
America just had its lowest number of births in 32 years, report finds - pseudolus
https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/15/health/us-birth-rate-record-low-cdc-study/index.html
======
rubidium
As a counterpoint to most of the other “isn’t this good?” comments of this
thread, let me say that humanity is, at its best, amazingly capable of
invention and creating a wonderful culture.

To have more people is to have more opportunities for those who can contribute
to the progress of the world.

We have shown an amazing ability to increase crop yield and, technologically,
can feed the world population. That’s a feat carried out by generations of
growing societies who were driven to innovate because they needed to. As long
as there’s opportunities for people’s creativity there’s no such thing as the
“carrying capacity” of the planet.

Yes we need to take better care of each other and the earth. But “less people
= good” is not the solution to that.

We need to raise up our future with a commitment to people being able to
address the problems around them, and not tell each other “it’d be better if
you weren’t born”.

~~~
dougmwne
I don't think we need a higher population to "contribute to the progress of
the world." The World Bank says that 10% of the world's population lives on
less than $1.90 per day. Very few people are given high levels of education
and career opportunities. The competition for those opportunities is getting
more intense all the time. Many people are dropping out of the workforce due
to lack of opportunity and hopelessness.

Having an additional billion people in extreme poverty is not going to make
the world a more innovative, wonderful and cultural place. If we instead focus
on providing more opportunity for the people who are here, that seems much
better than creating more people who will only ever have extremely limited
opportunity.

Most people have the innate capability to contribute at a high level, but lack
the opportunity. A very small number of people, given the right resources and
incentives can create massive innovations. It does not take billions.

~~~
hudon
also from the World Bank: in 1990, the percentage of world population in
extreme poverty was 37%. Now it is 10%.

It looks like as the population is growing, we are becoming less poor, not
more, which dismantles the rest of your argument.

~~~
dougmwne
I think you are actually helping to prove my point. The global fertility rate
has been dropping rapidly since 1970[1]. The poverty rate has also been
dropping rapidly for just about as long[2]. Isn't is possible that the
increase in living standards is being driven by the decrease in birth rate?
That seems more likely than more people=less poverty.

[1]
[https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/sp.dyn.tfrt.in](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/sp.dyn.tfrt.in)

[2]
[https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SI.POV.GAPS](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SI.POV.GAPS)

~~~
toomuchtodo
> The reflex of many economists when thinking about the fertility rate is to
> point to income as the likely determinant. And sure enough, between
> countries and over time we see that higher incomes are associated with lower
> fertility. But good things come together – richer countries are also
> healthier and better educated – and so this correlation between high incomes
> and low fertility alone is surely not evidence that it is increasing income
> that is responsible for the decrease in fertility.

[https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate#what-explains-
the-...](https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate#what-explains-the-change-
in-the-number-of-children-women-have) (Our World In Data: What explains the
change in the number of children women have?)

TLDR Major contributing factors are a woman's education (educated woman have
fewer children, and delay having children until later in life), access to
contraceptives, a reduction in infant mortality, with social norms and
increases in income and quality of life to a lesser extent.

Sidenote: Thanks to Our World In Data (YC 19 NP) for performing and hosting
top notch datasets and the analysis of such.

------
pseudolus
On a historical level fertility rates appear, with the exception primarily of
Africa, to be dropping across the board [0]. There's a concise summary by
country on present fertility rates on the World Population Review website [1].
Quite a few surprises as well.

[0] [https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-
rate](https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate)

[1] [http://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/total-
fertility-r...](http://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/total-fertility-
rate/)

------
bobblywobbles
They should focus more on the fact that income hasn't risen to account for a
number of expenses that makes it very impractical to have children (debt,
schooling, housing, loans, etc.). This is what I feel is contributing more to
the fact of lower births.

~~~
rpiguy
Even in European countries with generous support systems, subsidized day care,
free university and paid parental leave the birthrate has plummeted (below the
US in most instances).

So I am not sure that it is the cost, just rather a re-orientation of values
that has been slowly taking place with the advent of birth control, plentiful
food, etc. Human beings were all about the next generation for survival
reasons by genetic design even if they didn't want to be.

~~~
magduf
Subsidized day care and paid parental leave doesn't make up for just how much
work it is to raise a child in modern times (unlike the old days where you
just hoped they survived the first few years, and pretty quickly didn't bother
investing much more work into them and left them to fend for themselves).

Before the "nuclear family" became a thing, people lived with their extended
relatives, and raising children wasn't as much work.

~~~
hedora
Raising kids is a ton of work, but that doesn’t change the fact that only 30%
of US households can afford daycare:

[https://www.care.com/c/stories/2423/how-much-does-child-
care...](https://www.care.com/c/stories/2423/how-much-does-child-care-cost/)

------
pbuzbee
My personal view is that the birthrate in America has dropped because the
amount of resources necessary to raise a kid continues to increase. The
expectations of what it means to "raise a kid" continue to increase.

Financially, this means providing for them into their mid-20s, often at least
through (and including) college. The costs of everything along the way --
housing, clothing, food, education -- continues to grow and outpace income
growth.

The other big resource is time. You're expected now to enroll your children in
a variety of activities and shuttle them around, rather than give them
unstructured time to roam. Families now are more disconnected from their
extended families and their communities, so it's harder to get help here. It's
up to the two parents (if they're still together) who only have so much time
to give.

Basically, the marginal cost of each kid continues to increase, so people have
fewer children.

I think another effect is the extension of many of life's milestones.
Establishing a career, getting married, etc continue to fall later and later,
leaving people less time to build and raise a family.

------
frankbreetz
Why are we acting like this is a bad thing? Not having a child is the single
greatest thing an individual can do to reduce their carbon footprint. World
economy based off of infinite growth is unsustainable. America can keep this
economic model for the time being by being accepting of immigrants, but
eventually, the birth rate of the entire world will be in decline and will
have to base an economy of a static world population, and one that will be
quite older than we are used to. Progress comes with its own challenges, doing
things to raise the birthrate are not the correct answer.

