Babies and the Macroeconomy
- Reference: 0175817109
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/01/02/1432246/babies-and-the-macroeconomy
- Source link:
> Fertility levels have greatly decreased in virtually every nation in the world, but the timing of the decline has differed even among developed countries. In Europe, Asia, and North America, total fertility rates of some nations dipped below the magic replacement figure of 2.1 as early as the 1970s. But in other nations, fertility rates remained substantial until the 1990s but plummeted subsequently.
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> This paper addresses why some countries in Europe and Asia with moderate fertility levels in 1980s, have become the "lowest-low" nations today (total fertility rates of less than 1.3), whereas those that decreased earlier have not. Also addressed is why the crossover point for the two groups of nations was around the 1980s and 1990s. An important factor that distinguishes the two groups is their economic growth in the 1960s and 1970s. Countries with "lowest low" fertility rates today experienced rapid growth in GNP per capita after a long period of stagnation or decline. They were catapulted into modernity, but the beliefs, values, and traditions of their citizens changed more slowly. Thus, swift economic change may lead to both generational and gendered conflicts that result in a rapid decrease in the total fertility rate.
[1] https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w33311/w33311.pdf
South Korea still socially conservative (Score:2)
[1]https://www.straitstimes.com/l... [straitstimes.com]
Despite their abysmally-low birth rates, they're still miffed over an unmarried model having a child out of wedlock.
[1] https://www.straitstimes.com/life/entertainment/not-a-mistake-model-moon-ga-bi-refutes-rumours-about-her-child-with-k-actor-jung-woo-sung
Conspicuous by its absence (Score:2)
The paper implies that the decreases in birthrate are entirely a result of economic, social, cultural, and religious factors. While I can easily believe that these factors are responsible for the majority of the decrease, I can't help wondering about the contribution of environmental factors.
Recently we've been hearing a lot about the biological effects - and the ubiquity - of microplastics in various human tissues and organs. Could it be that women are now less likely to conceive, because the plastics have
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Individual fertility rates don't seem down, people are just intentionally not having kids. There are other papers that looked at your question.
Microplastics also aren't new in this kind of timescale.
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The paper starts out sus.
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OK, you're a Harvard researcher but you published using an
Anthropology course (Score:4, Informative)
Just recently going through an [1]Anthropology course [youtube.com] at Stanford, which is largely an historical overview of culture from the point of view of fertility.
The [2]Lecture 11 [youtube.com] and [3]Lecture 12 [youtube.com] are on point and give a good overview of aspects of fertility in the world today.
From that course, the underlying reasons for changes in fertility are a complete unknown. Changes in fertility happened in Europe over the last 200 years, there was a massive study (described as part of the course) that went through all the countries and localities in Europe looking at all the historical evidence, and lots of hypotheses were put forward... none of which turned out to be correct.
As cultures advance, fertility drops and we just don't know why.
Another tidbit from the course: when fertility drops, people are less open to the idea of immigration. It appears that when you have a low birthrate, people worry about diluting their culture with too many people from another culture. (Probably a deeply held biological imperative, although note that he didn't say that in the course lecture.)
He also outlines various ways people have tried to address and mitigate low fertility, the various ways have little effect and varying costs to society. For example, tax incentives to have more children.
A previous lecture talked about the industrial revolution, but pointed out that the revolution didn't change the average standard of living. The IR had been going for 80 years before standard of living began to change for most people.
And finally, the lectures talk about the various changes that will happen. For example, we will be transitioning to a culture of older people and Japan and Germany will probably get there first and we can see how they handle it.
The lecture series is pretty interesting, recommended for anyone who wants an explanation of why things are the way they are.
(The bit about land ownership in medieval Europe as a way to limit fertility was particularly interesting.)
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzdqyXtPbbE
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUxzHOM2NmQ
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdKFPE1h9xA
Real estate prices ... (Score:2)
> Fertility levels have greatly decreased in virtually every nation in the world, ...
In my neck of the woods the biggest problem is older generations voting to maximise real estate prices with the result that younger people don't really have a way to easily get into the market. Every time somebody wants to launch an effort to incentivise the construction of affordable housing the over 40 brigade shows up and votes in even higher real estate prices.
The problem is automation (Score:3)
You can find studies on automation showing it's effect over the last 40 years and we've lost large swaths of the kind of middle class jobs that require huge amounts of labor. You can see this with your own eyes just by going to YouTube and searching for "how stuff is made" and seeing how few people are actually involved in manufacturing these days. I have a video card kicking around here where the box probably proclaims no human being was involved in the manufacturing of the card.
Our policy makers in politicians saw this coming in the '90s and as a short-term solution they try to ship this to a service sector economy. I guess the idea was we'd all have jobs providing services to each other. The problem is without that base of good paying manufacturing jobs there aren't a lot of people that can afford to hire anyone for services. You can train up all the plumbers you want if people can't afford to hire a plumber they're not going to have much work.
