Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
You make some great points! Contrary to what most people believe, the world's population is going to not only stop growing, but start declining. The glorified ponzi sceme of the "everything bubble" includes population. It has to as it is unsustainable.
I wouldn't consider myself an expert on economics by any stretch.
But even I started scratching my head seeing the Central Banks re-inflating the housing market again after the 2007/2008 financial crash with their rock-bottom interest rates. Even though it was the inflated housing market that caused the crash in the first place...
It's time to stop relying on welfare systems that are designed as ponzi schemes and require 6 new working people to support paying the ones who are taking from the system. Lower birth rates are good for the environment, and the same people who want to pay out all this welfare to people yet are trying to get everyone to breed and at the same time want to keep carbon emissions down all the while they are visiting 30 different countries and encouraging population growth when the planet already has nearly 8 billion people... they are biting off more than they can chew... they have to make a decision...
keep paying out welfare programs to be compassionate and encourage breeding or risk bankrupting the financial system or cut back on breeding, get more people to be responsible and teach them how to fish so less are government dependent and maybe get a monetary system that isn't so dependent on perpetual "growth" of the money supply... and also maybe cut back on travel and actually do things in one's own life to be green instead of just saying they want to be green but living a lavish lifestyle...
People want everything, they aren't willing to compromise.. they want it ALL, and that is a problem going forward. They want green living but want to travel, want a healthy ecosystem but want people to breed more and keep consuming and building crap to prop up outdated banking systems... A population REDUCTION to 4 billion people over the next couple of centuries would create a natural deflation in asset prices as there is more "stuff" (houses, land) with less demand. It would create less need to clear cut rainforest to grow palm oil and raise farm cattle... that's the way we should be heading... not grow the population to 30 billion people... have it stabilize under 10 billion and stay there, forever, until we start terraforming and colonizing other planets.
Right now outdated fractional reserve central debt based banking systems and the corporations that operate within them drive a lot of this "growth" obsession and greed... the first step is a banking system and system of government (including welfare system) not dependent on perpetual growth and consumption. After that we can decide what to do.
Can the Mods please make this post a PERMANENT sticky at the top of this forum please. Thanks.
The economic consequence 21 years from now in 2041 will be severe. Every credible econometric model of the US economy shows population growth as a principle driver of future economic growth.
In many senses, this decline is associated with the incredibly strong economy we've enjoyed over the past several years - economic opportunity for women has resulted in their personal decisions to work and defer/decline to procreated.
More and more, it is clear the USA needs a policy of encouraging immigration of fertile women who are of childbearing age.
Kids cost money from the point they are conceived. From economic that broke IUD that failed or pregnancy test. They cost money as soon as happy time is done.
Lots of people don’t want kids and some can barely keep their heads above water financially, expecting them to pop out a kid or two is nothing but a recipe for disaster. Combine that parent that may not be there before or after the child is born with absolutely no support, yeah I see why people are waiting longer simply choosing not to have kids.
Kids cost money in a system, geared towards road blocks to have them.
In a system, where health care is free, mother to be has 3 months off last trimester, 100% pay, and up to 3 years maternity leave, 100%/75%/50% and job retained, with free child care, that is not much so.
And I lived in that system.
Kids cost money in a system, geared towards road blocks to have them.
In a system, where health care is free, mother to be has 3 months off last trimester, 100% pay, and up to 3 years maternity leave, 100%/75%/50% and job retained, with free child care, that is not much so.
And I lived in that system.
There is still the psycho and social work. I have to be my kids' psychologist and give them skills of their culture (American/western).
You can cover health care and give me time off, but I still have to parent my kids. Not as much emphasis was put on this concept before the 20th century, because kids were needed for work, or they just came about for lack of education and birth control. Mothering/parenting as we know it today didn't used to exist except for the upper middle and upper classes, if not for just royalty and uber rich. I suppose this is benefit of our overall higher standard of living, but nonetheless it's added responsibility.
I suppose, too, that a good portion of this job went to church staff.. ministers, priests, Sunday school teachers, etc..
That would be an interesting line of research. Is there a qualitative difference on perceived stress levels between being a religious mother and a secular mother.
I wish I belonged to a church community for many reasons, but well, you have to actually believe in the doctrine or it just feels wrong.
