Given roughly all of the decline in fertility rates is due to decreases in teen pregnancy and early twenties pregnancy, are not the most obvious proximal causes stuff like longer education/career paths later marriage, stronger norms against early pregnancy etc. The more fundamental causes seem hard to pin down, but explaining the changing age profile of parents seems like a good start.
A theme in academic fertility research is the tradof between the "quantity" and "quality"of children. Modern norms around parenting set high bars for parents to meet when it comes to how they raise children. If you give birth to children in less-than-ideal circumstances or fail to invest enough time into their upbringing, you are seen as failing your child. This makes it practically impossible to have lot's of children like people used to. This cultural norm is especially strong in East Asia, no wonder that region sees the lowest birthrates.
For me, the smell test for these explanations is "Does this make sense with HK/KR/SG being the top 3?", and none of them does as far as I can tell. My bet is on primarily (1) better birth control & (2) urbanization and secondarily (3) a cultural shift as a result of the change induced by (1) & (2), i.e. it became normal to choose not to procreate, and it even became abnormal to procreate at a young age.
The issue is that old people might enslave the young to provide for their pensions. The young will respond to that enslavement by reducing their own fertility to compensate, causing a death spiral.
Not that this gets harder, not easier, to fix as there are more old people (they make up more of the voting public).
Also, young people whose jobs are caring for old people will likely throw in their lot with olds out of self interest.
If the Amish or whoever ever got big enough they would be drawn into this. Many of these are welfare sponges and even the Amish use technology and interact with the economy more than you think.
I don’t see a way around this beyond a constitutional change to voting, but I would support any legislation that tried to protect parents from confiscatory taxes.
Here's something interesting, by Elizabeth Kolbert, writing in the Oct. 7 issue of The New Yorker: "(In 1962) a group of researchers at the University of Illinois decided to calculate what would happen if the number of people on the globe continued to increase along the trajectory it had followed for the previous two millennia. The researchers concluded, with a mathematical version of tongue-in-cheek, that the population would approach infinity on November 23, 2026. In the meantime, the planet would become so crowded that there would be no room to move. 'Our great-great-grandchildren will not starve to death,' they wrote in Science. 'They will be squeezed to death.'" See: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/10/07/dr-calhouns-mousery-lee-alan-dugatkin-book-reviews-rat-city-edmund-ramsden-and-jon-adams
This article argues that a crisis of meaning is the reason for declining birth rates, which is consistent with the high birth rates of populations in which a fundamentalist religion provides the meaning.
I may as well add something useless to the conversation.
Suppose the declining birth rate can be shown to be entirely the fault of government safety regulations making parenting such a chore that few parents want a second child -- car seats, clunky strollers, crib regulations, day care signups, you name it. Just suppose.
Suppose someone could reliably prove that all those regulations save, I dunno, 10,000 children's lives a year. But they also reduce the number of births by 1 million a year.
Does that mean the safety nazis are responsible for a net 990,000 unborn children every year, and is that equivalent to 990,000 deaths?
If a woman gives birth and kills the baby, or has an abortion, and no one else knows she was pregnant, has she actually killed anybody?
My main position on abortion laws is that they are way too indefinable to be enforced consistently. If I were a pregnant woman who had not planned the pregnancy, I do not know at what point, if any, I would think abortion a moral choice.
At best "being blamed" for children not conceived is a lesser evil than murdering children. At some point between conception and birth, almost all people agree that the lesser evil becomes the greater evil.
Staunchly pro-life people seem to put that at conception itself, with a few saying that preventing pregnancy is the same/similar. I am curious how they would handle your question, or what they see as the difference between a condom and conception prevented by safetyism. I suspect there's still a clear difference in their minds.
Even very pro-choice people put that at birth, except a pretty small fringe.
It seems the masses put that at some stage fairly early on related to viability, heartbeat, or something else that signifies growing humanity.
I enjoy being able to point to declining birth rates with increasing prosperity, whenever I run into a degrowther/population-bomb-nut.
However, I often wonder if it is a reliable truth. For example, if we had prosperity with more free time, might people have more children, as they would actually have time to spend with their huge investment? As we currently have society structured, jobs that produce a comfortable income also tend to result in working ridiculous hours.
