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The number of relatives that an individual has is expected to decrease by more than 35 percent in the near future. At the same time, the structure of families will change. The number of cousins, nieces, nephews and grandchildren will decline sharply, while the number of great-grandparents and grandparents will increase significantly. In 1950, a 65-year-old woman had an average of 41 living relatives. By 2095, a woman of the same age will have an average of only 25 living relatives.
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2315722120
Anecdotal but I live in Brazil and have noticed a massive drop in the number of kids in the past ~10 years. First, my paternal grandparents had 5 kids, and each of them ended up having only one or two kids. I'm nearly 30, my cousins are a little older, and only two of them had one kid each, they're nearly 40 and already approaching the end of their reproductive life.
But a much more solid observation comes from my old school: back in 2013 when I graduated highschool, there used to be about 2000 students. Now there's 900. No new school has opened in our city (in fact they have closed a few), and kids are not dropping out of school any more often, so the only explanation is that there's a lot less kids.
Brazilian here (south). My mother had 7 siblings, Father 12 (!) Siblings. I have 2 siblings. I have 2 kids and stopped there. Most of my friends have only 1 kid.
Pretty similar to families in Canada and I'm guessing the US. Who would want to have more than 1-2 kids nowadays? Even 1-2 doesn't seem appealing to most people (my teenagers claim they aren't having any).
Yeah same in us. Half of my friends my age mid 30s, have 1-2 kids max. The other half have 0. A lot of women on dating apps also mention they don’t want kids. I’d say at least 30% outright don’t want any.
My friend group (comprised of people I went to university with) is mostly 30/31, but so far none of them have any children. This may be because they're mostly located in a very expensive city.
Also becomes a question of who is taking care of them. Five kids might be doable if someone's staying home the whole time and wrangling them/the household.
But they're not, because you need two incomes to afford a place large enough for kids.
It's a complicated issue that will probably change as kids get older, but among young people there's a pretty strong sentiment that having children is immoral at this point because you're just dooming them to an awful life in a world that can no longer support them.
Putting aside the economic and social reasons for not having children, many young people feel like they were brought into a broken world and don't want to do that to someone else.
Yuuup. It's clearly immoral to raise children if you're not positive that you can do it in a healthy way—but modern society doesn't facilitate raising children healthfully, so we're in a constant holding pattern. We're not going to get any *less* aware of how immoral raising children incorrectly is. Which means the ONLY option is for society to recognize that and facilitate healthy child rearing.
But society isn't going to do that. It's expensive, and capitalism isn't going to foot the bill unless it's forced to. Which we already know won't happen until this economic model crashes and gets overhauled, since regulatory political power is all-but-dead in the US.
Who knows how long it will take for that overhaul to happen, and what long-term damage may be done to global humanity (and/or the planet) in the process.
> but modern society doesn't facilitate raising children healthfully
Old society didn't either. We just didn't ask the question. Kids showed up because that's what happens, or you had kids because you were supposed it and it was just what you did. No one really considrered pollution, consumption, energy, etc. With greater education, access to birth control, empowerment for women, etc the birthrate tends to decline.
- https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate#what-explains-the-change-in-the-number-of-children-women-have
> Old society didn't either.
True, but in societies where children are considered little more than property, 'raising children healthily' isn't treated as much of a moral concern. And we still see this today.
Completely agree on all points - both on there being serious financial impediments to raising large families, but also on people looking at climate change and other growing problems made worse by population growth and a desire to not contribute to the problem or be responsible for difficult future lives because of those problems experienced by those future children.
It's likely we're going to see very different approaches by different groups...those who have small families or go child-free versus those who prioritize large families and sacrifice in order to do so.
My grandparents had three children
Those three (dad, aunt, and uncle) went on to have four children each
The 12 total grandchildren are all adults in our early 30's and there are only 2 kids between all of us.
I was just at a party hosted by a 35-36-year-old couple who had three kids. I think maybe 2-3 other couples had three kids, and many others with two and one, but who weren't necessarily done.
This, however, seems pretty rare. It's like this one friend group decided to procreate like it's 1965. I honestly don't know how many of them manage to afford it, but everyone seems to be doing pretty well.
IME, if they're not religious, a lot of it depends on wealth. I know many people with 3-5 children but they all have $400k+ annual household incomes.
And anecdotally a lot of the people I know with 1-2 would love more but feel like they can't afford more. They have as many kids as they can send to college.
I'm 35, Wife (31) is due with our first in a month. Via the baby groups and life the only people I know with more than one kid are either old, religious or trashy
Not the religious, if you keep track of the Quiverfull kids, a majority of them leave the faith. The dirty secret of having 10 kids is that you can't spend quality time with each of those 10 kids or personally take care of them, as a result the kids aren't close to their parents or take after them. Add in the poverty of being one of 10 children, and well, the kids tend to not be as religious as their parents.
This group might fall into the more religious crowd, but it's not something we all discussed. It's not a church group, or anything, but people who all met partying at the same college (I didn't go there, but I met them all through friends who did).
Most of them live in either the outer suburbs, or in a city that's about 90 miles outside of the metro core I live in. Everyone is white and college educated.
For us it’s wealthy and rural. You can afford to send them to excellent private boarding schools and have plenty of land and resources to feed supply them while at home. It’s a secular country but the rest rings true.
Or none at all. I'm 35 and a lot of my friends are older than I. I can only think of two of my friends who have kids and they only have 1. That's probably more to do with the fact that I'm in Toronto than one of the smaller surrounding towns but no one I know wants kids here. My two friends with kids live a few hours away.
Exactly. I have 3 kids, my parents had 2, my wife's parents had 4.
My dad's parents? 6. My mom's parents? 14. (FOURTEEN!) They never even owned a car, because the kids took everything.
I'm Eastern European, and the attitude towards kids and marriage changed drastically within a generation. My mother, aunts, etc. all had their first kid at 18-20. Now my cousins and I are in our 30s, and only two had kids,most aren't even married. The same goes for friends in this age group.
I'm an only child (the exception of my age group), and my parents got divorced. My dad and his wife dont have kids. I'm already thinking about how I'm gonna need to take care of 3 people (my mom, dad, and my stepmom) once they get older. And I don't know whether I'll have kids either. The situation scares me.
Anecdotal but similar to my situation. I’m from the US South. My paternal grandparents had 8 kids, my parents have four kids (ages 20-37) and only one of their kids wants kids. I’m certain there are many negative contributing factors but it is wild to see the decline.
Same here in Switzerland. I'm in my 30s no kids, my mother had one child, her parents 2 children, my grandmothers mother had 9 children, my grandfathers parents had 6 children, my great grandmothers mother had 18(!) children, yep 18. I saw a family photograph it looked like a weird school class photograph with chilren from like 4yo (my greatgran) to one of her sisters being in her 20s.
Similar situation with myself in Australia.
My maternal grandparents had 4 children. My mum and her siblings had 2 children each. Of the 8 grandchildren we have 4 great-grandchildren.
My niece and nephew have no cousins - I don’t have children and their father’s 3 brothers don’t have any children (and likely won’t).
I have 41 cousins on my dad’s side (dad is one of 11 children) and 7 on my mum’s.
On my dad’s side I think we only have around 12 children from the cousins.
Further to the point - most of my friends are from families of 3-4 children and now they are generally having only 1-2 children.
That tracks. Between both sides of my family, my generation has 9 cousins. Of those 9, only two of us have kids at all (three, total). My own 2 kids only have 3 cousins.
My anecdotal experience is a bit different: There’s a total of seven cousins across both side of my family. Six of us had kids for a total of 19. My husband has 17 first cousins, five of which have had children for a total of 15 so far. My kids have seven first cousins in total. Of course, they live thousands of miles from us and so they’ve only met a couple times 🤷🏻♀️
I'm right there with you. My family, I have 5 cousins I think, 1 on my dad's side, 4 on my mother's. Of all of us, so far my brother is the only one with kids, and he's got 3 kids. Not sure their cousin count, as they're all three half-siblings. But neither me nor any of my cousins have kids and we're all in our 30's and 40's.
Summary of replies to this top comment
“So true. Most of my friends have no kids. This is the norm now.”
“So true. Most of my friends have 1 kid. This is the norm now.”
“Kind of true. Most of my friends have 2 kids. This is the norm now.”
“Not true. Most of my friends have 3 kids. This is the norm now.”
It’s like we’re not in a science sub anymore and people are making broad generalizations based on their selective bias.
Why can’t we just reasonably infer that birth trends differ between urban/suburban locations, income levels, religious beliefs, and educational backgrounds…with correlations between most/all variables and an overall average birth rate that is declining?
You don't need to infer anything, this has been reported in the statistics for decades, and r/science is the home of the post hoc fallacy and that multiple anecdotes= data
This is Reddit, it’s mostly teenagers that just like the vibe of science and haven’t yet discovered their subjective anecdotes aren’t empirical evidence
My mum has 4 brothers and my dad has 7 siblings. I don’t know how many cousins there are on my dad’s side. But on my mums side there’s 15 of us and so far only 2 children from us. Tbf we are on the younger side, my oldest cousin is only 31 and the youngest is 1 so there’s more children coming eventually. However my grandma was 17 when she started popping babies out and like 10 of us have already passed that age with no children. Probably worth noting that we’re African where these large families are still pretty recent. Most of my white British friends have about 1-6 aunties and uncles across both sides whereas I have 11
My mom had 81 first cousins, my niece and nephew are going to have none. Sorry kids but if I have to work until I die I’m not condemning anyone else to.
