The less cultural pressure and cultural momentum there is to have and raise kids, the more utilitarian factors have sway, imo, and expectations for parents to be spending more money and time on their kids seem to be ever rising.

But even relatively generous countries like Sweden don't come close to bringing parents to financial parity with non-parents -- even though it's the state that's benefitting financially long-term -- so getting to replacement rate for any developed country seems unlikely in the foreseeable future.

Plenty of people want kids, but societally across the world in developed nations we don't value doing something about making housing something middle class people can purchase and own.

I think it’s not just housing. Childcare, pediatrics (medical care for children) and social acceptance could be better.

Finding a spot for your child in a kindergarten in a big city is really challenging.

Phoning every pharmacy in town to find the prescribed drug for your child (simple things like antibiotics).

Leaving work 14:30 because you have to pickup your child from Kindergarten („can’t your wife pick him up“)

Being a parent is still great, but sometimes it feels harder than it should be.

Note: I live in Germany - might be different somewhere else.

I think there’s also a big angle around disruption: parents of young children get sick a LOT more and they’re going to have more unplanned or hard scheduling commitments, which causes a lot of stress for people with jobs. No matter how punctual you were before, willing to stay late to get something done, or simply part of the office social life, that’s all going to be a lot different in ways which people will worry affect their perceived employability.

That's definitely a factor, absolutely, and something Western countries have been doing absolutely pathetically at. Very much a "we've tried nothing and we're out of ideas" sort of situation.

But even if housing was cheaper, it would still be more expensive to have kids than not, if you want the space-per-person metric to stay at least somewhat similar.

> But even if housing was cheaper, it would still be more expensive to have kids than not, if you want the space-per-person metric to stay at least somewhat similar.

Yeah, that's a good point. We have tax credits for families, but they're utterly pathetic.

If the fertility + immigration rate is decreasing below replacement, housing will be available due to deaths. Building housing only reduces housing costs for a generation (at most) while increasing pollution, straining infrastructure, and uglifying formerly beautiful places.

There's a lot of points in this thread about birth rates needing to rise for economic good. This is based on the false premise that the only stable thing for an economy is growth.

For what it matters, here are my reasons for not having children. And yes, I'm in a heterosexual relationship and it was possible for us to have children but chose not to. The world is fucked, I couldn't bring a life in to this world where we are killing ourselves and the planet. Where the day to day is to hope you make enough money to just survive. We humans are selfish and fearful creatures. It's a gross world we live in.

Someone will come along and say, who will take care of me when I'm old? When I get close to that point, I'll follow Hunter S. Thompson's lead.

Seriously, I watched my grand parents slowly decay over the course of 15 years, it was not life.

If our primary goals as humans was to learn, create, explore and preserve; I would probably have a big fucking family because I would want my children to share in that.

Rather, we deny, horde, kill and build walls.

> This is based on the false premise that the only stable thing for an economy is growth.

Are you sure it's false? I'd like to believe that we could just have the generation being born replace the generation that's dying. But when you're saving for retirement will the inflation adjusted price of your stocks go up?

There are a lot of interesting details to look at. For instance, housing: With population size fixed, once a country has built enough housing, you'd only build new houses if you're going to tear another one down. Maybe this results in better housing over the long run, and maybe it results in the construction industry diminishing.

I think saying, "we don't want kids for economic reasons" is a cover. Kids are a lot of work, contraception is effective, and we don't want to be tied down for 18 years if we don't have to. It's selfish, but the truth.

My great grandparents had 8 kids, their kids had 4, mine 2, and me zero. There you go. Each generation in my family at least was financially better than the last.

I’ll go so far as to say many put sex ahead of kids, and when the sex dies so does the family. Kids be damned. Next level hedonism enabled by our advanced technology that we are unable to resist.

> It's selfish, but the truth.

In most instances, the choice to have kids or not have kids are both driven out a selfish desire to get out of life what one wants (though of course married couples may have one person's desires more filled than the other's). My friends had kids because they wanted to have the experience, have dependable relationships as they age, have someone to ensure they're cared for in old age, etc. It's not out of some altruistic behavior to ensure social security is stable for another few years.

That the decision benefits our societal structures (though likely harms the environment and natural ecosystems) is a side-effect.

"Dependable relationships as they age" and "someone to ensure they're cared for" aren't things potential parents should assume any offspring will be willing and able to provide.

One can be content in the event that offspring do not provide (for any number of reasons), but also aim for it as a potential benefit (without necessarily restricting your kids).

It can be as simple as having younger people to spend holidays with, or maybe take you to the doctor once in a while, or give a helping hand for a home improvement project.

