One of the things that drives economic growth - which is required under capitalism - is the growth of families. Lots of things anticipate having more people alive in the future to drive demand and provide labor. If that’s not going to be the case, what will happen to companies that demand constant growth?
Even if it’s just infant and child care that level off, that’s a huge part of our economy not growing. And our economy requires growth.
I don’t think this is good or bad. If it’s voluntary, fine. We’re not in some Children of Men style crisis just because people are having fewer kids, the human race will survive for a long time at 1.7 kids per woman or whatever, and rates will not be the same in 500 years for all sorts of reasons.
The concern is that it’s something like microplastics or birth control washing into waterways causing lesser fertility, but if it’s something like that we can focus on fixing that specifically and rates will go back up.
It’s been observed for something like 70 years, across all sorts of other economic trends. I’ve heard before that the peak human population is expected to be about 11 billion and change, in a century or so, and then it will likely just hang there.
I personally love my kid. I was so excited to be a parent. I am so surprised everyone is kind of stuck in that 18-29 mindset of “I am just not ready to be a parent”
Birth rates in the future won’t be too much of a worry mind you. Robots and humans that don’t age will make up the bulk of the workforce. The economy will just tank because there wont be a trillion people buying things.
Current metrics of the economy will show that it tanks. But we have known for ages that these metrics are at best wrong and at worst devastating to the planet and people on it - since leaders and policy-makers use them to allocate resources in ways that show up-and-to-the-right graphs.
It first occurred to me when hearing about Japan’s “lost decade”. Japan is by no means perfect, but when you visit you find a place where people have their material and social needs taken care of. If you read economists though you would think that the country was doomed.
Similarly after the housing bubble burst we had job losses and other problems in Holland the same as in other places. But looking at the metrics of wealth per capita, we basically were back in the same place as less than a decade before. Was life so horrible in 2004 that this was a huge tragedy? If you are insisting on constant improvement by some arbitrary measurement, then yes.
For me the biggest example was COVID-19. We showed that if it was important that we could have a way of life with drastically less environmental impact to the planet. We surely don’t want to live exactly like that, but we could make radical changes to have a better world for ourselves and our children (yes, even with drastically lower birthrates there will still be people on the future earth).
Luckily there are rebels in economics fighting against the orthodoxy. If you want to feel a bit of hope (mixed with a large dose of pragmatism) you can check out the Economics for Rebels podcast.
Why would I want to bring another human being into this world? The planet is melting, greed is at insane levels, the future looks bleak. I don’t want my children to suffer and get thrown through the machine.
It doesn’t add anything meaningful to the discussion. Basically everyone is aware of those arguments. The top level comment states some facts (e.g. climate change), but does not offer deeper insight or start a discussion. Nothing was gained from reading that comment, so it may as well not have been written in the first place.
In order to turn it into a meaningful contribution the author of said comment should have added something more.
For example by going into how they feel those facts are insurmountable and therefore how they see the demographic changes as inevitable and what sort of effects this will have on their personal life/on their community/on their country. This can then lead to a discussion about the severity of the effects and people can contribute what they think possible solutions are.
Or for another example, one could use these effects on demographic change as a basis to start a discussion about one of the contributing factors. i.e. take the difficulties that arise from lower birthrates as an argument for better family oriented policies/for more climate action/against bodily autonomy (that one would certainly start a fierce discussion, lol)
I’m glad my parents didn’t think like that. I vastly prefer non-optimal life to not existing at all.
I’m also not going to have kids but I do it because of me, not because of them. I don’t understand people who think they are so wise that they can make this judgement for others.
I’m glad my parents didn’t think like that. I vastly prefer non-optimal life to not existing at all.
Glad you were fortunate enough for this to be the case. It’s not the case for everyone.
I don’t understand people who think they are so wise that they can make this judgement for others.
Funny you’d say that, since you’re the only one here judging others for their personal choices.
My partner and I are content with our choice. We would not be able to give a child the life they deserve, nor will the world give that to them. Sure, maybe in another world we’d be willing. But now? Not for us.
Like it or not, by making that choice for yourself you are deciding to not bring them into the world, same as us. The outcome is the same.
Intentionally driving over someone and accidently doing so both have the same result but I don’t think you would claim that there is no difference. Intentions matter even if the outcome is the same. I’m not judging your choices but your reasoning.
