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(If there is a thread like this then please direct me towards it.)
It seems that regardless of if it is the poor of the 3rd world nations or the poor of the developed world, the worse-off people end up having more kids, on average, than the stable and well-off people that are actually more capable of supporting their child's needs.
Like, you see programs and informercials of people living in crushing poverty and their kids starving to death and it leaves the mind wondering, why create babies you can't afford and you know will suffer? And please don't give me the talk about how they can't afford condoms, they give out condoms for free in many of these countries. Plus, if they think they can't afford condoms then how the heck could they afford supporting a child for decades? Don't blame lack of access to education, it's common-sense.
Even in America, it seems like the biggest idiots have the most kids and then you see all these professionals, successful and smart people with no kids or only one child. What is going on here?
Why is this the case? (and yes, I know there are many exceptions to the rule so please don't knitpick)
It's because they are less educated, they probably aren't aware of the availabilities of birth contraceptives, or possibly can't afford it. Although, I I know that there are many non-profit organizations that give out free birth contraceptives, usually condoms.
I think the main reason is usually the poor are just less educated. Look at poorer countries, look at the education rates and then take a look at the birth rates.
Having a lot of children you cannot afford is a good way to BE poor and stay poor.
Convince a mother in Mexico or Central America of that, who had 12 children, and most of them made their way to the U.S., and have been sending remittances back home, where she now lives like a queen!
The smartest of the poor in this country, which is increasingly becoming a 3rd world country, are having one baby after another. They're thinking the same thing! Encourage them to be illegals in the more prosperous countries of the world, and send those remittance checks back home every month!
And maybe there'll be enough money to have the stupid unemployed mother with one child next door, with a college degree, come over for a lavish dinner some night, to relieve her hunger!
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Quote:
Originally Posted by kinkytoes
I think this is a fallacy. Both wealthy and poor people have the most children, and "middle-class" people can't afford children, and have the fewest.
Wealthy people have resources and in some societies it is still important to create the next generation of inheritors. "Poor" people in the US have leisure and resources to have children. In 3rd world countries the poor are usually in rural areas and in the absence of money, having children is the best way to be able to run a farming enterprise.
In the US (and it looks like the same in places like Korea), the middle class has to work, and does not get subsidized housing, so we cannot afford to have as many children.
I don't see many rich families having 8 children.
The simple answer is it's tradition. It's instinct to be fruitful and multiply.
Also, there is no welfare in most of these countries so people have children who can support them in old age.
Many religions also frown on birth control, and there's an attitude among some that sex should be for pro-creation only.
Lastly, in many of these cultures a woman's role is largely tied to child-raising, while at the same time performing other duties.
And the argument that they're good devout Catholics so are having dozens of children without a husband is rubbish because if they were truly devout, they'd wait until marriage to have children.
Single motherhood is the single biggest reason for poverty. Even in the past before birth control, most people especially the good Catholics delayed sexual intercourse until marriage and with a spouse, having kids becomes more affordable. Plus in good Catholic families, relatives often helped each other and provided child care.
The USA and Europe's middle class grew strong long before there were 1000 forms of artificial birth control, but it was the tendency to delay sex until marriage, have two parents working to support and raise children.
The poor are usually poor because they start having children at very young ages, they don't delay childbirth until marriage, they don't finish their educations even when the educations are offered.
The thread begs a question - What income of breed stock of this country should be? Should you be allowed to breed without a good insurance? Keep in mind that simple, no complication birth costs 20K+. Premature birth + complications = hundreds of thousands during the first months of baby's life + hundreds of thousands (if not millions +) along the way if there are serious health problems. Low social class is a major risk factor for the premature births. What about college? Should people unable to put their kids through college (a good HS to begin with) be allowed to breed? Under good insurance I mean a reasonably capped insurance. If you have uncapped 80/20 or 70/30 + huge deductibles and you make less than say 60k (or >100k for a major medical emergencies) your 80/20 is just as good as no insurance.
Let's calculate:
What's your estimate of the minimum income for the breeding stock? 50k, 60k?
Last edited by RememberMee; 01-26-2012 at 07:01 PM..
