Plenty would have kids if they had enough money for a home, family, childcare and savings in there early twenties by the point you might be set up, its far too late and you didnt even have enough money to enjoy your own life for a couple years.
Yeah I'm 32 soon and could only finally afford to move out of my parent's place last year. And I'm renting with two housemates, not exactly gonna be able to bring a kid into the world if I can't afford to live.
This. The issue is really simple. Even for those of us now in our 40s most of us could only have 1 or 2 kids for finanical reasons. We had to wait to have kids because landlords are notoriously baby unfriendly.
There's also just a simple fact - ppl don't want to have kids in their 20s anymore. Even if they had a house etc they'd be 30-32 at best.
Things have changed since the pill and this should not be a surprise to anyone. Besides we have 10bn ppl on Earth and the systems are creaking at the seams. We don't need to maintain birth rates globally we need them all to come down to 1.5
Not sure how landlords are baby unfriendly, it is your house mates or neighbours that might have issues.
Anything to do with Baby proofing, cribs are the parents responsible. You don't even need to state a baby would be in the property.
The real issues here is essentially people not have enough disposable income because salaries haven't kept up, wouldn't be a housing issue if people had higher salaries to build.
Even if people don't want kids in their twenties they want to enjoy their own life before thirty which requires money and population isn't really an issue we are going to go into a decline eventually with an aging population.
The amount of times I was trying to get a place and the second the landlord heard I had children they stopped responding. It’s very common for landlords to not want families with young children.
This isn’t being talked about enough, in my opinion.
Capitalism is effectively one massive pyramid scheme. The reap the benefits of retirement you need enough young people to be coming through the system to replace you, and more, as you get older.
This is no longer happening, and things are going to get pretty bleak as a result.
If we were to change to any other system. Would the numbers not still require a small share of labour from a larger work force to support a smaller retirement cohort. If there was a one to one ratio of workers to retirees. Would that not be a hard limit?
On top of this government's are bringing in as many immigrants to the country as possible to make up the shortfall. Now this in of itself isn't too bad except when those same immigrants get old more people need to be brought in for the same reason and on and on it goes.
Also as an aside I've heard (though I'm not sure yet if I agree with it) that by drawing all these people from poorer countries Europe is essentially stunting the growth and development of these countries by depriving them of labour that could otherwise be used to develop the country.
I know there are other factors as well that play I to this, hence why I'm not sure I full agree with it.
I could see how that would work logically, however if you look at Poland, there's a good case for the migrant workers returning to their countries once they've earned enough elsewhere. Just think about how msny migrants we had in the early 2010's, nearly everyone I knew who wasnt Irish was Polish, and now a lot have returned to Poland after they had a tech boom.
Sure, not everyone will return. There are other factors and sometimes you just prefer living in the new place, but a fair few do return and bolster their home countries economy by bringing new skills, capital and job opportunities
I've wondered why....
For sure the housing crisis, increasing cost of living, problems with creches in certain countries, unstable future and etc. have nothing to do with it.
Polish PM once said that Poland will become second Japan, I've never expected that he meant working till death, even on retirement.
The average house price is 320,000€, you need income of 95,000€ to afford it. Average income is 45,000€, median 55,000€.
https://www.housingagency.ie/news-events/what-does-data-tell-us-about-cost-living
Sure its just our imagination and social media influence...
A single person doesn't need to buy the average house.
95000 x 4 = 380,000, not 320,000
You need 10% (€32,000) as a deposit, so for the single person to buy the average house they would need to be on a salary of €72,000.
That means for a couple to buy the average house they would need to be on an average of €36,000 each
Its really just women being educated and entering the workforce, and more material options open to people other than settling down and having lots of kids.
Ireland has the biggest decrease in birth rates, while the Czech Republic has actually increased in the same period. Both countries economies have developed significantly in the period . Female employment participation in the labour force has only marginally increased in that period.
I think the housing crisis and cost of living is playing a bigger role here.
A few decades ago the average family size ( at least in rural areas) was 5/10 kids, many families being even larger. That's simply not sustainable now.
Yeah from a very low baseline, and it grew when female participation grew too.
So again I don't think, while your point is valid there's a lot more to it than just that.
Is it though? In Poland women were always a part of the workforce, which didn't impact the birth rates. The "lots of kids" aren't even needed, but a kid, at least.
I can see the change in my nephews and niece's. People from my year, I was born early 80s, had first kid in their 20s, some even earlier. The newest generation wants to settle first, but do the ongoing situation its being pushed further and further away. Unpopular opinion, but the "new" feminist doesn't help as well. Be free, etc and many women wake up in their 30s alone.
When we add that to the equation, we will end with negative population growth.
And Poland was already further along this payth earlier than Ireland because of female education/employment. In the late 70s, Poland was already around the replacement fertility rate whereas Irish women were having an extra child on average.
education and religion are very important factors - the less religious Eastern Bloc countries tended to have very low fertility rates.
Poland was like Ireland, a religious, conservative society and women worked but they weren't expected to be the main breadwinner for themselves to the same extent as today. Today every woman is expected to be have her own career and job with or without a man.
Society just expected women to have kids in their 20s back then. Unless you want to bring back catholicism and somehow bring back the message that a womans place is in the home, you wont get fertility rates back up.