In my opinion this applies to having children aswell. No one is under any obligation to have kids and there are plenty of valid reasons not to do so and this can be anything from financial, time saving or just personal preference. However, to me it’s hypocritical to justify not having children by essentially claiming that their life wouldn’t be worth living but at the same time you yourself continue your existence here. You basically set standards and then don’t apply them to yourself.
Infant mortality used to be insanely high before modern healthcare and medicine. There was no social safety nets expect for the community around you. There was no gurantees about access to food and clean water not to even mention education. Looking at virtually any metric life has never been better and yet people say “it’s not worth bringing children into this world”. I’m sorry but to me that kind of thinking is just insanely cynical and misjudged.
However, to me it’s hypocritical to justify not having children by essentially claiming that their life wouldn’t be worth living but at the same time you yourself continue your existence here.
I don’t think it’s hypocritical. To create new life and to sustain life are two different things. While there’s a certain relevance, the act of creating life has more to it than simply sustaining life. Sustaining maintains the status quo which while not ideal, the opposite also means ending a life which has far greater implications that are closer to ending life.
It’s not hypocritical to think that bringing someone to life might be a net negative and also agree that to stop continue living would result I’m a net negative because of reasons like how there’s people who are reliant on them.
Just to add to your point: the only reason I’m sustaining my life is because other people depend on me, not because my current life is really worth living for its own sake.
From subjective experience theres no difference. The moment you cease to exists you could just as well have never existed.
Also not existing is not something you do. Choosing to prevent something for existing that otherwise would have is. We’re however getting quite far from my original argument here which is that not making children because you think the world is an awful place and life is not worth living is, in my opinion, a bad reason.
I think it’s mostly up to the reader at what tone they’re going to intrepret my writing. I don’t notice such color in that. Then again I’m probably autistic so what do I know.
13.8 billion years of nothing untill a bundle of stardust on a random planet called earth combined in such a way that it suddenly became aware of its own existance. To our current knowledge that is about the most complex thing that has ever happened in the universe.
Yeah, I wont be there to experience my non-existence after I’m gone, but I’m more than happy to be here now.
My wife and I work a total of 4 main jobs. I think we had 10+ total forms of income for 2023.I try to get money on the side too. I can’t afford a kid. Even if I could, what time would I have to be a parent?
My in laws want us to pop out kids. We live in a 1br place. And we are just barely keeping our heads above water. They will say stuff like “well if you wait for a perfect time there will never be one,” or saying it’s our duty to let them have grandkids.
We both are medical caregivers for the same disabled couple. Our main full time jobs are a data center analyst and college cafeteria work. We also both collected from unemployment. I have some stocks and CDs that have helped a bunch to keep afloat. I do some work on the side here as well.
Not to invalidate the hard work, but aren’t data center analysts pretty well compensated? I would think that would cover a 1b place pretty effectively and then the other sources of income would be gravy. Maybe I’m over-estimating the salary for the field. I am ignorant, I must admit.
Our HR has absolutely no clue what we do and for years thought we were a branch of their help desk. So, currently management is trying to fix that. I started at this place a year ago. Great people, just underpaid. We hopefully should get that worked out here in the next few weeks.
It also depends on where they live and if they have student loans. For example the comfortable living salary in Boston has passed 80k. Low level analysts even here can still be making 80-90. Enough for an apartment, but not to add kids to the picture. Things get even weirder if you are mostly equity compensated at a startup or something like that (so your total comp is not actually spendable and you have a higher tax burden) which is pretty common in tech roles around here. This couple may be the textbook example of HENRYs, the modern DINK. High Earners, But Not Rich Yet. If they dont have kids they might retire upper middle class or wealthy. If they do they’ll stay in their current wealth class or become poorer.
A new report from SmartAsset says a single person in the Boston-Cambridge-Newton metro area has to pull in a salary of almost $80,000 a year to “live comfortably.” The study is based on a theoretical budget where a person spends half their income on needs, 30% on “wants” and the rest on savings or repaying debt.
“A single person needs to earn $78,752 after taxes in order to cover basic living expenses ($39,376) and still devote half of their earnings to wants and saving/debt,” the report for Boston states. “Following the 50/30/20 budget, a person living comfortably would allocate $23,626 for discretionary spending and $15,750 to savings or debt payments.”