
As U.S. fertility rates collapse, finger-pointing and blame follow - jseliger
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2018/10/19/us-fertility-rates-collapse-finger-pointing-blame-follow
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dragontamer
>The University of Pennsylvania’s Hans-Peter Kohler, who studies fertility and
birthrates, said the data indicated that many shifts affecting fertility are
occurring “in the transition to adulthood.” The biggest recent drops in
birthrate have been among teenagers as well as people in their 20s. In 2016,
the teen birthrate hit at an all-time low after peaking in 1991.

This... doesn't sound like bad news to me?

It seems like the #1 "issue" is that teenagers have stopped having kids.
That's a good thing, is it not?

Young 20-year-olds not having kids could be easily explained with the higher
amount of people going to college, and starting life later.

If the 25+ age group has stopped having kids, that'd be a bad thing for sure.
I guess its important to keep the overall fertility rate in mind for future
economic reasons, but a severe decrease in teenage pregnancy seems like a good
thing overall... even if it may cause an economic issue in the future.

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manfredo
Is a shrinking population actually bad in the long term? I'm taking on the
order of centuries here. While it does introduce the dilemma of reducing
spending on the elderly or increasibg taxes to care for the latter aging
population, a shrinking population seems like it'd reduce environmental impact
and global resource consumption in the long run.

~~~
adventured
The sole problem from population contraction, is replacement tax dollars for
existing entitlement-type programs that are built on a ponzi scheme approach
to ever larger inflows of tax revenue to support them over time.

Most of the developed world has the same problem on that front. The
desperation by these countries when it comes to figuring out how to patch up
the finances of those programs will increase by the year.

Robot (productivity) taxes will be one small answer. Another will be ever
higher income taxes, also eventually including heavy wealth taxes (that comes
last). Most of the developed or semi-developed world is starting to get hit on
demographics at the same time. The weaker economic nations are being forced to
respond first, as in Russia having to raise their pension ages so high it
starts to cut people off at the life expectancy line (plunging Putin's
popularity numbers in a rather startling fashion, which tells you how
important the pension promises were). France is being forced to confront
similar problems, with Macron trying to dress that up as market reforms. The
US is temporarily avoiding it thanks to its ability to run absurdly high
budget deficits for now.

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manfredo
I agree with the economic implications. Countries that experience an ageing
population need to face the fact that they either have to raise taxes
considerably, or reduce the care and benefits they extend to the elderly.

I also disagree heavily with the last paragraph. Creating disincentives for
automation is the last thing a country needs when its workforce is shrinking.
Automating jobs is a way of expanding the amount of labor available without
actually needing more people in the work force. If anything, countries that
are experiencing a population decline need to invest in more automation to
maintain their economic output.

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amanaplanacanal
The US doesn't work that way. Taxes and spending have only the loosest
correlation. As long as the US Dollar is the worlds reserve currency, it
appears there doesn't have to be anything connecting the two.

Someday, though...

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Justsignedup
I feel the answer might be simple actually.

As contraceptives becomes well understood and taught kids are opting to have a
better quality of life and not reproduce. They put it off so they can build a
career.

When they build a career they get used to a certain quality of life. And so by
mid thirties they don't want to have 3 kids. Of course they delay having kids
till they are financially stable enough to have kids and not worry about money
and hardship. Because who wants to voluntarily go through extreme hardship.

And so as cost goes up and pay goes down with available contraceptives people
are just not having kids until they have the financial stability which many
might not have.

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laaph
I found this article written oddly, as if it were a phenomena that is only
affecting the US. Fertility rates have been collapsing world-wide, ever since
the 90s if not longer. Yet this article doesn't mention that Europe has had
below replacement rates since the 90s, and the rest of the world is having
significantly less children per woman than it did back then too.

For each of the specific things it suggests it might be, it would have to be
something that is affecting the whole world, maybe at different rates around
the world but the whole world nonetheless.

Hans Rosling in one of his videos said we see the birth rate drop when women
are educated and have economic opportunities outside the house.

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sunstone
Children are becoming a luxury good in a lot of cities.

~~~
eaandkw
I think that this is a false argument. Just look at the poorer nations or even
poorer populations. They tend to have plenty of children. Kids are expensive,
that is true, but I think that most people arguing that it is too expensive to
have children actually mean that they are not willing to change their
lifestyle or standard of living to have kids.

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thrav
I agree. Everyone wants to live a certain kind of lifestyle, and kids aren’t
worth the sacrifice for many.

Without fail, the people I see having kids are all people who grew up with an
economic head start, and further distanced themselves with extremely high
paying jobs (private equity, hedge fund, commercial real estate, VC, big
tech).

I don’t know anyone with kids where the husband is not killing it financially,
and they all still complain about having limited money.

This is true in the Bay Area, where I live now, and back in Texas (Dallas,
Austin, San Antonio), where I’m from.

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sorenn111
Your story is so anecdotal and influenced by the people you know that it is
practically irrelevant. Not trying to jump down your throat, but "people I
see" and "I don't know anyone" renders your statement useless.