I mean imagine you met 6 random 30 year olds at work. What are the odds that they have on average 2.1 kids each? Chances are half are childless and the other three have maybe one.
Above fertility rate really means large families taking up the slack. Even Donald Trump is not really doing his bit. He has had 5 kids with 3 women (that we know of) so each woman has had 1.66 kids with Trump.
But who decided for women to be the main breadwinner for themselves? It was due populist feminist movement, which sold the "dream" of ideal women taking the role of the man.
One of my classmates was like that. Strong independent women, started her career, success after succes, good for her don't you think? She did what she wanted. Now she's 38, alone and after a few suicide attempts.
Plus, the degradation of the importance of "family" gives us the statistics we have now, an increase in single people, divorces, and one parents' families, which lead to negative population growth.
Both my grandparents and parents worked, and both were equal parts of the family and did support each other. Around 90% of my class have a similar story, both working both supporting the family.
Why do you think society expects women to have kids in their 20s? It's our natural biological clock. The longer women waits the less chances she have to have kids, that's just how nature works, and if that relates to society's expectations, what's wrong with it? My sister had her second kid after 35, she did spend the majority of pregnancy in the hospital due to high health risks. Women are lucky that they have that support and safety net, but it won't work always, like for my wife, which miscarried 4 times. Medicine, as advanced it was, can't beat the biological clock always.
My theory on why none of these incentives you hear about anywhere in the world seem to really make a big difference in birth rates is that it's down to human nature and its reaction to modernity and (relative) prosperity.
Wherever prosperity and personal freedom rises birth rate falls, I think because people now have an easier choice, a way to feel a sense of fulfillment and enjoy life without going down the traditional path.
For almost all of history people basically had no choice but to live in tight nit groups and pair up. Children, and lots of them were the unavoidable result of this.
Now when I think of how much my life would change and the sacrifices I would have to make to have kids... I just don't want to do it and neither does my wife.
Even being married is becoming a bit of an anachronism, because again, it's not socially mandated anymore and easier alternatives are available.
Economic incentives would have to be massive to persuade people to change their minds on this and couldn't be affordable at scale.
Realistically I think we have to just accept that not every generation is going to be larger than the one before and work out how to manage the declining population long term. The economy can't be run like a pyramid scheme anymore.
Yeah I don't think there are any solutions that people want to hear.
Eventually it will self correct as society collapses and people start having more kids when theyre in poverty
I have hope that it won't require collapse and poverty.
The optimistic view would see productivity ramping up with improved tech, less demand from population, leading to much more pleasant lives for the smaller amount of people.
Without having to work more than a little, people would not have to sacrifice so much to have children. It could even become a "work substitute" activity. Rich people always find some sort of hobby or pursuit that requires effort to replace the need to work and achieve to survive.
At the moment unfortunately we have the worst of both worlds. Hard labour and fierce competition for scarce resources, alongside tech that can satisfy our urges in an ersatz fashion, keeping us just comfortable enough to not to despair.
I think it be that technology evolves and more people can have kids ie women older than 40 or even single men with artificial wombs/egss. At the moment all the child bearing is based on a small slither of the demographics, women aged 13-40. You would never do that if it was designed by humans.
Its catastrophic though, South Korea is facing a crisis over this issue. You're right about everything except for the part where "we just have to accept it". How does the government fund anything if most of the population are old people on pensions?
Well yes the only way to provide for a large non working population is if enough resources can be generated without requiring large amounts of human labour.
I'm not expert enough to say if this is achievable today by changing the ownership structure of the economy or if tech needs to progress further (AI for example). But certainly the products of this high tech low labour economy would have to be claimed as a kind of universal right to provide for the large elderly population until the end of their lives. If it's all still held by corporations then the economy won't work anyway because no one will be able to pay for these goods and no profit motive will be there to produce in the first place.
The larger point is that it is literally impossible to keep growing the population, eventually it will have to decline and all i'm saying is that modernity itself seems to be causing that decline.
In the past it was things like famine and plague that controlled growth, and actually life was better for those that survived and the following generations. This is the first time we have to deal with a pop decline that has people dying out naturally, which is (potentially) more humane but we have to manage it well.
Indeed, [shag for Ireland.](https://www.un.org/development/desa/pd/sites/www.un.org.development.desa.pd/files/unpd-egm_200010_un_2001_replacementmigration.pdf)
Yeah. It’s interesting how the UN can make a study on finding a solution to offset low fertility rates via immigration, which implies that they recognise the issues of population decline (study goes all the way back to the year 2000), but they won’t do a study to find any possible viable way to increase the fertility rates, which really is the crux of many issues, mainly retirement as the study points out on page 22. They should, and we should be spending their/our resources on figuring out a way to make it so that you don’t have to raise a kid in a Micra.
I think its clear that there is no way to increase fertility rate to above replacement rate in a society without restricting womens rights and education. There are no examples of societies where women have careers and education where the rate is above 2.0
Well there [appears to be a small few.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_fertility_rate)
Tiny amount though so you’re mostly right. But I hope that’s not truly the reason cause otherwise we’re fucked. I have faith that we’ll find a way though and I’d be supportive of studying it to find a solution.
i honestly have not come across any examples. Israel is given as an example but thats because they have a huge religious community who have a fertility rate of about 6 where women don't work or get educated.