Of course there are no guarantees, but it is nevertheless something people hope for, and there's a very wide continuum with lots of things above "nothing".

kids are now an ‘experience’, like going on trip. We can choose when and how many. We control the parameters of our experience. For many the ticket is too costly not in money, but in time and commitment.

It's just more than one thing. Kids are getting more expensive due to expectations and cost of living increases (and expensive healthcare/college). Obviously the workload and commitment are also factors, all of these things are.

By that logic the richest people should have the most kids. Other than Elon Musk does that correlate at all? The stereotype seems to be the rich city people have less kids and the poor country folk have more.

It's more than just one thing. A lot of rich people value their career highly and wouldn't want to sacrifice the time for kids.

That said, the correlation within developed countries between income and how many kids you have varies IIRC, some places richer people have more kids, in other places they have fewer.

That's just stereotypes. Globally, wealth is inverse with fertility. But within a given country, it's J-shaped: wealthier people have more children on the margin.

Also wanna point out: as you get richer, the social expectations for how you raise your kids get higher in terms of $$$, too. Go upper class and suddenly you need to get your kids into fancy private schools, you need to send them to get horse riding lessons, you need to go on nice vacations overseas, etc.

Obviously these are not true needs, but if people feel like they're needs, they can still become factors in how many kids you have.

I don’t believe this at all. People want kids.

But they really can’t due to economic circumstances. Unfortunately that’s something some people don’t want to acknowledge, often for political reasons.

> But they really can’t due to economic circumstances.

I don't think this can be the entire situation. Anecdotally, both my wife and I have grandparents who lived for extended periods of time with three kids in mini camper trailers because they couldn't get into any other housing. They really wanted children, and it was a high enough value for them that they sacrificed a lot to have them.

Additionally, economic prosperity and higher living standards are typically correlated with lower birth rates. People who technically can most afford children, are less likely to have them. This is the opposite of what I would expect if finances are what prevent people from having children.

Having children now, I cannot fathom living in a camper trailer with them, and I am not saying that people should be doing that. My point is that different people (across different economic situations and different time-periods) have varying priority levels around having children. And that is ultimately what determines how many children are born.

Absolute wealth has little effect on people's behavior. Relative wealth is more important. Wealth relative to the people around you, and wealth relative to your expectations.

The average person in their 50s or 60s financially better off than the average person in their 20s or 30s. The average young person can reasonably expect to be wealthier 30 years from now. Therefore many young people feel poor, and they feel they need to be in a better financial position before they can seriously consider having a family.

I think the rise of the middle class had a huge impact on birth rates. Ordinary people were no longer living from paycheck to paycheck. Instead, they were capable of building wealth over time. That made young people poor, both relative to the average person and relative to their expectations. And many started seeing family a luxury they could not afford yet.

It really isn't about whether people can't, but about people's wants.

Nothing economically prevents anyone from having children other than being unable to afford the food to grow one. But as one could imagine, very few people probably want children, if it also meant that they'd be homeless. In other words, someone's want for a house can be greater than their want for a child. And this can go for anything (from spouse, to life circumstances). Again, it's not that most people can't economically, it's more that many people don't want to sacrifice other things that they also want.

This is a terrible argument, becoming homeless is not a reasonable sacrifice, it exactly proves the point that people don’t have kids for economic reasons

It's not a terrible argument at all. The parent stated "people CAN'T due to economic circumstances". This is false, because they absolutely CAN. But people not WANTING children because of economic reasons, is a separate argument, one which I was not disagreeing with.

After seeing what states have done to reproductive rights in the last 5 years and the continual lack of affordable healthcare which is considered a basic right in every other developed nation: fuck em'. The pensions, the tax system, the politician's salaries and kickbacks, they can all burn.

Seconding this. It's very expensive to have a child in the US. It can easily cost thousands of dollars. And you'll have to spend a lot of time fighting different charges with the insurance company post birth because there is a 100% chance they'll deny something that should be covered. We could've fixed this with a single-payer system but instead we doubled down on the worst aspect of our health care system and enshrined private insurance companies into the law. Predictably, they are taking advantage of it.

> The pensions, the tax system, the politician's salaries and kickbacks, they can all burn.

A pretty straightforward fix would be to make pension eligibility contingent on fertility: no kids, no pension benefit. Of course, you'd still have to pay into the system, regardless.

That's a recipe for a generation of kids warped and broken by being raised by parents who only see them as a cash cow. It's a terrible idea.

> That's a recipe for a generation of kids warped and broken by being raised by parents who only see them as a cash cow.

