These countries will do anything but incentivize young people to have kids. Like, hello—affordable housing, sustainable work, and a good work-life balance could actually help with that too!
That'd be nice but it clearly isn't the root of the problem, because through most of human history people have had kids despite wild poverty, terrible work prospects and a work-life balance that was appallingly bad and that may actually be illegal now depending on where you live. Most monkeys manage to procreate while basically living in the woods foraging.
Since the effect seems to correlate with wealth, it seems more likely to me that people are just sniffing out that they, personally, will have a more comfortable existence if they spend money on themselves rather than having children. Birth control means that is an easy option.
> through most of human history people have had kids despite wild poverty, terrible work prospects and a work-life balance that was appallingly bad and that may actually be illegal now depending on where you live.
The economics of having children is fundamentally different between societies that expect an educated workforce, and societies that do not. "Despite" might read "because of".
> Most monkeys manage to procreate while basically living in the woods foraging.
Monkeys are built for that lifestyle, we aren't anymore. What a terrible comparison. Monkeys evolved to be good at monkey things we've evolved to be good at human things. People don't want to "go back to monke".
>Since the effect seems to correlate with wealth
No, that's not all it, they're also corelated with intelligence and the lack of wealth.
Modern middle class people in developed western countries who aren't wealthy, are smart enough to see the wealth divide growing larger and large, good job opportunities scarcer and scarcer, and realize that unless they'll be leaving their kids a great inheritance they'll basically be breading economic cannon fodder as the future generations will have it worse when it comes to income, housing and wealth building. So if they're already suffering themselves because of this, why would they also want to bring people in this world that will suffer even more in the future?
Millionaires have plenty of kinds since they can afford it and they're also increasing their odds of passing their genes further along with diversifying their wealth, and poor uneducated people are subsidized by the state, so it's the middle class who's not having any kids.
> they'll basically be breading economic cannon fodder
Are you suggesting that it's a new development and that, for example, peasants had it better?
I'd say that even if the absolute difference in wealth is greater these days, the disparity in opportunities and quality of life has, on average, decreased (Don't ask for sources as I don't have any)
>Are you suggesting that it's a new development and that, for example, peasants had it better?
Where did I suggest that?
Peasants had loads of kids because kids were free labor vital for the farm and also helped later with old age care. They didn't have a choice to not have kids.
Urban people today don't have the same lifestyle as peasants in the past.
We aren't built for any lifestyle in particular. Humans are the most adaptable species on the planet. I don't know what you mean by "anymore" considering that human genetics haven't changed significantly for millennia. We're built exactly the same as people who had more kids.
>Humans are the most adaptable species on the planet.
Over a span of thousands of years of evolution maybe, but a lot of modern people in the developed west today wouldn't be able to survive without their smartphones and DoorDash.
> I don't know what you mean by "anymore" considering that human genetics haven't changed significantly for millennia.
What does this have to do with the calculated choice of not having kids due to unaffordable housing and worsening standard of living?
>We're built exactly the same as people who had more kids.
Yes, and? How is human behavior today comparable with humans from 100 years ago when there was no birth control and women were basically their father's/husband's property, let alone 10000 years ago when humans used to procreate though what was basically mass rape, just like animals in the wild. How is that comparable to our modern society and with the human and female rights today?
While it's absolutely true that many couples refrain from having children due to financial reasons, many others simply don't want any. You can't really fix the latter, even if a lot more can and should be done for the former.
You either deal with mass immigration or address your population decline—there’s no way around it. Historically, Nordic countries haven’t had much experience with immigration, and Sweden’s poorly managed policies make that painfully clear.
For immigration to succeed, you need a universal language like English, a thriving industry, and abundant opportunities to attract the cream of the crop. Essentially, you have to compete with countries like the US, Canada, and Australia—all of which offer better conditions for immigrants compared to majority of the places in Europe. Also, I don't know anyone that can get a job in the SV is excited to learn German and move there; let alone in the Nordics.