Also, don't neglect the tremendous social pressure to have babies--whether it is a good idea financially for the woman/couple or not. "Ooh, when are you going to have a baby?" is what everyone says as soon as someone gets married. Even if not married, many of the very poor live in a culture where having a baby means "at least somebody loves me"...with no thought to how that "somebody" is going to be fed or taken care of.
And yes, social programs that give more benefits to people based on how many children they have (just TRY getting Section 8 housing if you are a single person with no children--HA!! They'll laugh in your face and some social workers even say "come back when you've had a baby or two!") not to mention all other social programs that base eligibility on "family size" (code for "pop em out faster and your check will get bigger") are horribly biased against those who either don't have children or try to only have as many as they can afford.
I actually read a really good research paper about this once. It basically said that in developed nations poor people are more likely to be depressed, lead lives filled with tremendous stress, and at the same time feel trapped and disenfranchised, etc. Basically, people are upset and prone to self medicate, but don't have the sense of belonging to the larger society that would lead to at least a semi functional way of dealing with it. Self destructive behaviors like increased drug use, overeating, drinking ...and unprotected sex... happen among all groups. But a middle class person doing this stuff is more likely to still be able to go to work in the morning (or be surrounded by people who will express dissatisfaction they can't). They will also have more money and resources to apply to getting cured. In other words, they will try to maintain the social norms, especially for the functionally depressed. In poorer groups where people don't feel like part of the larger society to begin with, these behaviors are not treated the same way, since the people don't see themselves as part of a group where the same options are open to them in the first place.
In other words, a average middle class teenage girl would be more likely to see pregnancy as a potential threat to her future, so she'd work to not become preganant or face internal pressure (and have access to the money) to terminate the pregnancy of she did. A depressed middle class teenage girl who picked sex as her self medication would be likely surrounded by people who would be motivated to prevent/terminate a pregnancy even if she wasn't, and more likely to have her behavior viewed as a "problem" by those around her who would then try to get her help, and she would face a degree of social isolation as a consequence of her actions. A poor teenage girl self-medicating with sex is less likely to see her pregnancy as a threat to her future, since people around her are much less likely to see her "future" as anything else anyway. Pregnancy and subsequent poverty is just the way it is for everyone, few people sees themselves as part of a group where anything else is supposed to happen, and many of them have an array of self-destructive coping behaviors to begin with due to the increased rates of stress and depression... these things are just part of the way it is, part of the fabric of life in these communities.
Anyway. I remember thinking there was some truth to that particular study.
I actually read a really good research paper about this once. It basically said that in developed nations poor people are more likely to be depressed, lead lives filled with tremendous stress, and at the same time feel trapped and disenfranchised, etc. Basically, people are upset and prone to self medicate, but don't have the sense of belonging to the larger society that would lead to at least a semi functional way of dealing with it.
Yes, low (and high) social classes in the developed world have tremendous status anxiety causing rat race and stress. Simple fact that poor suffer status anxiety suggests that they are quite "enfranchised", they do belong to that greater society to feel anxious and stressed about their low status within it. The root of their depression is the same as that of an aging low level corporate grunt having no hopes for moving up a corporate ladder. It's a pyramid, and if there are no other meanings & means to justify ones existence within "greater society" other than rat race to the top, those who are left below are getting depressed and self-destructive.
Quote:
In poorer groups where people don't feel like part of the larger society to begin with, these behaviors are not treated the same way, since the people don't see themselves as part of a group where the same options are open to them in the first place.
Those who don't feel as a part of a larger, status oriented society do NOT get depressed because how their status is being perceived by that "great society". Just ask a few surviving Amazonian Indians what do they feel about their status within larger Brazilian society. That's why depression epidemics follows industrialization, "democratic" revolutions and liberal capitalism those revolutions bring. See Eastern Europe for example. Depression and suicides tripled as formerly somewhat traditional & communitarian social models are being replaced by the western status driven plutocratic models. Or take Eastern Kentucky for example. At the times when E. Kentucky was extremely poor and isolated people didn't get depressed and fat, drug use (other than moonshine) was something unheard of. Yet, after corporations opened up E. Kentucky for plunder and improved material well being of Kentuckians immensely, all we can hear is about poverty, depression & drug use in rural E. Kentucky.