There are huge surpluses of single men relative to single women in most major metros in this age bracket (Millennials).
Quote:
Originally Posted by RationalExpectations
Can you elaborate on that? What do you think is going on? Is it that single female Millennials are marrying outside their age cohort? Something else?
Quote:
Originally Posted by TMBGBlueCanary
I suppose one thing could be that there are usually more baby boys born than girls. The ratio is 105 boys born for every 100 girls born (unless you include countries that abort baby girls so the family has more boys, then it's 107 boys for every 100 girls). I am just speculating, but in the past, more young men died due to wars and disease but that's largely a thing of the past for Americans. So there are more boys living to be young adults. It's not an overwhelming percentage, but it's enough.
I would be glad to elaborate. TMBG has part of the answer correct, so that's why I have him quoted before I get into detail.
We'll start with the Singles Map. This is 2012 so I set the default slider age to 20-29, which would have covered the core of the Millennial generation (1983-1992 births). You could see that in 2012, there are massive imbalances of single men relative to single women. I think the working definition of "single" in this data set is just not married. We have no idea what the attachment rate is in the data set (people in exclusive, unmarried relationships). It is unlikely that this data set has changed meaningfully since 2012.
Because of the definition of single in the data set, single female Millennials marrying outside their cohort is irrelevant to that specific analysis. I could buy the argument that many single female Millennials will look to Gen X based upon the premise that testosterone levels are declining. Gen X men may have stronger testosterone levels than wussified Millennial men, who have eaten too much soy, too many processed foods, and absorbed too much anti-male (think toxic masculinity), and pro-feminist societal programming. If Gen X men are indeed more masculine, that would not help the competitiveness of Millennial men when competing for Millennial women. More information would be needed before drawing that conclusion.
The real answer is that there are two primary causes contributing to an excess of single males. They are...
1. Male births have outnumbered female births naturally throughout history but there have been too few male deaths before age 30 to compensate for the natural variations. Below are 3 reasons why fewer young men are dying.
Fewer Farming and Industrial Accident Deaths
A declining crime rate has not killed off enough males
No major wars in recent decades to thin the herd of males
[/list]
2. Immigration (legal and illegal)
China and India have had an excess of male births since the 1980s. Though the H1B visa program, China and India are dumping excess males into the United States. This is at best making a small dent in the male surplus problems in those nations, but it is worsening our biological sex ratios. Look at San Jose, California. San Jose is a sausage fest of Chinese and Indian tech workers who are not attracting men.
Immigration from Mexico and the rest of Latin America (both legal and illegal) tends to skew more male than female.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Therblig
Here in Denver, the imbalance approaches 10% across the 20-50 demographic and there are no good explanations.
I'm also not sure that would have much to do with a fertility rate, since women are the critical factor here and they have the odds of a suitable/desired partner loaded in their favor.
Denver is known as Menver. It is a really bad mating environment. Metro Denver attracts a lot of mountain exercise bums, who are overwhelming male. Tech workers in Silicon Valley make that a male heavy environment. Midland-Odessa, Texas has a preponderance of oil/gas/energy workers to create a huge male surplus. San Diego has a heavy concentration of military men.
When women have too many options as they often do in modern times, they tend to enter a state of analysis paralysis. With analysis paralysis, women will not commit to extended relationships when someone else better is around the corner, often with just a few swipe and texts exchanges, or a couple of in-person outings. Without extended relationships, fertility declines.
Additionally, many women who find themselves single in their late 20s and beyond are not appealing to men as long term partners based upon their attitudes. Looks are also relevant, but the attitude thing is worse. A lot of these women prioritize career above romantic relationships. Few men want to build a life with a woman who will skip spending time with them to work on a legal brief or a PR campaign on a regular basis. This affects fertility. These men are at best willing to have short term sex with career women, but don't want them around for a long time.