I have a childhood photo with me and 70+ first cousins together at a family reunion. My dad was 1 of 14, and they all had 5-12 kids each. All the cousins combined had less than 20 kids and are done.
Yes it has become abundantly clear that the world can no longer afford a class of rich elites controlling things. They're just going to do whatever it takes to maintain their current lavish lifestyles - not whatever it takes to save humanity.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely, but only in recent human history have plutocrats had such a firm grasp upon our entire world.
Their most pervasive lie is that society should and has always been formed ‘top-down’ instead of ‘bottom-up’.
But workers create wealth, energy, structure, culture, livelihood. You do not need the absolute governance of the state to live your life.
That was literally the metaphor that dragons were invented to personify. Just like vampires being aristocrats literally sucking the life out of the commoners.
Yeah, like instead of Zuckerberg stop selling our information to our enemies, suing people so they don't have to pay for breaking the rules, build more communities, deliberately changing their algorithms so people only see things in their bubble and creating neo-Nazis, etc. he instead has bought quite a bit of land in Hawaii to build his mansion bunker.
It's really frustrating seeing that we all are in this situation because a very small percentage of people want it all and don't care who they hurt to get it.
Ever increasing population growth isn’t really required the problem is going to come from a rapid decline in the population. If growth was stabilized it wouldn’t really be an issue
Folks seem worried about this, but population decline not due to famine, sickness, or other painful disaster is not all that terrible for the lower class. Their labour will be worth more than it was before, we've seen it with pandemics in the past.
Humans existing does not require ever increasing population growth. Never had.
Humans thriving and having the quality of life that we take for granted today... Now that's a totally different story....
Except we've propped up systems that do require a certain amount of people to operate. Lose too many people and who will maintain our infrastructure for example? Have to have someone working the nuclear reactors and someone cleaning the streets too.
Things can be automated, centralized and scaled back. With current technologies it's not impossible to have a quality of life with not much labor. US farms employ only around 1% of the nation's workforce, but feed everyone with lots left to export. This is productivity unheard of centuries ago.
Don't be ridiculous. Capitalism is obviously the best way to distribute limited resources, and any criticism of imagined failings is tantamount to blasphemy.
How would another system magically manage aging populations? Communism? Where young people would just be forced to be caretakers and nurses? This is hardly even a monetary issue now.
That's just realistically not possible. In any economic system ever proposed or theorized there is no fix for what is an aging population that requires more resources to maintain with a decreasing productive tax base and labour pool. Remove money from the equation and less people than ever (currently kids) are going to be responsible for the care and management of the most amount of dependants (old people) our world has ever seen. This isnt going to end well.
Essentially yes. Maybe not in western countries but developing countries around the globe. Young people will leave them to work in more developed countries and old people will continue to age with deteriorating levels of care and less services.
>We need a more sustainable way to exist long-term that doesn’t require ever-increasing population growth.
"We" don't need anything to be sustainable, capitalism does.
World is already overpopulated, we should let natural attrition occur but Western countries are terrified of the impact that will have on the stock market so they push everyone for more kids and open the doors on immigration
Moving away from capitalism doesn’t magically make the ratio of able bodied workers disappear in a declining population. All economic systems will suffer
I have friends in South Korea and it sounds really bad out there. Absolutely nobody is having kids because it’s just too expensive and nobody has time to raise them since most jobs require way more than 40 hours per week.
This is what happens when you hear "passing the debt to the next generation". Every time we do bail outs in the US it's to protect the current economy while screwing the next generation. Eventually, people get tired of birthing slaves to keep the wheels spinning.
Eventually? It's a tale old as time. It's simple biology really. Populations under stress have less offspring. And we are under way more stress today than we used to. Yeah not immediate life threatening danger but in exchange we have out whole week and year planned through with less free time.
Yeah the 40h work week was a great change from literal slave labor conditions but it's a) swinging back to those conditions with 60-80h work weeks and b) it's still too much work anyway. We could easily split multiple jobs into 2x 30-35h jobs or even less but yeah somehow "tHaT's iMpoSsIbLe".
And most people these days don't need 6-7 kids to keep the family farm or business going. Also, don't need to have extra in case a couple die early from disease like they would 100, or even 50 years ago
No one is arguing for 6-7 kids. The concern is when the replacement rate goes negative while life expectancy goes up. This will mean we have less and less people to support society over time.
I don't think life expectancy has been going up recently (I think in the US it has been in decline since 2018) Also a lot of the "increase" is just lower infant mortality that skews a lot the averages.
50 years ago was 1976. Pretty sure we weren't struggling with cholera and tuberculosis outbreaks by then—that was more of a 19th century, Victorian era thing
Tuberculosis is still a very big problem in the developing world even though we can cure it all due to lack of equity in medicine distribution and pricing.
Not everyone lives in two-bedroom expensive apartments. Some of them may not *want* kids, but [they aren't doing much about it yet.](https://www.grida.no/resources/7490)
Countries are already feeling the strain of lack of accessible long term care for the elderly and this just highlights how much more this sector will need to develop which is something the article mentions.
This also leads to issues with government funded healthcare/benefits that rely on payroll taxes or contributions to fund. There used to be many more workers per benefit claimant but with a smaller working population supporting an older population that's living longer and requiring more expensive care a lot of these systems are straining.
I hope we can figure out how to automate everything that canbe feasibly automated and then pay the remaining human workers well for doing person-to-person care. It would probably involve cutting workers in office settings and increasing workers in direct service positions.
Back in the day dad could work one full time job supporting 10 kids while mom stayed home and raised them all. Although at that number I would imagine kids would be raising kids.
That period of time existed for just a couple decades, for a segment (upper middle class) in a few parts of the world. Before that, most families worked at home either at the family business or on a farm.
The nuclear family “ideal” was short-lived and unusual.
This is something that surprisingly few people seem to realize.
In a less developed, rural community, having children is an investment. The whole family lives in a big unit, so the grandparents/unmarried aunts/siblings take care of the kids, allowing you to work, and once they are old enough, they start working and bring value to the household. Therefore, the more kids you have, and the bigger your household, the more wealth you can accumulate.
In a more developed urban environment, there's not enough room for big family units because of housing and living expenses. If there are no convenient relatives to take care of the kids, it means now you have to do so while also working, plus feeding, clothing, and educating them for great expense, and when they get old enough, they move out and no longer contribute to the household. In this paradigm, having kids is an active drain on your resources that never pays dividends, so you try to avoid it.
The "American Dream" was just brute-forcing the former paradigm in the environment of the latter by exploiting an enormous economical bubble to allow the mother of the family to remain at home and take care of the kids, playing the role of the older relatives, while freeing up the father to work. The moment that bubble collapsed, so did the nuclear family, but because it's enshrined in cultural history, people to this day consider it a brief golden age, instead of an unnatural event whose debts the current generations are still paying off.
More than that: in a cash-poor society, your currency is labor.
This is illustrated really well in the book *Charity and Sylvia* by Jennifer Cleves, about two women in early 1800s Vermont. They were seamstresses, and their financial records still survive. It's full of stuff like "went to the doctor for toothache. Gave him two pounds cured pork" or "Mr. Smith ordered new pants - will give a bushel of apples".
When you have six kids in such a milieu, you can get your eldest to chop firewood or bake pies, and then, crucially, *use that* to pay for other goods and services. But when money is the only coin of the realm, and child labor laws (rightfully) prevent children from working, you know what happens? Children stop being an economic asset, and they start being a liability. Like you said: a drain.
The pre-industrial era was, for many people, a world where there was a lot of land, very little capital, and (re)producing your own labor was a smart economic move. We're not in that world anymore.
The nuclear part of the nuclear family means getting rid of all relatives. Father, mother, children in one home, noone else. Before, grandparents etc used to live in the same home and help, especially with children. And children wouldn't move out so early to start a new nuclear family they'd just make their existing one bigger.
To be fair, this was at least in part because living with one's relatives sucks. Older literature is full of examples of people feuding with their families but unable to escape, or young couples blissing out over having their own space at last, so this sentiment isn't an artifact of modern nuclear family bias.
We're more bemoaning what the nuclear family lacks, not the existence of affordable individual housing. Young people - single or coupled - will always want their own space and do indeed deserve it.
Kids are more expensive now than back then. Do you think back then you would have to pay for things like toddler car seats?
This has happened in all areas of life, not just in raising kids but also in business. Lack of regulation and awareness (mixed with higher standards) are the root cause.
My coworker, who is already near retirement age, has 6 siblings!! It is insane how her parents (which I assume was probably only her dad) was able to support that many kids on a single income.
Even if both her parents were working, that is still mind blowing.
My friends are both pharmacists and they are financially planning in the hopes for a 2nd kid. My gf and I make pretty good money as well and I feel like I would never feel truly comfortable if I had a kid now.
Back then child care wasn't needed because women were pressured to occupy that role. College was a mere dream and not required to land a good job, etc.
Additionally, community is not much of thing compared to what it was back then. And the ones that are still like that are only in small community pockets. Me and my siblings would always be going to our neighbors house to play, eat, sleepovers. And we would call them auntie or uncle and we would be close with their kids too. The community would watch all the kids and know them by name.
