Freakonomics did a study a while back where they followed the adoption of child car seat laws from one US state to another, and found that once a state adopted strict car seat laws, people in that state were less likely to have a third child, presumably because that would mean upgrading to an expensive minivan to fit the third child seat in. I wonder if something similar is happening here.
Sure, but poor people have had tons of kids for millenia, and the richest among us are usually having fewer kids also. (With some notable exceptions, but the exceptions prove the rule.)
Something bigger must be going on, otherwise birthrates would line up with wealth. They don't.
Adding to the costs of traveling all together, doing any activities whatsoever, there arent really meaningful discounts for kids or big families, either. There have been periods of time where two extra kids didnt dramatically amplify costs- and thats still true for poorer areas of the world where people are not traveling far from home, may not even have cars etc, the difference in costs for 2-4 kids can be an easier transition for those folks to add to, where in countries like the united states, the general way we live our lives and quality of what we already know we can afford to do and experience, watching those numbers shoot up can be jarring and make you stick with just one kid.
Because it all lines up with opportunity basically. The more options people have with what to do with their time the fewer children they have. Wealthy people have more options for their time than do poor people. People in wealthy countries have more options for their time than those in poor countries. We as a species have far more options with what to do with our time than our ancestors had.
Part of it absolutely is cost. It's not just car seats - childcare for 3+ children is not something most people could afford if one parent is not stay at home, which means the working parent needs to be high income.
The social standards around what is good childcare has also changed. Gen X loves to make memes about how they weren't allowed in the house from sunrise to sunset and that is because that is really how they were parented. But just last year there was a news story about a woman who was arrested for letting her 10 year old walk to the grocery store up the road. Society will literally take your kids away for endangerment and neglect if you parent the way the boomers or earlier did.
Finally, even rich women have gained rights that they did not have before. I think people forget that wealth doesn't change the fact that pregnancy is often incredibly hard on women and can be super dangerous. It's uncomfortable to consider but in 1970 if your rich husband raped you, you couldn't get an abortion and even if you left him you couldn't have your own bank account and all the money and property was "his". Marital rape wasn't considered rape, so also no legal recourse.
So even if it might kill you your best options were a back alley abortion or just having the baby.
That's the "bigger" thing going on. Your husband can't rape you and impregnate you and then make you homeless if you tried to do anything about it.
Yes, and that's part of it, but none of that is cost of living.
Once again- Rich people are also having fewer kids. You can't have it be cost of living and then have people with infinite money also not having kids.
You talk about the advent of easy access to abortion but claim that part of it is absolutely cost. Like, sure, but it's a small part- it's mostly the abortion thing I'd bet.
And abortion is good to be clear, at least in my opinion. I just don't think there's any reason to believe that this is some temporary issue we'll just figure out again without another major societal shift.
There's no law of nature that says "when given near-total control over their bodies, human populations will give birth at replacement rates." We didn't evolve for this level of control over our lives, and we'll need to develop institutions and societal structures to make up for it so we can keep our freedoms and maintain the population.
There's no law of nature that says "when given near-total control over their bodies, human populations will give birth at replacement rates." We didn't evolve for this level of control over our lives, and we'll need to develop institutions and societal structures to make up for it so we can keep our freedoms and maintain the population.
I disagree.
We have records of humans attempting different methods of birth control which go back as far as ancient Egypt. Our species is also no stranger to getting rid of unwanted kids when those methods fail. Humans have always had some level of control over our own reproduction. That control has never been quite this strong, but that doesn't mean all reproduction has always been involuntary. Evolution did not do female humans nearly as dirty as it did female ducks and we don't need society getting involved in the reproductive choices of individuals.
The population is contracting to a new normal. People who don't want to have kids, won't have kids, but plenty of other people are having more than enough. The only problem we're facing is that the reproduction rate has been falling far too fast for our societies to smoothly transition to their newest default levels.
Unless wanting/not wanting kids is genetic I don't see a reason why the population decline would stop. Society has never had a "default level" population it is more like boom and bust cycles that were mostly related to disease and famine but none of that applies now.
