The US is flirting with its first-ever population decline

You're not alone, Kraig911. It's very hard to be a parent in modern society. My wife and I's friends have basically vanished from our lives, they have zero initiative or interest in coming over to see the kids or help in any way. They say they do, but they rely on us to take the initiative and make social things happen. After dozens of rejections or silence from dozens of them, it's rejection fatigue with the friends...unless they also have kids, in which case we play DnD together when the kids go to bed.

Going out to eat? Going on vacations? Sleeping? Your own health? Your finances? Say goodbye to all of that for 5+ years if you have kids, even more if you have a special needs child.

And despite all that, we love them and we want to have them, and probably the vast majority would do so again. And we will have our children to keep us young-at-heart, learning, active, and to help us in old age. Many of our child-free friends are going to go through a lot of loneliness when they're old, while we'll have the vibrancy of a family life.

> So when one of my kids throws a tantrum

If you're with your spouse, what I do is pull them out of the store until they calm down. Sometimes I wait in the car and my wife comes to the car because she is done shopping. I then remind them that they put themselves into that situation.

"people who have no idea how hard life is already for a kid who is disabled"

I have two disabled siblings out of the four kids my parents had - I didn't really appreciate what that meant for my parents until I had kids - I can only guess at the stress they must have gone through.

So yes, having kids sucks sometimes, but its also the most important thing that most of us do. And yes, as a dog-owning empty nester, I can confirm its not the same, not even close.

$6,000 / month in daycare for 4 kids? You have a sweet deal my friend. At the daycare in my neighborhood this does not cover even 2 kids : https://www.kidspaceseattle.org/enrollment - click on Tuition link at the bottom and weep.

> I pay about 6,000 a month in daycare.

My sister did this too until it got to be nearly as much as her entire salary so then she stopped working again and became the daycare. And that is super hard when your children have special needs. I think the worst may be that in-between area, where working and paying for daycare still seems to make sense financially because you take home more than you spend on not being at home but the net practical result is working for a very low effective salary to also spend less time with the children, which is its own kind of utterly draining.

> Some might say this is selfish, but on the other hand it’s kind of weird to expect anybody to commit to that for the sake of some other party, whether that be society, the government, peers, or parents, particularly when none of them are doing anything of substance to help mitigate those impacts in exchange.

Nah, I think that it is just selfish, and that it’s the least weird thing in the world to expect people to commit to sacrificing some things for the sake of their children.

You must have been led to these conclusions by ideas (perhaps labeled “individualism” or similar). Like all ideas, someone had to invent them, and these particular ideas surely have not been widespread for even 100 years.

Are you truly so confident that people in those countries don’t feel optimistic that their children will have better opportunities than their parents did?

I’d be shocked if they didn’t feel that, and even more shocked if it didn’t end up being the case.

It's possible that the things that would motivate people to have children in poor undeveloped countries are very different from the things that would motivate people to have kids in wealthy developed countries. So OP's take could be right for the US but wrong for Chad.

Of course, it could also be true that a certain level of affluence and freedom for women simply results in a strong downward pressure on birth rates, which is what I think is most likely. (I am not advocating for rolling back women's rights).

Their life are pretty stable - consistently bad, you can say. They know what their kid have is more or less same as what they did - not improving, but not getting worse either

Can you say the the same in a city where housing is getting less and less affordable,?

Population growth has rarely been a problem in poorer societies. Every fully developed country (afaik) has seen birth rates decline; that's the context.

> I'm actually really eager to hear why you think Chad, Somalia, and DR Congo are the countries where people feel the most optimistic about the future, and what you think rich countries should be learning from them!

Why not ask Israelis?

Even ignoring Haredim (who's fertility rate has fallen dramatically) secular Israelis tend to have 2 kids on average [0]. Israelis also work crazier hours than Americans (South Korea is the only OECD country tied with Israel in hours spent working), live primarily in 2-3 bedrooms apartment blocks built in the 1960s-90s, earn less than Americans, and pay American level prices for everything.

But society as a whole is very children friendly. If you have a baby crying in the background of a zoom call, it's not a faux pas to care for them. If your kids are running around in a mall no one gives you stink eye.

Western Europeans and North Americans are much less friendly and more individualistic veering on greedy.

[0] - https://www.taubcenter.org.il/en/research/israels-exceptiona...

Im no expert but my gut feeling is that theres more than 1 reason people have kids.

In "richer" western countries one of the strongest factors in that decision is "will my child have a good life" - that seems pretty sane to me, I wouldn't say that was the craziest and crackpotiest.

But maybe in other poorer countries it's something like "having sex is the only pleasure I get in this unbearable hellscape of an existance"

Very different things

The US isn't that attractive for white collar Latin Americans either. For example, the kind of Mexican who can get a job at Google ATX would also be able to demand a job at Reddit CDMX for around $80k-$100k TC or $140k at McKinsey CDMX.

Even for blue collar immigrants working undocumented in the US, a large portion were formerly lower middle class before the states they lived in either failed (eg. Venezuela) or quasi-failed (eg. El Salvador, Honduras).