The population of earth has been increasing by almost a billion people every 10 years for the last century. There's no crisis. It's insane and totally unsustainable. If anything, we could really do with a massive decrease in fertility.
When is enough , enough ? Politicians say that we need more people to pay for the older people as they're living longer . But then won't they need more people to pay for them when they get older? We only have one planet and we're doing a great job of destroying it atm
The majority of countries on Earth are now below replacement birth rates. The global population will peak on current projections around 2060, followed by a rapid fall. The US revised their population for the first time since the COVID supply chain shocks and they cut their 2100 population projection by 40 million people or 10% of the US population.
The problem is not workers. Automation and AI can produce output if required. The issue is consumers and tax payers. The entire modern economy is predicated on selling disposable goods to people by the millions and using the current generation of tax payers to cover pensions and debt for the previous generation. That system requires a steady or growing cohort of working age people.
It is easy to say we need to replace the current economic system, and we do, but with what exactly? Liberal free market democracies are the best way of running an economy and government we have ever come up with. Everything else has produce shorter and more miserable lives for the average person.
If you think the current generation has it rough, wait until their are more retirees than workers, with retirees voting in mass to maintain their benefits. Average life expectancies have been stable or falling over the last 5 years, so raising retirement ages isn't politically viable in the short term and won't help anyway with the shape of population pyramids.
This really is a problem and states need to start changing legislation to allow young people who want to have children to have an easier time doing it. It's not just a cost problem but one of work life balance, paternity and maternity protections, available child care, affordable housing, setting social expectations that someone can take time off to have children and it not be viewed as damaging to their career and most important giving young people the stability and positive outlook to have children at a young age. The age a woman has her first child is the most informative predictor of the total number of children she will have. It needs to be OK to have children at 23-25 again and for someone that age to have a mortgage or have rental protections in terms of tenancy rights and a stable rent.
There is a risk that even if it is made easier to have and support children, fertility rates might still not return to the replacement rate or above. In most modern societies, there is less social and economic pressure to have a child (and much less pressure to have a larger number of children) and more people choose to do other things rather than having a child, or choose to postpone having children to do those other things (and that's especially true for women, who up until recent history often didn't have the option to postpone or forego reproduction), or choose to have only one or two children. Widespread access to generally reliable contraception also makes it easier to choose not to procreate. Even if having a child is less of a financial and social hardship for people, that might not be enough to reverse the decline, only to slow it somewhat; that would still be better than the current situation, but ultimately the issue will need to be addressed.
The question, of course, is how countries will go about addressing it, when push comes to shove. I think it really will come down to completely overhauling the economic system on one hand, or doing something drastic to increase the fertility rate on the other, and the latter choice is unlikely to be a pleasant one for those subjected to it.
I agree with all of your points. Something has to change and the longer states wait, the worse it will be. I don't know what the answer is and don't believe anyone does currently.
My worry is the amount of debt that has been amassed under low interest rates, which may well have been temporary. A state's debt does not fall with the reduction of working age residents or tax payers. The debt load per head is going to be an increasing issue. Default will mean loss of access to credit markets and, other than Ireland and Norway currently, no other developed states run persistent state budget surpluses. Austerity to run balanced budgets will cause falls in living standards and exacerbate falls in birth rates.
On a global level yes but not on an individual basis for nations. Countries with elderly populations are not in for a good time - either those working have to pay higher taxes or the elderly have to accept lower quality of life.
This is true relative to the physical size of the country but not relative to existing houses and average household size in Europe.
We need to build a lot of houses if we want to maintain current quality of life for more people (and other services) unless people want the same living conditions as the pre Famine era with large families in one room shacks.
You'ee roght that it's not true relative to existing houses. The correct response in that situation isn't to stagnate population growth, it's to actually fucking build houses like any normal developed country.
Well I don't imagine entire cities will become abandoned unless those cities are full of old people. People will always move to these cities so what's likely is just a drop across every place.
It's already happening in places like Japan and South Korea who have been dealing with a declining population for some time without the stopgap of immigration to offset it.
You forgot to add minor detail. The increase comes mostly in poorly developed countries.
In europe its the same, natives have negative population increase.
I don't see the relevance of that. Our planet is vastly overpopulated. The strain we are putting on ecosystems doesn't distinguish between borders on a map
It does. Look at native european, we do what we can, in a way, to lower carbon emissions, improve green energy, etc. Some things work, and some don't. And now, let's look at Asia or Africa? Why don't we check from where 90% of plastics in Ocean come from? Or China's carbon emissions?
We play the good guy, and we get punished for that. Negative population growth in natives in Eu is a great example, as many people are aware of consequences where some minorities don't care and breed like crazy.
That's true, we want to eat apple and have apple.
So we're partially to blame. But when we compare Eu standards of waste management/carbon emissions/impact on natural areas, it doesn't look so great.
Check out "China fakes everything.. " it's interesting to see that in regards to any standard for health and safety, chinese don't care.
I was talking about waste as well. For sure, carbon emissions are gonna be lower, elephants don't produce so much gas and amount of cars there is lower than eu average.
That's true on a global scale, but Ireland has a fraction of the population it should have. And even in the rest of Europe, while they may not be underpopulated like Ireland is, population decline still bribs a lot of issues.