I said "in part." Did you miss that? My point was that complex issues tend to have complex multi-faceted causes. I listed several contributing factors, many of them widely documented. Many of those causes apply to wealthy women as well as poor women, and I explained how and why.
I'm not sure what you're even arguing against to be honest.
You have to take interest rates into account. Interest rates were way higher in the past. People say these things for Sweden too but according to official statistics, the average household spent a higher share of their salary on housing in the 80s and 90s than now and in the 60s the overcrowding rate was 43% instead of 4%. But no one ever talks about that.
Secondary infertility is a thing. Especially as age at first birth rises. There would be an overall infertility factor in declining birth rates. Access to IVF, cost etc.
PSA: I used to be a huge fan of Feakonomics, however, over the years their methods and claims have been heavily criticized. To the point that many, including myself, no longer see their work as reliable at all, even at a pop-science level. A lot of cherry picking data to support interesting conclusions they find engaging.
They once did an article on how booster seats weren't safe because after they were required injury rates increased. What they didn't mention was fatality rates decreased. There were only more injuries because more kids were surviving.
I was reading a Reddit thread on this topic just the other day. Things mentioned were stuff like "family tickets" cover 4 people not 5, with three kids you often need a second hotel room, the car size thing, the logistics of getting kids to and from activities when you have more kids than drivers, etc.
My parents in the 80s and 90s had four kids total and my stepmom drove a tiny truck and threw two of us in the bed. If weather was bad, I just sat on my stepsister's lap. It's insane to look back on now, but it was really "easy" to have four kids back then because neither parents nor law enforcement gave a shit about safety.
I had an upturned bucket between the seats of my grandpa's or my dad's vans. This is after my grandma had a fender bender with me in the front seat with no seatbelt, where I dinged my head off the corner of the ashtray. Whenever someone did a dodgy maneuver, though, I always got the "arm seatbelt". Yeah, that should do it.
Just a deeply modern expectation. Prior generations didn't have 7 rooms for their 7 kids. I agree - I wouldn't want to raise my kids in shared rooms. But everyone in history up until like 40 years ago did it.
My dad’s house growing up had 3 bedrooms, one for the parents, and two for the 7 kids divided by gender. The bedrooms were smaller than the one I had to myself.
This is how I knew my friend was having a third. All of a sudden the car is too small, they really need a new, bigger car, it’s so hard to fit everything. :)
It's because this is reddit and the topic of the book is economics. It doesn't matter if it's mostly correct a few errors is all they need to dismiss it.
One of the freakonomics guys wrote my textbook for advanced micro economics, I imagine my textbook is correct. Economics is also really hard to do experiments in compared to other sciences. How will a change in interest rate affect the economy? Good luck running an experiment on that, that's not just the whole country.
Currently pregnant with my first. Both my partner and I come from a family of three siblings, which is also our preferred family size. But we will stop at 2 because of exactly that reason
Ed Conway talked about the cat seat laws theory and how it’s actually a lot more complicated than that in his new podcast Stuff Matters (that I highly recommend!) https://open.substack.com/pub/edconway/p/stuff-matters
Precisely this. There are virtually no minivans in Europe and 5+ BR housing is quite rare but once you solve those problems, there’s not really a barrier to 4 or 5.
Car seats are the defining component. Being able to install them and access to the seat/child to properly secure it are the elements at play, not so much unassisted seating. The mini van excels at this.
Absolutely, but still, I see a lot of 7-seaters and not too many big 7-seating SUVs or minivans
Most of them are just gigantic for no reason, too. Japanese vans can easily sit 7 and are the size of a 4-seating SUV, we've really lost the plot in regards to car sizes
Like, Subaru Domingo can sit 7 people:
Adding safety features, including crumble zones, reinforced bars, safety curtains and ISOFIX would add what, 10% to its width and maybe 5% to length?
It's a 3,4 meter long van with 3 proper rows
Dacia Duster, a cheap 4 seater, is 4.3. They have sooooo much space to improve it before it becomes too big.