~~~
Damorian
Climate change is bad, because it could reduce the number of human lives.

Therefore, we will reduce the number of human lives to combat climate change.

~~~
AlexandrB
Climate change is bad because it could _catastrophically_ reduce the number of
human lives by killing a bunch of people through famine and disease.

That’s not at all the same thing as reducing birth rates - which is voluntary
and does not cause death and suffering.

~~~
raducu
Yes, but going from positive birth rates to negative could also have a
catastrophic effect on human civilization and send us back to a darkage just
when we were supposed to tackle global warming.

Maybe it won't be that bad, I've never ran the numbers, but intuition tells me
population reduction has never been good for human civilisation.

------
hi41
I am in constant fear of losing my job not being able to pay my mortgage and
becoming homeless. Why would anyone have babies under these circumstances?

~~~
saiya-jin
Why would you take a mortgage, probably the biggest investment in your life,
if you don't plan to have kids? Even in places where its actually cheaper to
pay mortgage compared to renting there are _so_ many negative aspects to
committing to strict payment regime for next 20+ years to a single place, that
it doesn't make any logical sense.

In no kids scenario is much better to rent, adapt your place of live to your
current situation/market/plans, when retiring just move someplace dirt cheap
and awesome.

If you have kids, its a huge value that you can pass to them, if done smartly
(if not, it will probably destroy offspring's relationships between them for
life).

~~~
toomuchtodo
If you have a mortgage, your rent payment is locked in. If you rent, you're
subject to annual increases in rent (which can be steep, and higher than
inflation).

There are many factors that determine if buying or renting is better for your
scenario. Below is a calculator the NY Times publishes which lets you adjust
variables to provide an answer based on inputs.

[http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/upshot/buy-rent-
calc...](http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/upshot/buy-rent-
calculator.html?_r=1) (NY Times: Is It Better to Rent or Buy?)

------
rofo1
I can't help but feel that general decadence in the last ~40-50 years
influenced this.

Other reasons, as far as I can see are:

The destruction of the concept of (nuclear) family. The abject sexual
promiscuity and the normalization of it.

The decadence of the Western civilization and the disregard of the values
congruent with Christianity resulted in the state that we are in now.

We see the moral values (or worse, the 10 commandments) as something that's
archaic, that has no place in a "modern" society and we absolutely tolerate
everything and we are afraid of shaming things that _should_ be shamed (based
on the effects they produce).

I ask myself, is there some behavior or value that we are allowed to judge
people on?

Who do we think we are that we normalize every single demented thing, and
additionally we think we have progressed our civilization because of it?

Don't we study history?

(edited - removed a quote that I mistakenly attributed to Aristotle)

~~~
c0nducktr
I don't believe that quote is anything Aristotle said.

~~~
rofo1
Oh, that's interesting! I've read it somewhere attributed to Aristotle for
sure!

Anyways, the point stands - should we tolerate everything, at all cases,
always? Doesn't sound right to me

------
paul7986
I wonder if and how much modern dating(apps) in the US has contributed to
this?

------
thorgilbjornson
This subject always confused me. On one hand, we're told to work to continue
this trend in the interest of reducing pollution and carbon footprint and
quell the dangers of overpopulation. On the other hand, we're told that
shrinking birthrates are a problem, and that we must import workers from
overseas to make up what we're losing. And, by crazy coincidence, doing so
would be great for massive corporations.

------
Symmetry
Because personality is somewhat heritable and because some personality traits,
such as Agreeableness, tend to cause people to want more kids we should expect
that this trend will reverse itself given enough time.

[http://hopefullyintersting.blogspot.com/2018/05/falling-
fert...](http://hopefullyintersting.blogspot.com/2018/05/falling-fertility-
rates-shouldnt-be.html)

------
alunchbox
But is that a bad thing? and I'm not just speaking about America, the entire
world I believe there's a decline in Japan's & China's birth rate as well.

~~~
rpiguy
From an ecological perspective not a bad thing. From a national economy
perspective, it is a very bad thing for two reasons.

Capitalism requires an expansion of consumption to grow. Even in a
recession/depression the old natural birth rate guaranteed that there would be
a larger body of workers and consumers to grow the economy when you came out
of it.

Secondly, the elderly require more care (Social Security, Medicare) while also
paying lower taxes mostly because of lower earnings. Our social support
systems are funded primarily on the assumption that there will always be more
young people than old paying into the system to support it.

Once countries stop growing in population the weight of the old really takes
its toll on growth.

Export oriented countries can get away with it for a little longer because the
populations growing in other countries will support their economies for a
while. Japan would otherwise have collapsed by now under the weight of a
shrinking population.

Aside from a small core of anti-immigration extremists in the US, most people
on the right and left, including our very Orange President, are for legal
immigration, which is the best way to stave off population decline.

~~~
douglaswlance
You're assuming that lowering human population would coincide with a lowering
of growth.

The labor market is increasingly becoming machine-based, rather than human-
based. As the number of humans drops, the number of machines grows.

We need fewer humans to maintain growth, so dropping birth rates could be a
good thing, since machines require less maintenance than humans.

~~~
rpiguy
Interesting theory, but in order for economic growth to occur someone has to
be there to buy the goods that these machines will be producing. Fewer humans
alive to buy goods with fewer jobs equals a shrinking economy, regardless of
how the goods are produced.

At that point we would probably start looking at other economic systems
anyway.

~~~
douglaswlance
That assumes machines will not consume goods.