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jnmd
I found one of the comments very thought provoking: "The declining total
fertility rates are children not born in the moment, but the hope is that they
are delayed, not forgone".

I hadn't considered it before, but a gradual change in what age people choose
to have children would show up as a temporary drop in fertility (for an easy
example, think about everyone delaying their next child for five years). A
quick google search show's a strong correlation between steeply increasing age
of first child and low apparent birth rates. In particular, US fertility rates
were even lower in the 1970's, another time when age of first child was
increasing rapidly.

Back of the napkin math shows that we'd see (very roughly) 80% of true
fertility if not adjusted for, making the true fertility rate slightly above
replacement levels (about 2.2)

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toasterlovin
Yeah, but women can’t delay forever and previous generations have already
pushed age of first child back way past where it once was.

Anecdotally, I look at my Facebook and there are a lot of women on there who
will really have to kick things into high gear ASAP to hit two children (since
they’re all in their mid 30s and childless).

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rabboRubble
I met super conservative friends of my parents the other day. They blamed the
falling fertility rates on narcissism and social media.

I'm like uh.... what about cost of living outpacing salaries? Cost of medical
care? Education debt?

All the young people I know aren't avoiding pregnancy because of their social
media engagement, they are however wondering out loud in conversations with me
if they can afford children.

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esoterica
And yet poor households have more kids than wealthy ones.

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rabboRubble
I bet the poor households are using Facebook just as much as the richer
households. Whatever the root causes are, I seriously doubt social media the
single most important cause.

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esotericn
The 'large metro area' drop is completely unsurprising to me as someone living
in London.

Working young people are looking at the "will I ever be able to afford to live
in a house" problem.

It is not at all uncommon for a 30 year old to be living with random
individuals.

Child rearing? You may as well ask a starving man his opinion on gluten free
bread.

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wilde
More people are renting. Rents are going up. When rents go up, fertility goes
down. This is not a mystery.
[https://www.nber.org/papers/w17485](https://www.nber.org/papers/w17485)

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techrich
People are getting dogs instead.

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csense
If Congress wants people to have more kids, can't the government just pay
people for each child they have, via a tax credit or direct payment?

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TimJYoung
I'm not sure that this is such a bad thing, given that more and more people
are working non-physical jobs and can continue to do so as they get older.
Personally, I have no problem with anyone that worked physical labor their
whole life retiring earlier with benefits while I continue to work. I like my
work, and it's been a pretty easy life, comparatively.

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fallingfrog
Daycare is 300 dollars a week, everybody's got a massive mortgage payment, not
to mention the college loans.. why would you expect a lot of babies being
born? _Of course_ the fertility rate is falling. Society puts all its greatest
costs squarely on young people of child rearing age. I mean, duh.

Edit: originally said 160 not 300, was incorrect

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pcmoney
$160 a week?! ROFL. Try $450/wk for full time day care. This is in a non-
coastal, non-major city for standard licensed day care, not Montessori or high
end. Standard rate in the town I live in, could maybe save $50/month if I
doubled my commute. Waitlist for daycare? 8months+. We enrolled shortly after
we conceived.

~~~
Tycho
That's like 20k a year. So you'd need something like a 30k salary (before tax)
just to break even. How much income would you be foregoing if one parent just
stayed at home?

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pcmoney
Ya I think thats a calculation many families have to make. I strongly agree
with the other comment in terms of opportunity cost years down the road. I
really see this with a lot of our friends. The wife often quits her job and
stays home because our society really makes it hard to work as the mom of an
infant and biologically that is typically easier (don’t even get me started on
the cost of formula vs breastmilk). But they do miss out on those critical
career years. Luckily we are both software engineers at well paying jobs and
so the daycare isn’t as much as an issue for us. But it is hard to see others
have to make these really hard decisions, so I guess I am outraged on their
behalf. It is especially brutal because of most of the women leaving their
careers haven’t finished paying off student loans. In this era of gender
equality we have constructed a financial system where it doesn’t make fiscal
sense for many women to get a college degree if they want kids. Anecdotally,
teachers can’t afford to work and have a kid and nurses just barely can. These
are by no means bad careers and its really just a very tough situation, not
all of of us can be software engineers making Facebook/Twitter apps.

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dawhizkid
The idea that you can have a kid in college in your mid 30s is pretty
fascinating. Maybe sociologically it is not easy or ideal to have kids very
young but being relatively young while your kids are grown is better than
being old.

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infradig
"...being relatively young while your kids are grown is better than being
old."

How so, whizkid?

~~~
dawhizkid
Because you have more time to spend with them before you die as a parent?

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jmpman
I would have had more children if childcare was more heavily subsidized. Make
it a tax deduction up to a fraction of the amount you pay in taxes to keep it
from incentivizing those without financial means to have children.

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scottwernervt
If there was a tax credit for day care wouldn't the day care companies just
increase prices to make more profit?

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eip
Looks like the vaccine for Human Population Virus is working.

~~~
dang
We've banned this account for posting unsubstantive comments and ignoring our
requests to stop.