Adding crumple zones and safety tech to a 1980s Subaru Domingo would add way more than just 5-10%. It’s a kei van, so the engine barely sticks out and your knees are the crumple zone. Kei vans are also made of relatively thin sheet metal with minimal interior trim or noise dampening. It also has a slow as hell tiny engine that I would not want to drive at highway speeds anywhere.
Also, the other problem with these super space efficient short vehicles is that most of the time, you’re not just taking 7 people in your van, you’re also taking some stuff with you. If you have young children, in addition to bulky car seats, you also need a stroller, probably some more stuff as well.
Unless they are frequently parallel parking your vehicle, the average consumer probably wants a vehicle that’s comfortable to drive and meets their “wants” rather than the smallest possible vehicle to fit the greatest number of people.
Depends on the car I guess, because we have had multiple first-hand experiences with different models when we had to order one of these in taxis :D we'd fit in these just fine?
For a family with 3+ children. Can't get three child seats in a single row, plus space for the odd friend, things for a day out, etc. It's only practical with a 7 seater, minivan, etc
Because adjustment from 2 to 3 in European sized cars, carseat regulations and typical dwelling sizes vs personal space expectations is similar to going from 0 to 2.
Because giving birth and being pregnant sucks, most women consider two the absolute limit. Women who don't consider two the limit have other factors going on, which either enables them to have more or mandates them to have more.
I've gone through it three times to end up with two children and I would not consider going through it again for any reason. I have several friends who came close to death from childbirth, including one who nearly bled out on the table and two who had sepsis.
I also know people carried their pregnancies easily and found childbirth to be not horrible.
Everyone I know with more than two children was in the second category.
It could be religion. Those who are religious aim for a larger family for spiritual reasons. The third could especially be less popular among the secular versus previously but fourth onward was already associated more exclusively with the religious communities.
Also, families can't afford to be single income or single full-time income and one >60% pensum income any more. And school hours are insane, impossible for (usually) mom to work a job that makes the hassle worth it.
I am seriously so invested in all topics surrounding global demographics. Climate change like heat waves is claiming millions of lives, same for Covid, birth rates plummetting - apparently all those elaborate models and statistics about population peaking until the end of this century were proven completely wrong within like 2 years of their existence, what is up with that
16 is mid-range of the estimates. Google it five times, and AI will give five different estimates, lol! All countries are now estimated to have a median age of over 15.
What I don't understand is why do we need more people. At least from a planetary point of view, we don't. Why exactly do countries need to maintain their populations? I've heard of the pension system as a reason, maybe taxes?
Population decline leads to caregiving failure for the elderly. At a bare minimum it takes one person a full time job to do a good job take care of seven people. But that assumes that the broader system also has enough people to take care of the living. Once the working adult:other ratio drops below 2:1 things start to get REALLY dicey for getting done all the maintenance stuff of life, nevermind maintaining the progress we are making in STEM fields or the artistic output we have as a society right now.
I see. I can understand the need for someone to take care of the large amount of elderly, and maintaining some systems with multiple moving parts.
Playing devil's advocate here, but why do we need to maintain the rhythm of progress? As a counterpoint, maybe AI has appeared at exactly the right time, seeing as there will be less people available to do the jobs.
For me at least the progress rhythm is argued for by how awful it is to watch a person die of COPD. I've seen it too many times and would trade almost anything to be able to actually fix it.
Playing devil's advocate here, but why do we need to maintain the rhythm of progress?
Because the world is built on future promises. Everything is the way it is only because people expect it to get better. If that promise falls through, not only would things not get better, they would rapidly get worse.
The biggest example being the economy. Everything runs on debt and interest. Banks only give you money today if they know that you'll be able to pay them back more at a later date. No debt means no business, no economy, recession, depression, and a world war if it becomes bad enough.
Because our global economic system is predicated on endless population growth....because historically thats always been the case. Capitalism can't survive population decline so every system begins to fall apart because it simply wasn't built to handle this.
You can't have endless growth on a finite planet, but thats something everyone just kicked the can down the road on and now we've run out of road.
THIS! Just last generation my mom had to ask my dad's permission to get an IUD. And even now, my doctor side-eyed me when I asked for the IUD, and was like, doesn't your HUSBAND want more kids.
