[lifeistooshort]

Short of uninventing birth control or making it illegal, by what mechanism do you think the trend will flatten out or reverse? In the past, women knocked out a lot more kids because it was a side effect of their not being effective birth control and the role women had in society as you point out. What we are seeing is the effect of removing those restraints and letting women choose how many children they want. And when given the choice, in every industrialized nation regardless of the underlying culture, women have chosen to reproduce below replacement level even when their government offers them benefits to encourage them to have children.



Are you aware that Mormon fertility rates have plummeted in recent years?

The incredible shrinking Mormon American family

New research shows that U.S. Mormon families are still larger than the nation’s, but the difference is smaller than it used to be.

religionnews.com

And I agree that's a wonderful thing. I've told my daughter that they live in the greatest time in all of human history to be women and I wasn't saying that ironically or with an ulterior motive. I mean it. A big part of my point is that it won't last if women don't choose, on average, to have at least replacement level fertility and there is no industrialized country where that is true except Israel, where a large highly religious group inflates their national fertility rate.



Why do you expect women to start deciding to have more children than you chose to? What do you think is going to make having more children an attractive choice for them?

So you have to understand how trends work
As an actuary I look at them all the time.

We're talking about declining trends. When you evaluate that to make a prospective projection you have to ask if you think it will continue and if it makes mathematical sense. It can male sense in the short term but long term it almost always has to flatten out or increase

So how low will a trend go? People can't have negative kids so the absolute limit is 0 kids for anyone which is unreasonable. And the more things decline the more the rate rate of decline has to slow. I'll throw out an example:

Note that I made these numbers up. Let's say women used to have an average pf 10 kids and now they have 4. That's a 60% decline which is pretty big. Will things continue at a 60% decline? It would mean that you then go to .4*4 kids =1.6 kids, then .4*1.6=..64 kids.

See how it quickly goes to numbers that are illogical? When it was 10 it had a lot of room to drop but eventually it will hit a baseline and either stay there or increase. People are going to have kids, just maybe not 10. And it might be the people who aren't in a great position to raise then but that's another topic. As I said, I'm a pretty well paid professional and I have 2 sons.

The Mormon fertility decline you mention is a great example of this. They don't want to spend their lives knocking out kids, and nobody has the means to properly support 10 kids. But a lot of people still want a couple and that might be just fine in the long run. 10 kids was really only necessary and sustainable when half of them didn't live to adulthood.....we no longer have that problem.

 

[QuestionAssumptions]

So you have to understand how trends work
As an actuary I look at them all the time.

We're talking about declining trends. When you evaluate that to make a prospective projection you have to ask if you think it will continue and if it makes mathematical sense. It can male sense in the short term but long term it almost always has to flatten out or increase

There is quite a difference between flatting out and increasing, in this case, because the fertility rates are already below replacement where they are flattening and the decline is still pretty large in places where they are above replacement. And they're not going back up anywhere unless it's being driven by a religious minority. So let me ask a more specific question -- the one that really matters. What makes you think fertility rates in the developed world will ever get back to or over replacement again in the future? (Without the sort of cultural replacement that I've already mentioned.) By what means do you think that will happen?

So how low will a trend go? People can't have negative kids so the absolute limit is 0 kids for anyone which is unreasonable. And the more things decline the more the rate rate of decline has to slow. I'll throw out an example:

Note that I made these numbers up. Let's say women used to have an average pf 10 kids and now they have 4. That's a 60% decline which is pretty big. Will things continue at a 60% decline? It would mean that you then go to .4*4 kids =1.6 kids, then .4*1.6=..64 kids.

See how it quickly goes to numbers that are illogical? When it was 10 it had a lot of room to drop but eventually it will hit a baseline and either stay there or increase. People are going to have kids, just maybe not 10. And it might be the people who aren't in a great position to raise then but that's another topic. As I said, I'm a pretty well paid professional and I have 2 sons.

The decline really only matters in the countries not yet below replacement, and their declines are still pretty large. Once the fertility rate is below replacement (again, it already is in every industrialized country except Israel), the overall population is in decline and flattening it after that won't stop the decline.

Sure, you had 2 children but 2.1 is replacement, so you are slightly below replacement and are doing nothing to offset the people having 0 or 1 children. How many siblings do you have and how many children have they had, overall? Did your parents get 4+ grandchildren?

Again, the overall fertility rate is already below replacement in many countries. That's not in one industrialized country. That's in every single one except one where it's offset by a sizable minority motivated by religion and politics to have a very high fertility rate. It's not a fluke or a niche trend. It's so much the norm that papers talk about how women's education and economics are fairly reliable predictors of fertility rates. The odds are that your children will likely only give you 3 grandchildren, on average, if they're as successful as you are, which is further below replacement, and so on until you have no heirs.

