[HN Gopher] More Americans say they're not planning to have a ch...
___________________________________________________________________
More Americans say they're not planning to have a child, U.S.
birthrate declines
Author : mariojv
Score : 30 points
Date : 2021-11-21 18:21 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.washingtonpost.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.washingtonpost.com)
| holonomically wrote:
| The world is expected to have ~11B people by the year 2100. There
| are plenty of people even if some countries have declining birth
| rates. [1] Better immigration policies solve any problems that
| nations with declining birth rates might have but that requires
| having politicians that are willing to put aside xenophobic
| concerns to implement sensible immigration policies.
|
| 1: https://ourworldindata.org/future-population-growth
| [deleted]
| mercy_dude wrote:
| Declining birth rate is a symptom, not a disease. Immigration
| may be a workaround but not a fix.
|
| The key reason why young Americans don't want to have children
| is because the cost of living including raising a child has
| been exploding for last 20yrs. Housing, healthcare, insurance,
| student loans and cost of education- all have gone up
| exponentially when the actual wages have not gone up.
|
| Immigration is a workaround but it has inevitable side effects.
| Including dilution of labor, assimilation and not to say many
| Of the core issues mentioned above affect immigrants alike.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| How do you square this with the fact that the birth rate is
| also low in European countries with reasonable cost of living
| and robust safety nets.
|
| Maybe people just don't want kids when they're educated and
| higher income.
| holonomically wrote:
| Then it's better to address those problems directly instead
| of scare monger about declining birth rates because the world
| has plenty of people and will continue to have more for the
| foreseeable future.
| tuatoru wrote:
| 1. North America has less of a "problem" than nearly everywhere
| else, since (overall) it has traditionally tolerated extremely
| high immigration rates, and potential migrants see it as a
| desirable destination.
|
| Politicians reflect their voters' views. In most countries
| immigration rates are at least an order of magnitude too low to
| compensate for low fertility and will stay that way.
|
| 2. Most of the projected increase in global population is due
| to an expected increase in lifespan, meaning a greater number
| of old people. They don't have kids.
|
| The big reservoirs of working-age people are in sub-Saharan
| Africa and rural India. Not many of them have the skills and
| funds to enable intercontinental migration. Yet.
|
| Not sure why declining birth rate is a problem, though. Maybe
| we'll get around to automating some of the things.
| holonomically wrote:
| Good points. I'll elaborate what I meant by sensible
| immigration policies. Sensible immigration policies includes
| a better social safety net and education programs to allow
| people to immigrate even if at the moment they don't have the
| right skills or funds.
| [deleted]
| tomatofarmer wrote:
| That is sensible only to you. I love how policies are
| designated as 'common sense' to try to promote acceptance.
| Let me decide what is common sense.
| holonomically wrote:
| What exactly in what I said is not sensible?
| tomatofarmer wrote:
| There is substantial untapped and underutilized potential
| already within the country. Using tax money to support
| immigration of those that possess neither skills nor
| funds, is frankly a slap in the face to all tax payers,
| and a signal to Americans that we are giving up on them.
|
| But of course one powerful group needs cheap labor, and
| the other powerful group needs more voters. Thus, with
| collaboration of the media apparatus, what you suggest
| will continue to be branded as sensible.
| holonomically wrote:
| I really don't get how you inferred all that from what I
| said. A social safety net and better education programs
| are better for everyone, including the people in whatever
| country happens to be implementing those programs and
| policies.
|
| The issue with media bias is another matter entirely and
| is unrelated to what I was saying but I recommend you
| stop viewing everything with a conspiratorial lens. It is
| not helpful for having a productive discussion.
| [deleted]
| akomtu wrote:
| Well, in America, children are just leverage to extract money
| from parents: healthcare, kindergartens, universities, all of
| them try to grab as much money as they can. Insufficient
| birthrate will be covered by immigration, until one day, just
| like in Rome, immigrants outnumber the natives and tell them to
| disappear.
| thatcat wrote:
| Associated cost has a role in suppression of birth rate but
| even socialized countries have signifigant declines in birth
| rate
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| The value of children declines as a country develops and
| industrializes. China and the United States share a total
| fertility rate of 1.7.
| diego_moita wrote:
| > one day, just like in Rome, immigrants outnumber the natives
| and tell them to disappear.
|
| Really? Wow, when did that happen?
|
| I went to Rome 3 years ago and the overwhelming majority of
| people there were Italians. Even many of the tourists in the
| Vatican were from other parts of Italy.
| akomtu wrote:
| I meant the ancient Roman Empire.
| diego_moita wrote:
| It is Europe buddy. Every country there was invaded and
| occupied by someone else at some time in history, with or
| without immigrants.
|
| The history of Europe is basically 3000 years of someone
| invading someone else's country and stealing their cows.
| Actually, the Italians spent most of their history doing
| exactly that to themselves. Up until the unification at
| late 19th century, Italians killed more Italians than any
| barbarian invasion.
| akomtu wrote:
| My point is that every nation follows the same life
| cycle: the golden age, stagnation, social strife and
| internal squabbles, normalization of amoral behavior, the
| steep decline of birthrate and replacement by invaders,
| be it barbarians or another civilized nation. We're
| somewhere at last stage, but the US is big and it may
| stay another hundred years in this quasistable state.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| > Really? Wow, when did that happen?