While these nations draw in the best and brightest, the EU ends up handling the leftovers: refugees and others in desperate situations. Then they complain about how immigrants have ruined their economy. Like, hello—you took in the most disadvantaged en masse; what exactly did you expect?
Nordic countries haven’t had much experience with immigration
That's not really true, at least not with regards to Sweden. In the 50s-70s there was a massive immigration wave from Finland. During the Pinochet years, Sweden took in a lot of political refugees from Chile. During the war in Yugoslavia there was another huge wave of immigration into Sweden. Sweden's immigration clusterfuck wasn't so much due to lack of experience, but more based on a very naive assumption that this immigration wave would play out more or less just like the previous ones.
Can't they also just... Live with fewer people? Living standards increased after the Plague wiped out a huge chunk of the population. The only people who DON'T benefit are "asset owners" whose status and asset values (land prices) would decrease. Everyone else would enjoy cheaper housing, full employment and boosted social status to "workers".
> Live with fewer people? Living standards increased after the Plague wiped out a huge chunk of the population
Having a catastrophic event wipe out large swathes of the population... and large swathes of the population being old (so requiring disproportionate amounts of effort and contributing little to economic and social efforts) is very different. If 60% of a country 's population is in retirement homes, who will take care for them? Who will work all the jobs required to maintain a standard of living for everyone and pay for those retirees?
Rapidly aging, not already aged. For South Korea if current trends persist (so far they've only been getting worse), it's expected that 25% of the population would be 60 and older by 2050.
Private housing (mainly condominiums) has always been expensive and has touched new highs in recent times, making it out-of-reach for most.
Public housing prices have gone up a lot (70-100% increase in last 5 years) but it is heavily subsidized for citizens who can buy directly from the Housing Development Board (HDB). Permanent residents cannot buy from HDB so they have to buy from the resale market where prices are sky high so they are bearing the brunt of it.
Seems religious anti-freedom is evolutionary selected for. Take away the pressures that shape society to squeeze into form & function and it unravels in record time.
The "laziness" here isn't just the working parents to be.
Old people could help a great deal with child care, instead the boomer capitalist mindset is "retirement" and getting "taken care of".
That's the clear solution. The elderly have a clear obligation to help the younger productive generations raise kids.
They don't.
Aside from these issues are the saturation of entertainment/video games, emphasis on look at me consumption while raising kids just needs pragmatic consumption, feminism, birth control, abortion (I am pro choice but it has a demographic cost), overwork, porn, internet dating isn't aligned with long-term relationships, drop in religion.
It all combined to less means, less time, less interest.
Single consumers are what western capitalism is strongly optimized for, and the cultural bulwarks have basically collapsed.
I used to be worried about the infinite growth /consumption of capitalism, but urbanization is the precise weapon environmentalism needs. Nothing will work because the rich get richer off of all of this.
The medium term solution is immigration, which converts low resource consuming people to high resource consumption, but that's just a generational delay in the inevitable demographic decline.
It's hilarious we talk about AI simply slotting into the economy while consumer capitalism withers away the biological aspects over generations.
Scandinavia isn't doing much to bring down housing costs, or cost of living in general. So I'm skeptical that their policies are really that great. Some of the countries like Sweden have allowed in large numbers of immigrants, many of which ended up working in elder care facilities. While that might be a positive in some ways it also drives up housing prices.
Many countries have a higher birth rate today than last year.
They tend to be lower income, have fewer women's rights, or be more agricultural.
IMHO, we overemphasized the dangers and impact of children, especially for women or career, and so couples have made the rational decision to have fewer children in industrialized nations, when given the choice.
That is a fine opinion to have. Mine have been worth every minute and penny and I wish I had them 10 years ago - but was dissuaded by nearly everyone including my grand plans for myself.
I am not trying to convince you, but one rational / philosophical argument goes:
Imagine the thing you are trying to accomplish before you have children. Now imagine your neighbor lets his children die (or be taken away) so he can do that, because parenthood was in the way. Everyone is aghast. Yet we deny ourselves parenthood to do that thing all the time.
> And gets women out into the workforce after childbirth by having maids.
