Biggest drop in US fertility rate in recent history | Hacker News Reader

Biggest drop in US fertility rate in recent history

nbcnews.com

22 pointsddlatham24 comments

The sad reality is that its the poorest and most irresponsible that are having kids. Its the most educated that aren't.

I was recently in India and my driver was my age (under 30) with 3 kids already. He told me his kids' favorite thing is a bucket KFC which costs his entire day's wages.

This kind of reversal is happening everywhere. No surprise that while US, Japan, China and Europe having shrinking native populations, Africa is expected to go from 1 to 4 billion people this century.

This is terrible news and shows what I think a lot of folks already knew. Falling birthrates are generally terrible for both the economy and society as a while.

An aside: In my social circle I know dozens of older millennial couples who would love to have children however due to massive student loan debts & high rent/mortgage payments the concept is simply unaffordable.

The student loan crisis is going to result in a "lost generation."

at some point, we're going to have to stop assuming that indefinite unstructured economic growth is a given and necessarily good.

maybe that time is past, or its far in the future. but shouldn't we start adapting to that eventuality rather than having to wake up suddenly to the reality that we're running out of natural resources to support a growing population and filling our own house with pollution?

flattening of population growth or a very slow decline should be exactly what we should be hoping for.

Exactly. Earth Overshoot Day (the day in a given year humans consume more than Earth's capacity to regenerate those resources) keeps getting earlier and earlier each year: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_Overshoot_Day. Our population and economic growth have not meaningfully deviated from the predictions made in the Club of Rome's report Limits to Growth, which means unless we start bending both curves further down soon we are on track for collapse: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-07117-2

The prices of resources disagree with that assessment.

The prices aren't including the cost of environmental destruction- we have allowed that to be an externality.

They don't disagree with anything, they just are. And the beautiful thing about that is that they can be the way they are and be totally unrelated to any real cost.

The solution, for your friends and for the economy, is more immigration. If the USA could some how get itself 5 million immigrants a year (an ambitious target) then the economy would grow so fast that your friends, lifted by the overall economy, should have an easier time paying off their debts. And also, higher levels of immigration would help the USA avoid any of the negative effects of falling fertility. All 4 of my grandparents came to the USA at a time when the USA still had open borders and I’d like to think that they and my parents made a positive contribution.

> when the USA still had open borders

Even under Trump, US borders are more open than ever, so the past tense is unwarranted. Sources:

https://edition.cnn.com/2013/11/06/us/immigration-statistics...

https://cis.org/Report/US-Immigrant-Population-Hit-Record-43...

Did you read the article you linked to? The sub title includes “Overall growth slowed”. And anyway it’s talking about the total immigrant population that’s built up over several decades, and even if that wasn’t an issue, it’s talking about absolute numbers rather than percentages of the population. As a percent of the population, immigration to the USA peaked in the early 20th century, which is when my 4 grandparents arrived. Immigration to the USA, nowadays, is just a small trickle, compared to what it used to be.

From the chart in my second link, 2016 immigrant population (good proxy for yearly immigration) was 13.5%. The highest it has been since 1900 is 14.7%. How is that a trickle?

For comparison, in 2010, China's population was 0.04% immigrant - 300-times less, per capita, than the US!

Edit: More international comparison: in 2015, India's population was 0.5% immigrant, Japan's 1.9%, Brazil's 0.9%, South Korea's 2.9%, Mexico's 0.9%, and Turkey's was 3.8%.

So, according to your own numbers, the peak was 119 years ago. So your own numbers demonstrate why you were wrong when you wrote “Even under Trump, US borders are more open than ever”

We'd be stealing those economic benefits from those other countries if we take their people. That isn't very nice. Maybe those countries would be amazing if we stopped taking their people.

This is great news- having fewer children is one of the best ways we can decrease our impact on the environment. Additionally, with the expected declines in quality of life over this century due to climate change it only seems right to have fewer children as they will likely suffer due to the widespread famine and water crises that are expected, especially as the American bread basket turns into a desert.

- It's too expensive; health care, child care, education, and housing costs are too high.

- Relationships at this point in time in the US are more volatile and disposable than they have ever been.

- No one wants to pay child support for years if a relationship doesn't work out.

Maybe more people are realizing that not having children offers an equally valid life experience? I chose not to have children since I'd rather spend what time I have in life concentrating on me and my wife's happiness, not a child that didn't choose to be brought into an uncertain world. The financial benefits are obvious as well, despite the government subsidies on having a child that I miss out on (and pay for).

>>>a child that didn't choose to be brought into an uncertain world

why so negative? If ever there was a time to have children it's now, and it's only going to get better. Don't plan your life around the highly improbable and unlikely negative events in life. Of all the children born in the history of the world none have it so good as those born today.

But this is the peak- climate change will only shrink our economy and our living standards from here on out. Why bring a child into the world that will never be able to achieve the same quality of life that we enjoy today? A child born today will turn 21 right around the time the IPCC expects the climate crisis to be ramping up, and they are historically conservative: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/07/climate/ipcc-climate-repo...

I like that this article was normative (didn't veer off into cheering or bemoaning the data).

As it happens I consider this good news.

Completely unrelated: Real wages falling in 2018: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/feeling-poorer-thats-because-re...

Well, do your duty. No excuses! My 12th is due at the beginning of summer.

If you are a capable software developer or better, you can afford this. It only takes one income of that type. You might need to trim back your expenses, but you can definitely support a dozen kids.

underrated comment

I suspect the two biggest factors here are distributional aspects of the economy and the opioid epidemic (the latter of which has already been established to be driving the recent drop in life expectancy and skyrocketing suicide rate.)

On its own, the drop in fertility isn't directly worrying (if I'm right about it's causes, they are, though), but it does make it a particularly bad time to be making an anti-inflammatory drive; the economic consequences of an aging society are something you should want to mitigate.

"The rent is too damn high."

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