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The US birth rate is at an all time low. Japan's birth rate is below replacement levels now.
There are lots of factors at play. But the biggest issue is who is having these children. It is not the college educated, fully employed demographic.
I agree that incentives to have children should be reduced. The interesting thing, since some here want to associate population growth with politics (social conservatives), is that the policies and incentives that exist to support babies born to families that can't take care of them are liberal policies. But the typical liberal can't fathom the idea that someone might suffer hardship because they had a baby and can't afford it. So they make it (relatively) easy to afford it.
Contraception is widely available and cheap. Why are these people having too many children?
-Stop discouraging smoking (let people smoke if they want), im not a smoker by the way.
-Remove all the safety restrictions on cars/ motorcycles, etc... let seatbelts/helmets be choice
-Stop trying to cure all the diseaese that pops up...just as they cure one it seems another one appears...we need to stop playing God and let nature take care of its own population control.
-If you are on welfare you need to be on birth control.
Mustang: How would you propose to monitor those women/men on welfare to see if they use birth control? I cannot think of any reliable, logical, humane and ethical way to do this.
The basic problem is our business people and our economists do not understand the economics of declining growth rate let alone actual numbers of people. Ever since the Great Plagues of Europe our churches, societies and governments have concentrated on growth as the be all and end all of human activity. To even consider the economics of low or no growth is anathema to the people that teach these things let alone the people that sponsor the studies. Without growth how do you justify compound interest and marginal reserve banking?
Like all thoughtless responses to a problem (low population) the results are approaching unattainable. Yes Americans consume more than other populations but that consumption is principally of energy and consumer stuff. Eventually the energy can be produced in an endless non consumptive system and the materials in most of the goods are recyclable into more stuff. A sustainable economy with a steady or slowly declining population is not only possible it can be profitable and sustainable as well.
I think eventually the US will settle down to a population of 150 million people living very well in a sustainable but almost luxurious manner. Much later the world will do the same with ten times the number of people.
The alternative will be less than a 500 million starving plague ridden people on a burned out world contaminated with radioactive dead zones and poisioned seas without the resources or knowledge to achieve the first alternative. We are now hell bent on this alternative.
maurb: I totally agree with you. Back in the 70s when people getting married were told to just have 2 kids only to replace themselves in life , I took it to mean it was urgent to do so. I had 2 kids. Others had 3 and 4 or even 10. Birth control was becoming available to everyone and several different types were on the market also. Not just abstainence. So, I did what was best for the country. I took it to heart. Others did not. And here we are now, with all these problems as you said, not enough jobs, not enough food, limited water, pollution, traffic, crime, etc. and it all stems from over population. And some cultures continue to have kid after kid. Selfish I would say.
i agree totally. i had zero kids as i thought even two was too many and one would have been more than i could afford. i miss my $150 apartment in pasadena in the 70's, my $250 apartment in mountain view in the 70's and 80's, and even my $615 studio in the early 90's! minimum wage doesn't buy food AND housing any more.
Even more puzzling to me is why people continue to have babies even as they struggle to make ends meet and there are no jobs in sight. Not just the people that can't make ends meet but the comfortable people who think they'll just send their kids off to college and like magic, they'll land jobs.
Same here.......That and the amount of kids. 2 isn't enough they want 7 or more............
The fundamental flaw with your statement is it doesn't take into account the amount of consumption of each American, compared to people in other parts of the World. For instance 1 billion Chinese, living in China is far less of an impact on our Earth's resources than say 400 Million Americans. We consumer far more per capita as a nation.
But the reality is that consumption is growing at high rates in China and India that has 1/4 of the worlds population. Its demands and being able to afford by toehr compatitive production is changing. One only has to loook at their acculation of basica resources and its effrects on pother nations to see they are a growing prodcvution cneter much more than their resources locally can produce. Many asian countries econmy rely on this demand for resource for prodcution for lkarge part of their GDP. They are even a huge market for western prodcution and growing as the ca comapotte to buy them.That of course means in a world economy that their is less for the so called modern world at ever growing higher prices.The chinese are not going to be satified by less than the western wolrd as they can afford it.Survival is always in the end competitive just has it is in all living creatures.
People do not want to give up the illusion that sky god is watching them fornicate, and crank out lots of surplus babies. They feel it is normal to have 6 kids. It isn't. Times have changed.
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