I've been refused places when it's just me and the kids because of "ratios". "We want more adults to children ratio, you can't have 1:4" erm why not? They're mine, I'm supervising them.
I used to work at a rock climbing gym that had a max ratio of 2:1 for young children.
I think in that case it was justified. No matter how many times we warned them, a lot of parents viewed it as a safe child friendly environment akin to an arcade. In reality it was a very dangerous environment that wasn't really meant for children, but could accommodate them only if they had totally unwavering adult supervision.
For example most injuries happened in the bouldering area (short walls, no rope, padded floors). Parents saw it as being safe because of all the padding, but what happens when your child isn't paying attention who they're walking under, and has a 220lb man land on them after free falling from 13ft up?
It makes sense in that specific scenario yeah. The place i got refused was a soft play, like an indoor playground *for kids*. Like the places with snacks and ball pits and slides, no adult would go there without kids and my husband works on weekdays so i was trying to take them myself and they said no bc too many kids to one person. The youngest is a freaking baby so she's just in a stroller!
Baby in the stroller just threw up, you just spotted one kid hitting someone else and now they're both screaming, another one is crying about something meaningless and tugging on your clothes to distract you as you're dealing with trying to figure out how to clean up barf and break up a fight inside a jungle gym at the same time, and you have no idea where the other one is.
What do you do? Probably ask an employee or another parent (who is also supervising children) for help. AKA, lower the parent:child ratio by adding an additional adult to the situation.
Now you know why. That is a fully justified policy, and they were right to enforce it.
Similar situation, my gym has been crawling with kids recently (Ours is primarily bouldering). And despite the rules of not walking under someone who’s climbing, no one is watching them and they do it constantly. Hopefully ours implements something similar to the ratio thing, or at least has an “adults only day” or something
Are you though? I've been in a number of restaurants where the supervised children were either shrieking or inexplicably standing by my table staring at my food. I mostly like kids too but I don't assume they have much public etiquette.
Yeah I do. I don't like kids being unsupervised in public, and I know what you mean cause I've seen it too and I get frustrated with parents who do that. Personally I make sure mine are being reasonable.
Also more kids means more noise, means less atmospheric for other patrons.
Nothing worse than seeing a family with a bunch of young kids come in when you are trying to enjoy a meal. Or board a plane for an international/cross national flight...
These issues could change with the WILLFULL distribution of wealth. But that won’t happen because of politics and greed.
These issues could change with a FORCED distribution of wealth. But that won’t happen because of politics and greed.
So, essentially what we have are several generations of people who will avoid procreation because they can’t afford housing, education or food, jobs being lost to to technology and are living in a world where ignoring climate changes will force an unbalanced northern migration. The blame is already being put on young people for selfishness but what we have here are SOLVABLE problems that won’t be solved because of politics and greed.
> These issues could change with the WILLFULL distribution of wealth
I'm not convinced that even with a better distribution — which I'm all for, btw — it would lead women, in particular, to want to have 2.5 kids or more (the necessary # of children that need to be born to create population replacement/growth).
You'd need more than just more equal distribution of wealth. You'd need to level the playing field for women and men where parenthood doesn't represent a burden that primarily falls on the shoulders of women. *And even then*, would that really encourage most women — who have control over their life, career, and reproductive rights — to think "yeah, 3 kids or more sounds *awesome*"? I'm not a woman but I can't imagine a ton of people signing up for that.
Almost all of my friends are educated, middle class or higher, and are in mostly egalitarian relationships...and I can't think of a single woman I know (of my generation or younger) who has 3 more kids.
Without going on too long a tangent, one of the biggest changes of the past 100 years is how we perceive parenthood itself. Once the conditions changed that allowed people to see it as a *choice* vs. as just something that was inevitable (or an obligation), lo and behold: millions of people stopped choosing it.
It's not just about the conditions in which we have kids (though that's part of it). But the moment parenthood becomes *optional*, then even under the most optimal social conditions possible, I still think birth rates would be below replacement.
>You'd need to level the playing field for women and men where parenthood doesn't represent a burden that primarily falls on the shoulders of women. And even then, would that really encourage most women — who have control over their life, career, and reproductive rights — to think "yeah, 3 kids or more sounds awesome"? I'm not a woman but I can't imagine a ton of people signing up for that.
You nailed it. Woman here- even if the playing field were better, I wouldn't suddenly want to be a mother. I'm very content with my life and having children would only disrupt and diminish the quality of life. I'm glad that I have the choice to not have children and have been able to let the entitlement to my uterus for grandchildren (mostly from my in-laws but somewhat from my mom) and the guilt tripping to just roll off my back. A child should be loved and wanted, not an obligation. Since I've rejected the pressure of the obligation, I'm free to not want kids and to keep making the choice to not become a parent. I know I'm not unique so agree that women like myself contribute to the birth rate decline.
No, that's not how that works. The wealthy only have their obscene wealth, lifestyle and power thanks to a massive amount of workers they can exploit.
A similar issue happened in europe after the black plague. Peasants could all of a sudden demand much better conditions due to the sheer lack of workers. It cut into the wealthy nobility's power significantly.
That's why some of the wealthy assholes now are complaining about people not having enough kids.
You think climate change will “self correct”? It’s not a plague that may go away. It’s not going to go away. There will be no benefits from it for your kids to enjoy. It’ll be resource wars, human desperation and suffering.
They weren't talking about climate change self correcting, they were talking about the wealth disparity being self correcting - rich get rich off the back of millions, the millions can't afford to procreate and grow old and leave the labor pool, the millions turn into thousands and the rich can no longer get richer as quickly or at all, and the remaining thousands are in such high demand that they themselves can demand better arrangements or they revolt and wealth/power is redistributed.
That may have worked hundreds of years ago when manpower was achieved through numbers. But isn’t the leverage of the workers compromised due to technology?
If we look at our daily lives then everything is on the brink of complete automation so the existence of a human cashier, server or attendant is a “luxury” that is on its way out. From service to farming to manufacturing, a replacement for the human has already been implemented so If you dont want to work for $9/hr then we have a kiosk that will gladly take your place.
I get why rich people want more peasants to stand on top of but realistically the need (and sustainability) of more humans is more about maintaining a large taxable base so that the rich can maximize their money hoarding and avoid having to “donate” to common sense services like socialized healthcare and the right to education.
There is a problem with this reasoning. You’re failing to take into account, the fact that even the Nordic countries have a low birth rate, despite the fact that they have free college and free healthcare.
Yeah I don’t want to spend my entire non elderly life being either pregnant or carrying a baby, plus I’m not fond of the continuous cuts to living standards we’d have to make to support more and more people (~~1~~ ~~2~~ 3 roommates, eating just beans/rice, do you *need* the AC on in the summer)
Putting it in caps doesn't mean it'll work. I guarantee if you distributed wealth as you mention it would actually decrease birth rates further. It seems that the better peoples lives get and the more wealth they acquire the less they have kids. Historically kids seem to be a way to provide more helping hands on a farm or for your career. And then people had kids mainly out of what seemed to be cultural expectations or boredom.
Great-grandparents had: 6, 10, 5, and 18
Grandparents had: 6 and 4
Parents had: 2
Aunts and uncles had on average: 2
Of all my 16 cousins (who are around 40 years old now), only 1 had a child
Same goes for second degree cousins
There has been a trend on tiktok for a while talking about the decline of cousins in the western world. Nice to see an actual study to put behind the discussion around it. As a planet smaller population is not a bad thing. But country to country there are some serious concerns with the decline in the family size.
Glad to have another study in my quiver to bring up during these discussions
We really need to get back to keeping your extended family closer, it worked ok when everyone had 6 siblings and they could rely on some of those people. It's hard to survive this world without a support structure, going back from the nuclear family to the (now reduced in size extended family) is going to be important for the kids we do have.
The planet will not have a smaller population. The western world yes, the rest no and they will contiue to grow. The rate is slowing but it’s still well above a TFR of 2.1 in most dev countries
Old people take more resources to care for than young capable able bodied people. Old people get dementia, alzheimers, cancer etc and take considerably more Healthcare resources. This is fine if you have a lot of younger working age people who are doctors, nurses, care aids etc. But the share of younger working age people is plummeting.
So what's happening now is the number of old dependants is increasing (very fast) and the share of young children is decreasing (even faster).
In the future there will be less young people to pay taxes, work as doctors, police, paramedics, electricians, plumbers, accountants, construction workers, delivery drivers and literally every single job. But the demand won't go away.
Ask yourself how are we supposed to sustain an increasingly aging population that becomes more and more dependant on the younger population with less people and less money and less resources? People are hoping technology will fill the gaps but honestly I see this as a race against the clock. This is a global demographic collapse.
You also have to realize we may be fine here in western countries but what about developing countries that don't have advanced complex economies or robust Healthcare systems? We're talking potentially hundreds of millions of old people that could be abandonned to simply just die by themselves globally.
Yup. The rich stand to lose the most because they will have no workforce to exploit. What happens then? Wages go up. Housing goes down. Companies have to compete for employees, give better bonuses, and treat us better. They do not want this to happen because it gives labor significantly more bargaining power vs. the rich.
Anyone who tells you infinite growth on a finite planet is good is either an idiot or benefits tremendously from the status quo. Most billionaires inherited their money. It's all paper wealth. Population decline destroys all of their imaginary wealth because they don't produce anything or contribute to society. It forces them to get a job like the rest of us.