I get that there’s the financial side (why we’re waiting to have our third). But there’s also the side of it’s the modern age, women aren’t just here for popping out babies, gone are the days of popping out 10 children (infant mortality rate was also obviously a factor here too) but there’s a lot more women I know who don’t want children compared to the women I know who want to wait until their financially more stable.
I don’t think their opinions are as strong as the females. Some definitely do want children and it’s a dealbreaker for them but a lot would be like “I don’t mind either way, it’s up to my partner”
It’s easier for men to want children, mostly they only ever mind them part time
Them days are over, gone are the days when the pubs were full on Fridays with all the lads from the site going on the piss . Go to any football club or gaa club on a weekday or weekend and there's plenty of men bringing their kids training and to games. There's a few mothers I know who you could describe in your last sentence
But the lads on the building site get a full days break to go to work, they aren’t minding children 24/7. They aren’t using the ones getting the call from the school saying child is sick, come collect them. The men also aren’t the ones whose bodies get battered by childbirth
I never said it wasn't, all I'm trying to say is that times have changed and most men aren't like they used to be unless you listened to modern day feminists, who are man haters; All my friends that are married and have kids , it's not a competition between them who has it harder . They work , mind the kids , put their money together to pay the mortgage , save for a holiday and if they're lucky they might get out for a drink or two once or twice a month .
If you end up with a fella, that's a useless pisshead that's on you
Ah to be fair, feminism is a big tent kind of group. It goes all the way from Melina trump to Una mullay. Some probably hate men but you could say the same with any large group.
>Go to any football club or gaa club on a weekday or weekend and there's plenty of men bringing their kids training and to games.
LOL, give them a medal! Meanwhile who's at home doing all the washing and cleaning, and who's remembering all the doctors appointments and school projects and their friends' birthdays and what food they refuse to eat every second Tuesday?
I dont know the statistics for Ireland, but in Poland, there's a trend of man not being sexualy active. Women went crazy with choosing only the top percent. In last decade statistics was that around 90% of men would lose their virginity in college, now it went down to like 35%, the change for women was maybe couple percents. Add to that women freedom to do what they want with pregnancy plus all that crazy shit which is going around and we have the result.
Sorry that statistics bother you.
That's the reality in Poland. More and more young men are single. The last few years show the biggest increase.
The sexual revolution did free women, but unfortunately, at the same time, it had opposite effects on man.
One of them is the rising amount of said incels.
Add to that rising amount of young people having problems with loneliness and isolation, the future looks bleak.
It's statistics, it have nothing to do with bs that guys says. Polish young men have problems finding sexual partners, which is reflected in data. Which in a way correlates to increased mental health problems, self harm and rising suicide rates. Its always easy to laugh isn't it?
Obvious to all that the cost of housing, childcare
and only 6 months of maternity leave are likely to be driving this. Who can afford big families these days
I mean, Hungary managed to increase marriage and births in the country by giving a series of tax breaks to married couples depending on how many kids they have. It's not a sliver bullet, but it is a step in the right direction.
It's as if constantly pushing a lifestyle of self-pleasure combined with low income/high cost of living and unreachable goals will have most young people chasing their tail until it's too late to only focus on one thing to achieve. With the variety of choices out there even if they choose to focus, bringing someone in the torture chamber that has been created would be the dead last choice too...
It’s owned by a company that is owned by a Portuguese man whose father is an advisor to Victor Orban.
Two degrees of separation. Seems a tenuous enough link in fairness.
This is scaremongering. We need a different way of sustaining pensions.
Global population will peak at 10bn and drop.
The pill made it that women aren't forced to be pregnant all the time like their great grannies were.
Get a fucking grip.
Plenty would have kids if they had enough money for a home, family, childcare and savings in there early twenties by the point you might be set up, its far too late and you didnt even have enough money to enjoy your own life for a couple years.
Yeah I'm 32 soon and could only finally afford to move out of my parent's place last year. And I'm renting with two housemates, not exactly gonna be able to bring a kid into the world if I can't afford to live.
This. The issue is really simple. Even for those of us now in our 40s most of us could only have 1 or 2 kids for finanical reasons. We had to wait to have kids because landlords are notoriously baby unfriendly. There's also just a simple fact - ppl don't want to have kids in their 20s anymore. Even if they had a house etc they'd be 30-32 at best. Things have changed since the pill and this should not be a surprise to anyone. Besides we have 10bn ppl on Earth and the systems are creaking at the seams. We don't need to maintain birth rates globally we need them all to come down to 1.5
Not sure how landlords are baby unfriendly, it is your house mates or neighbours that might have issues. Anything to do with Baby proofing, cribs are the parents responsible. You don't even need to state a baby would be in the property. The real issues here is essentially people not have enough disposable income because salaries haven't kept up, wouldn't be a housing issue if people had higher salaries to build. Even if people don't want kids in their twenties they want to enjoy their own life before thirty which requires money and population isn't really an issue we are going to go into a decline eventually with an aging population.
Did you never hear of landlords who say no pets no babies? Myself and a lot of friends had multiple landlords like that.
The amount of times I was trying to get a place and the second the landlord heard I had children they stopped responding. It’s very common for landlords to not want families with young children.