I remember seeing a similar trend as a kid - we used to see plenty of college educated Mexicans and Argentinians Engineers working blue collar jobs in California because of both their economic crises. When the worst of their economic crises ended, those that didn't naturalize chose to move back to the old country.

Take immigrant crime rates with a grain of salt, globalists fraud them in every way possible to push their world view.

> There is an amount of baby cash that would work

Probably not. A vast majority of families in the US raise children without a nanny. If the "only" preclusion is 'I don't have enough money to hire a nanny' but becomes satisfied, the requirements will likely evolve to something greater and continue indefinitely.

And afford a house large enough for the parents, children, and a nanny. This is a bigger issue than it may seem.

Some people argue that in the past, grandparents would take care of babies and young children, or that families raised kids in much smaller homes.

That’s true. But there’s a recursive effect at play: most people expect to raise their children in conditions similar to, or better than, their own upbringing, not worse.

That isn't realistic though, there will never be enough nannies for every family with children to have one.

If you wanted to pull a purely financial lever, you'd have to give couples enough money to offset one partner's income plus a lifetime of lost income due to the years spent outside of the job market.

IMO this would be perfectly fair and reasonable, considering they are raising a future lifelong taxpayer, but that kind of long term thinking is challenging.

> hire a competent housekeeper/nanny

They would need similar support as well and it's a tower of nannies all the way down (it truly does take a village to raise a kid).

More critically, assuming that you need a housekeeper or nanny in a two parent working household is legitimately ridiculous. And I say this as a 1.5 gen immigrant with a sibling who was raised in a 2 bedroom apartment in the Bay Area while both parents were working with a total household income of around $140k in the 2000s (ie. upper middle class)

However, he specifically said "will want to have children and feel/know that their children's lives will be good ones."

But this doesn't necessarily mean being richer. For example, many people are afraid of what unchecked climate change is going to mean for kids born today. No amount of individual or country wealth is going to fix that issue.

I have kids myself, but man... I really really worry about this. I do personally know people cite climate change as one factor in having no kids (or fewer kids). Some people even think that having kids will make it worse. They're not wrong...

The dimension of this issue that never gets air time is that we've made having kids almost completely intentional. The richer a country becomes, the more intentional having kids becomes. The dynamic we see with rich countries is that as having kids becomes more intentional, there's also the increase in reasons why people would choose to delay or forego having kids.

Generally, the more developed a country is, the more capitalistic it is. Capitalism inherently assigns monetary value to everything, even children, and as capitalist societies currently function children have deeply negative value. So deeply negative that it completely nullifies the higher “default” standard of quality of life that comes with life in a developed country.

Because it's not just money. It's time and money. You can have lots of money and nice things, but if you don't have time to raise your kids, you can't do it. And if you had the time, you wouldn't have the money.

The richer a country gets the more individualist you can become, is my basic theory.

Raising a kid as an atomic couple apart from extended family and community is a horrible experience for the parents. It takes a village and all that. Parenting is utterly exhausting if you are doing it alone with a partner and responsible for every waking moment of childcare.

You see this in immigrant communities in the US. The demographics with the most children universally are those with "old world" style family and community situations. More or less communal child care without the weirdo expectations that the "richer" parts of society has on parents. Parents are allowed to actually be adult human beings with real lives that are not hyper-scheduled to death. Kids tend to be more independent and "roam" between family and friends without official activities being scheduled every day for them. Ironically this typically results in more engaged parenting overall.

That's my theory at least - it's not much better than anyone else's though.

People compare themselves to their perceived neighborhood in time and space, not to peasants from 5 thousand years ago.

I know women who want more kids but their husbands/partners don't want more. One has 3 and she's the breadwinner (FAANG), so they can definitely afford them. A couple others are letting it happen if it happens but they already have one so aren't pressed. I think all of them would have had more if they started earlier but it took everyone a long time before feeling secure enough at work to have kids.

> People already want more kids than they're having

Maybe some people. But nobody I know wants more children. They want a better future for the children they already have. They want to have hope for their future.

Everyone I know who wanted more kids wanted them before having 1 or 2. And it is almost always the men who wanted more kids, as women are more cognizant of the sacrifices and risks.

And this applies to financially secure couples in the US who willingly stop at 1 or 2.

“Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.”

My wife worked in several daycares in her early 20s, including an extremely expensive "Bright Horizons" location in a very affluent area. Even premium daycares provide inferior care to infants and young toddlers versus parental/family care. The economics of a business being in charge of your child demand this. Something that shocked her was at this super expensive daycare she worked at, the infants were basically given the bare minimum of attention while the older children consumed all of the time from the staff. The focus was on parental retention, so her job was to focus on changing the diapers of the infants to prevent diaper rash, and this took precedence over actually holding them and interacting with them. At no point is it remotely similar to how homo sapien mothers parent their OWN infants.

Daycare is to parenting as processed food is to nutrition. They are modern developments that prioritize economics over quality.

A study done in Canada (a "natural experiment", where a lottery determined eligibility for free daycare and allocated it at random) allowed researchers to track children who were enrolled in daycare versus children who were parented by their mothers, found that (adjusted for income) the infants who lost out on the lottery and were raised by their mothers in early childhood were healthier and better adjusted adults years later.

