US Fertility Rate Falls To All-Time Low (npr.org) 248
An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: Women in the U.S. gave birth to roughly 710,000 fewer children last year compared with the nation's peak in 2007, according to preliminary data released (PDF) this week by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Lead researcher Brady Hamilton, a demographer with the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics, said the latest one percent drop in "general fertility" from 2024 to 2025 is part of a long-running downward trend. "Since 2007, there's been a decline in the general fertility rate [in the U.S.] of 23%," Hamilton told NPR.
The impact of that change in real numbers is sizable: In 2007, there were 4,316,233 babies born. Last year, even though the nation's population as a whole is larger, there were only 3,606,400 newborns. There's no consensus over why women and couples have shifted their behavior so significantly. Some experts point to economic factors, others say cultural influences, and better access to education and contraception for women are driving the change. "We're seeing big drops in fertility rates for young women, teenagers and women in their 20s," said economist Martha Bailey, head of the California Center for Population Research at the University of California, Los Angeles. "What's not yet clear is whether or not those same women will go on to have children later on."
"People are having the number of children they want and that they can afford at a time that makes the most sense for them," she said. "What I don't think anyone is in favor of is a Handmaid's Tale type policy regime, where we're trying to talk families into having children they don't want."
One silver lining in the data is the 7% decline in teen pregnancies in 2025. Bianca Allison, pediatrician and associate professor at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, said: "What is actually affecting the birth rates are likely lower rates of teen pregnancy overall, which is in the context of higher use of contraception and lower sexual activity for youth, and then also continued access to abortion care."
The impact of that change in real numbers is sizable: In 2007, there were 4,316,233 babies born. Last year, even though the nation's population as a whole is larger, there were only 3,606,400 newborns. There's no consensus over why women and couples have shifted their behavior so significantly. Some experts point to economic factors, others say cultural influences, and better access to education and contraception for women are driving the change. "We're seeing big drops in fertility rates for young women, teenagers and women in their 20s," said economist Martha Bailey, head of the California Center for Population Research at the University of California, Los Angeles. "What's not yet clear is whether or not those same women will go on to have children later on."
"People are having the number of children they want and that they can afford at a time that makes the most sense for them," she said. "What I don't think anyone is in favor of is a Handmaid's Tale type policy regime, where we're trying to talk families into having children they don't want."
One silver lining in the data is the 7% decline in teen pregnancies in 2025. Bianca Allison, pediatrician and associate professor at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, said: "What is actually affecting the birth rates are likely lower rates of teen pregnancy overall, which is in the context of higher use of contraception and lower sexual activity for youth, and then also continued access to abortion care."
Porn (Score:2, Insightful)
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Nope, ICE and bigotry. Immigrants have more kids than citizens on average. If it weren't for immigrants, the US birth rate would have been below replacement for years. Bigots know this, so in their fear and hatred they try to racially cleanse us by deporting honest workers and denying birthright citizenship.
Bigots gonna bigot, but we don't need to elect them.
When people feel oppressed... (Score:2, Insightful)
When people feel oppressed, they start having thoughts like "It isn't fair to bring a child into this" and they worry about their own survival and how they are barely making it even without the additional expense and worry of a child. This administration promised a lot of care and benefits for expecting parents and new families but they haven't materialized. They have also restricted methods of family planning, so it makes sense that people are not having as many families.
It makes sense that under this hars
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Indeed. These repulsive defectives seem to think that denial changes reality.
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I guess the world seems like quite a scary place from your mom's basement.
Meanwhile in the real world, exactly like GP says immigrants have made a meaningful impact on US birth rates [pewresearch.org].
Re:Porn (Score:4, Insightful)
You're either of native American descent or you're a hypocrite, because your forebears didn't seem to have too much of a problem with ethnic replacement.
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Bullshit. The right of conquest is a defunct historical concept that has been entirely outlawed for nearly a century, and it was superseded by principles of diplomacy and treaty-making that are thousands of years older.
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Re:Porn (Score:5, Insightful)
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If you think about it, you'd be grateful for the ethnic replacements when your decreasing native population gets old, stops working and no longer generates tax for your government to run - or maybe they'll work and tax you until you die.
I think they're more concerned about the gene pool, 1 Latina could potentially disrupt centuries of inbreeding.
Re:Porn (Score:5, Insightful)
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Why, are minorities treated differently or something?
Re:Porn (Score:5, Insightful)
By not spending all their time grouping people into different "races" and judging them by their stereotypes of said races as invariant characteristics of not only first-generation immigrants, but all descendants therefrom, despite the latter growing up in your society, while freaking out about any change, as though every society is constantly changing, let alone one that specifically formed as a melting pot that prided itself on inviting everyone in [nps.gov]?