|
| Importing barbarian fighters to swell the declining rank of
| the empire is one of the theories of the decline and fall of
| the Roman empire.
|
| > I went to Rome 3 years ago
|
| About 1600 years too late to be relevant for GPs example.
|
| And for the record, he is wrong about it being relevant to
| emigration to the US today. Despite having Senators in the
| Senate on the Capitol hill (Rome had Senators in the Senate
| on the Capitoline hill), the US is not the Roman republic or
| empire and the problems they face are not the same.
| cma wrote:
| Looks like they got roped into the neonazi/"great
| replacement" stuff by someone (probably Facebook/YouTube
| algorithm).
| jesuschristhn wrote:
| The Migration Period is a noncontentious event within the
| historiography of Rome (i.e. the Roman Empire). It's not
| related to anything regarding events from today. I disagree
| with the original assertion that the "natives" were
| "replaced" but it's not disputed that the Germanic tribes
| mixed with the native Italics and possibly contributed to
| the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, ignoring the
| actual sack of Rome in 410 by the Visigoths, a Germanic
| tribe invited into the Roman Empire to bolster its
| declining population, which is probably what the original
| poster was referencing.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sack_of_Rome_%28410%29
| jesuschristhn wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Migration_Period
| vmception wrote:
| Finally one of these surveys that even allows for the answer that
| people just aren't interested.
|
| It is always hilarious how this sociology field only attracts
| people that think children are the most fulfilling thing they
| ever did and _everyone_ else must want that so there must
| therefore be some _other_ problem like economics.
|
| Turns out the onion satire article was spot on
|
| https://www.theonion.com/study-finds-american-women-delaying...
| Bostonian wrote:
| The Western world has gone beyond tolerance to approval and
| celebration of non-procreative lifestyles.
| diveanon wrote:
| Good, the world doesn't need more people.
|
| Adoption is always a great option if you want a child to raise.
| eigengrau5150 wrote:
| Parenting is the hardest unpaid job known to man. No wonder
| nobody wants to do it.
| iammisc wrote:
| Perfect. Will mean the future generations are much more
| religious.
| jl2718 wrote:
| Anecdotally, the problem is much worse among those that
| contribute more in taxes than consume in public benefits. This is
| the real problem. Low-skill high-fertility immigration will not
| solve it. Child tax credits will not solve it. Welfare programs
| will not solve it. These problems all exacerbate the problem by
| growing the population below the net-income line. You may say
| that these people are more necessary or useful than those above,
| but that is a different debate.
|
| Net-income-positive Americans are choosing not to be parents
| because the law is openly hostile to it. Some examples:
|
| Child support: The _minimum_ guideline is 33% of income for a
| single child, non-deductible. US /CA taxes take ~55%, so that
| leaves 12%. If you have a great tech salary of $150k, that leaves
| you with a living budget of $1500/mo. The only way to survive
| here on that is in your car. (I have done this. Not a career
| enhancer.) Meanwhile, nobody needs $4000/mo extra to raise a
| child, unless they are paying somebody else to do it. This is why
| women have a hard time finding mates. The only men that are
| willing to take that risk of relationship breakup are those with
| nothing to lose. It's horribly dysgenic, and frankly awful for
| the kids it is trying to protect, because now they end up with a
| working mother and a deadbeat father, by design. And by the way,
| this is not a gendered issue. The first I became aware of it was
| by a woman that was forced to both give up her kids and pay her
| ex.
|
| Child care: The licensing, certification, and insurance
| requirements have turned this into a human farming business. When
| I was growing up, kids just sort of roamed, and then the police
| started notifying parents that they had to send them to certified
| daycare, so my mom got the certification until some professional
| daycare moved in and started calling the inspectors any time we
| went outside to play in the woods. Now it's much worse; daycare
| costs more than most jobs pay, and those with nothing to lose
| just ignore the law anyway.
|
| The only way it makes legal sense to have children is if both
| parents are either on welfare, or part of an immigrant community
| that operates outside of the rules. My recommendation to my
| children will be to move out of the country immediately after
| graduation to a place that is more financially and legally
| family-friendly, then start finding a partner and having children
| right away. The opportunities for this decline much faster than
| any goals other than professional athletics.
| crateless wrote:
| I have been recently picturing a dystopia (utopia?) wherein
| women sell their eggs to some kind of govt. agency which in
| turn hires women who are willing to carry babies to term.
|
| These babies are then raised in child group homes by state
| employees all the way from infancy. Meanwhile the state pays
| for their education until they either graduate or until some
| kind of arbitrary deadline.
|
| Thus the problem could become cost effective due to economies
| of scale thereby partially mitigating the cost problem.
|
| However, it is still unclear whether to then make childbirth
| opt-in or something along those lines.
|
| If we are going to farm kids, then why not do it properly?
|
| /s
| uejfiweun wrote:
| Yeah, there is simply just too much risk involved in marriage
| and children these days if you aren't above a certain financial
| line. In our current environment, where you can't afford a
| house and rent rapidly increases each year, the prospect of
| losing 50% or more of your income is simply too much to bear.
|
| I'd guess that in the next 10 years, these problems come to a
| head, and we end up with significant deregulation of some of
| these anachronistic policies. But it will get a lot more dire
| before this happens.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-11-21 23:02 UTC)