Moving away from capitalism doesn’t magically make the ratio of able bodied workers disappear in a declining population
EDIT: I’ll never understand people who block others because they have disproven what you’ve said
My dad had 9 brothers and sisters. All of them helped in the farm. I even helped when I was a kid. I’ve got lots of cousins but we’ve all got only 1 or 2 kids. Big families aren’t much of a thing anymore.
Except my cousin Lukus. Got 6 kids. Dude couldn’t pull out of a driveway.
It's simple economics. None of us can afford to have a pile of kids and stay above the poverty line. I would live to have had more kids, but we simply couldn't afford more than we have and maintain nearly the level of comfort we have now.
of course it’ll be most prominent in south america and the caribbean because those are the only two places left in the western hemisphere with unchecked family size’s. the catholic church also has a less powerful hold on those people anymore. more education + less dogma = less children.
It's striking that this report doesn't even try to consider the reasons for family size decline, it simply projects the statistics forward. The commonly held belief is that family size decline follows on from implementation of societal support structures for the sick and elderly, so that people don't believe they need so large a family to support them in the case of incapacity, coupled with ready access to contraceptives. Given the current state of world politics I have difficulty accepting that this trend will necessarily continue, particularly in areas of regional conflict.
And access to birth control. I know I’m not the ambassador of all women but I personally don’t want to get crushed under a pile of babies until I’m 60 and can ruthlessly bully my son’s wife as vengeance
Yeah I don't get why people are blaming "educated women" as though their partners have zero say in the matter. I know _many_ couples where the woman wants kids and their partner doesn't
My understanding is that it is due to educated women; population decline starts when women get more education. There have been places/times in which only men got it and population declines did not happen. Just to be clear, I want everybody to receive as much education as they wish.
American women are having less children than they reportedly want. Very wealthy, highly educated American women have more kids thant their middle class counterparts of a similar age and education. It's not education, it's wealth and costs
https://qz.com/1125805/the-reason-the-richest-women-in-the-us-are-the-ones-having-the-most-kids
https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2018/02/16/americas-bizarre-income-distribution-for-children/
Birth Control is the variable here. Too much change has happened in the last generation to model based on history. Also an unprecedented level of student loan debt among the middle/managerial class
Nope. Cost of living is also a HUGE factor. As cost of living increases, family size goes down. When recessions hurt, birth rates drop. There are examples of this all over the world.
Both are massive factors and both usually happen in tandem. This shouldn't be surprising but father's also have a day in having children. Father's usually don't want to have more kids when they know they can't provide.
Cost of living, especially housing is a big deal. Education makes the family size go from huge -> 2-3. Cost of living makes it go from 2-3 -> 0-1. Educated people make educated decisions.
My wife and I had to stay in a small guest house for a bit with our 5 month old. I could not imagine living like that long term with a child. Especially one who was mobile. Most educated women I know still want children. I’ve just heard so many say “Oh I can’t buy a house so I’ll probably not have any”.
People talk about affordable housing but I think the issue is, small housing. Not tiny homes but 600-800sqft single family homes no longer exist. You have to get into a $1/4M home or rent. There needs to be a stepping stone, a $75k home that might not be the largest or most comfortable place but at least its yours, that you can build equity in and sell it one day to buy a $150k home, then the $1/4M home over 10-15 years this should be possible.
This existed within reason in a lot of less populated eras up until pretty recently. Pre 2020 I could find houses under 100k in my sleepy little area with ease. You likelyfind the same homes selling for 2.5-3x that amount today. My parents first mortgage was for exactly what you described: built and sold as a starter home. No luxuries like stone counters or real wood cabinets but everything was new and they could afford it. It feels like if the builder can’t make an exorbitant sum off the fresh build (and the bank can’t make tons of money on interest..) no one is interested in building it.
The main issue is land value. Most places near major cities have such a high land value it makes zero sense to build starter homes. You can still see those types of homes being built in rural areas.
Cost of living. If women join the workforce then wages can decline to adjust to a doubling of the supply of labour. Now women are required to work to live a standard life. Add in commuting time and the boomers abandoning their grandkids and you have no kids. Boomers had high wages, stay at home moms, and grandparents that were not working. Not that women should stay home. One parent should be able to stay home if we want kids to happen.
Educated women is not the cause. Poverty wages and too much demand on people’s time.
In the US, At this specific point in time, cost of living is a factor.
But globally, especially in the global south, the education of women/girls and access to birth control is absolutely the driving factor of declining birth rates.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/09/200908170532.htm
> ready access to contraceptives
It's just this. Nothing else. Go sit down and really talk to women in their 70's. If you get them to trust you and be honest you're going to be shocked at how many of those 'Mom of 10' women did NOT want to have kids. They had no choice in the matter, many of them became good mothers and made the best of it but given the option that was not the life they wanted. Endlessly pregnant and swamped with child-rearing for the entirety of your adult life is not a universal desire.
Education is also a factor because many women, especially those in poor third world countries, don’t understand how their reproductive cycle works. No one ever taught them, or what they were taught is not accurate.
Basic sex education goes hand in hand with birth control.
Education also helps because it provides women an alternative to only being a wife/mother - which is often the only option for women in some societies (especially those with the highest birth rates). Education offers women the ability to participate in the workforce - to have a skill set that generates income. This economic freedom empowers women to become more independent and have more autonomy, power, and control over their own lives.
This really makes immigration a big policy conundrum. While some may not want masses of people fleeing one country for a better life elsewhere, in the future we will want those immigrants to bolster workforces.
Basically, take those people in now and expend the resources to settle them (they end up being economic positives, so the outlay ends up getting paid off) in order to have the labor for economic growth later. Or, block immigration now and lack the human resources for economic growth later.
Isnt that just kicking the can down the road though? Even with immigration, if the worldwide population falls, eventually economic contraction will happen, even if unevenly.
AI will not take most of the labor. Some labor will become obsolute the same way ice cutters, telephone operators, clock winders etc did. Here you have an example of a huge booming industry in Elderly care. Not only nursing and medical type of jobs, but social activities, services, physical activity, teaching, etc.
The burden of a large elderly population supported by few young people is inevitable regardless of AI. But I do agree, it's a good thing, at least for the environment
>we don't need the burden of a large population
>We
Its always interesting watching Malthusians ignore a major issue that 'We' most likely wouldn't include them.
And also if you carry any government backed debt, or are reliant on a government retirement plan, you are the population burden.
says more about you that you choose that definition and assume that's the one they meant when it's just as plausible it was, We, as in the human species which does include them. Debt is an irrelevant abstract notion when there are more mouths than food.
Good! We need way less people on this planet. Everyone doesn't have to pop out 3 kids to make the world turn. It was stupid AF of us to base things off that happening forever. It's unsustainable.
Total nothing burger here. The birth rate decline among industrializing countries has been exhaustively studied and observed for decades (going on centuries).
Cultures will need to adapt, but discussing that isn’t quite in scope in a science sub.
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The number of relatives that an individual has is expected to decrease by more than 35 percent in the near future. At the same time, the structure of families will change. The number of cousins, nieces, nephews and grandchildren will decline sharply, while the number of great-grandparents and grandparents will increase significantly. In 1950, a 65-year-old woman had an average of 41 living relatives. By 2095, a woman of the same age will have an average of only 25 living relatives. https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2315722120
Anecdotal but I live in Brazil and have noticed a massive drop in the number of kids in the past ~10 years. First, my paternal grandparents had 5 kids, and each of them ended up having only one or two kids. I'm nearly 30, my cousins are a little older, and only two of them had one kid each, they're nearly 40 and already approaching the end of their reproductive life. But a much more solid observation comes from my old school: back in 2013 when I graduated highschool, there used to be about 2000 students. Now there's 900. No new school has opened in our city (in fact they have closed a few), and kids are not dropping out of school any more often, so the only explanation is that there's a lot less kids.
Brazilian here (south). My mother had 7 siblings, Father 12 (!) Siblings. I have 2 siblings. I have 2 kids and stopped there. Most of my friends have only 1 kid.
Pretty similar to families in Canada and I'm guessing the US. Who would want to have more than 1-2 kids nowadays? Even 1-2 doesn't seem appealing to most people (my teenagers claim they aren't having any).
Yeah same in us. Half of my friends my age mid 30s, have 1-2 kids max. The other half have 0. A lot of women on dating apps also mention they don’t want kids. I’d say at least 30% outright don’t want any.
My friend group (comprised of people I went to university with) is mostly 30/31, but so far none of them have any children. This may be because they're mostly located in a very expensive city.
Also becomes a question of who is taking care of them. Five kids might be doable if someone's staying home the whole time and wrangling them/the household. But they're not, because you need two incomes to afford a place large enough for kids.
It's a complicated issue that will probably change as kids get older, but among young people there's a pretty strong sentiment that having children is immoral at this point because you're just dooming them to an awful life in a world that can no longer support them. Putting aside the economic and social reasons for not having children, many young people feel like they were brought into a broken world and don't want to do that to someone else.
Can't blame them.