I've wondered, thinking about the long term, whether there might be technological developments that substantially reduced the cost of having children. Artificial wombs would reduce the cost of producing children and AI might be able to reduce the cost of rearing them.
Alternatively, imagine a future where AI had replaced many jobs and child care is one it can't replace. People are rich through the increased productivity, but child care is what many people do, perhaps to acquire the capital that they can then live on.
I'm thinking of doing a post on the subject, once I have accumulated enough ideas. Do commenters here have suggestions?
I've considered the possibility that people would do all of the people care jobs - things that involve human emotions and interactions. Childcare, elder care, maybe sales roles. Possibly even waitstaff, nursing, psychiatry, and things we don't normally think about like sex work.
The kinds of work that we would have psychological hang-ups about a machine doing, even if it could very accurately imitate a human.
What I've just noticed about this list is that it's extremely slanted towards current female roles in society. There's a ton of implications for future society just based on that.
Evolutionary arguments presume that creatures will produce offspring like themselves (with small mutations). But human beings are about to enter a period when their mastery of biotechnology will falsify that presumption. People will create genetically enhanced versions of themselves, or completely novel (nonhuman) creatures. “Survival of the fittest” will no longer apply.
There have been been lots of studies, I can't speak to their rigor, that show sex itself has been falling for generations and not just in raw amount or lifetime sexual partners but even desire itself. It seems Gen X was an extremely oversexed outlier with Gen Z lining up to be an extremely undersexed outlier according to a back of the napkin meta-analysis of every study I've seen on it in the past fifteen years included recent one. So on your questions (A) yes and (B) the latter. It seems for most people, multiparty sex is simply a low value substitutable good which as Gen X'er myself I can't even fathom lol.
Given roughly all of the decline in fertility rates is due to decreases in teen pregnancy and early twenties pregnancy, are not the most obvious proximal causes stuff like longer education/career paths later marriage, stronger norms against early pregnancy etc. The more fundamental causes seem hard to pin down, but explaining the changing age profile of parents seems like a good start.
A theme in academic fertility research is the tradof between the "quantity" and "quality"of children. Modern norms around parenting set high bars for parents to meet when it comes to how they raise children. If you give birth to children in less-than-ideal circumstances or fail to invest enough time into their upbringing, you are seen as failing your child. This makes it practically impossible to have lot's of children like people used to. This cultural norm is especially strong in East Asia, no wonder that region sees the lowest birthrates.
Would you think it fair to say that *accidental* pregnancies are what has declined?
For me, the smell test for these explanations is "Does this make sense with HK/KR/SG being the top 3?", and none of them does as far as I can tell. My bet is on primarily (1) better birth control & (2) urbanization and secondarily (3) a cultural shift as a result of the change induced by (1) & (2), i.e. it became normal to choose not to procreate, and it even became abnormal to procreate at a young age.
The issue is that old people might enslave the young to provide for their pensions. The young will respond to that enslavement by reducing their own fertility to compensate, causing a death spiral.
Not that this gets harder, not easier, to fix as there are more old people (they make up more of the voting public).
Also, young people whose jobs are caring for old people will likely throw in their lot with olds out of self interest.
If the Amish or whoever ever got big enough they would be drawn into this. Many of these are welfare sponges and even the Amish use technology and interact with the economy more than you think.
I don’t see a way around this beyond a constitutional change to voting, but I would support any legislation that tried to protect parents from confiscatory taxes.
The old can't enslave the young. The young will be the concentration camp guards, for the old will be too infirm to do it themselves.
The fiscal problems will resolve themselves when the money runs out.
The french underwent the demographic transition two centuries ago and are still here. She'll be fine.
Here's something interesting, by Elizabeth Kolbert, writing in the Oct. 7 issue of The New Yorker: "(In 1962) a group of researchers at the University of Illinois decided to calculate what would happen if the number of people on the globe continued to increase along the trajectory it had followed for the previous two millennia. The researchers concluded, with a mathematical version of tongue-in-cheek, that the population would approach infinity on November 23, 2026. In the meantime, the planet would become so crowded that there would be no room to move. 'Our great-great-grandchildren will not starve to death,' they wrote in Science. 'They will be squeezed to death.'" See: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/10/07/dr-calhouns-mousery-lee-alan-dugatkin-book-reviews-rat-city-edmund-ramsden-and-jon-adams
https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2024/08/fertility-crisis/679319/
This article argues that a crisis of meaning is the reason for declining birth rates, which is consistent with the high birth rates of populations in which a fundamentalist religion provides the meaning.
