The Global Fertility Crisis Is Worse Than You Probably Think

cl0ckt0wer

if you want a thing, pay for it. the economics of childrearing aren't workable for most people without a huge cut to standard of living.

ritzaco

> “Only two things are important right now in life: fertility and deep learning,” the University of Pennsylvania economist Jesús Fernández-Villaverde said at the conclusion of a recent lecture. “Everything else is noise. Once you start thinking about these, it’s hard to start thinking about anything else.” Not sure if I agree but that's quite a memorable quote

kilroy123

I think this guy is on to something. It's also interesting that India, which has arranged marriages, has such a high population and much better demographic situation than most of the West. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4apGtiz42Qk

usrnm

Personally, I see no reason to be alarmed. Humanity has been growing at an absolutely batshit crazy rate for the past hundred years, even the doomsday Thanos-level event that halves the population of the planet overnight would just bring us to the level of mere 50 years ago (the main reason I never understood the logic behind the whole Thanos idea). This growth must stop at some point and maybe even correct itself, it's perfectly ok. Our current economic system along with some countries may not survive it in their current form, but it's definitely not a humanity-level crisis.

gota

This is "only" a crisis in the sense that our current economies break down if the influx of new consumers slows down. We'll adapt. Won't be painless, but it is not catastrophic, at least not in the same sense that climate change is catastrophic > “Do you know how hard you need to abuse a mammal to make them not have children?” If you asked Leahy what the explanation was, “my answer is technology,” he said. “My answer is social media. My answer is AI.” My answer may include that, especially for richer countries, but also includes, and at a mucher higher placing for all countries: * reduced child mortality risk, family planning * urbanization; reduction of child-as-farmhand-labor incentives * increasing distance to parent support networks, the disaggregation of clan/extended family households * economic uncertainty

zpeti

What if - evolutionarily we just haven't evolved for birth control? What if - given a choice, women just don't want to have 2.1 children on average? No one wants to touch this topic, because it's super offensive and probably political, but it seems like the most plausible to me. And clearly we're not going back. No one is going to ban birth control, and they probably shouldn't. But then where do we go from here? Basically all genes of non enthusiastic parents will die out over the next 100-200 years, and we will get more enthusiastic parent genes succeeding, and population grows again? Or we literally just die out...

bfmalky

> “Only two things are important right now in life: fertility and deep learning,” the University of Pennsylvania economist Jesús Fernández-Villaverde said at the conclusion of a recent lecture. “Everything else is noise." And the climate crisis. Why does it seem like everyone has forgotten about the climate crisis recently? AI isn't going to fix it.

schnitzelstoat

I have one kid, who is my favourite thing in the world even though he is still a toddler, but I'm not sure if we will have more. We certainly wouldn't have more than two, so we'd still be slightly below replacement rate. I'd rather focus all my time and resources on one or two children and here in Catalunya it's hard to even buy a single family home (most people live in apartments which are very small by American standards) so if I want each kid to be able to have their own room then I'm pretty much limited to one, at most two, unless I win the lottery or something. Furthermore, it's very difficult for women as the birth and recovery is very hard. There is a lot of pressure on women to breastfeed nowadays too, not just from social media, but even from medical staff. Personally, I was always formula fed as a child so I didn't care if my child was breastfed or not - but nonetheless I could tell the pressure took a big toll on my wife. I ended up in a serious argument with a nurse over it at one point. I doubt this trend of declining fertility will reverse so we really ought to think about how we will adapt to these changes. I wonder how many people will regret not having kids, or having more kids, though. I waited until 33 to have my kid and I think one of my biggest regrets in life is not having done it sooner. It was funny reading through the article, as I actually live in Catalunya and I am improving my Catalan precisely to be able to go and live with my kid in one of those small villages in the mountains :)

entropi

I tend to view this as purely an optimization problem. Basically all aspects of traditional values, systems in place and the whole lifestyle, established mostly after the agricultural revolution; seems to be laser-focused on increasing surviving offspring. I feel like it should be obvious that if you take a solution that optimizes almost exclusively for x (surviving offspring), and replace it partially, optimizing for a,b,c (industrial output, female participation to workforce, etc.); you necessarily get a lower x in exchange for higher a,b,c. Now it looks to me like everyone is trying to increase x back again, but without decreasing a,b,c. It seems obvious to me that you cannot do this (unless you have been doing a terrible job at optimizing before). You have to trade some value off from the other side. But in our current society, I don't see how can this happen.

delbronski

I think the real issue is not fertility. It is humans refusing to share wealth fairly, which then leads to low fertility. A world with fewer humans, plus AI/robots doing the heavy work would be amazing, if we shared wealth fairly. Unless we humans figure out a way to build institutions that share wealth rather than hoard it, then we are toast either way. Headline should read “The global wealth hoarding crisis is worse than you think”

no_news_is

https://archive.is/57Raz

fellowmartian

Derek Thompson keeps banging his neoliberal drum in the face of (what he sees as) literal extinction. We need GDP, growth, yada yada. Just another 1% of GDP growth bro, it’ll fix everything. It’s funny how we’re unwilling to move a single iota on our socio-politico-economic system and actually fix what people are SAYING the problem is. Actually free childcare, education, cheaper housing, more future security, etc. Yes, most of us grew up in a world where none of that was present, but we now understand how suboptimal it was on our psyches and want to break the cycle.

Balgair

> “Do you know how hard you need to abuse a mammal to make them not have children?” I've worked with mammals from gerbils to dogs fro research. And, yeah, it is really hard to get a mammal to not to want to reproduce (you can go snip-snip, of course). Humans are not like other mammals, of course, we have 'reason' and the like, but still. I think that little quote is really doing a lot of load bearing in the fertility crisis debates. Humans, as I am sure we are all aware, really really like reproducing. The other things that come with it are, of course, the issue that stop us from completing the 'job'. But, even things like access to contraception do nothing to the falling birthrate. It's not the prophylactics, it's the participants. We talk here about the cost of a kid, and rebuttals about Norway abound. The cultural conditions, and then someone mentions Mongolia or Israel. The support afterwards, and then you talk about Sweden. This structure, that structure, this exception, that exception. How we need a recipe not a single policy to fix the birthrate. And still nothing works. Suffice to say: We are being really badly abused. Want to fix the birthrate? It's a whole-ass thing where you have to change the whole-ass culture so much that people actually want to just have kids. I know that seems tautological, but like, it's just true. We just have gotta stop hurting each other.

thefz

I will never understand this forum's fixation over human fertility

phoronixrly

Any reason this was flagged? Is it LLM-generated? Is it flawed in some way? I just need to know whether I can trust the article or it was flagged just because HN doesn't like it.

tsoukase

Human progress is to blame for low fertility through a multitude of mechanisms but the most important is the status of the female: it seems her advanced role outside of the home depresses her maternal instinct. Instincts are vulnerable to environment and don't survive in certain occasions.

johnea

I'm sure there's a factual error in the title. This should read: The Global Fertility Windfall Is Better Than You Probably Think What you need to know™: - What kind of fantasy thinking could possibly conclude that a reduction in global population is a bad thing? - How much more of a poster child do we need, to demonstrate that modern capitalism is a ponzi scheme? - Just another example that what trends in "journalism" is just the perspective of ownership. - If this is a true theory, why isn't africa booming economically? (this dismissal and lack of concern for Africa should really be reason #1, but the truth is, most white people couldn't give a shit less what happens to Africans)