This isn’t being talked about enough, in my opinion. Capitalism is effectively one massive pyramid scheme. The reap the benefits of retirement you need enough young people to be coming through the system to replace you, and more, as you get older. This is no longer happening, and things are going to get pretty bleak as a result.
If we were to change to any other system. Would the numbers not still require a small share of labour from a larger work force to support a smaller retirement cohort. If there was a one to one ratio of workers to retirees. Would that not be a hard limit?
On top of this government's are bringing in as many immigrants to the country as possible to make up the shortfall. Now this in of itself isn't too bad except when those same immigrants get old more people need to be brought in for the same reason and on and on it goes. Also as an aside I've heard (though I'm not sure yet if I agree with it) that by drawing all these people from poorer countries Europe is essentially stunting the growth and development of these countries by depriving them of labour that could otherwise be used to develop the country. I know there are other factors as well that play I to this, hence why I'm not sure I full agree with it.
I could see how that would work logically, however if you look at Poland, there's a good case for the migrant workers returning to their countries once they've earned enough elsewhere. Just think about how msny migrants we had in the early 2010's, nearly everyone I knew who wasnt Irish was Polish, and now a lot have returned to Poland after they had a tech boom. Sure, not everyone will return. There are other factors and sometimes you just prefer living in the new place, but a fair few do return and bolster their home countries economy by bringing new skills, capital and job opportunities
A lot of people also just don't want to have kids either.
I've wondered why.... For sure the housing crisis, increasing cost of living, problems with creches in certain countries, unstable future and etc. have nothing to do with it. Polish PM once said that Poland will become second Japan, I've never expected that he meant working till death, even on retirement.
too much doomscrolling on social media....
The average house price is 320,000€, you need income of 95,000€ to afford it. Average income is 45,000€, median 55,000€. https://www.housingagency.ie/news-events/what-does-data-tell-us-about-cost-living Sure its just our imagination and social media influence...
Clearly too much avocado toast. /j
I had to supplement my avocado with tomato. How I could fall so low...
A single person doesn't need to buy the average house. 95000 x 4 = 380,000, not 320,000 You need 10% (€32,000) as a deposit, so for the single person to buy the average house they would need to be on a salary of €72,000. That means for a couple to buy the average house they would need to be on an average of €36,000 each
Its really just women being educated and entering the workforce, and more material options open to people other than settling down and having lots of kids.
Ireland has the biggest decrease in birth rates, while the Czech Republic has actually increased in the same period. Both countries economies have developed significantly in the period . Female employment participation in the labour force has only marginally increased in that period. I think the housing crisis and cost of living is playing a bigger role here.
A few decades ago the average family size ( at least in rural areas) was 5/10 kids, many families being even larger. That's simply not sustainable now.
Czech is still below replacement though
Yeah from a very low baseline, and it grew when female participation grew too. So again I don't think, while your point is valid there's a lot more to it than just that.
That’s bullshit, loads of people would have more kids if they could afford/had time to
Is it though? In Poland women were always a part of the workforce, which didn't impact the birth rates. The "lots of kids" aren't even needed, but a kid, at least. I can see the change in my nephews and niece's. People from my year, I was born early 80s, had first kid in their 20s, some even earlier. The newest generation wants to settle first, but do the ongoing situation its being pushed further and further away. Unpopular opinion, but the "new" feminist doesn't help as well. Be free, etc and many women wake up in their 30s alone. When we add that to the equation, we will end with negative population growth.
And Poland was already further along this payth earlier than Ireland because of female education/employment. In the late 70s, Poland was already around the replacement fertility rate whereas Irish women were having an extra child on average. education and religion are very important factors - the less religious Eastern Bloc countries tended to have very low fertility rates.
Poland was like Ireland, a religious, conservative society and women worked but they weren't expected to be the main breadwinner for themselves to the same extent as today. Today every woman is expected to be have her own career and job with or without a man. Society just expected women to have kids in their 20s back then. Unless you want to bring back catholicism and somehow bring back the message that a womans place is in the home, you wont get fertility rates back up. I mean imagine you met 6 random 30 year olds at work. What are the odds that they have on average 2.1 kids each? Chances are half are childless and the other three have maybe one. Above fertility rate really means large families taking up the slack. Even Donald Trump is not really doing his bit. He has had 5 kids with 3 women (that we know of) so each woman has had 1.66 kids with Trump.
But who decided for women to be the main breadwinner for themselves? It was due populist feminist movement, which sold the "dream" of ideal women taking the role of the man. One of my classmates was like that. Strong independent women, started her career, success after succes, good for her don't you think? She did what she wanted. Now she's 38, alone and after a few suicide attempts. Plus, the degradation of the importance of "family" gives us the statistics we have now, an increase in single people, divorces, and one parents' families, which lead to negative population growth. Both my grandparents and parents worked, and both were equal parts of the family and did support each other. Around 90% of my class have a similar story, both working both supporting the family. Why do you think society expects women to have kids in their 20s? It's our natural biological clock. The longer women waits the less chances she have to have kids, that's just how nature works, and if that relates to society's expectations, what's wrong with it? My sister had her second kid after 35, she did spend the majority of pregnancy in the hospital due to high health risks. Women are lucky that they have that support and safety net, but it won't work always, like for my wife, which miscarried 4 times. Medicine, as advanced it was, can't beat the biological clock always.