Not that there haven't always been racists.
1840s-1880s: "F***ing Irish!"
1850s-1940s: "F***ing Chinese!"
1880s-1920s: "F***ing Italians! F***ing Slavs! F***ing Jews!"
1890s-1940s: "F***ing Japanese!"
1914-1920: "F***ing Germans!"
Late 1800s-Present: "F***ing Mexicans!"
1970s-Present: "F***ing Muslims!"
Who do you think will be next, while the previous groups become "normal" in the US? How many people of Italian descent do you see going around speaking Italian and living as if it were Italy in the early 1900s? In general, often even in the second generation, and esp. by third and beyond, immigrants' origins generally just becomes a historic fact rather than a daily lived thing. There may be some signature dish that you cook, or you may have a dream to some day visit the country your ancestors came from, or you (might) still be the religion of your ancestors, or whatnot. But you speak the local language, your hobbies are and interests by and large in-distribution for the country, your education was the same standardized education, etc. And over time, due to intermarriage, ancestry increasingly becomes diverse and less defining - "I'm X% Irish, Y% English, Z% Italian..." etc. Skin colour or part of the world doesn't change it. Ever met a south Asian-ancestry Brit? They're not out there talking like a call centre operator from New Delhi and eating curry every day, they're eating at Nandos and calling each other "bruv" and the like.
This is how all "peoples" form. Do you think there just happened to be 143 million people defining themselves as "Russian" living across this massive landmass? No - the Russian empire conquered a massive diverse range of people, and then assimilated them to be "Russians", through education, intermarriage, etc. At least in the US people are living there willingly and had a choice in the matter.
It's like this everywhere. Do you think there just happened to be a people called "The English"? No, there were Gaelic peoples there, then Romans, then Angles and Saxons, then vikings, and on and on. Flows of people are the nature of history, both during wartime and peacetime. I'm as white as they come, but genetic tests show a tiny bit of African ancestry - from a percentage basis, maybe back into the 1600-1700s - because hey, there were "Moors" in Europe then too. "Most" genetics in Iceland sees Y chromosomes *mainly* showing Scandinavian roots and mitochondria *mainly* showing British isles roots, but there's also, for example, a not insignificant bit of Greenlandic genetics here.
Even the most isolated places in the world see a free flow of genetics. Tristan da Cunha is considered the most remote settlement on Earth, with its 238 people. Boats only arrive once every few months, and to visit you have to get special permission from the Island Council. There were 7 surnames on the island, from the island's original male settlers. This expanded to 10 in the 1960s after some islanders intermarried during an evacuation due to the island's volcano. But genetics show the presence of an Eastern European ancestor from the early 1900s, possibly from a Russian sailing ship. Even on the most remote place on Earth, genetic flow exists - and it does not harm a damned thing, and is in fact, very much a good thing.
And culture flows even easier than genetics. Culture is constantly changing, radic
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nicely said. the romans were a very mixed pot themselves from early on. i didn't know about tristan but as a curiosity (and anecdotal counterpoint) basque people in a far less isolated environment have in fact maintained unique genetic patterns tracing back to the bronze age until very recently, likely for cultural reasons. they didn't even intermarry across close geographic areas.
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stopping legal immigrants, not just illegal (Score:2)
Nobody, nobody, minds legal immigrants.
Turns out not to be true; the current administration has also slashed legal immigration:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/t... [cbsnews.com]
https://www.theatlantic.com/id... [theatlantic.com]
Except for white South Africans:
https://www.reuters.com/world/... [reuters.com]
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*Citation needed.
Re:Porn (Score:4)
* Illegal immigrants are immigrants.
* Legal immigrants are immigrants.
* In the USA, immigrants (legal or illegal) have kids at a higher rate than citizens. This is what I said in my OP, and it was true then and is still true now.
* A high or low birth rate is neither good nor bad by itself, though the effects of a certain birth rate can have good or bad effects of many parts of life/culture/economy/etc.
The birth rate has been declining for a long time, and has many reasons. However, the declining birth rate has declined less because of immigration (since, again, immigrants have more kids on average). The current administration has deported many immigrants, both legal and illegal immigrants. This will make the (already low) birth rate decline quickly.
Does this make sense? Do you disagree with any piece of this? Because it sounded like you disagreed with my point, despite my comments being accurate for all immigrants regardless of their legal status.
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Re: Porn (Score:4, Interesting)
Obesity tends to lower fertility rates in both men and women too.