No, unless everyone who currently chooses not to have children is a sociopath.

There are less black and white positions: that would incentivize people settling for relationships they have doubts about or to stay in failing ones (being a single parent is not easy), and it’d be especially cruel to anyone with fertility issues. As social policies go it’d be much easier to simply allow more immigration.

> There are less black and white positions: that would incentivize people settling for relationships they have doubts about or to stay in failing ones (being a single parent is not easy),

And if it does that, so what? Is perfectionism really that important?

And honestly, my proposal isn't so much about increasing the birthrate, but preventing a certain kind of freeloading ("The pensions...they can all burn"). Totally make the conscious choice to go child-free, just understand if you do you may not be able to retire.

> and it’d be especially cruel to anyone with fertility issues.

And if that's really an issue, which I'm not convinced of, because policies are invariably "cruel" like that in innumerable ways, you could always carve out an exception for people who've attempted fertility treatments.

> As social policies go it’d be much easier to simply allow more immigration.

Except that probably would be even more cruel, since it falsely hand-waves that there's enough high fertility elsewhere to sustain a low fertility rich country. It turns out there isn't, so what you proposal requires is either: 1) export the labor shortage to poorer countries that are less equipped to handle it, or 2) maintain crushing poverty in many countries to turn them into baby factories for the immigration solution.

One could start buying unwanted fertility from the childfree using carbon credits for the kids they’d never have, investing the lump sum, to attempt to tip the scale back. There are economic tools available if intentionally choosing not to have kids is weaponized by nation states through policy for exploitation.

Love this. Then our leaders' true views of us as cattle will be out wide in the open.

> Love this. Then our leaders' true views of us as cattle will be out wide in the open.

Wow, you misunderstood that pretty badly.

Unless you can make a money-golem, a pile of cash can't take care of you in your old age, labor will. If you haven't had kids, it means you haven't paid into the future labor pool, and it would therefore be unfair for you to withdraw from it once labor becomes too constrained. To do otherwise would be like paying out full pensions to people who never paid a dime into the system.

You already pay in by working during your productive years. You’re arguing for a pyramid scheme where you pay for both generations before you and the ones who come after. Better to simply opt out if you’re going to be squeezed economically for a suboptimal socioeconomic system. You’re just livestock that didn’t consent to be here.

I agree that this is a bad idea, but you should note that Social Security in the US is already a pyramid scheme. That's the entire reason these articles about the fertility rate are a thing -- there aren't enough able bodied people being born to cover Social Security for the people aging out of the workforce in 20 years.

Indeed, population ballooned [1] and everyone thought the gravy train of growth was never going to end. Sucks to discover the future isn’t going to be better than the past. Quality of life was artificially inflated, and the bill coming due will be unpleasant.

Regardless, individuals must be empowered to live their best life (if they choose to be childfree) [2] [3] [4] [5], even if it breaks the entrenched system.

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/population

[2] https://www.axios.com/2024/04/16/young-adult-sterilization-i...

[3] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama-health-forum/fullartic...

[4] https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20230208-the-adults-cel...

[5] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2021/11/19/growing-s...

> You’re arguing for a pyramid scheme where you pay for both generations before you and the ones who come after.

The system I'm starting to conceive doesn't seem like a pyramid scheme, but rather something more balanced than what we have now:

1. You contribute into the pension system to support your parents (through a pension), as a societal obligation. After all, they more likely than not supported you when you needed it.

2. You contribute labor to the next generation of society, in the form of children, to make a claim to the society's, labor-dependent, old-age support programs (funded through point 1). Otherwise, you're on your own to support yourself, which would probably consist of working well into what we currently consider the "retirement years," and/or "choosing" euthanasia when that is no longer possible.

> You’re just livestock that didn’t consent to be here.

No one ever consented to "be here," and it would be impossible to do so. That's just a fact of life.

People keep pointing to how "expensive" it is to have kids, however I see rich, well off people having fewer and fewer kids.

I really think deep down the reasons are social and societal. The decline of the family system, religion, and traditional values have all led to this.

Look around. People just don't want kids (no matter the money). They don't like to admit this but they find it burdensome. They want "freedom". At least this is my observation.

I find this to be more common in America than in other western countries.

As one American friend put it: "Americans love their granite counter tops more than they love their children".

If you look at the actual numbers, it's not the rich having fewer children over time. The people with (some) money (defined here as 2x the poverty rate) have fewer children, period, but they're not causing the DECREASE in birthrate, because they've always had fewer children, and that hasn't changed much. The birthrate among poor people, though, has plummeted since 2008.