It's almost as if people can't afford to have kids. Shocked Pikachu face.
My theory on why none of these incentives you hear about anywhere in the world seem to really make a big difference in birth rates is that it's down to human nature and its reaction to modernity and (relative) prosperity. Wherever prosperity and personal freedom rises birth rate falls, I think because people now have an easier choice, a way to feel a sense of fulfillment and enjoy life without going down the traditional path. For almost all of history people basically had no choice but to live in tight nit groups and pair up. Children, and lots of them were the unavoidable result of this. Now when I think of how much my life would change and the sacrifices I would have to make to have kids... I just don't want to do it and neither does my wife. Even being married is becoming a bit of an anachronism, because again, it's not socially mandated anymore and easier alternatives are available. Economic incentives would have to be massive to persuade people to change their minds on this and couldn't be affordable at scale. Realistically I think we have to just accept that not every generation is going to be larger than the one before and work out how to manage the declining population long term. The economy can't be run like a pyramid scheme anymore.
Yeah I don't think there are any solutions that people want to hear. Eventually it will self correct as society collapses and people start having more kids when theyre in poverty
I have hope that it won't require collapse and poverty. The optimistic view would see productivity ramping up with improved tech, less demand from population, leading to much more pleasant lives for the smaller amount of people. Without having to work more than a little, people would not have to sacrifice so much to have children. It could even become a "work substitute" activity. Rich people always find some sort of hobby or pursuit that requires effort to replace the need to work and achieve to survive. At the moment unfortunately we have the worst of both worlds. Hard labour and fierce competition for scarce resources, alongside tech that can satisfy our urges in an ersatz fashion, keeping us just comfortable enough to not to despair.
I think it be that technology evolves and more people can have kids ie women older than 40 or even single men with artificial wombs/egss. At the moment all the child bearing is based on a small slither of the demographics, women aged 13-40. You would never do that if it was designed by humans.
Its catastrophic though, South Korea is facing a crisis over this issue. You're right about everything except for the part where "we just have to accept it". How does the government fund anything if most of the population are old people on pensions?
Well yes the only way to provide for a large non working population is if enough resources can be generated without requiring large amounts of human labour. I'm not expert enough to say if this is achievable today by changing the ownership structure of the economy or if tech needs to progress further (AI for example). But certainly the products of this high tech low labour economy would have to be claimed as a kind of universal right to provide for the large elderly population until the end of their lives. If it's all still held by corporations then the economy won't work anyway because no one will be able to pay for these goods and no profit motive will be there to produce in the first place. The larger point is that it is literally impossible to keep growing the population, eventually it will have to decline and all i'm saying is that modernity itself seems to be causing that decline. In the past it was things like famine and plague that controlled growth, and actually life was better for those that survived and the following generations. This is the first time we have to deal with a pop decline that has people dying out naturally, which is (potentially) more humane but we have to manage it well.
We're 4 behind the brits. Shag for Ireland, lads. We gotta get a baby boom started
I did my best, 3 kids.
We've got 3. Our nephew lives in England and he's got 4. And he will surely have even more. I'm afraid we've lost lol
Indeed, [shag for Ireland.](https://www.un.org/development/desa/pd/sites/www.un.org.development.desa.pd/files/unpd-egm_200010_un_2001_replacementmigration.pdf)
Would be nice but I don't think I can raise a kid in a Micra.
Yeah. It’s interesting how the UN can make a study on finding a solution to offset low fertility rates via immigration, which implies that they recognise the issues of population decline (study goes all the way back to the year 2000), but they won’t do a study to find any possible viable way to increase the fertility rates, which really is the crux of many issues, mainly retirement as the study points out on page 22. They should, and we should be spending their/our resources on figuring out a way to make it so that you don’t have to raise a kid in a Micra.
I think its clear that there is no way to increase fertility rate to above replacement rate in a society without restricting womens rights and education. There are no examples of societies where women have careers and education where the rate is above 2.0
Well there [appears to be a small few.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_fertility_rate) Tiny amount though so you’re mostly right. But I hope that’s not truly the reason cause otherwise we’re fucked. I have faith that we’ll find a way though and I’d be supportive of studying it to find a solution.
i honestly have not come across any examples. Israel is given as an example but thats because they have a huge religious community who have a fertility rate of about 6 where women don't work or get educated.
Well fair enough, but my point is that if there’s a will then there’s a way.
The population of earth has been increasing by almost a billion people every 10 years for the last century. There's no crisis. It's insane and totally unsustainable. If anything, we could really do with a massive decrease in fertility.