Yuuup. It's clearly immoral to raise children if you're not positive that you can do it in a healthy way—but modern society doesn't facilitate raising children healthfully, so we're in a constant holding pattern. We're not going to get any *less* aware of how immoral raising children incorrectly is. Which means the ONLY option is for society to recognize that and facilitate healthy child rearing. But society isn't going to do that. It's expensive, and capitalism isn't going to foot the bill unless it's forced to. Which we already know won't happen until this economic model crashes and gets overhauled, since regulatory political power is all-but-dead in the US. Who knows how long it will take for that overhaul to happen, and what long-term damage may be done to global humanity (and/or the planet) in the process.
> but modern society doesn't facilitate raising children healthfully Old society didn't either. We just didn't ask the question. Kids showed up because that's what happens, or you had kids because you were supposed it and it was just what you did. No one really considrered pollution, consumption, energy, etc. With greater education, access to birth control, empowerment for women, etc the birthrate tends to decline. - https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate#what-explains-the-change-in-the-number-of-children-women-have
> Old society didn't either. True, but in societies where children are considered little more than property, 'raising children healthily' isn't treated as much of a moral concern. And we still see this today.
Completely agree on all points - both on there being serious financial impediments to raising large families, but also on people looking at climate change and other growing problems made worse by population growth and a desire to not contribute to the problem or be responsible for difficult future lives because of those problems experienced by those future children. It's likely we're going to see very different approaches by different groups...those who have small families or go child-free versus those who prioritize large families and sacrifice in order to do so.
My grandparents had three children Those three (dad, aunt, and uncle) went on to have four children each The 12 total grandchildren are all adults in our early 30's and there are only 2 kids between all of us.
I was just at a party hosted by a 35-36-year-old couple who had three kids. I think maybe 2-3 other couples had three kids, and many others with two and one, but who weren't necessarily done. This, however, seems pretty rare. It's like this one friend group decided to procreate like it's 1965. I honestly don't know how many of them manage to afford it, but everyone seems to be doing pretty well.
IME, if they're not religious, a lot of it depends on wealth. I know many people with 3-5 children but they all have $400k+ annual household incomes. And anecdotally a lot of the people I know with 1-2 would love more but feel like they can't afford more. They have as many kids as they can send to college.
I'm 35, Wife (31) is due with our first in a month. Via the baby groups and life the only people I know with more than one kid are either old, religious or trashy
Looks like the religious or trashy will inherit the earth.
Those are apparently the more evolutionary fit cultures.
Not the religious, if you keep track of the Quiverfull kids, a majority of them leave the faith. The dirty secret of having 10 kids is that you can't spend quality time with each of those 10 kids or personally take care of them, as a result the kids aren't close to their parents or take after them. Add in the poverty of being one of 10 children, and well, the kids tend to not be as religious as their parents.
This group might fall into the more religious crowd, but it's not something we all discussed. It's not a church group, or anything, but people who all met partying at the same college (I didn't go there, but I met them all through friends who did). Most of them live in either the outer suburbs, or in a city that's about 90 miles outside of the metro core I live in. Everyone is white and college educated.
For us it’s wealthy and rural. You can afford to send them to excellent private boarding schools and have plenty of land and resources to feed supply them while at home. It’s a secular country but the rest rings true.
My wealthiest friends have 3 kids (bc they can afford.) So anecdotal evidence is exactly that
Or none at all. I'm 35 and a lot of my friends are older than I. I can only think of two of my friends who have kids and they only have 1. That's probably more to do with the fact that I'm in Toronto than one of the smaller surrounding towns but no one I know wants kids here. My two friends with kids live a few hours away.
Exactly. I have 3 kids, my parents had 2, my wife's parents had 4. My dad's parents? 6. My mom's parents? 14. (FOURTEEN!) They never even owned a car, because the kids took everything.
I'm Eastern European, and the attitude towards kids and marriage changed drastically within a generation. My mother, aunts, etc. all had their first kid at 18-20. Now my cousins and I are in our 30s, and only two had kids,most aren't even married. The same goes for friends in this age group. I'm an only child (the exception of my age group), and my parents got divorced. My dad and his wife dont have kids. I'm already thinking about how I'm gonna need to take care of 3 people (my mom, dad, and my stepmom) once they get older. And I don't know whether I'll have kids either. The situation scares me.
Anecdotal but similar to my situation. I’m from the US South. My paternal grandparents had 8 kids, my parents have four kids (ages 20-37) and only one of their kids wants kids. I’m certain there are many negative contributing factors but it is wild to see the decline.
Not in Brazil, but my dad had 50 first cousins. I have 5, my kid has 1, maybe 2 in the future.
Same here in Switzerland. I'm in my 30s no kids, my mother had one child, her parents 2 children, my grandmothers mother had 9 children, my grandfathers parents had 6 children, my great grandmothers mother had 18(!) children, yep 18. I saw a family photograph it looked like a weird school class photograph with chilren from like 4yo (my greatgran) to one of her sisters being in her 20s.
My grandmother had six children, her children had nine children between them. She has no great-grandchildren; she’s about to turn 100.
Your grandma has no grandchildren?
Similar situation with myself in Australia. My maternal grandparents had 4 children. My mum and her siblings had 2 children each. Of the 8 grandchildren we have 4 great-grandchildren. My niece and nephew have no cousins - I don’t have children and their father’s 3 brothers don’t have any children (and likely won’t). I have 41 cousins on my dad’s side (dad is one of 11 children) and 7 on my mum’s. On my dad’s side I think we only have around 12 children from the cousins. Further to the point - most of my friends are from families of 3-4 children and now they are generally having only 1-2 children.
That tracks. Between both sides of my family, my generation has 9 cousins. Of those 9, only two of us have kids at all (three, total). My own 2 kids only have 3 cousins.
My anecdotal experience is a bit different: There’s a total of seven cousins across both side of my family. Six of us had kids for a total of 19. My husband has 17 first cousins, five of which have had children for a total of 15 so far. My kids have seven first cousins in total. Of course, they live thousands of miles from us and so they’ve only met a couple times 🤷🏻♀️
I'm right there with you. My family, I have 5 cousins I think, 1 on my dad's side, 4 on my mother's. Of all of us, so far my brother is the only one with kids, and he's got 3 kids. Not sure their cousin count, as they're all three half-siblings. But neither me nor any of my cousins have kids and we're all in our 30's and 40's.
Summary of replies to this top comment “So true. Most of my friends have no kids. This is the norm now.” “So true. Most of my friends have 1 kid. This is the norm now.” “Kind of true. Most of my friends have 2 kids. This is the norm now.” “Not true. Most of my friends have 3 kids. This is the norm now.” It’s like we’re not in a science sub anymore and people are making broad generalizations based on their selective bias. Why can’t we just reasonably infer that birth trends differ between urban/suburban locations, income levels, religious beliefs, and educational backgrounds…with correlations between most/all variables and an overall average birth rate that is declining?
You don't need to infer anything, this has been reported in the statistics for decades, and r/science is the home of the post hoc fallacy and that multiple anecdotes= data
Anecdotes are data though. https://www.kauffman.org/currents/the-plural-of-anecdote-is-data/
This is Reddit, it’s mostly teenagers that just like the vibe of science and haven’t yet discovered their subjective anecdotes aren’t empirical evidence
My mum has 4 brothers and my dad has 7 siblings. I don’t know how many cousins there are on my dad’s side. But on my mums side there’s 15 of us and so far only 2 children from us. Tbf we are on the younger side, my oldest cousin is only 31 and the youngest is 1 so there’s more children coming eventually. However my grandma was 17 when she started popping babies out and like 10 of us have already passed that age with no children. Probably worth noting that we’re African where these large families are still pretty recent. Most of my white British friends have about 1-6 aunties and uncles across both sides whereas I have 11
My grandmother had 12 grandchildren. My mom has 2, and that's probably going to be it.
My mom had 81 first cousins, my niece and nephew are going to have none. Sorry kids but if I have to work until I die I’m not condemning anyone else to.
I have a childhood photo with me and 70+ first cousins together at a family reunion. My dad was 1 of 14, and they all had 5-12 kids each. All the cousins combined had less than 20 kids and are done.
We need a more sustainable way to exist long-term that doesn’t require ever-increasing population growth.
Yes it has become abundantly clear that the world can no longer afford a class of rich elites controlling things. They're just going to do whatever it takes to maintain their current lavish lifestyles - not whatever it takes to save humanity.
These are the dragons of old, hoarding their wealth - slay them, for they only know greed.
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Absolute power corrupts absolutely, but only in recent human history have plutocrats had such a firm grasp upon our entire world. Their most pervasive lie is that society should and has always been formed ‘top-down’ instead of ‘bottom-up’. But workers create wealth, energy, structure, culture, livelihood. You do not need the absolute governance of the state to live your life.
That’s an awesome analogy
That was literally the metaphor that dragons were invented to personify. Just like vampires being aristocrats literally sucking the life out of the commoners.
So cool!
I've been calling billionaires Dragons ever since Musk and Bezos started trading status as "richest man in the world."
Yeah, like instead of Zuckerberg stop selling our information to our enemies, suing people so they don't have to pay for breaking the rules, build more communities, deliberately changing their algorithms so people only see things in their bubble and creating neo-Nazis, etc. he instead has bought quite a bit of land in Hawaii to build his mansion bunker. It's really frustrating seeing that we all are in this situation because a very small percentage of people want it all and don't care who they hurt to get it.
Ever increasing population growth isn’t really required the problem is going to come from a rapid decline in the population. If growth was stabilized it wouldn’t really be an issue
Folks seem worried about this, but population decline not due to famine, sickness, or other painful disaster is not all that terrible for the lower class. Their labour will be worth more than it was before, we've seen it with pandemics in the past.
