

No Babies? -- Causes for the aging population of Europe - b-man
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/29/magazine/29Birth-t.html?_r=1&fta=y&pagewanted=all

======
philwelch
One of my (rather cynical) friends predicts that liberal, secular, Western
culture is going to die out in the long run. He thinks certain religious
traditions that encourage children and families (traditional Catholicism,
Islam, Mormonism) will survive, but not us. I argued it was a race--could our
culture infect theirs before theirs outpopulated ours? It'll be interesting to
see (in the ominous, "may you live in interesting times" sense of the word).

~~~
po
This assumes that a person cannot be born in a religious culture and convert
to a more secular culture or vice versa.

[edit] Could the people down-voting please explain why this is not a valid
point?

~~~
philwelch
_I argued it was a race--could our culture infect theirs before theirs
outpopulated ours?_

That sentence kind of implies what you said. I didn't downvote you (I can't
because of how HN works) but I'd assume that's the reason why.

~~~
po
I see... I didn't interpret "could our culture infect theirs" as converting
people over. I don't see it as something infective. There will naturally be a
good deal of attrition. Makes sense, thanks.

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bpodgursky
Sometimes worry that this is a depressing answer to Fermi's paradox (Fermi's
paradox asks why no intelligent life has been found, if the odds of it are so
high):

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox>

Maybe when a species/civilization gets to a certain point of sophistication
and intelligence, the motive to keep expanding (or even reproducing,
apparently) stops, and they don't go on to colonize anywhere else.

Really, the only reason the Americas are so populated right now is because of
crazy overpopulation in Europe at the time. If a new continent was discovered
today (or if Mars was suddenly terraformed), how long would it take for it to
be populated? Would it ever be?

~~~
adnam
It's not sophistication and intelligence. It's the cost of living.

~~~
bpodgursky
I don't think it's that simple. Plenty of people living in poverty manage to
have quite large families.

I think instead it's the desire to have children only if you can have them and
still live a the level of comfort you desire. It used to be, that people had
kids simply because it was the default, and everyone did. But now that society
has advanced to the point that people are able to make different decisions, it
seems like often the choice is, simply to not have them.

That's all I mean by sophistication--the ability to look at how you are
living, and make those choices for yourself.

~~~
pmjordan
Exactly this. European governments have put various financial incentives in
place for having kids, yet they're scratching their heads why they're not
working.

At least in Austria, it pretty much doesn't matter how much your household
earns, up to a certain level (it's somewhere around €2300/month net if I
remember correctly), as long as you have at least 2 kids. The child benefits
plus family tax breaks compensate for low income. The benefits are diminished
(not just proportionally) at higher income levels, which basically means
there's an incentive for poor people to have kids. Having a kid probably won't
reduce your standard of living if it comes with a 50% raise or whatever. One
parent dropping from full-time to part time will also have little to zero
financial impact at that level.

At higher income levels, none of that is true. The jobs tend to be more
demanding, working part time is hardly an option, and daytime childcare is
expensive. The €100/month/child or so the government give you won't even get
close to covering that.

I don't know if the incentives are working among those with lower income -
they have more kids, but for all I know they would have more anyway, but the
current setup is useless for encouraging reproduction across the board.

~~~
zephyrfalcon
I don't know about Austria, but in the Netherlands there's a similar monetary
compensation you get for each child; however, AFAIK it's not meant to
"encourage" people to have more children. Rather, it's meant to make up for
the increased cost of living once your family expands.

(There's a Dutch politician quoted in the article as saying that Dutch women
should have more babies... it seemed awfully odd to me. Upon closer
investigation, he was talking about cranking up the birth rate from 1.7 to
2.1.)

~~~
randallsquared
_it's not meant to "encourage" people to have more children. Rather, it's
meant to make up for the increased cost of living once your family expands._

Removing discouragement is the same overall as adding encouragement.

~~~
Someone
"Removing discouragement is the same overall as adding encouragement."

It may have the same effect, but it something entirely different. For example,
would you argue that legalizing the sale of tobacco or alcohol is the same as
encouraging people to smoke or drink?

~~~
randallsquared
It's not clear to me that legalization of those drugs would have the same
effect as doing something else with the intent to encourage use of them.
However, in the case of money, it's a little clearer: the only difference
between giving someone extra money when they have another child and replacing
money they spend on an extra child is what you say about it.

Now, it's true that what you say about it can have a real effect on choices
and outcomes, but we don't really know enough to reliably predict what that
effect is in the general case, so for practical purposes, I think we're better
off assuming that the effects are negligible.