Re: Porn (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: Porn (Score:5, Informative)
Yep. 8,000 hours of 1950 minimum wage bought median 1950s house, 56,000 hours of current minimum wage buys current median house. Even states with higher minimum wage, itâ(TM)s 20,000 hours plus. Minimum wage would have to be $50 an hour to buy median ($400k) house with it.
Re: Porn (Score:2)
$50/hr to buy $400k house in 8,000 hours, like minimum wage workers in 1950s.
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Nonsense. The wealthier the society, the fewer children people have. We had higher fertility rates when few people have indoor plumbing or electricity.
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Nonsense. The wealthier the society, the fewer children people have. We had higher fertility rates when few people have indoor plumbing or electricity.
Thing is, if you're living like it's 1885, what else is there to do besides pop out kids? Heck, the rug rats will eventually be old enough to help with the farming and chores, so it's probably a net benefit to have 'em if you're living in poverty.
However, when you're in a modern first world country, the DINK lifestyle has its perks. There's a lot of cool toys you can buy and things you can go do when you're not spending most of your income on raising (a) kid(s). The people saying that child rearing is ex
Re: Porn (Score:2)
Re: Porn (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not quite so simple. The most rural countries with lowest levels of education have the highest fertility rates, those countries also tend to be the poorest. If you look here [wikipedia.org], at first glance it does indeed look like the poorest countries have the highest fertility rates and vice versa. If you look a little closer at the bottom of the list though, you'll see very rich nations like Japan and South Korea alongside less wealthy ones like Ukraine, Belarus, (arguably) Poland and the Baltic states. In Ukraine's case the war is obviously a factor, but still you see what I mean.
If you live on a small farm in a non-developed nation, without indoor plumbing or electricity, raising children is cheap. You just need enough food to feed them. Your large extended family which lives nearby, maybe even in the same house, will help with raising very young children. Then when they're even slightly older they can start helping with with farm work which needs less strength as well as looking after even younger siblings. When they've grown up they may be able to provide for you when you get old, because there may be no functioning state welfare. That's what happens in the sub-Saharan African nations and other very rural nations with the highest fertility rates.
When you live in the city though, raising children is expensive. Your family likely lives far away from you and can't help with raising them. You have to spend most of your time working in an office somewhere. In the meantime you have to pay for childcare, which in developed nations tends to be very expensive if not subsidised by the government. The expectation of money you need to spend on clothing, school expenses etc for the children is so much higher in developed countries. A lot of lower earning young couples will simply not be able to afford having 2+ young children at the same time. If you wait until your one child grows up and leaves the nest until you have another, at that point you may be too old and no longer able to have children. That's especially considering that couples often won't start having children until they've completed their university education and got a long-term job and some financial security.
Very wealthy people in developed nations will often have large families - see Musk, Trump, Zuckerberg. When money is not a concern, many people will choose to have large families.
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You know where all that wealth is concentrated, right?
Re: Porn (Score:2)
The world is fucking awful Now is why.
Re: Porn (Score:2)
It was a hell of a lot better before smart phones.
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So you're saying that marriage has no incentive to a man other than bedroom fun?
You're probably right and there's not many younger traditional women out there where responsibilities are split by role. Instead, both parties do the same job. Nobody wants to work all day and then cook for a family of 3-4, or have to pay to eat out all the time.
Unfortunately, the US economy cannot support having only 1 person work to support a family. Wages are too low due to twice as many people in the work force from feminist
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Simple answers for people with simple minds. Actual reality is a lot more complex.
Here's an idea (Score:3)
What if we enacted policies to make having children, you know, affordable?
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Less developed regions: 2.35
More developed regions:1.46
USA: 1.41
Europe: 1.62
Africa: 3.95
China: 1.02
Replacement fertility rate (for sustained population) for most developed counties: 2.1
The UN has predicted, in 2024, that the worlds population will peak at 10.3 billion by 2084. Other thing to note is the the world's p population is expected to get significantly older
Re:Here's an idea (Score:4, Informative)
Oh course not. The government doing anything to benefit citizens is literally communism. But spending hundreds of billions helping Israel blow up poor people is still cool.
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The schools are operated by demented commies that have all sorts of plans for your kid(s). Both of you work, so your kid(s) get raised by the interwebs, being told they're not the gender the patriarchy told them they are.