In the US we already give low income people subsidized or free daycare.

The real issue is how the system didn’t support the middle. If you are broke you get tons of support - healthcare (Medicaid), food (SNAP), housing (section 8), and a myriad of subsidized options for everything, from discounted utilities to childcare. But be middle class and get very little, except paying taxes to support the poor to get everything. Huge driver of political division across the West

Tax payer paid childcare is known for its low quality. There was an article in The Economist about it.

The timing for those factors doesn’t match the timing of the fertility decline in the US.

Birth control usage is slightly down since the mid 90s. Among sexually active women not trying to get pregnant, the rate has been flat since 2002. https://www.guttmacher.org/fact-sheet/contraceptive-use-unit...

Women’s labor force participation rate peaked in the late 90s. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300002

It’s hard to see how a stronger social safety net would decrease birth rates, but that has actually also decreased, e.g. from welfare reforms in 1996.

Meanwhile, total fertility is down ~20% over the ~30 year period since then.

> Modern humans live in what would have been historically viewed as a Utopia.

I think about this all the time, and how tragic (comedic?) it is that humanity finally created a Utopian age but most of its inhabitants are ignorant of that fact, and thus don't appreciate it, and instead genuinely believe they live in one of the worst times ever.

Yep. Birth control made it so women can choose how many times they get pregnant. Pregnancy is not exactly a walk in the park, so it’s no surprise it’s decreasing as birth control increases.

To override this, society needs to make having kids be “cool.” It’s that “simple,” but there’s no real way to coordinate that in society from the top down without being authoritarian.

So it’s a problem that can only be solved by individual change and convincing others one on one that it’s desirable. And people don’t like that.

If, as another comment states, the countries with highest birth rates are Chad, Somalia, Congo, Afghanistan and Yemen, how does that square with your "Only if the mothers in aggregate truly believe" assertion?

> Then please explain why birth rates throughout human history, when life was vastly more difficult and dangerous than it is now, were so much higher?

One of reasons is because more hands were needed to deal with the difficulty

Analysis from a time before the birth control pill is pointless. It's an alien society.

Funny how you don't realize you fit perfectly into the description of one of the groups that know exactly what is going on.

> Then please explain why birth rates throughout human history, when life was vastly more difficult and dangerous than it is now, were so much higher?

> The birth control pill decoupling sex from pregnancy.

Boom. Done. You had the answer already and just didn't reconcile your own thoughts.

You really need to interpret the comment you're replying to in the context of here and now, not 100 years ago before people had a choice about whether to get pregnant from sex. Doing otherwise is misleading.

Within the context of people having more choice about pregnancy, the critical remaining piece is that the world is economically and societally absolute shit for people to have children in. Women don't just have the option of entering the workforce, they increasingly need to because a dual income household is now the market expectation in relation to cost of living in developed cities and especially cost of living with children in developed cities. Not to mention the capitalist class war overtly amplifying economic disparity instead of reducing it. Not to mention the environment, climate, justice, and social wellness being gradually destroyed by plutocratic christofascists on a grand scale.

> Then please explain why birth rates throughout human history, when life was vastly more difficult and dangerous than it is now, were so much higher?

Easy.

In the West at least, having more kids is no longer advantageous. In the past this could reduce the need for labor.

Now there isn't a "farm labor" problem to solve.

You really don't need to get so elaborate. The shift from agricultural to industrial/service economy explains it well enough.

In an agricultural economy, children are an economic assistance, a source of labour, and a means of helping with survival.

In our industrial/service capitalist economy, while they are a net good for society ... they are a cost centre for the parent.

I think that perfectly aligns with their take.

People in their 30s, married, tend to have more stable lives. They are in a position where they feel they are able to give that child a good life.

More and more women have the power to choose when they get pregnant every day.

This is the number one reason for the decrease in fertility. Unplanned pregnancies are becoming a thing of the past.

Not entirely. Sperm counts in young men have been falling for decades. No one is sure why.

I think if artificial wombs ever succeed it will turn the world upside down

Yup and thats part of the issue. Too many people want to simplify it down to, "if we just did x, then we will see y." Nah, this is a complicated problem. Its probably gonna take the whole alphabet of solutions, but there is no political will or too much squabbling to since people want their idea why we have population decline to be right. But the bottom line is, having kids is expensive. You can make it less expensive, but that alone probably isn't gonna solve it.

Israel is a very complex case to say the least...

But one thing for sure is that despite wars and terror attacks, the mentality is that they are living the best life. Instead of living among Arabs as dhimmis or the disposable "other" among Europeans, they are a nation again and have the power to defend themselves. That's very powerful and one of the reasons for the extremely natalist society.

Total fertility rate is the correct metric for comparing how many kids a woman or couple is deciding to have. The birth rate is just boosted by Haredi Jews having outlier amounts of kids, presumably because its a cult where women don’t have many rights.

https://www.taubcenter.org.il/en/research/israels-exceptiona...

> Among Jews, the TFR among Haredim has fluctuated around 7 children per woman since the 1980s, and around 2.5 children per woman among the secular and the traditional who identify as not religious. However, Haredi fertility in the 2007 to 2013 period was lower than in the 1990s, while fertility in the non-Haredi Jewish population has increased since then.