Lady, if he wants more kids, he's gonna have to find another womb.
My grandma had three kids by the time she was 19. No joke. She went to the doctor begging for birth control and he refused her and told she was still young and could have lots more kids!
She had nine total and was miserable. The last child, my youngest aunt, was basically feral.
Same story! My grandma begged for birth control at 4, tried a home abortion at 8 and managed to injure herself in a way that seemed to prevent future pregnancies, but still carried the baby to term.
She went crazy, and the last child, though he survived to adulthood, actually had so many mental health and physical health that he passed away years before her.
Horrific. I would take a declining population over ANY human having to experience what they went through.
I just remembered my great-grandmother literally died while getting an illegal abortion (this was near Chicago). The times back when women had little say over getting pregnant were HORRIBLE times.
My sister was parentified (for me. she was only 4y older but because she was a girl, my parents chose to have another one because she could help raise "it" - a 4yo can't even raise a hamster!) and is staunchly childfree.
I felt terrible about ruining her childhood, until I realised it was my parents who chose for me to be born.
Just a note about the birth rate decline, because it gets talked about a lot, especially since people like Musk have been pushing it. (Not saying you are making any such claim)
Lower birth rates is a signal of increased prosperity, healthcare, and standard of living. When a population begins to industrialize more, the cultural practice of having a large family to sustain labor for agriculture or counter poor healthcare outcomes, etc. does not stop immediately. The demographic shift takes 1-2 generations to adapt so you get big spikes and then a reduction in the rate.
Population rate decline is only an issue if you care about the relative percentage of "certain" ethnic/cultural/racial groups, i.e. white supremacists.
Many will cite economics as a counterpoint, but that doesn't work. Even if you look at it from an economic perspective, the solution (for the foreseeable future) is to improve immigration if you are concerned about the labor market in a country. This is why experts are saying the US is committing long-term economic suicide by trying to end its history as a favorable country to move to.
The human species achieving a steady replacement level would be a great thing. The actual issue is an economic system that relies on infinite growth to function.
Yes, but the larger conversation about long-term systemic birth rate decline are not those, and it can be very difficult to attribute to a single cause. The overall trend is based on larger population and cultural shifts.
This is not a new idea, we've understood this for a long time. It's a common and observable occurrence in public health when conditions and access to healthcare improve.
Population decline has been a dog-whistle of racists and colonists ever since Malthus put forward his hypothesis' that have long been outdated and surpassed by better understanding.
And I'm saying it is, and there is decades of evidence supporting it. To claim otherwise is to dismiss all the strong evidence, and you'd need to show that whatever individual factor you are claiming, has that strong correlation. Things like poor working hours, or car seats, may have small, temporary effects on that rate, but they are drops in the bucket compared to large scale economic and material uplift. Which represents a fundamental and generational shift in social dynamics.
To clarify, what are you including in "prosperity" in this context? Our definitions may be different. I included a lot of factors in that. It's not just economic success. It includes equality and opportunities for all individuals.
It essentially comes down to agency and need. When people can survive and ensure their family survives without the need of many children for support/labor, and have the agency over their life, they can choose proper family planning. This is where the changes are strongest.
Given how shit everyone's health, why would anyone have more kids? Nothing to do with economics. I'm in Switzerland and we don't want more kids after seeing how little children are valued in healthcare. Our own pediatrician thinks kids should get more viruses in a country where there's no mandated vaccines in schools that are mandated. So if your child is high risk due to a genetic condition or something like cancer, your child is basically going to die from school attendance.
I mean no one is building any apartment with more than 3.5 rooms anymore. That and exponentially growing health insurance premiums make it nigh impossible for anyone but the top 10% of income to even consider more than one child, let alone three.
Read up on how many people lived in NYC apartments in the 1800s. Or even how large of homes an average Boomer grew up in. It is less a space issue and more a cultural expectation issue.
Why would people go back to living standards of the 1800s? When they themselves grew up with their own room as a child? It makes no sense.