We've got a major disaster coming when the baby boomers die off because they're the only ones with any disposable income. And it looks like they're going to take it with them. They're either spending it all or having it sucked out of them by the United States health care system. Other more civilized countries might see a bit of that money get passed on to the next generation since they have proper and functioning health care systems though...
Basically low paying service sector jobs like driving for Uber eats isn't going to keep our economy functional. It doesn't matter how many kids you drop we just don't need this many people and we have more people than we need.
A little while ago Elon Musk came out with the backing of Donald Trump and called for a massive increase in the number of high skilled work visas, specifically H1B. He tried making the argument that they would always be more jobs created. The entire internet called him on his bullshit.
We know we're running out of work we just don't know what to do about it
Children used to be cheap labor ... (Score:2)
... now they are ultra-expensive pets.
Urbanisation & Mechanisation leads to employing children to be less and less feasible, turning them into a notable cost-factor above all else.
The first-world has childrens rights for the sole reason that we can _afford_ it.
Point in case: I'm a Gen-X and did performing arts in the 90ies and now I do web-coding to earn some decent money. That is - on the broad scale of things - a _very_ marginal job and a exception to the general population. My daughter is now 27, a m
Abstract of non-sequiturs (Score:1)
That abstract is just a serious of statements that are written as if they follow logically from each other.
BUT THEY DO NOT.
Is this how social "science" works ?
Or rather, fails to work.
Short term gains for long term pain (Score:3)
The economic gains occurred when the workforce was doubled by encouraging women to get jobs instead of families.
That makes balance sheets look good in the short term and only has the minor downside of extinction-level fertility rates and a long term outcome indistinguishable from genocide.
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Really? You don't think the media, schools, government propaganda and misled parents telling girls over and over they should go be a success in the workplace and that men are pigs won't lead to girls trying to get a job instead of a husband?
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What if we teach children to think for themselves?
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That's definitely part of it. Other parts of it are:
A broad and highly successful propaganda campaign painting men as evil, marriage as slavery, and approaching girls as harassment.
Preferential hiring of women and preferential college admission for women resulting in women, who don't want men who make less than them, having more money.
Telling women and girls that they don't need self-improvement.
Telling girls and boys that there is one True Love that will drop out of the sky just for them instead of the re
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I watched a guy from Scandinavia doing a interview recently, and talking about these topics. One fact that blew me away was that on average men are overall contributors to the welfare state over their lives, and women, on average, receive 1.3 million (he said dollars - not sure what currency precisely) from the welfare state over their lifetime. He had two points... 1) by and large men are OK with this when polled, but 2) this reduced one of the primary reasons women would have been seeking to partner up
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What if women live longer and collect more in old age so your reasoning only applies to grannies?
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Even if that's true, it's kind of the same reasoning, isn't it? Two people together will have a much better chance of saving for a comfortable retirement, and there's less need to do that if you know the government will force young people to give you money in your old age anyway.
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> I watched a guy from Scandinavia doing a interview recently, and talking about these topics. One fact that blew me away was that on average men are overall contributors to the welfare state over their lives, and women, on average, receive 1.3 million (he said dollars - not sure what currency precisely) from the welfare state over their lifetime.
In Scandinavia you see sex-based differences in group averages and in the US those same measurements show both sex-based and race-based differences in group averages
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These pronatalism arguments are such bullshit. These "fertility level" studies only deal with economic consequences, not the survival of the species. The human race is in no danger of going extinct due to birthrates. We can kill ourselves with greater success in many other ways, thank you very much.
The economic model relying on parabolic fertility rates, on the other hand...
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For 6 years the world has teetered on birth rate falling under replacement rate. Almost for sure it will fall below that.
That obviously doesn't mean that the species will die and nobody is predicting that.
But there's lots of world level forecasting that forecasted 10 billion and 50 billion people on the planet and now all of that seems unlikely. Now we also have to figure out why, because none of it actually makes sense.
History - India's forcing sterilization of men (Score:2)
History
he UN has multiple rounds of programs since the 1960s to lower India's birth rate.
India has used a declared emergency lead by Indira Ganhdi, the daughter of India leader Nheru , for mass forced sterilization of men , often in life-threatening unsanitary conditions.
India forced sterilization of men - "The Emergency" [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
- 1975 to 1977 when Prime Minister Indira Gandhi declared a state of emergency across the country by citing internal and external threats
- The order bestowed
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emergency_(India)
Re: (Score:2)
*It's a trap!* This is a super Anglo-centric view of the world and the history of "work".
The highest birth rate countries don't have any sort of traditional "women didn't work" and in fact currently have the highest work rates for both women and men. Some of them also don't even fit the model of lack of birth control.
Birth rates are currently tied heavily to religious cultures - specifically Catholics and Muslims.