It absolutely is an economic issue, and you get what you pay for. If people are not secure in their current status, they're not going to risk poverty to have kids. Children need to be cared for, and that means either professional childcare (which is expensive, since the professional needs to make enough to survive off of a handful of kids) or giving up half of a household's income.

The other factor is the drop in teen pregnancy. I think the birth rate for 26-35 hasn’t changed as much as the teen birth rate has dropped (which is correlated with poverty)

It is pretty funny to see the moral outrage over both declining birth rates and overpopulation. Remember when everyone was panicked about overpopulation in the 90's? Well, it turns out it's a self-solving problem. No eugenics or state-mandated contraception control necessary!

It mentions the high cost of housing, but I feel like that gets largely overlooked as a factor. It lists it as just one thing of many and I can't help but feel some of the other stuff is related.

Women pursuing "fulfilling" careers: One possible reason is greater financial need rather than desire for some kind of self fulfillment.

Student loans: We get told we need education to have well-paid careers.

Contraception: Cool, but you can also just not have sex as one strategy for trying to not have kids. (Granted women can get raped so it's not necessarily a perfect answer.)

For most Americans, housing is the single biggest budget item and homelessness is a horrifying scenario that is tough to escape once there. The best answer is just don't end up homeless to begin with, so I think a lot of people are doing their best to run faster to stay in place.

And children are a burden that would slow them down and have them fall off this treadmill.

Birthrate decline due to increased wealth and social status is not inevitable. See Sweden.[1]

However, as the article said, there are issues around the uncertainty of the future and economic issues that's contributing to depressed fertility rate. We should take of that. It is unclear if taking care of these problems will lead to income-fertility relationship that was shown in the Swedish population.

1. https://www.niussp.org/fertility-and-reproduction/income-and...

Sweden has accomplished this with unfettered immigration, which they seem to be doing a 180 on right now. Will be interesting to see how it works out.

https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/daa97aba-en/index.html?i....

Higher income is correlated with higher fertility rate in Sweden. Presumably, immigrants are more likely to be poorer.

Unfettered or not, immigration is inevitable for the west.

Italy and Poland were really tough on illegal immigration but gave out the highest amount of work VISAs.

European Commissioner for Home Affairs Ylva Johansson in 2024 said the European Union “needs a million migrants a year”.

Italy has been really though on immigration only in words, it is kafkaesque but detention camps in Northern Africa were made under a center left government by Marco Minniti in 2017. Now that we have a center right to right government (or maybe far right, I don't know how to classify people who refuse to repude fascism and who are in parties that are the direct descendants of the far right parties in the 80/90s) their ideas of a sea blockade fell through (well, who would have expected that). At the same time, government is - and the right parties were, when they weren't in charge - pushing against the ngos such as open arms, while ngos rescue only ~5-10% of the immigrants, while the rest is saved by the Italian coast guard. The idea of a pull factor isn't true as well [1]

It's a shit show, at the end we're still in "need" of slave labour to work in tomato fields and to do unskilled jobs because almost no Italian would do them

[1] https://pagellapolitica.it/articoli/meloni-piantedosi-pull-f...

> Unfettered or not, immigration is inevitable for the west.

That assumes birthrates elsewhere are high enough to sustain that, but they're declining everywhere. Immigration is basically just exporting the low birthrate problem to someplace less equipped to deal with it (which is par for the course for rich, western countries).

I expect we'll start to see emigration controls in the not too distant future.

>someplace less equipped to deal with it

I think China's approach would become the blueprint for third world countries eventually dealing with this.

Unfortunately China doesn't seem to have an approach yet, other than doubling down on more and more authoritarian measures to lock down the economy.

> Unfortunately China doesn't seem to have an approach yet, other than doubling down on more and more authoritarian measures to lock down the economy.

IIRC, they've only tried carrots so far, which hasn't worked. My bet is they'll turn to sticks, sooner rather than later, and have a lot of experience with them due to the one child policy.

I wouldn't be surprised if they start to fine the childless and/or limit childless women's advancement opportunities at work.

Yes I agree, birth rates are down everywhere. Interestingly they are rapidly declining in countries where most of these legal migrants come from.

I do not agree with emigration controls. At least not in the next 50 years!

Sweden is still below replacement rate, though. I think the reality is that having kids is still expensive, and lacking cultural pressure, people look at the utilitarian aspects more when considering whether to have kids. It's obviously far from the only factor, but compromising standard of living or retirement savings or what have you does factor in.

Above a certain level of income, fertility rate is at or above replacement rate.

