There’s also late stage socialism. It’s called communism. It too relies on the right kind of growth just like capitalism. Socialism also tends to fail faster than capitalism because power is centralized from the start, so corruption spreads faster and is more malevolent.
People stop having kids when economic forces work against them. It doesn't matter how the forces were put there. At least it's not like it was in Adam Smith's time, when the downward pressure was a result of children failing to reach adulthood. Thanks to birth control and modern medicine, people can decline to have children when they know the conditions are not right.
The whole "children are so expensive" meme is overrated. College is expensive but attendance rates are high. Real estate is expensive but people keep buying homes. Some alternate reasons for declining fertility:
1. Decline in religious belief
2. Widespread, easy to use birth control
3. More options for entertainment are widely available. Having kids is less attractive when you could be traveling, binging endless series, or playing computer games
4. Strong anti-natalist sentiment that was pushed very hard post-war and persists
5. Higher rates of college attendance, which means people are studying and furthering their careers in their 20s rather than having kids
Children are not too expensive for anyone to afford, they're too expensive for most people to think it is worth having more than two. That might sound like a qualification, but it's what population decline means.
I unfortunately can't find the source right now, but I recently came across a study that found that, in the US, number of children was almost completely uncorrelated with regional cost of living but was quite correlated with beliefs about the amount of effort/time raising a child requires.
I think our culture of expecting/demanding that parents invest ever greater amounts of time and effort (with all the evidence suggesting that these increased investments do not improve long term outcomes) is a far bigger driver than costs.
And car seats! Three kids are dramatically more expensive than two because you need a bigger car, and many family activities are priced for a family of four.
Perhaps not as big a deal in the US, but in the EU where some form of car seat is required for the first 8-10 years of a child's life it's a big thing.
That only applies to 3 at the same time. And most Americans drive SUVs and other large cars regardless of how many children they have. Small sedans basically aren't even sold in America anymore due to lack of consumer preference.
I believe the average cost to raise a child in the US is comparable to a Lamborghini. I suppose it's up to the individual to decide what the more desirable purchase is.
Just imagine if the future of our economic system required a significant number of middle class Americans to buy three Lamborghinis, to offset the people who only bought one.
> College is expensive but attendance rates are high
A lot of "college is expensive" is a US-specific problem, not one universal to the Western world. In many European countries, public universities are tuition-free. Even in those Western countries with non-nominal tuition, it is almost always significantly less than the sky-high US levels.
The fact that many countries have cheaper higher education yet lower fertility than the US suggests that, even in the US case, this is unlikely to be a big factor. It likely makes a difference at the margins, but only at the margins.
It's not so much the expense but the timing. People are in college during the peak fertility years. By the time they graduate and get a job and spend a few years getting established, fertility is already declining.
Maybe a policy like this might work: for every child you have, you get a lifetime 10 percentage point reduction in income tax rates.
Suppose the top rate is 37%. Have one child, now for the rest of your life, your top rate is capped at 27%. Have a second child, now your lifetime top rate is capped at 17%. Third child, capped at 7%. Fourth child, never pay income tax ever again.
But, a lot of people will object to such a policy. Childless people will end up having to pay higher taxes as people with kids pay lower or no taxes–some may accept that as their personal sacrifice for the greater good, many likely won't. Others will object to the fact that the biggest benefit is going to be for the middle and upper classes – who are most likely to pay the higher tax rates – while having far less benefit for those on low incomes, who pay little or no tax already. There is the (difficult to quantify) risk that unsuitable parents may end up having kids just for the tax benefits, and then mistreat/abuse those kids. Given all these objections, I'd be surprised if it ever actually gets adopted. But, in terms of increasing TFR in wealthy countries, it might actually work.
When there is consequently more to do, more to experience, more people to meet, more to discover, more novelty to novel at. In short, the modern era has more of what makes the childhood experience what it is, enough to spill over into what was previously considered adulthood.
I sometimes ponder what would happen if we did discover the secret to substantial life extension or even immortality; if this phenomenon of trying to stretch that delightful halcyon glow of childhood wonder - what I've heard the Finns call lapsuus - would extend into decades or centuries or perpetuity as a result. It would if nothing else provide a plausible explanation for the behavior of characters like Q from Star Trek.
Children are massively more expensive, and less useful, in richer societies. I don't think anybody in Japan would be allowed to provide for their children the standards of care provided in a country with a growing population. As for the second point, if you are a farmer in a country with little physical mobility, your children are your retirement savings. If you live in America, your children are future employees of a company ten states away.
I read a statistic somewhere that it costs $2M to raise a child. Considering that it's considered a horrible imposition to ask your kids for money, or even to ask them to take care of you, it's easy to explain why urbanization, industrial development, and education, work against population growth.
That's ok, it'll only take a couple of generations for the people who don't feel the drive to have kids to be out of the gene pool. Then the next baby boom begins.
some animals that live in groups where the leader gets to do all the mating, if a new leader emerges, he will kill all the offsprings of the old leader.
i'd say that this is a clear sign that animals do have strong biological drive to care about continuing their bloodline