>Even among Jewish women who self-identify as secular and traditional but not religious, the combined TFR exceeds 2.2, making it higher than the TFR in all other OECD countries.

> Meanwhile, the curb is full of extra large SUVs idling with kids just waiting inside the cars

Anecdotally, when my work schedule was wonky for a while I would do the same with my kids. Those few extra minutes hanging out with them in the morning were something I valued a lot. We got to talk and relax a little bit after the rush of getting ready in the morning. They had all day to spend with their classmates so a few extra minutes in the morning wasn’t going to change much.

A suggestion: If you want to make friends with other parents, morning drop off is the worst time to do it because everyone is going from the rush of morning routines and mentally preparing for their jobs. After school is better, but the best is at events and activities away from school hours completely. Our schools have done parent socials that have been great for meeting people. Sports and activities are also a great way to get introduced to other families.

It also helps to be the one leading the charge. We’ll do things like go to the museum or other activities and then send invites to 5+ other families. Tell them to invite other families.

Anecdotally my experience is dramatically different.

Last week I arrived by car right near the beginning of dropoff time. Pulling in right in front of me was the mom of one of my kid's classmates, carpooling with another kid who lives in the same apartment complex. The three of them met up as soon as they got out of the car, and then another one of their friends (who lives across the street from the school and usually walks) joined them from his driveway. They met up with a 5th friend before they crossed the street.

Then I walked - well, more like ran - with the 5 of them down the 111 steps that take us from the street level to the schoolyard. When they reached the bottom, they met up with 3 more friends who had just been let out of the drop-off zone in front of the school itself. Said a quick goodbye to my kid, but he wasn't really paying attention, he was already ensconced in his pack of 8.

I've gotten there with my kid before drop-off time, walked down the stairs with him, and there's been a pack of about 20-30 kids and 2-3 parents usually milling around before the school gates open.

I realize that this is somewhat atypical in 21st-century America, and we specifically chose this community because, well, it actually has a sense of community, but it's not unique. In preschool I'd take my son over to his preschool bestie's house (she lived about 2 cities away), and there'd be a whole pack of kids roaming the neighborhood going over unannounced to each other's houses.

If the medium is the message, the SUV communicates that there is only space for the nuclear family members, speed and comfort is of the essence, and the road is the only acceptable avenue for transportation. The sidewalks are for homeless people, jogging athletes, and eccentrics.

On the off chance you’re in the Bay Area, look into Walk N Roll: https://walknrolltoschool.org/

I helped start the chapter at my kids’ school and I’ve been impressed by the enthusiasm given how car-centric the school is (we’ve got the big SUV line, too).

Like you, we were usually one of two or sometimes three bike families. Walk N Roll days are now packed with bikes, and the bike population has increased substantially on regular days, too.

We’ve met some cool families, and the “goddamned big cars idling, you live three blocks away why don’t you just walk” grumbling in my head has quieted a bit.

A different experience here in London - when we are 10 minutes early there's a big load of kids waiting with their parents, most arrive on foot.

jesus that’s dystopian af

Second this. Maybe also "The Fourth Turning"

It is cool to live in a place where everyone questions the roles society might impose on them, but it's too extreme lately. The cost of community is inconvenience. The price of individuality is loneliness.

So much of life is brutally inefficient without networks of trust and reciprocity.

> It takes two incomes to afford a family's lifestyle. Someone has to take care of the kid. Two people have to do the job of three people.

Being stay at home parent is one of the most lonely thing you can do. Yes, the parent who works in office and goes bowling with collagues is less lonely. But the one who is spending whole day with a small kid and no one else is much more lonely .They cant go bowling either, because they need to put kids to sleep. So, they have to try much harder to have any social contact.

I'd say (and this is painful for many) that it really depends on who you are and how you act - if you're outgoing, or force yourself to pretend to be, and you talk, and you listen, and you don't immediately judge people (by whatever metric you come up with) - you can build community anywhere

Is it easier if you're in a group of tightly-knit people all nearly identical to you? Sure! But it's possible with work anywhere that has any population at all.

Social media and the Internet have let us self-select for "friends" who are as close to us as possible, there's ease because of the lack of friction, but that same lack of friction prevents our rough edges from being sanded off.

The number of people who could list what they want in a community, and when presented with a community that matches their list, cry that it votes wrong is way too high, just as an example.

> kids have freedom to go outside, good friends with lots of neighbors and parents, my social life is busier than it was when i didn’t have kids

Don't have kids myself, but this aspect seems incredibly obvious just reflecting on my childhood in suburbs of Chicago through the 80s-90s.

But the causes for what's keeping the kids indoors now instead of literally running the neighborhood are manifold. In the 80s there were far fewer indoor forms of entertainment to occupy the kids without driving mom batshit insane and making a mess of the place. Now the kids have tablets and gaming consoles, the outdoors is such a scary place when it's not full of gangs of children who know all the backyards better than the parents ostensibly owning them.

It's all rather depressing and the longer I live the more convinced I am that not adding my own kids to this state of affairs was the right move.