Surprisingly, openly totalitarian & otherwise restrictive societies are less clinically depressing places to be than ostentatiously freer developed world. First, these societies limit opportunities for (and outcomes) of the rat race, also, the language of opportunity and rag to riches are not being used for the social control sake (that's what KGBs are for). As a result, people don't correlate their self "worth" with their place in a pecking order nearly as much, they know that opportunities are indeed limited, this encourages people to commune more freely & seek other meanings & joys in life, as a result cumulative amount of happiness of everyday existence (unrelated to consumption) is somewhat greater (imho) than in the developed world. And in the developed world, alas, take consumption out of the equation and there is almost nothing else left.
I think Ted Katzinsky fought industrial society in very peculiar and futile way but he had lots of astute observations. One of which is the universal human need for power (in the sense of power to affect things in your "environment"). Rural Kentuckian farmers & hunters (for example) were robbed of their power to organize their world as they saw fit, instead they were given an illusion of mass elections & "opportunity" to run national rat race, sell their wage slaving arses and, if successful, partake in a consumption feast. Yet, poor 18th century KY settlers (who had no such "opportunities") had power to organize their world as they saw fit and modern KY poor have lots of stuff (and illusions) and no power at all, they are just squatters on corporate lands getting depressed for not "bettering themselves" enough to meet high corporate expectations.
Note, adjusting your wages slaving arse to meet somebody's expectations isn't quite the same as being in charge of your destiny. Both, middle and lower class are totally powerless (middle class is even more so, since it needs to adjust everything about itself (including personality) in order to hold a higher status job, lower classes have more freedom of individuality). Yet, middle class can drown its powerlessness in the sea of conspicuous consumption and lower classes have limited opportunities to self-medicate that way. Think about it, you buy stuff, it's "emanation" of your power, you are a boss, a master now. All those years of bending over and spreading your buns were not in vain.
BTW, for all practical purposes 35k "middle" class family is indistinguishable from lower class as far as everything goes. Show me a nation whose teenage pregnancy is zero, and I show you a dead and soon to be rotten country. In a way, we should celebrate teenage pregnancy, society is not dead yet.
Last edited by RememberMee; 01-27-2012 at 12:40 AM..
I believe it is a combination of a couple reasons that other posters have touched on:
1. Poor countries often have a culture that associates many children with success/luck/prosperity. This might have originated in times when having more children did in fact allow a family to leverage more hands to the fields to provide more stability in food and trade resources, but even if no longer applicable many generations of a culture taking pride in large families is hard to break.
2. The inability to make wise decisions, usually resulting in short term reward but unwillingness to make sacrifices that might lead to long term gain. Obviously this isn't easily quantified by it seems to make sense that many people who in poor financial situations because of basic dumbassedness will carry that into other arenas like family planning.
I believe it is a combination of a couple reasons that other posters have touched on:
1. Poor countries often have a culture that associates many children with success/luck/prosperity. This might have originated in times when having more children did in fact allow a family to leverage more hands to the fields to provide more stability in food and trade resources, but even if no longer applicable many generations of a culture taking pride in large families is hard to break.
2. The inability to make wise decisions, usually resulting in short term reward but unwillingness to make sacrifices that might lead to long term gain. Obviously this isn't easily quantified by it seems to make sense that many people who in poor financial situations because of basic dumbassedness will carry that into other arenas like family planning.
Large farm families weren't poor in the way many people are poor. For one they would have to have land to farm, own the land or be in a position to rent it, own livestock, have enough money and resources in order to have healthy kids strong enough to work the farm.
Poor people in third world countries didn't have children to use to work for the family because the kids often just died in infancy and early childhood. It doesn't seem that parents could feel a whole lot of pride watching numerous babies and children die from starvation and illness.
I think it comes down to what you said about basic dumbassedness more than anything. Having baby after baby that you cannot feed is no way to get ahead, no way to help children get ahead.
In the past, the middle class grew from large enough families but to people who married before getting pregnant or married when pregnant so that the family started with two parents. Even before artificial birth control, delaying sex until marriage, delaying marriage until adulthood prevented extreme poverty. A couple marrying at age 24-26 and going on to have 12 children was in a completely different position than some 13 year old girl ending up having 12 children and no husband.
The middle class couple was a lot more likely to end up with 12 healthy live children and the indigent woman might have ended up with 2 or 3.
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