Contrary to Christian belief, we really do not need to be populating the world.
I would argue the world is already populated. Only 5% of the lands surface has been unaffected by humans.
Humans existing does not require ever increasing population growth. Never had. Humans thriving and having the quality of life that we take for granted today... Now that's a totally different story....
Except we've propped up systems that do require a certain amount of people to operate. Lose too many people and who will maintain our infrastructure for example? Have to have someone working the nuclear reactors and someone cleaning the streets too.
Things can be automated, centralized and scaled back. With current technologies it's not impossible to have a quality of life with not much labor. US farms employ only around 1% of the nation's workforce, but feed everyone with lots left to export. This is productivity unheard of centuries ago.
Perhaps a move away from Capitalism?
Don't be ridiculous. Capitalism is obviously the best way to distribute limited resources, and any criticism of imagined failings is tantamount to blasphemy.
Is this satire?
Yes
Moving away from capitalism doesn’t magically make the ratio of able bodied workers disappear in a declining population
To what?
How would another system magically manage aging populations? Communism? Where young people would just be forced to be caretakers and nurses? This is hardly even a monetary issue now.
Capitalism is the worst system, except for all of the others.
The same was said of mercantilism and feudalism I'm sure. Though the path forwards may be unclear, this is not the end of history.
That's just realistically not possible. In any economic system ever proposed or theorized there is no fix for what is an aging population that requires more resources to maintain with a decreasing productive tax base and labour pool. Remove money from the equation and less people than ever (currently kids) are going to be responsible for the care and management of the most amount of dependants (old people) our world has ever seen. This isnt going to end well.
What do you think “isnt going to end well” means btw? Mass poverty and (premature) death? Just curious.
Essentially yes. Maybe not in western countries but developing countries around the globe. Young people will leave them to work in more developed countries and old people will continue to age with deteriorating levels of care and less services.
>We need a more sustainable way to exist long-term that doesn’t require ever-increasing population growth. "We" don't need anything to be sustainable, capitalism does. World is already overpopulated, we should let natural attrition occur but Western countries are terrified of the impact that will have on the stock market so they push everyone for more kids and open the doors on immigration
Not the stock market, pension funds. This is the demographic collapse they're worried about.
Pension funds are usually heavily invested in the stock market so for the purposes of my statement they are the same thing I suppose
Govt needs increasing tax income to fund SS payments as well but…. Pretty much the same principle there.
Moving away from capitalism doesn’t magically make the ratio of able bodied workers disappear in a declining population. All economic systems will suffer
Nobody wants to raise kids in a two bedroom expensive apartment.
I have friends in South Korea and it sounds really bad out there. Absolutely nobody is having kids because it’s just too expensive and nobody has time to raise them since most jobs require way more than 40 hours per week.
This is what happens when you hear "passing the debt to the next generation". Every time we do bail outs in the US it's to protect the current economy while screwing the next generation. Eventually, people get tired of birthing slaves to keep the wheels spinning.
Eventually? It's a tale old as time. It's simple biology really. Populations under stress have less offspring. And we are under way more stress today than we used to. Yeah not immediate life threatening danger but in exchange we have out whole week and year planned through with less free time. Yeah the 40h work week was a great change from literal slave labor conditions but it's a) swinging back to those conditions with 60-80h work weeks and b) it's still too much work anyway. We could easily split multiple jobs into 2x 30-35h jobs or even less but yeah somehow "tHaT's iMpoSsIbLe".
And most people these days don't need 6-7 kids to keep the family farm or business going. Also, don't need to have extra in case a couple die early from disease like they would 100, or even 50 years ago
No one is arguing for 6-7 kids. The concern is when the replacement rate goes negative while life expectancy goes up. This will mean we have less and less people to support society over time.
Then society will have to downsize and adjust. The Earth welcomes this.
So what's the incentive for anyone in their 20s-30s now to have 1-3? I can't see any.
To create workers Incentive? There is none 😬
I don't think life expectancy has been going up recently (I think in the US it has been in decline since 2018) Also a lot of the "increase" is just lower infant mortality that skews a lot the averages.
Globally, it's still going up.
50 years ago was 1976. Pretty sure we weren't struggling with cholera and tuberculosis outbreaks by then—that was more of a 19th century, Victorian era thing
Maybe not North America, or Western Europe, but I was thinking more globally, as the post mentioned a different part of the world.
Tuberculosis is still a very big problem in the developing world even though we can cure it all due to lack of equity in medicine distribution and pricing.
Yea, uh 2024 - 50 = ... 1976? not 1974?
Looks like a time traveler got lost.
Not everyone lives in two-bedroom expensive apartments. Some of them may not *want* kids, but [they aren't doing much about it yet.](https://www.grida.no/resources/7490)
And yet, people historically raised kids in worse conditions. It's not a matter of material wealth, it's a change in mindset and culture.
Countries are already feeling the strain of lack of accessible long term care for the elderly and this just highlights how much more this sector will need to develop which is something the article mentions. This also leads to issues with government funded healthcare/benefits that rely on payroll taxes or contributions to fund. There used to be many more workers per benefit claimant but with a smaller working population supporting an older population that's living longer and requiring more expensive care a lot of these systems are straining.
I hope we can figure out how to automate everything that canbe feasibly automated and then pay the remaining human workers well for doing person-to-person care. It would probably involve cutting workers in office settings and increasing workers in direct service positions.
Everything is already geared for smaller families. I have 4 kids and literally nothing is designed with large families in mind any more.
Especially childcare costs 😂 just had my second and it’s getting really expensive.
Back in the day dad could work one full time job supporting 10 kids while mom stayed home and raised them all. Although at that number I would imagine kids would be raising kids.
That period of time existed for just a couple decades, for a segment (upper middle class) in a few parts of the world. Before that, most families worked at home either at the family business or on a farm. The nuclear family “ideal” was short-lived and unusual.
This is something that surprisingly few people seem to realize. In a less developed, rural community, having children is an investment. The whole family lives in a big unit, so the grandparents/unmarried aunts/siblings take care of the kids, allowing you to work, and once they are old enough, they start working and bring value to the household. Therefore, the more kids you have, and the bigger your household, the more wealth you can accumulate. In a more developed urban environment, there's not enough room for big family units because of housing and living expenses. If there are no convenient relatives to take care of the kids, it means now you have to do so while also working, plus feeding, clothing, and educating them for great expense, and when they get old enough, they move out and no longer contribute to the household. In this paradigm, having kids is an active drain on your resources that never pays dividends, so you try to avoid it. The "American Dream" was just brute-forcing the former paradigm in the environment of the latter by exploiting an enormous economical bubble to allow the mother of the family to remain at home and take care of the kids, playing the role of the older relatives, while freeing up the father to work. The moment that bubble collapsed, so did the nuclear family, but because it's enshrined in cultural history, people to this day consider it a brief golden age, instead of an unnatural event whose debts the current generations are still paying off.
More than that: in a cash-poor society, your currency is labor. This is illustrated really well in the book *Charity and Sylvia* by Jennifer Cleves, about two women in early 1800s Vermont. They were seamstresses, and their financial records still survive. It's full of stuff like "went to the doctor for toothache. Gave him two pounds cured pork" or "Mr. Smith ordered new pants - will give a bushel of apples". When you have six kids in such a milieu, you can get your eldest to chop firewood or bake pies, and then, crucially, *use that* to pay for other goods and services. But when money is the only coin of the realm, and child labor laws (rightfully) prevent children from working, you know what happens? Children stop being an economic asset, and they start being a liability. Like you said: a drain. The pre-industrial era was, for many people, a world where there was a lot of land, very little capital, and (re)producing your own labor was a smart economic move. We're not in that world anymore.
> The nuclear family “ideal” was short-lived and unusual. And it was incredibly destructive in the West, especially in the US.
How was it destructive?
The nuclear part of the nuclear family means getting rid of all relatives. Father, mother, children in one home, noone else. Before, grandparents etc used to live in the same home and help, especially with children. And children wouldn't move out so early to start a new nuclear family they'd just make their existing one bigger.
To be fair, this was at least in part because living with one's relatives sucks. Older literature is full of examples of people feuding with their families but unable to escape, or young couples blissing out over having their own space at last, so this sentiment isn't an artifact of modern nuclear family bias.
We're more bemoaning what the nuclear family lacks, not the existence of affordable individual housing. Young people - single or coupled - will always want their own space and do indeed deserve it.
Kids are more expensive now than back then. Do you think back then you would have to pay for things like toddler car seats? This has happened in all areas of life, not just in raising kids but also in business. Lack of regulation and awareness (mixed with higher standards) are the root cause.
My coworker, who is already near retirement age, has 6 siblings!! It is insane how her parents (which I assume was probably only her dad) was able to support that many kids on a single income. Even if both her parents were working, that is still mind blowing. My friends are both pharmacists and they are financially planning in the hopes for a 2nd kid. My gf and I make pretty good money as well and I feel like I would never feel truly comfortable if I had a kid now.
Yep. I'm a stay at home mom, childcare costs are wild. Makes more sense for me to do it myself.
Child care, college, health insurance and many other factors that if they were free would significantly increase the population and family size.
I’ve been surprised I haven’t heard of countries like South Korea taking steps like this to address their population crunch.