It's not an either/or choice for nearly anybody.

There are plenty of volunteers at community events in my area that have prestigious jobs, and the strivers working to maximize opportunities for themselves actually seek these out as another opportunity for accolades and networking.

You just need to find people who actually have an interest in their community. You know who those people often are? Parents. I suspect the decline in birth rates, especially in urban areas, amplifies this in both directions.

That is almost certainly the reason why they are making such a spectacle of it. Self deportation is the goal.

Don't be ridiculous, talking about "partisan fear". They have taken away documented, American citizens without due process.

When armed men can take you out of your home or your car and whisk you away without a judicial warrant and without due process, it is very reasonable to be afraid.

I guess you don't live in Minneapolis, or another targeted metro area. It is hard to imagine what it is like to live in a city where 3000 masked and poorly trained people cos-playing special forces are specifically tasked with arresting as many people as they can and told that they have full immunity.

you haven't seen the effect on schools when federal agents enter school grounds and take kids away.

you haven't seen my parent's nursing home sending the senior leadership outside the building to look for patrols before they let the staff leave (the staff is all legal/greencard holders, but see note above -- ICE doesn't care).

It's not hysteria when it is your every day lived experience.

What?

This happened a few blocks from my home: https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2025/08/17/dc-arrest...

As did this: https://www.thedailybeast.com/ice-goons-tear-down-pro-immigr...

These neighborhoods are high income, predominantly white, and filled with families.

My oldest has come home terrified because he turned a corner while playing outside and physically bumped in a guardsman carry a rifle.

I get it that some of you don't live in places that are immediately impacted by this administration, but some of us have to confront this on a daily basis.

Yes, this article is about the US.

And I live in a place single digit blocks from multiple places where ICE agent behavior has made national headlines. I have no financial reservations.

What a bizarre comment. Who cares about their genetic line? Are you evolution itself? Do you have stakes in making sure your genes make it to the future?

A weird comment to make to someone who already has children, but I guess at least we can all be happy that my kids are being raised by parents that can read?

what an insanely insulting reply. this site sucks now.

Given that I.C.E. has been allowed to stop people just for not looking white enough, and even white citizens have been shot for being "near" I.C.E. operations, I would suggest that it is not safe to assume someone is not a citizen, just because I.C.E. makes them feel unsafe in their neighborhood.

You think only non-citizens are under assault? Are you familiar with “Kavanaugh Stops”?

ICE threatens everyone, regardless of citizenship. They daily detain citizens without even bothering to ask "papers please". They menace and threaten and intimidate people just out and about in the neighborhood.

The ICE raids have little to do with immigration, they are a secret police force meant to cause terror in communities with their lawless violence. It is a politically driven attack on a state that had the audacity not to vote for Trump, nothing more.

ICE was arresting people whether they are citizens or not, whether they have legal status or not. They also beat people because they wanna.

>Real people are annoying

They are actually not. In fact once you work on your mental health, you'll find real people the only kind you'd want to talk to. But the real people actually working on their mental health (part of it is reducing device usage to bare necessities) are quite small unfortunately. But I am hoping that will change.

If you look at the top companies in America currently by market share, pretty much all are selling addictions while maybe a handful actually selling tangible products.

As much as I love this post, I have to be the one to point out that Uhura and Spock are from a different Enterprise than Picard, Riker, and Troi. Great work, though, I can practically hear Leonard Nimoy reading this dialogue.

Was this written by a human? It's far to entertaining to have been written by an LLM.

As a man who's never wanted kids, and is now getting to an age where it probably wouldn't be a good idea, those weren't really the big factors for me.

Having a kid is just an unfathomably large commitment. If you bring a kid into the world, I believe you're responsible for creating the conditions where that kid can grow into a healthy, well adjusted adult, and that's seemed like an increasingly impossible commitment for the past few decades.

I have a small child. It's awesome!

It's also enormously stressful and expensive. We're stopping at one where in past times a family like ours might've had 2-3. There are a variety of reasons, but cost in money, time, and housing are big factors. I'm very well off compared to most Americans, so I can see why if you're even marginally on the fence it has tipped into a no.

"Make it work" is a great thing to say on the internet, but not very good advice to people who are one broken down car or health issue away from not making rent, which is a LOT of young Americans.

Maybe all these things are true at the same time. More of a “is it better to have loved and lost than never loved at all” kind of dialogue.

In the midst of grief over any of the topics above, compounded by an indifferentand maladapted system, I think it’s completely understandable that folks could have a lot to say about these challenges.

> there is nothing in this world that brings people more joy than their families and their children. Nothing.

Counterpoint: Yes, you're giving the standard apologetic we all hear from parents. However, plain and simple, objectively it's typically the most stressful thing you will do in your entire life. It's so bad the US Surgeon General had to put out an entire advisory paper about it[1]:

> 41% of parents say that most days they are so stressed they cannot function and 48% say that most days their stress is completely overwhelming compared to other adults (20% and 26%, respectively).

[1] https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/parents-under-pressu...

One really common that myth this article busts is about child care.

"Child care is virtually free in Vienna and extremely expensive in Zurich, but the Austrians and the Swiss have the same fertility rate."