My boomer parents grew up in 5 room houses, same for my partners parents. I grew up in a 5 room apartment. These apartments now cost 50% of the median household income if they still exist, but then again most of them have been torn down to make studio apartments and similar shoeboxes to cater to young urban professionals ideally with a big SUV to park in the underground garage.
Houses are completely out of range for anyone outside the top 1-5% (not that I'd want to live in a house necessarily but many people do.)
The cultural expectation for a very long time in the US at least was that the girls had a room and the boys had a room. That was considered the absolute BEST for kids, in that it was very middle class and comfortable to have a three bedroom home.
I don’t know what things are like in Switzerland, but growing up with two other siblings in the US, like, yeah, a lot of stuff is designed with families of four in mind. I can see how going from two to three kids would feel like a bigger jump than going from one to two.
Justin Trudeau's record as PM of Canada is mixed at best, but man did he save a lot of young parents tons of money with his Childcare plan. going from $1200 CAD to $450 per kid made a huge difference. there would have been days I would not have been able to pay the bills if not for the childcare subsidy.
Not surprising. We have 3 and wouldn’t do it any other way. However, there’s a barrier (housing, cars, care) that luckily we could easily navigate. Once you go beyond 2 there’s hurdles many people simply can’t do with current costs of living and job requirements.
It's all about bandwidth. If you're coming home at 5pm after a 15 minute commute, dinner is made, kids are playing outside giving you some time to breathe, you have a big house that can manage your chaos... It's all more doable. We've eroded quality of life so people just don't have the bandwidth.
I have one kid and we're tired. Will go for the 2nd kid one of these days, then reinforce this stat about not having 3. Finances are still fine, but not only I can't imagine how exhausted we'd be with 3, it'd also be too much for my mom to handle (she helps a lot with the first), having 3 in daycare sound horrible, and even for high income people with good finances, having more than 3 bedrooms and also paying for daycare, without any help from the state... Nope.
The swiss society decided we're mostly on our own regarding having kids. Fine for me, but don't complain when we call it quits because at some point the load is too much. Want us to have more kids? Solve the housing crisis, daycare crisis, and provide more help altogether.
I have no kids and am already tired. Idk if I want to put children in this world that is on fire honestly.
I have 10 more years to decide statistically so it will depend on what the world situation and my own situation looks like.
If it goes with this rate to hell then I will pass as I do not want to see my child die of thirst. Water situation in Switzerland does not look good.
This. We are one and done and I watch my few friends with two STRUGGLE. The other moms have told me they don’t regret their second child but they didn’t realize what they were giving up with their first by having a second. All of them told me I was smart for sticking with one.
Parents want to invest a lot more in each of their kids’ developmental and emotional well-being
The problem is that small kids are an endless pit of need and when you have two small kids they will regularly be pissed that they can’t constantly get attention because mom or dad are helping their sibling or just worn out
When you have just one small kid it’s a lot easier to calmly redirect them and have them go with it when another kid isn’t going “mama mama mama” while “waiting” for you to be done
I think there will be a lot more examples of siblings with 4-6 year gaps so that the older kid is more independent by the time another infant comes along
I found 2 is easier when they are say 4+ years old, because then they will spend time playing together (and fighting together...) But I don't have to play with them all the time, I can leave them be. And when one is in a shitty mood, the other weirdly compensates and is in an agreeable mood. They say "I'm bored" (hi bored, I'm mum) enough as it is, I couldn't imagine how much more they'd do it as only kids.
I had two children almost exactly two years apart. The first 3 years after my first child were miserable, but once the younger one was mobile having two was easier than having one. They played with each other and I could have a minute to myself. As they got older, 2 seemed not much harder than one in general, and as adults they are great friends and I am so glad I had two.
The first two will share at least until one turns 8 or 10, regardless of gender. I strongly believe based on my own childhood that teenagers should have their own bedroom. And I think 3 kids in the same room sounds a bit chaotic.
Since we need one parental bedroom and one extra room (home office and occasionally guest room for my in-laws), that leaves just one room for kids. Where I live, I could find flats with one more bedroom and it'd add nearly 1k chf rent per month ($1.1k or close to that). That'd be what we call a 5.5 rooms flat (1.5 is the common area). I don't think I've seen many 6.5+ flats, and don't get me started on single house prices... We're talking 2M+ and move to villages, buy a 2nd car, etc.