Quote:
Originally Posted by WIHS2006
As a Millennial this doesn't surprise me in the least. I'm in my early 30's and most people I know are only just starting to get married ... assuming they are even able to find someone that wants to get married. Kids? Yeah, no. I only have one friend in my social circle with more than two kids. A few with two, a few with one, and a whole bunch with none. Having a child is expensive, having two or more kids is more expensive ... and it's even more expensive in a high COL place like Long Island. It costs an average of $233,000 to raise a child from birth to 17 and that doesn't factor in the cost of college tuition (which many parents pay at least part of nowadays) or the reality that kids these days tend to live at home well into their 20s and beyond. As I've said previously on this forum, I am open to marriage but I'm not too keen on kids.
That said, maybe this declining birth rate is a good thing, the reality is that we are headed towards a post-jobs world. Less mouths to feed and less jobs to provide are both good things in the world to come.
The anecdotes you see in your own social circle are reflective of a poor mating environment in the Millennial cohort. Millennials are getting married later in life than Boomers or Gen X did. There are no evidence yet that fewer Millennials are getting married. To really examine that, you'd want to wait a few years to see % of Millennials getting married at least once by age 45. My hypothesis is the % of Millennial marrying at least once by 45 will be the similar as Boomers and Gen X. Whereas the median Boomer got married at roughly age 23 and the median X'ers got married at 27, the median Millennial is getting married around age 30. Marriages of the course of the lifetime of the marriages are still failing at around the same rate.
The bad mating environment that Millennials are coping with that I have illustrated will have economic impact. There will be fewer working age people in the future and a large % of the population over age 65 and not contributing positively to economic growth.
The post-jobs world will have a lot of consequences.
I live amongst, and am a part of, this educated, white collar professional group.. definitely on the older side with only a few reproductive years left (that will NOT be utilized).
Many of the white collar professional companies have started to give rather generous leaves of absences for both parents (check out AMZN). Also many of these jobs can be done from home anyway. It's not just about the first 6 months or year of the baby's life, but the entire child-rearing process.
What I see many in this cohort lacking are... extended family. Specifically grandparents. My neighborhood is a bunch of transplants like myself, many from abroad, like my husband. We came here for the white collar jobs.
In additional to the public and economic resources required to raise the kids in the way we want to raise them, we really need social support in the way of invested family. I'm not talking about visits every couple months (or in my case, less), I'm talking about an extra set of hands during daily life that you don't have to pay money for.
Also most educated parents-to-be know that the real expense isn't the 3-4 years of childcare as much as the 4+ years of higher education. It's daunting to think about paying for childcare and saving for both retirement and college education at the same time.
I do know several families with more than 2 kids, but they tend to be much closer, or a part of, the C-suites in these major corporations. They tend to be Mormon (no surprise there). Or blended families. Or already financially independent.
I wanted more kids (more than 2), but my husband didn't and I can easily see why. It was going to be a lot more money throughout the first 22-25 years. I was already over the age of 30 (which brings up another point.. when women are starting families at 28-30 years old.. who wants to be birthing a 3rd at age 35+ ?).
You know, just writing about the pressure of having to birth more babies to support society is making me feel defensive! I imagine a lot of younger women will feel the same and say "bug off".
There is a bit of a pandora's box.
The vast majority of the companies in the country don't offer those kinds of benefits. Your butt is basically headed back into the office ASAP as a man.
A lot of the jobs around here aren't professional level. Median HHI is mid $30k - low $40k range depending on the town. If a woman is in a $15/hr job, it's probably worth it to become a SAHM than try to pay for daycare out of that. I know several families who made that decision.
The working class is just getting by. There's not much left to save for retirement or higher education after subsistence.
You make some great points! Contrary to what most people believe, the world's population is going to not only stop growing, but start declining. The glorified ponzi sceme of the "everything bubble" includes population. It has to as it is unsustainable.
There are close to 8 billion people in the world today. Most of them are at least reasonably well fed. But the only reason that's possible is because of mechanized mass agriculture, which is heavily resource and capital intensive. The future we're heading into is one of a declining availability of capital and resources. As unpleasant as a prospect as it is, the global population will have to get much smaller. And the usual suspects of famine, disease, poverty, violence, as well as drug abuse and suicides- will do the job...
in fact they can fix it today ... if they increase the employee share 1.25% and the employer share 1.25% and remove the cap it is funded fully .
In other words, raise its price -- which will have its own consequences.
But coming back to the live birth dearth, it is more than who funds SS. It is about having enough people to do all the work in 30, 40, 50, 60 years.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