I may as well add something useless to the conversation.
Suppose the declining birth rate can be shown to be entirely the fault of government safety regulations making parenting such a chore that few parents want a second child -- car seats, clunky strollers, crib regulations, day care signups, you name it. Just suppose.
Suppose someone could reliably prove that all those regulations save, I dunno, 10,000 children's lives a year. But they also reduce the number of births by 1 million a year.
Does that mean the safety nazis are responsible for a net 990,000 unborn children every year, and is that equivalent to 990,000 deaths?
Yes, then no. You can't be blamed for deaths of someone never conceived, but you can be blamed for people choosing not to conceive.
If a woman gives birth and kills the baby, or has an abortion, and no one else knows she was pregnant, has she actually killed anybody?
My main position on abortion laws is that they are way too indefinable to be enforced consistently. If I were a pregnant woman who had not planned the pregnancy, I do not know at what point, if any, I would think abortion a moral choice.
At best "being blamed" for children not conceived is a lesser evil than murdering children. At some point between conception and birth, almost all people agree that the lesser evil becomes the greater evil.
Staunchly pro-life people seem to put that at conception itself, with a few saying that preventing pregnancy is the same/similar. I am curious how they would handle your question, or what they see as the difference between a condom and conception prevented by safetyism. I suspect there's still a clear difference in their minds.
Even very pro-choice people put that at birth, except a pretty small fringe.
It seems the masses put that at some stage fairly early on related to viability, heartbeat, or something else that signifies growing humanity.
I enjoy being able to point to declining birth rates with increasing prosperity, whenever I run into a degrowther/population-bomb-nut.
However, I often wonder if it is a reliable truth. For example, if we had prosperity with more free time, might people have more children, as they would actually have time to spend with their huge investment? As we currently have society structured, jobs that produce a comfortable income also tend to result in working ridiculous hours.
Are people simply too busy to reproduce?
I've wondered, thinking about the long term, whether there might be technological developments that substantially reduced the cost of having children. Artificial wombs would reduce the cost of producing children and AI might be able to reduce the cost of rearing them.
Alternatively, imagine a future where AI had replaced many jobs and child care is one it can't replace. People are rich through the increased productivity, but child care is what many people do, perhaps to acquire the capital that they can then live on.
I'm thinking of doing a post on the subject, once I have accumulated enough ideas. Do commenters here have suggestions?
I've considered the possibility that people would do all of the people care jobs - things that involve human emotions and interactions. Childcare, elder care, maybe sales roles. Possibly even waitstaff, nursing, psychiatry, and things we don't normally think about like sex work.
The kinds of work that we would have psychological hang-ups about a machine doing, even if it could very accurately imitate a human.
What I've just noticed about this list is that it's extremely slanted towards current female roles in society. There's a ton of implications for future society just based on that.
Evolutionary arguments presume that creatures will produce offspring like themselves (with small mutations). But human beings are about to enter a period when their mastery of biotechnology will falsify that presumption. People will create genetically enhanced versions of themselves, or completely novel (nonhuman) creatures. “Survival of the fittest” will no longer apply.
I wonder if there was any data that could tells us
1. Are people having less sex per capita ?
2. Are people avoiding pregnancies or sexual intercourse itself ?
There have been been lots of studies, I can't speak to their rigor, that show sex itself has been falling for generations and not just in raw amount or lifetime sexual partners but even desire itself. It seems Gen X was an extremely oversexed outlier with Gen Z lining up to be an extremely undersexed outlier according to a back of the napkin meta-analysis of every study I've seen on it in the past fifteen years included recent one. So on your questions (A) yes and (B) the latter. It seems for most people, multiparty sex is simply a low value substitutable good which as Gen X'er myself I can't even fathom lol.