If I was raising a kid, I'd be worried how they're going to earn a living that affords them the ability to do things like purchase a house, what with the advent of AI and how late-stagey capitalism has become, with private equity buying up everything that's not nailed down. But yeah, I'm sure if you manage to keep them away from everyone who is trying to confuse them about their gender, all of aspects of their lives that are actually critical to becoming a successful adult will just magically work themselv
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If anyone was ever in doubt of the effects of leaded gasoline.
Oh no! (Score:2)
Anyway, mayhem the billionaires will make their own slaves.
How surprising. (Score:4, Interesting)
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Life doesn't have to be a grinder.
Years ago I decided consciously not to enter the rat race of life. I scaled back expectations of job and financial success, and focused on my family. I didn't work overtime while my coworkers were wearing themselves out for promotions. When I finished my days work, I went home, and stopped thinking about work I didn't buy the biggest house I could afford, I thought hard about what was necessary. I've never every bought a new car, and don't plan to.
The funny thing is, I didn
You don't say (Score:2)
Pushing more and more people into dense urban landscapes that are hostile to life does not lead to happy people? You don't say...
We were in a GREAT position (Score:4, Insightful)
The industrial world has a fertility centered around 1.25 - put four middle aged women in a room, they'll have five kids with them. The United States was blessed with a solid 1.6 and we were collecting the best of the best globally.
A year and a half of master race archetype Stephen Miller in charge of immigration combined with the end of Roe v. Wade and we're going to catch up to Italy in short order - a bit less than that 1.25 global norm.
The most warped thing is that, with ideologues doing jobs that ought to be in the hands of pragmatists, when hits like this keep coming, they will employ their belief system to rationalize doubling down, rather than recognizing a disastrous policy and reversing course.
The only thing that might correct this problem is a wave of refugees arriving when Asia spins out over losing its energy supply.
My contact information ain't hard to find, one of y'all drop me a line when America is great again.
Re: We were in a GREAT position (Score:3)
No, we were/are screwed. The 4 women with 5 kids is misleading, with their husbands it is 8 people with 5 kids. Replacement with no growth is 2.1, which suggests 9 children for 8 people or 4 women, and 1 will not breed or die. This is a long term leading indicator for population collapse (still rising due to boomers living long) and GDP collapse, and concentration of national debt to unsustainable levels, not to mention collapse of social security, etc.
Expect the stock market and k-shaped economy to keep go
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Fertility rate ?!?! (Score:5, Informative)
I think they mean birth rate not fertility rate. Just because you don't have kids doesn't mean you can't.
Re: Fertility rate ?!?! (Score:2)
It's reasonable to conflate the two when the proof is in the pudding.
Re: Fertility rate ?!?! (Score:2)
Yeah, that is correct. People are choosing not to have kids. Fertility rate is medical.
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Temporary Decrease or Permanent Decrease? (Score:5, Interesting)
Leaving aside possible reasons for a declining birthrate (increased cost, greater opportunity cost, social trends, decreased community availabilty for things like child care, mismatch in education between partners, student debt), let's ask a different question:
Is the decrease in fertility actually a permanent reduction in births on average for women in the United States, or are we seeing a temporary statistical impact due to shifting of when women are having children?
From the article:
"One possibility, according to economist Martha Bailey, head of the California Center for Population Research at the University of California, Los Angeles, is that U.S. women are delaying motherhood and will have more children later in life.
"We're seeing big drops in fertility rates for young women, teenagers and women in their 20s," Bailey said. "What's not yet clear is whether or not those same women will go on to have children later on."
A CDC study published in March of last year found fertility rates rising among women in their 30s and 40s, though not fast enough to offset drops among younger women."
I find it also interesting (but also noting that correlation is not causation) that the peak in births also coincided with the beginning of the great recession: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
A different article (from the govfacts.org site, which is not associated with the government - do your own research on whether they are an objective source: https://mediabiasfactcheck.com... [mediabiasfactcheck.com]) dives a bit deeper, and interestingly shows that birthrates have fallen below replacement rates before:
https://govfacts.org/long-term... [govfacts.org]
"After World War II, America experienced a baby boom that peaked around 3.5 children per woman in the early 1960s. This explosion of births reflected returning servicemen starting families, pent-up demand from Depression and wartime delays, economic prosperity, and cultural expectations that strongly favored large families.
The boom was followed by a sharp âoebaby bustâ that brought the rate to 1.7 by 1976, according to CBS reporting on historical trends. This decline coincided with the introduction of the birth control pill, changing womenâ(TM)s roles, and evolving cultural attitudes toward family size.
For three decades from 1980 to 2007, birth rates remained remarkably stable, fluctuating with economic cycles but staying near replacement level. During recessions, couples would delay childbearing; during expansions, they would catch up. This predictable pattern gave policymakers and economists confidence they understood fertility dynamics."