The gain there sounds a bit risky. The kid still needs a full time caregiver and the amount of time a human needs to put into housework hasn't changed - so there aren't direct improvements.
There is an argument from letting people specialise, but the net change could easily be trading down the quality of the kid's life. Nothing wrong with that in principle but it isn't obviously a net win. Getting kids face-to-face time with a high-status and invested parent has to be worth a lot more to them than time with some maid. Outsourcing child rearing to a sort of capitalist factory farm seems like it could be a big picture mistake.
The gotcha here is they import maids from developing SEA countries. Its probably a net positive for all parties but those maids get paid low (comparatively to the local market) but well enough compared to their homeland. They will leave their families to make money so they can send it back. Sometimes this power dynamic creates bad situations. Similar story in Hong Kong.
So you can go back to a position that most definitely pays at least double what the maid is making and adding value to the economy.
Edit: I have more knowledge on the HK side, the maid works long hours 6 days a week. On their day off they congregate downtown (at least used to) and socialize and create informal markets. Its not an easy life but they are able to send money back home.
It's probably exactly the same amount they'd be working back home. 6 days (legally) or even more (illegal but rarely/never enforced) is common in many industries across SEA, maid service assuredly being one of them, along with everything else in the hospitality and F&B industries.
It for certain is and like I said before, the arrangement is beneficial for both parties in most cases but I think its good to highlight because they are taking advantage of imported labor (which most countries do in some form).
Which is indirectly pegged to open-market prices. There's also some encouraging of a view of public housing as an appreciating asset. Insufficient new housing supply due to Covid, combined with these policies, has seemingly led to ongoing runaway (resale) public housing prices: a whopping 40%+ price increase over 2020 Q3 - 2024 Q4: https://www.hdb.gov.sg/-/media/HDBContent/Images/EAPG/EAPG-C.... A 40% average increase in (resale) public housing prices over 4 years is eye-watering.
Non-homeowners' wealth is getting inflated away by the rises, which is going to make it harder for younger people to have kids.
Parts of the Singapore government is aware of its demographic crisis and has a material incentive to address it. For example, its military doctrine is predicated on conscription from a reserve of able-bodied male citizens that have undergone military training when they came of age; this is not something completely alleviated by mechanization, AI, or naturalization. I'm curious myself why the city-state has yet to take even more extensive measures to address this.
Just having kids doesn't solve the labour problem though. People don't want to spend their life just taking care of old people - there's no career path there.
It's more than just wages, the work is miserable for most people. One of my relatives had Alzheimer's disease and spent the end of his life in an elder care facility. Every time I went to visit I saw how he was abusive and combative towards the staff when they had to dress him or brush his teeth or change his diaper. I see tech company employees on this site whining about minor mistreatment from co-workers all the time but they have no idea how bad it can get in healthcare dealing with patients.
People used to do these jobs and also own a house, have large families and happy lives. So the incentive of a career path and more money is only because people cannot have these things today (and fake social media lives influence).
> People used to do these jobs and also own a house, have large families and happy lives.
Well, careers were for one half of the population, as determined by birth, and caring for large families and their houses and elderly was for the other half. We set it up so that the latter was the shitty end of the deal, so eventually that other half got tired of it. Then we started down the path of industrializing care, and that made doing this kind of work even shittier. So, that's where we are today.
Right. I still see comments here by people praising multigenerational housing in traditional societies. In practice that usually amounts to the wife doing unpaid labor to care for the husband's parents as they age (and constantly criticize her for doing everything wrong).
> ...(and constantly criticize her for doing everything wrong)
That parenthetical is, in my mind, an often-overlooked, but absolutely crucial aspect.
You normally see this framed in a moralising way as a critique against the selfishness endemic within the culture of the working-age generation. But there may be a flip side to that coin, namely a powertrippin' culture on the side of the now-elderly.
I actually did work in the care sector for a very short period of time.
But the problem I'm having with my aging western boomer dad, is that he never learned how to relate to family in a way where he doesn't get to dominate it all. And if I have a choice of taking care of him and never crawling out from under the thumb of his domination, or shipping him off to a home, then the home it is.