TL;DR: the article argues we cannot fix the population crisis with small tax breaks or traditional values because the modern world has made the cost of raising a child being too high for most people to want to try.

---

The article argues that the global drop in birth rates isn’t a moral failure or a biological accident, but a logical response to the pressures of modern life.

1. Myth: People are too selfish/liberal to have kids.

Reality: It’s not about hedonism. Instead, people are avoiding parenthood because the life has become such a grind. In places like Korea, young people feel that bringing a child into such a hyper-competitive, expensive world is unfair to the child.

2. Myth: It’s a biological problem (low testosterone/chemicals).

Reality: There is no evidence that people can’t have kids physically. The issue is a lack of desire. It is a social and economic choice, not a medical one.

3. Myth: Women working is the cause.

Reality: Data show birth rates are actually higher in countries where women have more jobs and support. In countries where women stay home more (like parts of India), birth rates are still crashing. Work isn't the enemy; lack of support is.

4. Myth: Immigrants will replace the population.

Reality: Newcomers quickly adopt the habits of their new country. Within one generation, immigrant birth rates drop to match everyone else’s.

5. Myth: The government can just pay people to have babies.

Reality: South Korea spent $280 billion on this effort and the birth rate still hit record lows. Cash doesn't work if the overall culture is too stressful and the difference in culture between men and women remains fixated on old roles.

e: moved TL;DR to the top.

https://archive.is/bmlll

> At some point, you could take 100% of the output of the productive people and it would still not be enough to support retirees et al.

But productivity for productive people is increasing. Is there an assumption that retiree spending is also going to increase to match?

Realistic solutions look something like: - we increase productivity of the working population - we lock or decrease the per-year, per-person spending on retirees - we decrease the % of their lives that people spend retired

I think it's inevitable, the model is unsustainable and going to fail. In a finite world we can't have social models that rely on infinite growth. I'm sure the changing demographic is going to cause pain (probably right when I'm getting ready to retire), but historically pain is the real catalyst for change so maybe some good will come out of it.

But infinite population growth is unsustainable so it had to come to an equilibrium eventually. Maybe we overshot the maximum comfortable population by a bit and we are going to rebound for awhile.

Also an economy that requires an infinitely growing population feels like a pyramid scheme which is also an unsustainable system.

Or decrease handouts to the non-working population. Maybe we cannot afford to keep seniors in their SFHs driving everywhere.

I really hope that automation and robotics will _finally_ allow us to invert the pyramid.

Why? I understand that's how the system works now but does it have to? Productivity has never been higher.

Why though? All those old people paid in all their lives so surely that is sitting in a vault somewhere waiting for them.

If they were only eating there would be no problem. But they want fancy vacations. They want houses. They need drugs. They need MRI machines. And they need these things for decades for minimal cost irrespective of ability to pay. And, when they do die, they expect to pass estates tax-free to thier children. Supporting the retired population is one thing, but the day may soon come when we revisit what it means to be retired.

We need young people to pay for the billionaire subsidies (economically speaking, someone has to accumulate all that profit and it's not going be us)

Predicting population decline is safer than overgrowth. Since with low birth rates we know we need substantially higher than replacement rates to make up for the deficit. Which seems unlikely

That's the way the system is set up but basically it's not sustainable. You can have more young people now to fix the problem of funding older people. But what happens when these young people get old? Now you need even more young people.

GDP is correlated only while good things are increasing - forcing every married family to divorce at gunpoint and become two family households would greatly increase GDP - but I don't think we'd agree that's good.

This. The prospect of a brighter future at least means capital and labor are fighting for slices of a bigger pie. If the pie per capita stays constant or shrinks there will be a lot more anti-social behavior to response to the zero-sum environment.

Mentioning Social Security and government implies there is some other form of retirement that doesn't inherently depend on younger people still working, doesn't it? I mean, who else going to grow the food and sweep the streets?

This might be a really good analogy - we're in an endless summer and we have people who are now dying having lived in it their entire life - we don't even know what fall is like, let alone winter.

On a personal level it might be possible to "bring winter back" - I'll have think on what that might mean.

If you or anyone you care about is or will be elderly and is not financially independent, you should care.

This has nothing to do with capitalism; it's a resource allocation problem. We spend inordinate amounts of money on end of life care, and any changes are currently unacceptable to voters.

One of the ways the Netherlands made streets safer for dismounted people was by framing it as stopping killing kids with your cars. Yes this is "think of the children" logic but since kids are generally healthy the top causes of kid death in the US are gunfire and cars.

ive seen similar things like no income tax if you have 3 kids. i think that give you slightly better alignment because you still want to be productive.

I don't think he blames the immigrants specifically, so much as illegal immigration as an institution. The only "punishment" that most people want for illegal immigrants who have committed no crimes other than the immigration violation itself is for them to be deported, which really does not seem like a punishment at all -- it's just undoing the criminal act. Like if you stole some money from a bank and then had to give it back, but otherwise did not have to face prosecution.