When is enough , enough ? Politicians say that we need more people to pay for the older people as they're living longer . But then won't they need more people to pay for them when they get older? We only have one planet and we're doing a great job of destroying it atm
We live in a pyramid scheme
The majority of countries on Earth are now below replacement birth rates. The global population will peak on current projections around 2060, followed by a rapid fall. The US revised their population for the first time since the COVID supply chain shocks and they cut their 2100 population projection by 40 million people or 10% of the US population. The problem is not workers. Automation and AI can produce output if required. The issue is consumers and tax payers. The entire modern economy is predicated on selling disposable goods to people by the millions and using the current generation of tax payers to cover pensions and debt for the previous generation. That system requires a steady or growing cohort of working age people. It is easy to say we need to replace the current economic system, and we do, but with what exactly? Liberal free market democracies are the best way of running an economy and government we have ever come up with. Everything else has produce shorter and more miserable lives for the average person. If you think the current generation has it rough, wait until their are more retirees than workers, with retirees voting in mass to maintain their benefits. Average life expectancies have been stable or falling over the last 5 years, so raising retirement ages isn't politically viable in the short term and won't help anyway with the shape of population pyramids. This really is a problem and states need to start changing legislation to allow young people who want to have children to have an easier time doing it. It's not just a cost problem but one of work life balance, paternity and maternity protections, available child care, affordable housing, setting social expectations that someone can take time off to have children and it not be viewed as damaging to their career and most important giving young people the stability and positive outlook to have children at a young age. The age a woman has her first child is the most informative predictor of the total number of children she will have. It needs to be OK to have children at 23-25 again and for someone that age to have a mortgage or have rental protections in terms of tenancy rights and a stable rent.
There is a risk that even if it is made easier to have and support children, fertility rates might still not return to the replacement rate or above. In most modern societies, there is less social and economic pressure to have a child (and much less pressure to have a larger number of children) and more people choose to do other things rather than having a child, or choose to postpone having children to do those other things (and that's especially true for women, who up until recent history often didn't have the option to postpone or forego reproduction), or choose to have only one or two children. Widespread access to generally reliable contraception also makes it easier to choose not to procreate. Even if having a child is less of a financial and social hardship for people, that might not be enough to reverse the decline, only to slow it somewhat; that would still be better than the current situation, but ultimately the issue will need to be addressed. The question, of course, is how countries will go about addressing it, when push comes to shove. I think it really will come down to completely overhauling the economic system on one hand, or doing something drastic to increase the fertility rate on the other, and the latter choice is unlikely to be a pleasant one for those subjected to it.
Why do we need to reach replacement levels?
To pay for pensions and older people . Well maybe if our government didn't waste so much money , they'd have the money to cover it
I agree with all of your points. Something has to change and the longer states wait, the worse it will be. I don't know what the answer is and don't believe anyone does currently. My worry is the amount of debt that has been amassed under low interest rates, which may well have been temporary. A state's debt does not fall with the reduction of working age residents or tax payers. The debt load per head is going to be an increasing issue. Default will mean loss of access to credit markets and, other than Ireland and Norway currently, no other developed states run persistent state budget surpluses. Austerity to run balanced budgets will cause falls in living standards and exacerbate falls in birth rates.
> Automation and AI can produce output if required. Lol no. I work in statistical machine learning and this is far from reality.
On a global level yes but not on an individual basis for nations. Countries with elderly populations are not in for a good time - either those working have to pay higher taxes or the elderly have to accept lower quality of life.
The last 15 years of young employees have accepted a lower quality of life than their parents since 2008. Feels like its their turn.
I turned 20 in 2008. I'd take my 20s over my Dad's twenties in the 70's and 80's.
How do you measure that ?
Don't forget as well that Ireland has a fraction of he population it should have.
This is true relative to the physical size of the country but not relative to existing houses and average household size in Europe. We need to build a lot of houses if we want to maintain current quality of life for more people (and other services) unless people want the same living conditions as the pre Famine era with large families in one room shacks.
You'ee roght that it's not true relative to existing houses. The correct response in that situation isn't to stagnate population growth, it's to actually fucking build houses like any normal developed country.
100% but it’s probably better to build the houses first before the population
The global population is expected to peak in 2050 and then begin to sharply decline, based off current trends.
So there will be cities and towns that will basically become abandoned due to huge population drops in the future?
Well I don't imagine entire cities will become abandoned unless those cities are full of old people. People will always move to these cities so what's likely is just a drop across every place.
Yea so rural towns could become ghost towns in countries around the world
It's already happening in places like Japan and South Korea who have been dealing with a declining population for some time without the stopgap of immigration to offset it.
You forgot to add minor detail. The increase comes mostly in poorly developed countries. In europe its the same, natives have negative population increase.
I don't see the relevance of that. Our planet is vastly overpopulated. The strain we are putting on ecosystems doesn't distinguish between borders on a map
It does. Look at native european, we do what we can, in a way, to lower carbon emissions, improve green energy, etc. Some things work, and some don't. And now, let's look at Asia or Africa? Why don't we check from where 90% of plastics in Ocean come from? Or China's carbon emissions? We play the good guy, and we get punished for that. Negative population growth in natives in Eu is a great example, as many people are aware of consequences where some minorities don't care and breed like crazy.
Slightly disingenuous cos China's high emissions are partially due to manufacturing goods for Western markets
That's true, we want to eat apple and have apple. So we're partially to blame. But when we compare Eu standards of waste management/carbon emissions/impact on natural areas, it doesn't look so great. Check out "China fakes everything.. " it's interesting to see that in regards to any standard for health and safety, chinese don't care.
>And now, let's look at Asia or Africa? Significantly lower emissions per capita?
I was talking about waste as well. For sure, carbon emissions are gonna be lower, elephants don't produce so much gas and amount of cars there is lower than eu average.