I did pull up the CDC historical data (unfortunately orphaned and no longer being updated) on US births for comparison:
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data-... [cdc.gov]
And indeed there are peaks in births in 1957 and 1961, and troughs from 1973-1975. What is interesting is in terms of peak fertility per woman was in 1957 at a rate of 122 births per 1000 women between the ages of 15 and 44. This fell to 65 births per 1000 women in 1976, rose to 68.4 by 1980, fell again to 65.4 by 1986, etc. In 1990 it peaked at 70.90, and in 2007 it peaked again at 69.30.
I have no idea how to translate these numbers to replacement figures, but assuming that the general trends are comparable, it seems like birthrates have actually been on a decline since 1957, by CDC measures. While 2007 may look like it was a peak, that's only a local maxima.
Lastly, we might want to factor in the fact that US population grew significantly in the last 60+ years. Taking a different look at the problem from perspective of the US Census:
https://www.census.gov/library... [census.gov]
This article trumps the highest population growth in the US in decades:
https://www.census.gov/newsroo... [census.gov]
"For Immediate Release: Thursday, December 19, 2024
Net International Migration Drives Highest U.S. Population Growth in Decades"
"...DEC. 19, 2024 â" The U.S. population grew by nearly 1.0% between 2023 and 2024, according to the new Vintage 2024 population estimates released today by the U.S. Census Bureau.
As the nationâ(TM)s population surpasses 340 million, this is the fastest annual population growth the nation has seen since 2001 â" a notable increase from the record low growth rate of 0.2% in 2021. The growth was primarily driven by rising net international migration...."
Could it be that we're seeing fewer births simply because we're approaching or have already hit a maximum point in the population we're able to support in the US?
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If women are delaying having children until they can better afford it, and affordability is decreasing, all that will happen is they get too old to have them before becoming financially stable enough to do so.
Whatever the issue is, the solution is the same and should be done for many other reasons: Get the cost of living down. Cheaper property, higher wages.
Re:Temporary Decrease or Permanent Decrease? (Score:4, Insightful)
If women are delaying having children until they can better afford it, and affordability is decreasing, all that will happen is they get too old to have them before becoming financially stable enough to do so.
Whatever the issue is, the solution is the same and should be done for many other reasons: Get the cost of living down. Cheaper property, higher wages.
I don't think that would make much difference.
At least in the US, young people are wealthier than they ever have been. Housing prices are relatively higher, but not that much, not if you buy the size of house that people bought 50 years ago. If you also reduce eating out and other expenses to the levels that were normal a couple of generations ago, make kids share rooms like they did then, etc., it's perfectly feasibly to have a family on a typical income -- depending on where you live, even a single income.
What's changed isn't the economics, it's people's willingness to make the compromises needed. But the compromises are not just economic; they aren't even primarily economic. Raising children is a lot of work, takes a lot of time, and a lot of patience, and limits your freedom. I think many people today are unwilling to make those compromises, too.
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Younger generic material is superior. Period. It's true of men and it's true of women. There are also additional complications related to women having children at older ages which are not genetic. It doesn't matter how anyone feels about it, it's a highly studied phenomenon.
If people are having children at later ages that's not a good thing.
Percent chance of beign a first time mother at 30+ (Score:2, Troll)
the Birthgap documentary has that a woman who has not had a child by age 30 has a less than 50% chance of ever becoming a mother, regardless of her current dating, engaged, married, single status.
Combine that with
1) many women 18-28 have a fear of commitment, delaying growing up settling down.
2) 50 years of telling men that only men need to "do better", "step up", and "take the first step to fix the world's problem" has not helped.
Re:Percent chance of beign a first time mother at (Score:4, Insightful)
I am a man over 50 and it is the first time I hear that only men should "do better", "step up" etc.
But I am not watching/reading alt-right manosphere propaganda... probably that's why never heard of it.
iPhone did it... (Score:2)
2007 is when iPhone was introduced...
Men got easy access to porn, shortly after women got Instagram, recently both got TikTok...
Is anyone surprised? (Score:3, Insightful)
Our cultural division is at an all-time high. 1/3 of the population despises another 1/3 and is willing to accept pain themselves as long as it means "owning the libs."
The cost to have children has made them a luxury.
The current administration is cool just obliterating our green spaces as long as they can pull some natural resources out of the ground.
Jobs are becoming harder to find for younger workers.
Who wants to reproduce in this environment?
I had kids in my late 20s (Score:2)
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No kids. I am now about to turn 50.