The Mormon fertility decline you mention is a great example of this. They don't want to spend their lives knocking out kids, and nobody has the means to properly support 10 kids. But a lot of people still want a couple and that might be just fine in the long run. 10 kids was really only necessary and sustainable when half of them didn't live to adulthood.....we no longer have that problem.

And I think the way you characterize motherhood as "knocking out kids" is part of the problem. Unless you've done something worthy of being mentioned in history books, "knocking out" two children is the most important thing you'll ever do. Nobody is going to care about your well paid professional career 100 years from now (nor mine). When my childless and never-married aunts died, they'd done pretty well for themselves and didn't run out of money before they died. I found their jewelry and awards they got for 25 years of service for their employers, etc. Do you think any of those employers visited them in the nursing home while they had dementia or went to their funeral? Do any of them still talk about those women like I do? Yet you talk about having your two children as if they were something you did before your professional career, which is what you sound more proud of.

You are entitled to think that way and place your priorities wherever you want and feel free to correct me if I'm mistaken. You may not care what happens after you die or if you eventually have no heirs. A lot of people don't. But I think that's the very mindset I hear from a lot of people and that's going to make it impossible to increase fertility rates back to replacement levels unless it changes. People talk about pregnancy and children as if they're an unfortunate side-effect of having fun and a hindrance to their career.

As for 10 kids being sustainable when only half survived to adulthood, I keep hearing that get argued. That left people with 5 heirs. Now people are having fewer than 2 on average, which is never going to equal replacement level even if every single one of them survives. That's the problem. I'm not saying people should have 10 children (by the way, my grandmother was 1 of 12 and I'm pretty sure they all survived to adulthood). I'm saying that if, on average, they are having less than 2.1, the population is going to decline, that's not sustainable, and I do see how that ever gets back up to replacement with the current cultural values in the entire developed world with the exception of some religious minorities who have high fertility rates.

 

[Numb26]

Sounds like someone is a member of the Club of Rome.

 

[gaius]

They had 800,000 births last year.

If you can't discern the problem there, maybe don't take too big a swipe at @Ikaika .

I'm definitely not ragging on Japan but I'm not going to ignore a very serious problem.

For the love of God Conan. Will you please, sometime before you die of old age, take a break from either yacking about how you used to date models 30 years ago or trying to white knight everyone on the board so they'll like you and just come up with a genuine, informed opinion about something and take the time to express it fully. Ikaika is a grownup person and can handle his or her self just fine without you.

I have faith in you man and I'll be waiting.

 

[QuestionAssumptions]

Sounds like someone is a member of the Club of Rome.

Not sure if you are talking to me. I do actually own the book Beyond the Limits: Confronting Global Collapse from back i the 1990s and read it back then. It was interesting to read about their World3 model and ideas of sustainability, but their predictions where never very good in practice, in my opinion. The one good perspective I did get from it was understanding that effects can lag behind changes to inputs by a significant amount of time, such that not only can the negative effects of changes take a while to show up but corrective actions can also take a while to do anything. The children people are having or not having today don't become a workforce trend until a couple of decades later. I don't think the population decline issiue now is being caused by what they were talking about.

Please note that I don't necessarily expect current population trends to continue without alteration for centuries or even until the end of this century, but then the question becomes one of what the changes will look like if they do happen and will they be what the people who aren't concerned expect or want?

 

[maquiscat]

Authentic marriage rates have declined to the extent that politicans felt the need to recognize cohabitation as common law marriage.

Since only 11 states still have common law marriage, and none have added it that I am aware of, I am going to need you to back this up. Even if you are talking about outside of the US, you need to back this up. Common law marriage has been coming off law books for a while now.

Bro, if you leave people to their own devices, do you expect them all to behave responsibly?

Looking at this statement within the context of the thread, I don't see where anyone has a responsibility to procreate. They have responsibilities IF they procreate, but no responsibility TO procreate.

 

[LeGenDary_Man]

Since only 11 states still have common law marriage, and none have added it that I am aware of, I am going to need you to back this up. Even if you are talking about outside of the US, you need to back this up. Common law marriage has been coming off law books for a while now.

Relationship dynamics in Quebec for reference:

Quebec leads the country in common-law couples, solo living

The latest batch of results from the 2021 census provides a picture of the makeup of Canadian households.

montrealgazette.com

Interesting attempt at redefining marital statistics.

Looking at this statement within the context of the thread, I don't see where anyone has a responsibility to procreate. They have responsibilities IF they procreate, but no responsibility TO procreate.

If a country does not encourage its people to marry, procreate, and produce individuals with a moral code, does it have a future?

 

[maquiscat]

Relationship dynamics in Quebec for reference:

Quebec leads the country in common-law couples, solo living

The latest batch of results from the 2021 census provides a picture of the makeup of Canadian households.

montrealgazette.com

Interesting attempt at redefining marital statistics.