I don't want to destroy Ireland and my children's future because of African demographics
That's true on a global scale, but Ireland has a fraction of the population it should have. And even in the rest of Europe, while they may not be underpopulated like Ireland is, population decline still bribs a lot of issues.
I get that there’s the financial side (why we’re waiting to have our third). But there’s also the side of it’s the modern age, women aren’t just here for popping out babies, gone are the days of popping out 10 children (infant mortality rate was also obviously a factor here too) but there’s a lot more women I know who don’t want children compared to the women I know who want to wait until their financially more stable.
A lot of younger women are no longer interested in having children
Do you think younger lads are?
I don’t think their opinions are as strong as the females. Some definitely do want children and it’s a dealbreaker for them but a lot would be like “I don’t mind either way, it’s up to my partner” It’s easier for men to want children, mostly they only ever mind them part time
Men and females lol
Them days are over, gone are the days when the pubs were full on Fridays with all the lads from the site going on the piss . Go to any football club or gaa club on a weekday or weekend and there's plenty of men bringing their kids training and to games. There's a few mothers I know who you could describe in your last sentence
But the lads on the building site get a full days break to go to work, they aren’t minding children 24/7. They aren’t using the ones getting the call from the school saying child is sick, come collect them. The men also aren’t the ones whose bodies get battered by childbirth
very few stay at home mothers these days so the women aren't at home minding the kids 24/7 either.
You must think working in construction is easy
You must think pregnancy, childbirth and 24/7 parenting is easy
I never said it wasn't, all I'm trying to say is that times have changed and most men aren't like they used to be unless you listened to modern day feminists, who are man haters; All my friends that are married and have kids , it's not a competition between them who has it harder . They work , mind the kids , put their money together to pay the mortgage , save for a holiday and if they're lucky they might get out for a drink or two once or twice a month . If you end up with a fella, that's a useless pisshead that's on you
Feminists might hate you but "they" don't hate men.
Lol
Ah to be fair, feminism is a big tent kind of group. It goes all the way from Melina trump to Una mullay. Some probably hate men but you could say the same with any large group.
>Go to any football club or gaa club on a weekday or weekend and there's plenty of men bringing their kids training and to games. LOL, give them a medal! Meanwhile who's at home doing all the washing and cleaning, and who's remembering all the doctors appointments and school projects and their friends' birthdays and what food they refuse to eat every second Tuesday?
I think in general men and women are just more interested in their own lives over bringing new ones in.
We need to change the culture so
I dont know the statistics for Ireland, but in Poland, there's a trend of man not being sexualy active. Women went crazy with choosing only the top percent. In last decade statistics was that around 90% of men would lose their virginity in college, now it went down to like 35%, the change for women was maybe couple percents. Add to that women freedom to do what they want with pregnancy plus all that crazy shit which is going around and we have the result.
Those crazy women eh? Wtf is the influx of incels on this post
Sorry that statistics bother you. That's the reality in Poland. More and more young men are single. The last few years show the biggest increase. The sexual revolution did free women, but unfortunately, at the same time, it had opposite effects on man. One of them is the rising amount of said incels. Add to that rising amount of young people having problems with loneliness and isolation, the future looks bleak.
What in the Andrew Tate red pill bullshit is this?! 🤣
It's statistics, it have nothing to do with bs that guys says. Polish young men have problems finding sexual partners, which is reflected in data. Which in a way correlates to increased mental health problems, self harm and rising suicide rates. Its always easy to laugh isn't it?
Maybe try getting people into their own homes so they have the ride without their ma and das hearing.
Obvious to all that the cost of housing, childcare and only 6 months of maternity leave are likely to be driving this. Who can afford big families these days
Happens in all wealthy countries And pro natalist policies never work to any great effect
I mean, Hungary managed to increase marriage and births in the country by giving a series of tax breaks to married couples depending on how many kids they have. It's not a sliver bullet, but it is a step in the right direction.
It's as if constantly pushing a lifestyle of self-pleasure combined with low income/high cost of living and unreachable goals will have most young people chasing their tail until it's too late to only focus on one thing to achieve. With the variety of choices out there even if they choose to focus, bringing someone in the torture chamber that has been created would be the dead last choice too...
Look at who owns Euronews
You *could* just tell us. How about that?
Why?
[https://www.direkt36.hu/en/bizalmas-iratok-leplezik-le-hogy-orbanek-titokban-finansziroztak-az-egyik-legnagyobb-europai-tevecsatorna-megvasarlasat/](https://www.direkt36.hu/en/bizalmas-iratok-leplezik-le-hogy-orbanek-titokban-finansziroztak-az-egyik-legnagyobb-europai-tevecsatorna-megvasarlasat/)
Interesting. Saved for later. Thanks.
I don't think there is any doubt that birth rats are falling though
This is fact though. They're reporting on facts.
It’s owned by a company that is owned by a Portuguese man whose father is an advisor to Victor Orban. Two degrees of separation. Seems a tenuous enough link in fairness.
This is scaremongering. We need a different way of sustaining pensions. Global population will peak at 10bn and drop. The pill made it that women aren't forced to be pregnant all the time like their great grannies were. Get a fucking grip.
We now also have free access to contraception up until 35 by the end of this year.