I have always enjoyed the freedom that I have to be selfish and lazy :)
Mostly female education (Score:3)
If you look across countries, the variable that correlates most strongly with TFR is years of female education (-0.82 correlation).
So raising TFR would mean fewer women at university, fewer abortions, and more teen pregnancies. The exact opposite of current policy.
Not female education - boomers are to blame (Score:2)
However, we have been past that affect for 50+ years now.
What we see today in most western countries is a huge redirection of consumption of goods and services from young workers and the creation of new capital, to older workers and retired people. The rich aren't consuming more, the elderly are. They consume
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Re:Not female education - boomers are to blame (Score:4, Informative)
The numbers don't back up this narrative. Poor, indebted countries have higher birthrates.
There's no statistical correlation between debt and TFR. The only strong correlation is female years of education. And it's a negative correlation.
One thing's for sure (Score:2)
The posters and readers here aren't fixing the problem!
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The posters and readers here aren't fixing the problem!
An economic system that can't function without continuous population growth was never sustainable in the first place.
Children used to be super cheap labor ... (Score:3)
... and basically "just happen" as a side-effect of normal life. You'd have a surplus even with half of them dying off in early childhood. Today they are ultra-expensive pets that can easily cost north of 100 000 Euros for families with demands and expectations in developed countries. And selection isn't brutal anymore, it's basically non-existent with modern medicine. Urbanisation, electric power and lighting, education and other effects have turned producing children into an exception rather than the rule.
An additional effect I'd call it the decadence/affluence effect. Don't know if there is a term for this, although the effect has been recorded in history. The late Roman Empire being a prominent example, but there are other sunken civilizations that went through similar phases before vanishing swiftly.
Instincts that drive mating are fairly low-level and are elevated by positive stress and porking your sweatheart being the primary highlight of your daily life. Overtune those with other distractions and a non-scarcity environment, modern contraception and virtual sex and people have less reason to engage in mating which becomes more and more complicated as standards rise into the absurd. The result also being less mating and birthing. See Nigeria vs. the rest of the world today for details.
This is also the prime reason why revelation cults that have "pushing out babies" as a basic duty actually have an evolutionary advantage and anti-theists are prone to dying out once they emerge in high cultures. Being an anti-theist myself I've recently been discovering more and more distinct advantages of adhering to the mind-virus of an abrahamic revelation cult such as Christianity or Islam. The cultists do and will survive the decline of high civilization(s), that's for sure proven IMHO.
Pump up the Lebensborn MAGA! (Score:2)
Big news (Score:3)
Having kids is expensive, exhausting and can be largely unrewarding. Film at 11.
And given the general shitty state of the world, it's no wonder people don't want to have kids.
(I have three adult kids, so I know what I'm talking about when it comes to how exhausting it is.)
The new reality is that the world's population is going to start shrinking, probably before 2100, possibly well before 2100. We have to adapt to this new reality because there's not a damn thing we can do to reverse it; this trend is worldwide and persistent.
minority report (Score:3, Interesting)
We haven't achieved parthogenesis, so a stem donor is needed, and these stories always seem to have a bit of narrative to them.
The people behind this seem to thing that birth control was just invented a few years ago, that people stop having children at any time they economy isn't booming, the only thing remotely touching on this is the one womannoting lower sexual activity for teens.
No where in this is noted that men are checking out. A couple years ago 63 percent of men under 30 have chosen to be single. I suspect it has grown since then. The femosphere has narratively framed this as a male loneliness epidemic, in a faux expression of sympathy.
Meanwhile, men have framed this are claiming that they no longer wish to be involved in a system that to many looks like any interaction with a woman is akin to handling a hand grenade with the pin pulled. One wrong word or move, and you can wreck your life. So they avoid the move. They see that the divorce rate is above 50 percent, which doesn't include the men in unhappy marriage.
What is a real issue is that as the modern narrative for women is like something out of "Sex and the City", where you don't even think about marriage until you are in your mid-30's, and experienced man men to make certain you can find Mr right. Problem with that is that when men hit that age, they think more with their brains than their genitals. In addition to the general disrespect, with fertility on the downswing at that age, many women will be looking at IVF.
And yes, Birth control has been around a long time, especially if you consider condoms. The first birth control pills were approved in the US in 1960. That's 65 years ago! It's a stretch to blame that.
Back to the male loneliness epidemic. I'm in a campus environment. When I was a student, we were all yencing our brains out, and having a lot of fun.
Today, a sort of sexual apartheid has developed. Here are young men and women at their peaks, and there is little interaction.