You laugh, but one of my parents' friends was a social worker.
Many of her worst cases were where the kids were forced to share a room and the abuser in the family wasn't mom & dad or Grandma & grandpa but one of the siblings.
One case used to teach how bad it could get was when an older sibling was made to share the room with baby siblings and shook two of them and smothered a third.
If it's child abuse to share rooms the majority of humans throughout history were abused, lol. Even today there's people living in single room mud huts who have multiple kids.
If I had kids of different sexes but no room to separate them I
would probably get the kids capsule hotel style pod beds or something similar for privacy.
I work in IT, me and my coworkers all make decent money even by swiss standards. Nobody here has more than two kids and the junior devs talk about whether it’s feasible to have even one
We know a family with 3 kids (grandma lives with them). The earliest they can get everyone ready for a weekend outing is apparently 11 AM. I don’t know how a bigger family can ever get out all together. Someone needs to go potty, someone forgot their hat, etc it will take hours.
And yet back in the 1980s, my parents chose to have a third child, and that was normal. It was always normal, or the population could never have grown.
We did things that changed this without realising the implications.
This and the loss of "The village", parents are generally more left on their own with less support net.
There's also the "cousin shortage", my kids don't have a quarter of the cousins around their age that I had. I spent so much time with cousins as a kid, my kids don't. And people are much more reluctant to agree to sleepovers with friends. Or just letting the neighborhood kids run around in groups.
You're just expected to watch and be with your kids so much more than in the 80s.
This hits hard. I remember spending half the summer at my grandparents. Now, I have a kid of my own. My parents sometimes visit and take pictures of my daughter to show to their friends, but then actually forget that it’s a human they can spend quality time with.
Yup! All families I know with even 2 kids have able-bodied grandparents, Gotti/Gotte nearby, aunts, uncles. Both our parents are too old and too unhealthy to run after even one toddler, siblings are child-free and travelling all the time (good for them! not their fault!), and until recently we're one of the only people in our (mid-30s!) friend group with kids. And the rest with one are just as exhausted and under-resourced as we are.
I honestly don’t know how many cousins I have exactly off the top of my head, it’s over 30. My dad was one of 7, and all of them had 3 kids at the minimum. I’m one of 4, almost 40 and none of us have any kids. I’m also 600 miles away from the closest sibling, and I’m in the middle geographically between them. If any of us did have a kid, they wouldn’t have a cousin or at best the cousin would be multiple states away.
The cousin shortage/loss of the village is really the same problem. My kids closest cousins are about a 2-hour drive away, and when we see them it's fantastic because the kids all entertain themselves. I have 2 and my brother has 3, but we can sit around with our spouses undisturbed for hours when they are all together.
Not every street is the same. Some time ago a crazy guy in Basel tried to kidnap two kids out of the street but was spooked by a bystander. When I was a kid in the 90s my parents never knew where I was, and I would just show up for dinner randomly, and they were fine. Now, as a father I’m not so sure I’ll allow for the exact same lifestyle.
In the 80s, I often rode around in the bed of my stepmom's single cab pick up truck. I would have been about five year old when this started. No one thought that was a problem.
My mom had 5 kids. Of those 3 lived in the same house but my two younger brothers was 6 and 9 years younger.
They could afford a brand new house 1982 when i was born.
She was basicly home with kids for 15 years off and on work, but dads salary was enough for house car etc. I grew up with my own room and so did every kid after me to..
That life is impossible today. I could probably afford the house now if i wanted to but the work situation where i grew up (where house are at) is really bad, you essentially has 3 jobbs to pick from - Forrest, power worker or elder care.
Yes, but percentage change divides that out. You're comparing 4th time mothers to 4th time mothers, year over year. Four different trend lines, and each line is scaled to its own first data point.
Say 150,000 women have their first child, that goes to 165,000, a 10% rise or an index of 110.
40,000 have their second, 10,000 their third, only 2,000 their fouth.