Elsewhere, the relationship is inverse. Earning more decreases fertility rate, such as in the US.

It is very expensive to have kids in this country!

I wonder if it’s more than just correlation that Facebook was made available to everyone in late 2006.

Modern dating kind of sucks.

Nah, even among married couples it’s still way down. Costs and incentives are just way misaligned right now

> Nah, even among married couples it’s still way down. Costs and incentives are just way misaligned right now

And culture.

People keep talking about the birth rate like it's just an economics problem, but it's not. It's just that people are too comfortable with thinking in economic terms, and looking at it from the angle of culture is taboo in many ways.

The old school ways still work, go to church, ask friends and family to set you up with someone ect

Modern dating does suck and probably doesn't help contribute to fertility rate.

You can speak for yourself. I’ve been able to “do it” with more than a 100 women because of dating apps. I can’t even imagine being able to do that without meeting women online.

there must be more to it. You're not picky? You're atractive? You've got game? You're on a site for hookups and not one for long term relationships?

I meet less than 2 women a year from dating sites. I've been on them since 93. Just rejecting relgious women easily removes 95% Of the rest, a large percentage write nothing in their profile so that I have no reason to write. And, personal preference means I'm interested in at most 1 of 20. no, I'm not looking for models, just something that suggests we might be a match

Not particularly picky. Needs to be atleast a 6 superficially. I’m not attractive, probably a 4 or 3 and not white/black. But I am tall and if I can speak to a person I’ve often been called charming with a booming voice. I’m talking about the past (5-7 years ago), I’m happily married now.

It really is more than one thing.

Over the last 100 years: We've eliminated multi-generational families along with the affordable, appropriate sized housing they need.

Humanity's history of extended family support seems to have ended here. Two parents are now expected to have the same wisdom, experience and energy that came from many.

Over the last 50 years: We've wiped out free range area and adult-free time for children.

That ended critical peer-based growth - which somehow has to replicated by two parents (hopefully two). Parenting hours increase from dozens per week, upwards to 168.

Over the last 10 years: We've raised the cost of living so high that ~4 typical incomes are required to pay basic bills.

Modern parents are expected to replace 10 adults + entire child peer groups, perform this task 24/7 - while earning ~70% of their basic bills.

In the face of this, declining birth rates seem inevitable.

This is controversial and might get downvoted. Raising kids is a lot of work without any monetary reward. In past 50% of the human population was tasked with taking care of family. Now that part of the population goes to office and actively take part in economy and enjoys all the benefit it provides. Unless government starts to pay a attractive salary to at home parents things are not going to improve.

And the genius answer of both the US and EU governments is to bring in millions of non-nationals in, yearly. Somehow thinking this shall prevent their ponzi (state debt) from crashing.

Fertility rates going down should be a cause for celebration, not concern.

But there's the mother of all ponzis sustain so...

You need people to work.

A consequence of decreased fertility is increasing median age.

It's a compounding problem as you need resources and more young people to support older peoplevv

Why is it a cause for celebration?

Less people -> less congestion, less pollution, less finite resources consumption .

With automation we don’t need that many people as in the past.

Infinite growth is not sustainable.

To offer a counter-point, doesn't less people = less workforce over time, less economic activity, less competition, less able-bodied men for your military, making you more vulnerable compared to other nations with better birth rates?

Doesn't seem like a slam-dunk case but rather one of tradeoffs?

I get that infinite growth isn't sustainable, but shrinking isn't the only alternative, correct? It can be slower rates of growth.

Not necessarily, if you have automation and AI.

> less workforce over time

Manual workforce can be replaced by robots. We don’t need 4M+ uber drivers if we have 4M Waymos.

> less economic activity, less competition

Not if you compensate productivity with automation and AI. Work of 100 people done by one.

> less able-bodied men for your military

Ideally, you should have most of your army be robots and semi-autonomous systems. Military action should only cause equipment loss on your side and not personnel loss.

You still can have growth, just not the population growth, but productivity and quality of life growth instead.

> Why is it a cause for celebration?

Anti-humanist environmentalism?

I understand you’re not necessarily taking a stand one way or another on “anti-humanist environmentalism”, but surely it’s possible to be both in favour of declining population numbers for the environmental and other benefits, _and_ not be anti-humanist at the same time?

More planet for the rest of us. /s

How do you support retirees on a declining population? There's a reason there's all this pressure to raise retirement ages.

> There's a reason there's all this pressure to raise retirement ages.

From this end, the pressure to work later in life feels more like our only chance to avoid homeless retirement.

I only say that because that is the pure reality for many of us.