But here's the interesting observation. The people presumably suffering - the men? They don't look unhappy at all. They hang out, mess with each other as men do, Monkin about. The women on the other hand don't look all that impressed by their own situation.
When I was in college, you would see men and women interacting, holding hands hugging, kissing, enjoying each other's presence. Today, it is almost jarring if you see a man and woman holding hands or interacting. This is weirdly un-natural.
side note: I was married by the time I was in college, so didn't have the "college experience"
Point is, you can swing the pendulum too far, and lets face it, when normal interactions become sexual harassment, when even marriage is problematic, it is not illogical for the gender that is claimed to be always at fault to do a simple risk/reward assessment, decide there is virtually no reward, only risk, then lean out. It is also not surprising that the group who ended up causing this problem frame it as a loneliness epidemic. This is a problem men cannot fix, and with the narrative that it is not possible for a woman to do anything wrong, it is going to be a generational issue to repair.
Since the usual crowd will downmod me, all me incel, and drop to coward status to do so half the time, might as well let everyone know that despite being married for a long time, and not young, I'm still sexually active, and the wife initiates it half the time or more - I don't really keep count. So have at me as you usually do.
have you looked at retirement planning? (Score:2)
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It isn't one thing, it is EVERYTHING. (Score:4, Interesting)
It isn't just people being more accepting of alternative LBGT lifestyles.
It isn't just social media destroying people's in person social skills.
It isn't just greater availability contraception and abortion.
It isn't just women having more options in life and no longer needing to to submit to a man to get by in life.
It isn't just better and better virtual porn.
It isn't just the rise of cost healthcare, childcare, food, housing, transportation.
It isn't just the the wealthiest 20% taking almost all of the economic gains over the last 46 years.
It isn't just more people not ascribing to religious dogma commanding us to make as many babies as possible to bring riotous souls to earth.
It isn't just people being concerned about what kind of world their progeny would grow up in because of an increasingly erratic climate.
It isn't just because the competion for diminishing resources is an all time high with an almost doubling of the world population in the last 46 years.
It isn't just one thing. It is all of those things. However if life wasn't so much more expensive in the US that it was for previous generations, most of the other things probably would factor a lot less into the equation. Having children used to be a net economic gain for most families. On a societal level when each generation does worse economically that the last. The more children you have the greater and economic negative each child becomes. The economy does not work as well as it used to for the majority of Americans.
Everything is changing now with AI/robots (Score:2)
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The government doesn't want kids (Score:4, Interesting)
Here is the list of everything parents get in Germany that is not guaranteed in the US.
Phase 1: Pre-Birth (Safety & Rest)
The "Work Ban": If your job is physical or hazardous, you stop working immediately (Day 1 of pregnancy) at 100% pay.
Mandatory Rest: You must stop working 6 weeks before your due date at 100% pay.
Job Security: It is illegal to fire you from the moment you announce your pregnancy.
Paid Doc Visits: Employers must let you go to prenatal appointments during work hours without docking your pay or vacation time.
Phase 2: The Birth (Zero Cost)
The Bill: $0. Hospital stays, epidurals, and emergency C-sections are fully covered.
The Support: A state-paid midwife (Hebamme) visits your home daily for weeks to help with healing and breastfeeding.
Phase 3: Post-Birth (Cash & Time)
Monthly Cash (Kindergeld): The state pays you €259 per month, per child until they are 18+ years old.
Paid Leave (Elterngeld): The state pays you 65% of your salary (up to €1,800/mo) for 12–14 months to stay home.
Free Daycare: Legally guaranteed from age 1; in many regions (like Berlin), it is completely free.
Sick Child Days: 15 paid days per year per parent to stay home with a sick kid (separate from your own sick leave).
Extended Leave: Your job must be held for you for up to 3 years if you choose to take that much time off.
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You're so brave!
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Patrimony is a word already [wiktionary.org]. It refers to a son inheriting possessions from his father. The -monium suffix is productive in Latin and means "obligation:" testimony is the obligation to testify; patrimony is the obligation to act as a father; matrimony is the obligation to act as a mother, i.e., fulfil "womanly duties."
Whoever sold you this bullshit was lying to you, and not even doing a particularly good job.
You are being scammed.
Re:Feminism - it's about getting even, never equal (Score:5, Interesting)
I can't comment on your masculinity. I don't know you. But it seems like you're wounded, so let's cauterize it.
In a very strange sense, it is true that males are disposable, but this fact is built into sexual reproduction by evolution itself. In virtually all species, if one parent is responsible for carrying offspring and the other isn't, then by definition the former parent is anchored longer in the reproductive act, and is thus in need of protection during that period.
