polish GDP was growing each year until 2020, but fertility rates keep on dropping until 2004. Then they stabilized below replacement rate.
GDP can not explain changes in fertility rate. There were cultural changes happening that had bigger impact.
[0] https://n-22-3.dcs.redcdn.pl/file/o2/tvn/web-content/m/orig/...
Agree. And not women only, males too. While a woman can decide to have a child completely on her own, it's most of the times a decision shared between parents. You need to take a multi-decades commitment that changes completely your life, permanently ties it with that at least two other people, and enormously reduces your space of freedom. It just doesn't make much sense.
No, it actually proves me right. The increase in job opportunities, which women definitely took advantage of, and adoption of modern western lifestyle is what made the birth rates plummet.
Since you mentioned former Soviet Union countries, Hungary implemented [1] new measures to give the people the necessary conditions to have kids. All the news articles I can find are from 2019, so it will take a while until we can decide if they had success or not:
In fact the expectation was the both parents would be working and the child would be in childcare or kindergarten. Which of course put a lot of pressure on women due to reality of being a housewife and a full-time working woman at the same time.
There was also a lot of collective pressure - if you do not have a child by certain age you would be considered a failure, which is hard to attribute to communism per se but to certain backwardness and lack of education.
But I still think that big difference in fertility is the change from peasant family with 5-8 children to the urban family of 1-2.
No surprise women forced to have children by religious and/or societal pressure have more children. Therefore in the long run societies with less freedom out compete more free societies.
What we really need is an ability to decouple having children from the physical cost it can have on female body. It would be a great achievement if technology could resolve this issue.