Interesting attempt at redefining on your part also. Nothing in that article showed where anyone government wise is changing cohabitation to common law marriage. They showed two different things. Cohabitation rates and common law marriage rates. Unless you have something else, all you've done is shown a conflation fallacy on your part. As best I can tell from the article, cohabitation rates are roommate type relationships, and separate from common law marriage relationships.

If a country does not encourage its people to marry, procreate, and produce individuals with a moral code, does it have a future?

Aside from the conflation fallacy of marriage required for procreation, what makes the future of a country is largely a matter of opinion. Moral codes are a matter of opinion also, even if there are common elements such as morals against theft and murder.

 

[LeGenDary_Man]

Interesting attempt at redefining on your part also. Nothing in that article showed where anyone government wise is changing cohabitation to common law marriage. They showed two different things. Cohabitation rates and common law marriage rates. Unless you have something else, all you've done is shown a conflation fallacy on your part. As best I can tell from the article, cohabitation rates are roommate type relationships, and separate from common law marriage relationships.

FYI

A common-law relationship is legally a de facto relationship, meaning that it must be established in each individual case, based on the facts. This is in contrast to a marriage, which is legally a de jure relationship, meaning that it has been established in law.

What is cohabitation?

Cohabitation means living together. Two people who are cohabiting have combined their affairs and set up their household together in one dwelling. To be considered common-law partners, they must have cohabited for at least one year. This is the standard definition used across the federal government. It means continuous cohabitation for one year, not intermittent cohabitation adding up to one year. The continuous nature of the cohabitation is a universal understanding based on case law.

While cohabitation means living together continuously, from time to time, one or the other partner may have left the home for work or business travel, family obligations, and so on. The separation must be temporary and short.

Assessing a common-law relationship - Canada.ca

Program Delivery Instructions, Family class, Assessing a common-law relationship

www.canada.ca

There must be a reason (or reasons*) why Canada created this LAW?

*I recall some cases in which a woman treated her cohabiting partner like a husband with shared finances and children but he was not marrying her. This is exploiting a woman on romantic grounds and should be discouraged.

Aside from the conflation fallacy of marriage required for procreation, what makes the future of a country is largely a matter of opinion. Moral codes are a matter of opinion also, even if there are common elements such as morals against theft and murder.

I am NOT asserting that a marriage is required to procreate. You can have kids outside wedlock for sure. Your choice.

My contention is that kids benefit the most when raised in a stable family unit by a man and woman as husband and wife. Married parents are in the best position to teach their kids about commitment and relationship among other beneficial values that will serve them well in adulthood.
+
A family unit is central to social life and social capital to any human around the world. Do you know that ancient humans such as Neanderthals had family units? Why do you think these ancient people felt the need to create family units? Can you trust a complete stranger to have your best interests in mind? Who will teach you how to live your life and survive in a seemingly unforgiving world? Who will take care of you when you are struggling or have health related problems? There is a limit to what the state can do for you. And there is a limit to people giving you favors for FREE in life.

Humans have come a long way to understand the importance of creating family unit(s) based on a lengthy history of experiences with other humans and even animals. If the wisdom of creating family unit(s) is in question where you live then things are BAD there.

A family unit is further regarded as the building block of a society for numerous reasons. It provided the basis for creating a civilization due to safety concerns and the NEED to work with other family units and/or individuals for mutual benefits. It also provided the basis for creating a "moral code" for HOW to work with other family units and/or individuals for mutual benefits. Why do you think "cheating" is generally disliked around the world? Because this act is a breach of values such as commitment, trustworthiness, familial goodwill, and can ruin family units. These values are also a part of the "moral code." Cheating is a prosecutable offense in some countries.

Moral code is defined on the basis of "what is GOOD for an individual, a couple, a family unit, and the society at large." It is defined with mutual consultation and agreed-upon terms. In a modern society such as a country, LAWS are decided with mutual consultation and agreed-upon terms between a large number of individuals (consensus-building factor).

The bottom line is that a "moral code" cannot be a matter of opinion but defined with mutual consultations about "what is GOOD for an individual, a couple, a family unit, and the society at large," with consensus-building if necessary.

You seem to look at this matter through the lens of individualism. This is why your perception is distorted.

What makes the future of a country is largely a matter of opinion?
No, my friend. This is not the case unless you are detached from the ground realities of HOW a country or civilization works. There is a need for a population base that can co-exist peacefully, create meaningful relationships, and remains productive to sustain itself. Moral code is at the center of this function which is achieved with mutual consultations and consensus-building as pointed out above. Refer back to contents in following post for further insight:

Declining marriage and birth rates: Is that good or bad?

I listened to a podcast the other day by a guy who used to be a vendor here on TAM who calls himself Dad Starting Over. He has had a couple podcasts lately where he questions whether the current decline in marriage and birth rates is a good thing or a bad thing. In his most recent...

www.talkaboutmarriage.com

Education programs in your country need to step up.