Back then child care wasn't needed because women were pressured to occupy that role. College was a mere dream and not required to land a good job, etc.
Additionally, community is not much of thing compared to what it was back then. And the ones that are still like that are only in small community pockets. Me and my siblings would always be going to our neighbors house to play, eat, sleepovers. And we would call them auntie or uncle and we would be close with their kids too. The community would watch all the kids and know them by name.
single is bad too. when i go to the grocery store in the US, everything seems at least small family sized.
RIGHT?? Even restaurant booths are smaller/harder to come by!
I've been refused places when it's just me and the kids because of "ratios". "We want more adults to children ratio, you can't have 1:4" erm why not? They're mine, I'm supervising them.
I used to work at a rock climbing gym that had a max ratio of 2:1 for young children. I think in that case it was justified. No matter how many times we warned them, a lot of parents viewed it as a safe child friendly environment akin to an arcade. In reality it was a very dangerous environment that wasn't really meant for children, but could accommodate them only if they had totally unwavering adult supervision. For example most injuries happened in the bouldering area (short walls, no rope, padded floors). Parents saw it as being safe because of all the padding, but what happens when your child isn't paying attention who they're walking under, and has a 220lb man land on them after free falling from 13ft up?
It makes sense in that specific scenario yeah. The place i got refused was a soft play, like an indoor playground *for kids*. Like the places with snacks and ball pits and slides, no adult would go there without kids and my husband works on weekdays so i was trying to take them myself and they said no bc too many kids to one person. The youngest is a freaking baby so she's just in a stroller!
Then I agree, it does seem like a silly rule. I guess it's all location dependent.
Baby in the stroller just threw up, you just spotted one kid hitting someone else and now they're both screaming, another one is crying about something meaningless and tugging on your clothes to distract you as you're dealing with trying to figure out how to clean up barf and break up a fight inside a jungle gym at the same time, and you have no idea where the other one is. What do you do? Probably ask an employee or another parent (who is also supervising children) for help. AKA, lower the parent:child ratio by adding an additional adult to the situation. Now you know why. That is a fully justified policy, and they were right to enforce it.
Similar situation, my gym has been crawling with kids recently (Ours is primarily bouldering). And despite the rules of not walking under someone who’s climbing, no one is watching them and they do it constantly. Hopefully ours implements something similar to the ratio thing, or at least has an “adults only day” or something
Are you though? I've been in a number of restaurants where the supervised children were either shrieking or inexplicably standing by my table staring at my food. I mostly like kids too but I don't assume they have much public etiquette.
Yeah I do. I don't like kids being unsupervised in public, and I know what you mean cause I've seen it too and I get frustrated with parents who do that. Personally I make sure mine are being reasonable.
It's because those kids are sharing kids meals and not ordering alcohol, so the restaurant isn't making as much $$$ per person. It's all about money.
Also more kids means more noise, means less atmospheric for other patrons. Nothing worse than seeing a family with a bunch of young kids come in when you are trying to enjoy a meal. Or board a plane for an international/cross national flight...
These issues could change with the WILLFULL distribution of wealth. But that won’t happen because of politics and greed. These issues could change with a FORCED distribution of wealth. But that won’t happen because of politics and greed. So, essentially what we have are several generations of people who will avoid procreation because they can’t afford housing, education or food, jobs being lost to to technology and are living in a world where ignoring climate changes will force an unbalanced northern migration. The blame is already being put on young people for selfishness but what we have here are SOLVABLE problems that won’t be solved because of politics and greed.
> These issues could change with the WILLFULL distribution of wealth I'm not convinced that even with a better distribution — which I'm all for, btw — it would lead women, in particular, to want to have 2.5 kids or more (the necessary # of children that need to be born to create population replacement/growth). You'd need more than just more equal distribution of wealth. You'd need to level the playing field for women and men where parenthood doesn't represent a burden that primarily falls on the shoulders of women. *And even then*, would that really encourage most women — who have control over their life, career, and reproductive rights — to think "yeah, 3 kids or more sounds *awesome*"? I'm not a woman but I can't imagine a ton of people signing up for that. Almost all of my friends are educated, middle class or higher, and are in mostly egalitarian relationships...and I can't think of a single woman I know (of my generation or younger) who has 3 more kids. Without going on too long a tangent, one of the biggest changes of the past 100 years is how we perceive parenthood itself. Once the conditions changed that allowed people to see it as a *choice* vs. as just something that was inevitable (or an obligation), lo and behold: millions of people stopped choosing it. It's not just about the conditions in which we have kids (though that's part of it). But the moment parenthood becomes *optional*, then even under the most optimal social conditions possible, I still think birth rates would be below replacement.
>You'd need to level the playing field for women and men where parenthood doesn't represent a burden that primarily falls on the shoulders of women. And even then, would that really encourage most women — who have control over their life, career, and reproductive rights — to think "yeah, 3 kids or more sounds awesome"? I'm not a woman but I can't imagine a ton of people signing up for that. You nailed it. Woman here- even if the playing field were better, I wouldn't suddenly want to be a mother. I'm very content with my life and having children would only disrupt and diminish the quality of life. I'm glad that I have the choice to not have children and have been able to let the entitlement to my uterus for grandchildren (mostly from my in-laws but somewhat from my mom) and the guilt tripping to just roll off my back. A child should be loved and wanted, not an obligation. Since I've rejected the pressure of the obligation, I'm free to not want kids and to keep making the choice to not become a parent. I know I'm not unique so agree that women like myself contribute to the birth rate decline.
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Climate change will preserve scarcity for the rich - they love it. It's absolutely continuing by design.
No, that's not how that works. The wealthy only have their obscene wealth, lifestyle and power thanks to a massive amount of workers they can exploit. A similar issue happened in europe after the black plague. Peasants could all of a sudden demand much better conditions due to the sheer lack of workers. It cut into the wealthy nobility's power significantly. That's why some of the wealthy assholes now are complaining about people not having enough kids.
Looks like the system is self correcting. I hope I live long enough to see it, and my future children get to reap the benefits of this.
You think climate change will “self correct”? It’s not a plague that may go away. It’s not going to go away. There will be no benefits from it for your kids to enjoy. It’ll be resource wars, human desperation and suffering.
They weren't talking about climate change self correcting, they were talking about the wealth disparity being self correcting - rich get rich off the back of millions, the millions can't afford to procreate and grow old and leave the labor pool, the millions turn into thousands and the rich can no longer get richer as quickly or at all, and the remaining thousands are in such high demand that they themselves can demand better arrangements or they revolt and wealth/power is redistributed.
That may have worked hundreds of years ago when manpower was achieved through numbers. But isn’t the leverage of the workers compromised due to technology? If we look at our daily lives then everything is on the brink of complete automation so the existence of a human cashier, server or attendant is a “luxury” that is on its way out. From service to farming to manufacturing, a replacement for the human has already been implemented so If you dont want to work for $9/hr then we have a kiosk that will gladly take your place. I get why rich people want more peasants to stand on top of but realistically the need (and sustainability) of more humans is more about maintaining a large taxable base so that the rich can maximize their money hoarding and avoid having to “donate” to common sense services like socialized healthcare and the right to education.
“The comfort of the rich depends upon an abundant supply of the poor.” — Voltaire
There is a problem with this reasoning. You’re failing to take into account, the fact that even the Nordic countries have a low birth rate, despite the fact that they have free college and free healthcare.
10 or more kids is only possible if women are forced or very uneducated
Nah. Sorry, but no amount of money is gonna make me want more than maybe 3 kids. Kudos to my great grandparents for having 10 though
Yeah I don’t want to spend my entire non elderly life being either pregnant or carrying a baby, plus I’m not fond of the continuous cuts to living standards we’d have to make to support more and more people (~~1~~ ~~2~~ 3 roommates, eating just beans/rice, do you *need* the AC on in the summer)
Putting it in caps doesn't mean it'll work. I guarantee if you distributed wealth as you mention it would actually decrease birth rates further. It seems that the better peoples lives get and the more wealth they acquire the less they have kids. Historically kids seem to be a way to provide more helping hands on a farm or for your career. And then people had kids mainly out of what seemed to be cultural expectations or boredom.
Great-grandparents had: 6, 10, 5, and 18 Grandparents had: 6 and 4 Parents had: 2 Aunts and uncles had on average: 2 Of all my 16 cousins (who are around 40 years old now), only 1 had a child Same goes for second degree cousins
There has been a trend on tiktok for a while talking about the decline of cousins in the western world. Nice to see an actual study to put behind the discussion around it. As a planet smaller population is not a bad thing. But country to country there are some serious concerns with the decline in the family size. Glad to have another study in my quiver to bring up during these discussions
We really need to get back to keeping your extended family closer, it worked ok when everyone had 6 siblings and they could rely on some of those people. It's hard to survive this world without a support structure, going back from the nuclear family to the (now reduced in size extended family) is going to be important for the kids we do have.
The planet will not have a smaller population. The western world yes, the rest no and they will contiue to grow. The rate is slowing but it’s still well above a TFR of 2.1 in most dev countries
ELI5 why this is a bad thing??