Because what can an illegal immigrant do? They could in theory just rely on social services and entitlements, but I don't think anyone (including the immigrants themselves, for the most part) really wants that. They want to work, and to make money, and the law makes it very hard to do so legally, so they work illegally.

All the barriers you mention are things that we put in place to "protect" workers, but at the same time create a black market that undercuts those very workers.

As for the employers, sure, they are culprits here, but would you rather have them let the immigrants starve? That also does not seem to serve any social good. As for not paying workman's comp, for example, there is already enough paperwork and bureaucracy involved in hiring a legal worker where there are systems that support and administer those programs. If you wanted to offer a workman's comp lookalike for illegal labor as a social service, then that would multiply the effort and cost by a huge factor.

Wanting them gone isn't the same as putting the blame on them. It isn't a personality conflict or a troubled relationship; immigrants shouldn't feel guilty for wanting to stay and the people competing with them should feel guilty for wanting them to go. Or rather, who cares? Shouldn't people be allowed to have their inner states to themselves? Can't we own anything? How did a discussion about labor exploitation turn into a discussion about feelings?

And why is it a discussion about some workers' feelings vs. other workers' feelings? How did the boss manage to completely recuse himself?

Does it? It sure costs a whole helluava lot. I mean, there's tax credits and things, but it's not at all cheap!

I think capitalists just want cheap labor. The US itself doesn’t have a unified position on population. Plenty of people want a population decrease because they feel everything is overcrowded.

This logic would fly a couple of years ago.

Since then, we have seen indiscriminate violence against people and families following the rules.

And a bizzare hate campaign against H1B.

And court judgements explicitly enabling masked government agents to target someone solely on the basis of skin color.

Wouldn't it be simplest to just legalize the people who are here and at the same time also open up immigrant visas too?

The vast majority taken up in these dragnets are legal residents of the united states.

The attorney representing ICE to the courts in MN admitted it directly, admitted that ICE does not believe it needs to honor orders of the federal court system, and that they do not comply with orders to release legal residents of the united states.

You should educate yourself. Here's commentary that directly references the lawyer's responses and judge's commentary https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6o-_2thaI8

I think you missed the sarcasm.

There are other plans now:

https://baptistnews.com/article/remember-the-first-goal-of-p...

Horrible fiscal ticking time bomb that ignores the fact that regularization means naturalization over the next 10-15 years and so access to EU healthcare system.

The biggest drag on government budgets in EU are socialized healthcare and retirement costs. At this point we know healthcare costs are severely backloaded, with most spending coming out of the last 10 years of someone's life. Regularizing now allows them to show a fiscal boost now and for next 4-5 years(edit: maybe even like 10-15 years) and accumulate a massive liability as they age.

Think about it this way: If you regularize a 30 year old illegal migrant right now with a path to citizenship over next 10-15 years, the government NPV is positive over a 15 year horizon(whilst he works) and then will go flat to negative as he starts using the healthcare system whilst retired.

Spains youth is everywhere in europe but in spain? That economy sounds like a warzone from what they tell..

I have no doubt that this has positive effects on the national economy as a whole (you get workers, on demand, without really paying for raising, educating, training them), but it is not really sustainable because population growth is low/negative pretty much everywhere, and it also leads to significant pushback from cultural friction and local workers (that dislike competition).

You could argue that the whole rise of somwhat radical rightwing parties all over Europe is mainly the result of policies like this during the last half century...

Animals have "r/k selection": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R/K_selection_theory ; some have huge numbers of offspring (e.g. spiders, most fish), some carefully nurture a single egg per year. Humans are already at the smaller number of offspring compared to the rest of the animal kingdom, but what I think is happening is that social pressure has simply pushed the tradeoff hard into "quality".

That is, the message is "unless you can give your children a perfect life, you shouldn't bother".

Certainly the main victory against birthrate worldwide has been the long process of eradicating teen pregnancy.

> Easy access to contraceptives probably makes a significant difference too

This is so basic as to be an axiom of the whole thing. The politics of going back to forced childrearing through suppression of healthcare are horrific, but some of the US is pushing for that.

I'm not going to find sources right now, but from my understanding the research shows that the greatest impact on number of children is education of girls. Once women have more options, staying home their whole life popping out babies seems less desirable.

There will no doubt be a push by some of the most conservative idiots to stop educating girls.

Flash news - todays people have higher standards and expectations of living than your grandma and grandpa. In particular - most people want college education for their kids. College education comes with tens of thousands in expenses and people are like "how am I gonna put 2 kids in college? I think I will have 1"

Another flash news for people who haven't had kids in daycare for a while - pricing for daycare means that for the first kid the mom could work and come ahead money wise. Second kid is about neutral (depending on location and salary, in some cases the mom comes ahead money wise, in other case she does not). Daycare pricing made us decide to have 1 kid - if we had 2 kids in daycare my wife would have been better off staying at home (which we could not afford and she did not want to do anyway).

Access to contraceptives make a significant difference as well.

In my opinion, it mostly comes down to contraception and changing lifestyle choices. Most child-free people I know simply prefer not to have kids.

That said, I wouldn't be surprised if, within a few decades, the dominant concern swings back toward "overpopulation" as major advances significantly slow or reverse aging.

