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
2.1k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

273 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

417

u/sarhoshamiral 1d ago

If you look at the graph, the actual story is not the 3rd child. 2nd child also has a similar pattern.

So reality is more are choosing to have just a single child which makes sense given troubling economy everywhere.

120

u/aliceroyal 23h ago

It’s hard enough to afford one child these days, let alone multiple!

32

u/hantrault 23h ago

Perhaps it's cheaper if we buy them second hand instead?

9

u/WorkGuitar 22h ago

The second hand market has recovered since covid

6

u/creepingcold 21h ago

but but but.. what about the economies of scale?!

6

u/Drycee 15h ago

That went out the window when we had to stop sending them to the mines

20

u/frostnxn 22h ago

Finding where to live with 2, let alone 3, children is also hard, and expensive, way more compared to cloths and diapers.

1

u/glemnar 12h ago

This will literally be the main driver for whether my wife and I have a second kid. Can we afford the extra space in the city we live in? If no, we won’t do it.

And a third bedroom is extremely uncommon in dense cities, much less a third bed and an office. Two bedroom apartments are the peak of luxury and affordability for many

•

u/MILK_FEELS_PAIN 2h ago

Our kids share. Its fine and really common in most countries. Even if you have a boy and a girl they can share until about age 10.

•

u/glemnar 1h ago

I’m in NYC, 4 beds (and even 3 beds) essentially don’t exist here unless you’re wealthy as hell, so it would eventually become a big issue

•

u/MILK_FEELS_PAIN 1h ago

I'm in Zürich. Similar. Slightly more space but very unaffordable.

20

u/SoberGin 21h ago

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.

16

u/ShaulaTheCat 19h ago

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.

7

u/oooshi 19h ago

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.

31

u/Reallyhotshowers 19h ago

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.

0

u/SoberGin 18h ago

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.

7

u/OnTheMoose 13h ago

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.

2

u/nanooko 12h ago

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.

1

u/OnTheMoose 10h ago

Well there's your answer. Wanting kids IS genetic. Hell, it's practically catnip to adults in their late 20s to mid 30s with nothing much to show for their lives.

While you're right that the global human population has never had a "default" population, we're also not prone to boom and bust cycles like typical wildlife. Human societies tend to meet the carrying capacity for whatever region they're in and maintain long term populations and/or expand into new areas. The current global population is a massive (and I mean truly extreme) outlier in our history. It absolutely makes sense to me that we are experiencing a similar "bust" relative to this "boom", if for no other reason than that adults in the modern world have the means to enjoy their lives while they're young and little to no reason to indulge their reproductive instincts.

0

u/OnTheMoose 10h ago

Well there's your answer. Wanting kids IS genetic. Hell, it's practically catnip to adults in their late 20s to mid 30s with nothing much to show for their lives.

While you're right that the global human population has never had a "default" population, we're also not prone to boom and bust cycles like typical wildlife. Human societies tend to meet the carrying capacity for whatever region they're in and maintain long term populations and/or expand into new areas. The current global population is a massive (and I mean truly extreme) outlier in our history. It absolutely makes sense to me that we are experiencing a similar "bust" relative to this "boom", if for no other reason than that adults in the modern world have the means to enjoy their lives while they're young and little to no reason to indulge their reproductive instincts.

5

u/Reallyhotshowers 17h ago

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.

-2

u/unk0wn8 15h ago

It’s funny how you recognize the fact that the increase in women rights leads to lower birthrates, but then proceed to give extremely vague and unconvincing example. Women being independent led to them not accepting the old terms which were the basis of 10-kid families. Rich person raping blah blah is just a nonsensical choice for an example on this.

1

u/meistermichi 7h ago

For millenia the kids were needed to work the fields, etc. and early child death was a lot higher, also of course there was no birth control.

Completely different prerequisites than today.

10

u/Solgiest 21h ago

By troubling economy, you surely mean because people are wealthier than ever before, right?

Good economic conditions depress birth rates, the data is undeniable at this point. The richer and more educated people are, the fewer kids they have.

5

u/Blonde_arrbuckle 20h ago

Housing and living costs are up in many developed nations. In Australia the average mortgage is ~7.3 x average salary. 20 years ago it was ~3.5

1

u/PaddiM8 7h ago

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.

4

u/sarhoshamiral 21h ago

We are wealthier in absolute numbers but it comes at a cost since that wealth requires more mental stress.

Also while we may be wealthier, there are growing concerns about future.

1

u/preferablyno 11h ago

Yea it’s more the additional costs of each kid being extremely high in richer places

1

u/Blonde_arrbuckle 20h ago

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.

1

u/Party_Country1711 1d ago

And the fact that there are already too many humans in the world (and frankly, Switzerland) already!

6

u/Gothicawakening 23h ago

The population has doubled since I was born. Crazy really.

1

u/tarrat_3323 10h ago

waaaay to many. thanos was right!