[ExI] From the baby boom to the baby bust

[William Flynn Wallace]

What I find very interesting, is why fertility rates are falling. Is it
medical, cultural or both? Probably both, and if so, what's the medical
reason?

As quality of life improves (access to food, shelter, etc.) birth rates go
down.  Historically, many children would die young (which drastically
skewed the statistics on how long the people lived) and so they kept on
having them because they needed them to work the farm and so on and support
them in their old age.  When confidence that the offspring would live grew
to a certain point, they quit trying to have more - birth control obviously
helped here.  This has been true in many countries and now we have places
where the replacement birth rate (having two kids replacing the parents) is
negative.

The fewer the better, I say.    bill w

The fewer the better, I say.   bill w

On Mon, Jun 3, 2024 at 6:11 AM Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> On Mon, Jun 3, 2024, 5:31 AM efc--- via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
>> What I find very interesting, is why fertility rates are falling. Is is
>> medical, cultural or both? Probably both, and if so, what's the medical
>> reason?
>>
>
> Having a baby has always been medically risky and stressful for the
> woman.  With much longer life expectancy, in much better condition (between
> the economy, and technologically improved quality of life), there is that
> much more to risk by creating a baby.
>
> But I would say the problem is more economical.  Raising a child from 0 to
> 18 is far more expensive than just having a child (e.g. if given up for
> adoption), especially if one adds in a parent-funded college education, and
> with uncertain futures, many women and men are less certain it is worth
> their time and money.  This is due to conditions that predated the 21st
> century: notice the falling birthrate in country after country as they gain
> access to modern Western standards of living (Japan being among the first,
> many African countries being much later).
>
> One possible solution is political: pro-natalist funding that consistently
> and substantially offsets and/or lowers the cost of child raising.
> Universal state funded daycare, for example.  Your mind's ear can probably
> already predict the howls of outrage from certain sectors, who claim to be
> about "family values" (and in practice mean valuing their own family above
> all others), at the mere thought of providing such services to the poors
> (or insert whatever minority grouping, but it is usually disdain for anyone
> in no position to potentially fund the legislators' political careers).
> There is the possibility of a focused technological effort to radically
> drive down the cost of raising a child so as to achieve much the same
> result, but I am unaware of any large scale effort that explicitly has such
> a direct goal at this time.
>
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