> my grandmother had 17 siblings

Another anecdote. Nobody in my extended family has more than 3 kids. My grandmothers from both sides had more. But the trend is pretty clear. Fewer kids for the modern generation. Regardless of the level of education and income. In fact, the lower education/income ones in my extended family have fewer kids.

I can't agree with you enough. I am so sick and tired of the cost of living argument. Back in the 1800s people were living in tiny cramped places and having 5-6 kids while barely able to afford necessities.

>I think the "cost of living" explanation for low birthrates is just wrong

If you're demanding it be all-or-nothing, then sure it is "wrong". It obviously isn't the only reason. As countries get richer, people have fewer kids.

Is it a factor? Of course it is. Children are incredibly expensive if you subscribe to modern norms and expectations. There are many, many, many people who want kids but can't afford it, and if they do have a kid it's prohibitive having more than 1. Two is basically financial suicide for many. And to be clear, I have four children which is a luxury of being in a financially rewarding career at the right time, but even still it was unbelievably tough making it happen.

"anecdote: my grandmother had 17 siblings"

Standards change. You understand that, right? If you're middle class in 2026, the expectations around having and raising a child are very, very different from someone sixty years ago. People generally aren't keen on having six kids sharing a room these days. Even bunkbeds are considered poor by many. Now since both parents will have to work, account for childcare, massive vehicles, education savings, and so on.

Contraceptives will be harder to get. Project 2025 is also about stopping the "senseless use of birth control pills".

Seems like when you give women the choice, many elect to have fewer kids than replacement level.

Hell, in many countries in Europe, they basically throw money at anyone having kids and their birthrate has plummeted which would indicate that economics is not only reason.

Yes, the "cost of having kids" argument is 100% bunk. Africans in abject poverty are having 6-7 kids, while individuals living in the richest countries are having 1 or none even though they clearly can afford many more.

Even within Western countries income is negatively correlated with fertility - those most able to afford kids are having the least number of kids.

Back of an envelope suggests that to really make this work you'd need most women in the 20-40 range to have the job title of "parent" and a lower middle class or more salary paid by the state, so .. 10-20% of GDP? Nobody wants to contemplate just how expensive this is going to be, including the fact that now you have a short-term labour shortage (because they're out of the regular workforce as well!)

Your specific claim may indeed be true, but it's misleading. The relationship between income and children is U-shaped. From middle incomes to higher incomes, fertility rises. It is also important to point out that income is tied to other factors in America. You're going to disproportionately find your $500k earners in a handful of superstar coastal cities. Those things need to be controlled for if you want to isolate the effect of income on family size.

Mixed in with all this, and possibly preceeding all this, is declining marriage rates. It's significantly riskier, financially and relationally, to have kids without getting married.

There are many solutions to different aspects of the problem - if we define the problem something like "people get together older, and have kids older, and have fewer."

But even if everything was "easy and perfect" (arguably some other countries have this) - you still have something that is generally discouraging people from having kids.

The median Amish family income is about $65,000 and typically has six to eight children.

Based on your lower comment, Rhode Island.

Median family income $87k

Cost-of-living ~$36k excluding housing

With your example of a $350K home, someone making the median (presumably not 20-30 year olds but more like 40-45 year olds...) they could save up the $70k down payment in under 2 years.

P & I payment of ~$2k / month. Maybe $1k more for escrow of taxes and insurance.

So $72k total cost of living on $87k, assuming you've made it to median income.

Of course, if you're making less than $72k, buying a $350k house would simply be... untenable.

Also, based on rough guideline of "30% of income on housing", you'd definitely want to keep your mortgage under $2200 / month.

Census link indicates median home values are closer to $404K though, too.

https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/RI/LFE046224

https://livingcost.org/cost/united-states/ri

In general the “housing is too expensive” people mean “I looked at every available house in both San Francisco and New York City, and didn’t find anything cheap!”

Housing for the boomers used to cost 3x the median salary. Now it's more like 6x the median salary. These are nationwide numbers. Wage growth isn't keeping up to pace with housing prices

Sure people can just move to a remote dying town and get a house for super cheap, but turns out people want to live within a reasonable distance to jobs.

How much cost do you consider a first time home as costing?

The fall of this site after 2016 has been sad to watch. Basically turned into low-volume reddit.

But it's objective!! You can objectively measure the value of people. We could just plug people's value into a database and let AI do the match-making. People don't have to be involved in the decision-making. Especially not female people!

/s

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i know almost zero men that dont want a girlfriend, many are trying

interesting how HN downvoted this one, but not previous :P

H1B is just a cheap labour scam unless you think there aren't any Americans that could do the jobs on the jobs.now website that reposts the H1B re-advertisements.

H-2A is expensive and prone to abuse. It is generally considered a failure by both employers and workers who participate in it. So I’m guessing your use of fantastic and generous is either sarcasm or uninformed?

Nobody cares.

Why a debate - we are not allowing enough immigrants, VISA class is just hiding that fact.

There is no labor shortage. Look at layoffs and job openings - lowest since 2020.

LOL. There is no labour shortage. There is only a shortage at a particular price point.

If there is such a labour shortage, what explains the layoffs?