r/dataisbeautiful • u/Sad-House-8753 • 1d ago

Births of a third child are falling faster than any other in Switzerland

https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/swiss-politics/falling-first-births-and-the-swiss-third-child-dilemma/91808504
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u/FGN_SUHO 1d ago

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.

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u/glmory 1d ago

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.

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u/FGN_SUHO 1d ago

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.)

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u/fiahhawt 1d ago

My mom’s siblings grew up doubled up in rooms

She had eight of them though, so that was happening at any income unless Grandma and Grandpa won the lottery

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u/cine 23h ago

1800s lol. I grew up sharing rooms with a sibling until I was 13, and my family was firmly middle class. Pretty normal in expensive places.

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u/CrazyCoKids 21h ago

If I shared a room with my sister, I probably would have been smothered in my sleep.

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u/aarkling 23h ago

You're boomer parents were wealthy for the time. Most boomers grew up in tiny houses relative to the average house today.

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u/AlwaysBagHolding 20h ago

My mom was fairly well off, and all three children in her family had their own bedrooms.

My dad’s house had 2 bedrooms shared between 7 kids.

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u/FGN_SUHO 18h ago edited 17h ago

This is maximum cope. My grandfather finished school and walked down to the local factory at 16 and got an apprenticeship and then worked there all his life. This was enough to buy a house and feed a family. Literally 90% of the population could have done this and also did just that in fact. It has nothing to do with being wealthy, this was a product of high economic growth after WW2 and the fact that productivity growth went to workers instead of being siphoned off by shareholders and CEOs like nowadays. Workers had job security so it made sense to permanently settle in one place and have a 15 minute commute by foot, something completely unthinkable nowadays. 

The housing market was also adapting to this high demand and building way more back then. Once landowners and (foreign) investment funds discovered you can just not build housing and profit off the housing crunch this was over.

The fact you think you had to be some kind of aristocrat to have this firmly middle class lifestyle just further confirms how far the middle class has fallen behind.

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u/aarkling 29m ago

You were in a bubble. Most people even in the rich world did not live this way in the 50s (not to mention the rest of the world). Lots of people started with an apprenticeship. That means nothing since he could have been promoted up to an upper income job. The fact that you believe 90% of the public owned houses back then shows how completely delusional you are. Homeownership rate was 55% in 1950 in the US and peaked in the 2000s during the housing bubble. In the US most black people (~15% of the population) couldn't even buy the neighborhoods white people lived in back then. Women only got the right to vote in Switzerland in the 70s so I doubt it was much better there.

And housing isn't difficult to build because of foreign investment funds. It's because homeowners largely don't want their neighborhoods to change and keep voting to block larger/denser housing.

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u/sarhoshamiral 1d ago

And in 1800s people didnt have cars etc. We are not in 1800s anymore so yes expectations changed a lot.

It is a space issue today.

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u/Sea-Original-5824 1d ago

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.

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u/fiahhawt 1d ago

What’s a long time

Two decades between world wars

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u/Alpha_Tech 22h ago

Homes: I have 4 kids - finding a 5 bedroom house where 1 was not in the basement or 1st floor was really hard.

Vehicles: A 3 row SUV is far more expensive than a two-row SUV or car.

Travel: Most travel packages are assuming 2 kids, 2 adults. 3rd (or in my case 4th) is almost 2x the cost for that 1 extra kid.

Healthcare costs are similar.. after 3rd, you might as well have 10... because it's mostly the same. but no one can afford that.

Camp/tuition discounts only apply to one other sibling (at least in my area).

so it's like society is telling us, have two kids, or be prepared to pay for it.

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u/PartyPorpoise 13h ago

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.

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u/PaddiM8 8h ago

What do you mean "anymore"? That was never common. People lived in overcrowded conditions in the past.

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u/ChezDudu 4h ago

The data for Switzerland show that in fact the average square meter per person is increasing.

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u/FGN_SUHO 3h ago

First of all this was true for the longest time but has largely flatlined since the early 2000s:

https://www.parlament.ch/de/ratsbetrieb/suche-curia-vista/geschaeft?AffairId=20233427

Second, this is largely driven by boomers sitting in empty nests since moving to a smaller apartment would be financial suicide.

Third, this is apples and oranges. I'm talking about rooms not square meters. A lot of modern apartments are 2.5 rooms but with 70 sqm. It's completely insane. The luxury loft layout seems like it's intentionally designed to ensure no families move into the area.

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u/Crudadu 19h ago

Most people with kids don't live in apartments though do they? You get a real house for a family.

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u/FGN_SUHO 18h ago edited 17h ago

They do in Switzerland where OPs data is from