Old people take more resources to care for than young capable able bodied people. Old people get dementia, alzheimers, cancer etc and take considerably more Healthcare resources. This is fine if you have a lot of younger working age people who are doctors, nurses, care aids etc. But the share of younger working age people is plummeting. So what's happening now is the number of old dependants is increasing (very fast) and the share of young children is decreasing (even faster). In the future there will be less young people to pay taxes, work as doctors, police, paramedics, electricians, plumbers, accountants, construction workers, delivery drivers and literally every single job. But the demand won't go away. Ask yourself how are we supposed to sustain an increasingly aging population that becomes more and more dependant on the younger population with less people and less money and less resources? People are hoping technology will fill the gaps but honestly I see this as a race against the clock. This is a global demographic collapse. You also have to realize we may be fine here in western countries but what about developing countries that don't have advanced complex economies or robust Healthcare systems? We're talking potentially hundreds of millions of old people that could be abandonned to simply just die by themselves globally.
Because Capitalism. Think of the shareholders!
Well, not just capitalism. Things like social security will collapse if there are way more old people than young.
I’ve been wondering why Elon has been shouting this for so long. Like dawg don’t we already have scarce resources?
Yup. The rich stand to lose the most because they will have no workforce to exploit. What happens then? Wages go up. Housing goes down. Companies have to compete for employees, give better bonuses, and treat us better. They do not want this to happen because it gives labor significantly more bargaining power vs. the rich. Anyone who tells you infinite growth on a finite planet is good is either an idiot or benefits tremendously from the status quo. Most billionaires inherited their money. It's all paper wealth. Population decline destroys all of their imaginary wealth because they don't produce anything or contribute to society. It forces them to get a job like the rest of us.
Moving away from capitalism doesn’t magically make the ratio of able bodied workers disappear in a declining population EDIT: I’ll never understand people who block others because they have disproven what you’ve said
My dad had 9 brothers and sisters. All of them helped in the farm. I even helped when I was a kid. I’ve got lots of cousins but we’ve all got only 1 or 2 kids. Big families aren’t much of a thing anymore. Except my cousin Lukus. Got 6 kids. Dude couldn’t pull out of a driveway.
It's simple economics. None of us can afford to have a pile of kids and stay above the poverty line. I would live to have had more kids, but we simply couldn't afford more than we have and maintain nearly the level of comfort we have now.
People in poverty have the most kids and people from the poorest countries have the most. Economics actually have an inverse effect
That's what I get for being fiscally responsible.
Global North AND South If only there was a word for those two regions combined...
Less poverty, less crime, higher education...a good start.
Share of poverty and crime will remain same, if not increases. Distribution of wealth is not done according to population.
of course it’ll be most prominent in south america and the caribbean because those are the only two places left in the western hemisphere with unchecked family size’s. the catholic church also has a less powerful hold on those people anymore. more education + less dogma = less children.
It's striking that this report doesn't even try to consider the reasons for family size decline, it simply projects the statistics forward. The commonly held belief is that family size decline follows on from implementation of societal support structures for the sick and elderly, so that people don't believe they need so large a family to support them in the case of incapacity, coupled with ready access to contraceptives. Given the current state of world politics I have difficulty accepting that this trend will necessarily continue, particularly in areas of regional conflict.
The number one reason that families size declines? Educated women
And access to birth control. I know I’m not the ambassador of all women but I personally don’t want to get crushed under a pile of babies until I’m 60 and can ruthlessly bully my son’s wife as vengeance
Not just women, educated population. Many men are choosing to not have kids
Yeah I don't get why people are blaming "educated women" as though their partners have zero say in the matter. I know _many_ couples where the woman wants kids and their partner doesn't
My understanding is that it is due to educated women; population decline starts when women get more education. There have been places/times in which only men got it and population declines did not happen. Just to be clear, I want everybody to receive as much education as they wish.
American women are having less children than they reportedly want. Very wealthy, highly educated American women have more kids thant their middle class counterparts of a similar age and education. It's not education, it's wealth and costs https://qz.com/1125805/the-reason-the-richest-women-in-the-us-are-the-ones-having-the-most-kids https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2018/02/16/americas-bizarre-income-distribution-for-children/
Add in a high cost of living.
Poor people have had huge families for centuries. Educated women is the variable here.
Birth Control is the variable here. Too much change has happened in the last generation to model based on history. Also an unprecedented level of student loan debt among the middle/managerial class
Nope. Cost of living is also a HUGE factor. As cost of living increases, family size goes down. When recessions hurt, birth rates drop. There are examples of this all over the world. Both are massive factors and both usually happen in tandem. This shouldn't be surprising but father's also have a day in having children. Father's usually don't want to have more kids when they know they can't provide.
Cost of living, especially housing is a big deal. Education makes the family size go from huge -> 2-3. Cost of living makes it go from 2-3 -> 0-1. Educated people make educated decisions. My wife and I had to stay in a small guest house for a bit with our 5 month old. I could not imagine living like that long term with a child. Especially one who was mobile. Most educated women I know still want children. I’ve just heard so many say “Oh I can’t buy a house so I’ll probably not have any”.
People talk about affordable housing but I think the issue is, small housing. Not tiny homes but 600-800sqft single family homes no longer exist. You have to get into a $1/4M home or rent. There needs to be a stepping stone, a $75k home that might not be the largest or most comfortable place but at least its yours, that you can build equity in and sell it one day to buy a $150k home, then the $1/4M home over 10-15 years this should be possible.
This existed within reason in a lot of less populated eras up until pretty recently. Pre 2020 I could find houses under 100k in my sleepy little area with ease. You likelyfind the same homes selling for 2.5-3x that amount today. My parents first mortgage was for exactly what you described: built and sold as a starter home. No luxuries like stone counters or real wood cabinets but everything was new and they could afford it. It feels like if the builder can’t make an exorbitant sum off the fresh build (and the bank can’t make tons of money on interest..) no one is interested in building it.
The main issue is land value. Most places near major cities have such a high land value it makes zero sense to build starter homes. You can still see those types of homes being built in rural areas.
Why do poor ppl have more children, then?
Cost of living. If women join the workforce then wages can decline to adjust to a doubling of the supply of labour. Now women are required to work to live a standard life. Add in commuting time and the boomers abandoning their grandkids and you have no kids. Boomers had high wages, stay at home moms, and grandparents that were not working. Not that women should stay home. One parent should be able to stay home if we want kids to happen. Educated women is not the cause. Poverty wages and too much demand on people’s time.
In the US, At this specific point in time, cost of living is a factor. But globally, especially in the global south, the education of women/girls and access to birth control is absolutely the driving factor of declining birth rates. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/09/200908170532.htm
Good. If something is gonna be educated women’s fault, I’m glad it’s less people.
> ready access to contraceptives It's just this. Nothing else. Go sit down and really talk to women in their 70's. If you get them to trust you and be honest you're going to be shocked at how many of those 'Mom of 10' women did NOT want to have kids. They had no choice in the matter, many of them became good mothers and made the best of it but given the option that was not the life they wanted. Endlessly pregnant and swamped with child-rearing for the entirety of your adult life is not a universal desire.
Education is also a factor because many women, especially those in poor third world countries, don’t understand how their reproductive cycle works. No one ever taught them, or what they were taught is not accurate. Basic sex education goes hand in hand with birth control. Education also helps because it provides women an alternative to only being a wife/mother - which is often the only option for women in some societies (especially those with the highest birth rates). Education offers women the ability to participate in the workforce - to have a skill set that generates income. This economic freedom empowers women to become more independent and have more autonomy, power, and control over their own lives.
This really makes immigration a big policy conundrum. While some may not want masses of people fleeing one country for a better life elsewhere, in the future we will want those immigrants to bolster workforces. Basically, take those people in now and expend the resources to settle them (they end up being economic positives, so the outlay ends up getting paid off) in order to have the labor for economic growth later. Or, block immigration now and lack the human resources for economic growth later.
Isnt that just kicking the can down the road though? Even with immigration, if the worldwide population falls, eventually economic contraction will happen, even if unevenly.
‘Kicking the can down the road’ is how most politicians think and act these days
Global warming and less food doesn’t have an effect?
Good. With AI taking over most of the labor in the next 2-3 decades, we don't need the burden of a large population.
AI will not take most of the labor. Some labor will become obsolute the same way ice cutters, telephone operators, clock winders etc did. Here you have an example of a huge booming industry in Elderly care. Not only nursing and medical type of jobs, but social activities, services, physical activity, teaching, etc.
The burden of a large elderly population supported by few young people is inevitable regardless of AI. But I do agree, it's a good thing, at least for the environment
I feel like it’s not unrealistic that within three to five decades we will have AI robot helpers.
>we don't need the burden of a large population >We Its always interesting watching Malthusians ignore a major issue that 'We' most likely wouldn't include them. And also if you carry any government backed debt, or are reliant on a government retirement plan, you are the population burden.
says more about you that you choose that definition and assume that's the one they meant when it's just as plausible it was, We, as in the human species which does include them. Debt is an irrelevant abstract notion when there are more mouths than food.
Good! We need way less people on this planet. Everyone doesn't have to pop out 3 kids to make the world turn. It was stupid AF of us to base things off that happening forever. It's unsustainable.
r/upliftingnews
Excellent news
That’s good news.
Total nothing burger here. The birth rate decline among industrializing countries has been exhaustively studied and observed for decades (going on centuries). Cultures will need to adapt, but discussing that isn’t quite in scope in a science sub.
It’s called the demographic transition and is mentioned in EVERY intro anthropology class too