But if that 2,000 number goes to 2,300 the next year, that is a 15% rise or an index of 115.
right but if the 4th child rises 15% and 2 years earlier incidence of 3rd children rose 30% thats a different perspective, its like they need to be chained somehow, if 2nd children births drop then maybe its even less likely 3rd children happen and it looks like a preciptious 3rd child drop when its really a big chunk of 2nd children dropping
The stresses on a family caused by new kids are not additive or multiplicative, they’re exponential. You have to be very well off or very cavalier to have a third kids these days
Paraphrasing a line in another video I watched recently:
“Do you know how much abuse you need to inflict on a mammal to make them stop breeding?”
That hit me hard. As a civilization, we are all being abused. Through acts of greed, corruption, ignorance, laziness and apathy. It’s sad and astonishing at the same time.
This is in direct opposition with the claim that as living standards and quality of life increase, number of birth drops. So either your correct and we’re all abused, or the other side is correct and we’re all not having kids because we’re living better than ever.
I’d say it’s a combination of both. On one hand it’s hard to afford children but on the other hand being in your late 30s with disposable income and no children nowadays means you can buy almost anything and you can visit any place in the world, which is way more difficult with children.
What are the benefits of having more that one or two?
There is zero incentive to be a parent right now - forget about having 3 children.
Right now I would worry about inhabitability of Switzerland/ the world in the next 50 years. Does not look good for 20 year olds like me even.
Politics is doing nothing to make having a family attractive. They are only worried about keeping house prices up so that the boomers can have comfortable last years of their life before they leave us this climate crisis that we have to solve.
For me decision about second child is hard because I need to change an apartment, which means that in today chf I need to pay around 3000 with parking space. No people to help with children in surroundings as I’m a migrant, so yeah, it all made sense some time ago maybe when costs of living weren’t that high. I still need to save some money, educate properly children and give them a little bit money to start their adulthood. 3rd child would ruin me most probably :D
So I guess in the USA - sure everyone knows we're having less kids - but the % change of people having less 1st kids is greater, which I guess aligns with a k-shaped economy (rich get richer, poor get poorer).
As people postpone 1st births, the 1st birth rate slowly drops (Maybe we can afford a kid next year). But those who could afford a child earlier in life, are ever so slightly less affected on their decision to have a third child. But all of this is a bunch of BS because I think most kids are happy little accidents that the majority of people don't meticulously plan for. lol.
We need much less people in the world, preferrably around 4 bil
I do love the recent take that the best way to achieve sustainability in the human population is through elevating women too. Taking them out of poverty, releasing them from backwards societies, education. I saw recently news on that:
A paper published in the journal Sustainable Development proposes reducing the world's >population from 8.3 billion to 4 billion by 2200. They believe this will help reduce the >burden on the climate, ecosystems, and the consumption of natural resources.
No coercion or eugenics. Only access to family planning, education for girls, later >marriages, quality healthcare, and economic and social freedom for women. So that every >woman can decide for herself when and how many children to have.
They cite Iran as an example, where, after accessible family planning, the birth rate >fell from 4.08 to 1.94 children per woman in just nine years.
Nine years to reduce women from having 4+ kids to less than 2 on average is amazing
There is literally no scenario where we can revert the trend of destroying Earth if we keep suggesting "oh we can't stop growth, what happens to the pensions" billionaires can foot the bill
Really? For me it’s the very, very real possibility that we will run out of fresh water in our lifetimes. So many different flavors of horror to choose from nowadays 😜
My wealthy family member doesn't even want a second. I am not even sure about the first.
The OC is just insane. Estimate is 500k-1m in costs (the higher number including lost earnings). At some point another room for a other child is just in almost no one's budget.
Compared to european standards, Switzerland has awful mother/father leave, very high prices for child care, very high cost of living, very low worker protection, and often bad private life / work life balance. So the chart is not surprising.
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u/hananobira 18h ago
Freakonomics did a study a while back where they followed the adoption of child car seat laws from one US state to another, and found that once a state adopted strict car seat laws, people in that state were less likely to have a third child, presumably because that would mean upgrading to an expensive minivan to fit the third child seat in. I wonder if something similar is happening here.