In this forum I see a lot of posts about this topic so I thought I might get some answers. When confronted with this problem, one often hears responses along the lines of
- expensive to raise children.–> however, we see a decline rate worldwide and also lower compared to some previous centuries after 1700 where the quality of living was much worse.
- various environmental problems such as climate change are impacted by more fossil fuel use.–>that is likely part of the motivation, but we will need young people to discover technologies that reduce our fossil-fuel dependence.
I was wondering if it is actually driven by culture. As the standard of living improves and we are able to focus more on our careers, do we see less value in raising kids? Have we started to see it as more of a chore?
Also, Doepke talks about the disparity in pay between men and women who have children The New Economics of Fertility (imf.org). It was observed that the very ultra-low-fertility countries like Japan and Korea had an expectation on women doing the brunt of the work (80%). Whereas countries with low-fertility rate, the workload split was more even.
So it could be that we are just in a transition period where more and more men are realizing that they need to split the work of raising children.
Is population-decline culturally driven?
byu/2DTurbulence inFuturology
6 Comments
I think it is a perfect storm of consequences of neoliberalism, late state capitalism, corporate greed, cost of living, environmental existential concerns and pollution, climate change, geopolitical threats and sense of hopelessness.
Almost all developed countries are facing the same issue – so it has to be more than cultural. I think developed countries have been milked dry by greed. Child bearing aged people instinctively know shit is messed up on top of the obvious inability to pay for kids.
i think its culturally driven and possibly environmentally driven. But frankly when women are given more freedom they have less children. France has had declining birth rates since the Revolution. The whole children are expensive never made sense considering a mere glance at past living conditions would show that to be bullshit.
I see 3 big reasons
1) choice. Nobody likes to talk about how many kids are accidents but the combination of sex Ed and birth control availability has a huge impact here.
2) the cost of raising kids TO YOUR STANDARD OF LIVING. When living conditions are bad, honestly it takes a lot less to raise a kid to your living conditions and each one is more likely to start adding to the household younger. A lot of the countries with falling birthrate have high expectations. Their own room, saving for college, if working happens it’s for spending money or learning lessons not to contribute to the household, there will be vacations which suddenly cost more, etc..etc…
3) opportunity cost. If you’re dirt broke you’re probably going to be working or chilling at home. Kids dont interfere with that much. If you’re not, and especially if you live in the kind of country with a lot of entertainment options, a strong currency and passport, things like that then kids can interfere with a lot more. The added costs can make you skip out on a lot of entertainment, travel, education, a cushier or earlier retirement, etc…
Basically the more you have the less likely you are to have a kid you didn’t plan, the more it costs to raise them the same way you were or the way your peers intend to, and the more other things you could be doing with those resources.
You see it play out in national differences but also fertility rates across different levels of income/education in the same nation.
It’s nearly driven 100% by the advent of women working full time and the contraceptive pill. The birth rate fell off a cliff around 1960.
Not wanting kids, just for not wanting, is too a think. I don’t want, and don’t care if we go extinct because of this.
All the explanations of the current population decline I feel aren’t actually the true problem. I think that the real problem of decline is that developed nations as a whole have lengthened adolescence until about the mid to late-20’s or sometimes even longer because since people are living longer, there isn’t a dire need for 16-24 year olds in the workforce. Delaying adulthood by delaying the age people enter the workforce causes them to put off child bearing into their 30’s which is known to decrease total lifetime child bearing.
Lengthening retirement ages only make this problem worse. Lengthening the educational requirements for entry-level career positions makes this worse. Having un-specialized education after age 16 in highschool is also an issue. There’s no reason it should take 16 years to train a person for a lot of the work that is done, even for relatively technical jobs.