I don't want to unduly overgeneralise here, but I'm wondering if there may be something systematic or quantitatively significant going on here: There was a particular generation where young men suddenly had the opportunity for a power grab (taking power away from any intergenerational power structure) based on becoming financially self-sufficient at an early age, including owning a home for use by their nuclear, rather than extended, family. In Europe, this generation was the boomers because of the war. In North America, it might have been one generation earlier. Women wanted power too, so feminism.
If that same generation wants the next generation to stick around to take care of them, even when they have alternative options, then a precondition for that would be to renegotiate who is in charge. Doing that is hard, if the only reality you've ever known is a struggle for and steady increase of your power.
Urbanization is like heroin for economics. Governments become addicted to it and the explosion in the GDP, trade and all other traditional indicators of economic health and power.
Demographic health is something that needs a long term investment, certainly much longer than capitalism can tolerate. 18 to 25 years?
It's to the point now that without immigration, countries are committing demographic suicide even in western "happy" counties, unlike "sad" totalitarian countries where urbanization is combined with reproductive rebellion.
We see that the current level of human population is unsustainable. It's not just emissions but also, and perhaps especially, pressure on environment and resources.
We need to find solutions that do not involve even higher population.
> I don't see the current level to be unsustainable at all.
Always very surprising to read this.
Population has grown ~8x since 1900, environment is collapsing around us, billions of people are still living in poverty (i.e. their consumption of everything will go up if or when poverty is eradicated globally)... So, yes current population level is completely unsustainable.
It all depends on how it's managed. If things are REALLY REALLY poorly managed, the entire Earth will be uninhabitable for anyone; with good management we could have >10x as many people as we do now.
But with what living standards and quality of life? This would need stringent rationing of everything.
Is our aim to improve living standards and quality of life or to squeeze as many people as possible on the planet even if that means living in a studio flat in a huge tower block with only a daily ration of nutritious yeast and a ban on travelling around or owning too many things?
I'd rather see humanity live in houses with gardens and enjoy life and nature, and be able to see the world, but with 1 billion people on Earth instead of 10 billion.
Yeah it'd not be as nice, but it's technically possible. Probably the limiting factor (I think we're already seeing this) is people feeling they are too "crowded, cramped and hungry" and not feeling like having children.
That would be a disaster. We don’t have 10x more arable land that can be farmed at industrial scale. Global agricultural land is about 2/3rds pasture that can grow enough grass for ruminants but it can’t really grow food for humans.
The amount of land used to grow fodder is actually a small fraction of the land animals use, so you wouldn’t gain much back, you’d just lose all the calories supported by land that is otherwise unproductive.
Fair enough, but there are a LOT of options we just don't even look into because they're not profitable at current low food prices. It's like mineral resources vs reserves, basically where there's a will there's a way. Agriculture is currently less than 5% of GDP, there's a lot of headroom for putting more effort into it. Nuclear-powered vertical farming anyone?
And the population in 1900 is ~6x that of the population in 1400. I'm not sure what you are getting at with such a comparison. It sounds totally meaningless to me.
I don't know which stance is closer to the reality, but it sometimes gives me pause that there are places like infinitely vast Kazakh steppe or endless backyards of Sakha republic whilst we're supposedly running out of land for humans globally.
My supposition is that the Earth _is_ at full capacity by many meaningful metric such as GHG emissions, but when it comes to land area - it must be tiny minority of places like core Western Europe, northeast coastal US, or coastal Far East, that are at capacity. Definitely not everywhere.
I agree that the earth is over capacity at some things humans are doing. Like GHG emissions as you say. But this is precisely the mismanagement I was getting at. To prove overcapacity you also need to prove a degree of efficiency. You can't say there isn't enough food if you are throwing away 99% of the food source.
It's not so much about space to build housing, which isn't much of an issue, but all the resources consumed by each human being, not least when they enjoy the living standards of a developed country. In any case, perhaps we'd also wish to keep wild areas wild [1] (that's also what protecting the environment means).