------
TheEzEzz
I think the problem is integrating family life with the rest of your life.
Right now both concepts are completely orthogonal, so when you start a family
suddenly you have a much bigger management problem.

(I Am Not An Anthropologist, but) My understanding of traditional hunter
gatherer societies is that women would keep on working even with a small baby.
The baby could be strapped to the womans back, or simply kept close by, so
that the woman could keep working but still have quick access to the baby to
nurse it when needed.

When the child got older, they would have the entire tribe looking out for
them, so there wasn't a need for constant micromanagement. We have daycares,
but that only lasts half the day. After work the parents are expected to
dedicate the rest of their night to supervising. That's a big (and unnatural)
time commitment, in my opinion.

------
bnoordhuis
Women of Europe! We need to remedy this situation. I'll do my bit if you do
yours. Email address is in my profile, please attach pictures.

(I kid, I kid. I've already done my share: the little one is expected next
month).

~~~
dennisgorelik
Your share is 2.1 kids, not just one.

~~~
bnoordhuis
Fair point. I'll get right on it!

~~~
mahmud
diversify your DNA portfolio.

------
amttc
Compare with this article from a few months back:
[http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/10/world/europe/10iht-
sweden....](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/10/world/europe/10iht-
sweden.html?pagewanted=all) . While this article isn't exclusively about just
birth rate, it notes that Sweden has one of the higher birthrates in Europe.
Looking at wikipedia, the birth rate for Sweden is still (what I suppose is)
low, only 1.67, compared with the US at 2.09.

edit: just in case you aren't inclined to read through, the article is about
granting fathers paternity leave.

~~~
jarin
Darn, and I thought it was going to be about Children of Men.

~~~
amttc
I think what all of these articles point to is that it's expensive or time
consuming to raise kids, so people simply don't have them. It seems like the
key to raising fertility rates is just to provide a good environment for
parents to have them in, like giving leave to new parents and giving tax
incentives or stipends to those who do. Then again, its probably more complex
than this.

~~~
spamizbad
An interesting argument I've heard wrt to "high" western birthrate countries
is that it has more to do with the societal roles of women. In both the United
States and Sweden, women are generally told they can have both a career and
become mothers, and while this view is not universally held in either country,
it's a widespread belief. By contrast, in western nations with lower
birthrates, the social views tilt towards women being told they can have a
career OR become a mother, and that trying to be both is detrimental.

What tends to happen in nations when motherhood becomes an either-or
proposition is, women opt to either forgo childbearing or chose to only have 1
child and then continue on with their career track. Whereas in countries with
a broader view of motherhood, women who want both aren't guilted by society to
stop at 1 or, and likewise fewer women face the choice of forgoing or limiting
motherhood to pursue their career ambitions.

~~~
kjhgbhjkl
Generally there is a bounce. For a generation after women get the chance of a
career, education etc the birth rate plumnets - this is the position Italy is
in.

Then 20-30 years later those same women have reached positions in politics,
industry, education etc where they can influence policy on childcare,
maternity leave etc. Then the number of children goes back up - this is the
state Scandanavia is in.

Germany is a little odd, remember that less than 20years ago it absorbed a 3rd
world country which rather screws up it's stats.

~~~
Riesling
Calling the DDR a 3rd world country is a little exaggerated in my opinion.

~~~
kjhgbhjkl
HN now with free hyperbole.

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cstross
Inconvenient facts this article _doesn't_ mention include the baby booms in
France and the UK since 1998. Given that post-natal and social policies have a
huge impact on birth rates and are set at a national, not EU, level, this
report needs to be taken with a bucket (not a pinch) of salt.

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yoasif_
This article is a bit of a slog (but well worth reading) -- I summarized the
most interesting part to me (birthrates and why) here:
[http://quippd.com/show/4304/Where_have_all_Europes_babies_go...](http://quippd.com/show/4304/Where_have_all_Europes_babies_gone)

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olegkikin
Is this a problem? Overpopulation seems worse to me.

~~~
jseliger
Yes, a big one, as the article explains: if you have a massive number of old
people living on pensions / versions of social security, but not a lot of
younger people working to produce goods and services, those old people are not
going to be able to survive at the standards of living they'd like and b)
over-taxed young people are going to be incentived to not work or leave.

These are not good things, especially because they have recursive aspects, as
discussed.

~~~
jacquesm
That's a problem that will solve itself in a maximum of about 70 years.

~~~
bpodgursky
No, it won't. If you maintain the same sub-replacement fertility rate, you'll
end up with a stable inverted population pyramid, albeit a constantly
shrinking one. Every generation will have too few workers to support too many
retirees.