Mammals in particular have an "experimental male, stable female" genetic strategy where more pronounced variation in traits (height, academic performance, et cetera) is presented in males. With each generation these traits then get folded back into the matrilineal trunk, which is less affected by them. This specifically happens with traits on the X chromosome via Barr body [wikipedia.org] inactivation.
So there's one answer that you can settle on, if you want to feel really shitty. You are disposable. Society isn't responsible for this, though. The game was rigged tens of millions of years ago when some fucking fish somewhere evolved live birth. Unless you're a salmon, you've drawn the short straw.
But there are a couple of other angles worth considering.
First of all—who is doing the disposal of all these men? Women aren't the ones declaring wars, or cheaping out on safety equipment, or blocking legislation that reduces gun violence. We didn't invent conscription and we didn't bomb the World Trade Center. I mean, fuck, Pete Hegseth is systematically firing female generals and wants to stop women from volunteering to serve in the military, even if they meet all the physical requirements for service. These bloodthirsty assholes are the ones actually killing you, and they should be your #1 enemy. All of these problems are reduced by a factor of ten just by moving to Canada, where the reproductive laws are basically the same as any blue state.
Now, as for reproductive politics... I used to be a fairly left-libertarian person on this issue and felt that the real problem was that people are immature assholes to each other. It seemed to me that custody and child disputes only happen at all because the people involved had shitty parents, and that the only solution was to get rid of societal expectations; live and let live, make it easier for single moms to get good jobs so they don't need alimony in the first place. (Another "-mony" word, but this time from -monia, "condition," + alo, "nourishment.") But these days it's pretty damn clear to just about everyone that the last thing civilization needs is yet more isolation and atomisation.
I think the actual solution is to turn parenting into a social obligation. It's a little different from how things are now, but I think the benefits would be worth it.
Consider the consequences of what would happen if made the following into a moral principle: your parents' generation raised you, so you have a duty to raise the next generation. In this system, every adult is expected to have and raise 2 kids, or contribute the equivalent amount of work to paideia [wikipedia.org] by helping to raise the kids of strangers, teaching, tutoring, babysitting, et cetera. This would have the additional benefits of making childcare cheaper, reducing the work parents actually have to do alone, and reducing the power and scope of serial child abusers (can't hurt a lot of kids if positions of power over them aren't a viable career.) Experts would still exist for key jobs like high school teachers.
Parents still get to choose who they hire to help raise their kids, so you don't have to worry about some weirdo brainwashing them. Since virtually every adult is going through the labor pool, there's a ton of choice. Both parents and helpers would be anonymized during this selection process to reduce biases around gender, appearance, etc.
The enforcement is as follows
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What about the women sent to war?
Only men can be forced into dangerous combat roles. Combat for a woman is an option.
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No, actually. Post some links.
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All I see is reports of citizens protecting critical infrastructure from the "president of peace".
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Genetic Men cannot have children and are basically slaves in this society
We are all slaves or potential slaves in this society. Don't be such a snowflake.
When a man is sent to war
When was the last time we had a draft?
If the world was actually a Patriarchy (which is also designed to protect women) then Marriage would be called Patrimony and the deaths of hundreds of thousands babies through abortion would not occur.
Oh fuck, you're one of those. Never mind, there's no having a rational conversation with you.
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Genetic Men cannot have children and are basically slaves in this society
We are all slaves or potential slaves in this society. Don't be such a snowflake.
Woman's Choices in society:
1. Work
2. Stay at home and have children
Man's choice in society:
1. Work
2. Work
It's quite obvious when you simply look at reality for what it is. Don't be such a White Knight.
When was the last time we had a draft?
Vietnam as I recall 60,000 men died. Are you saying another 60,000 men should die just to make it relevant? Or have the laws changed, did I miss some landmark new laws that ended this practice?
Never mind, there's no having a rational conversation with you.
Alternatively your world view has a fragile basis in reality and you're too confronted by the idea that I may
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Don't feel bad. Even if the girls didn't learn feminism they still wouldn't sleep with you.
Re:We taught boys and girls to hate marriage (Score:4, Insightful)
Boys don't matter that much here. The fertility limiter in humans is female fertility. Male fertility is basically ~13 years old to around 60-80 depending on individual and ethnic group.
For females, this window is much narrower, and optimal window is very narrow. Optimal starts around 14-16 (depending on ethnic group) and it crashes into geriatric pregnancy between late 20s and early 30s and sterility between mid 30s to early 40s (again depending on ethnic group).
The really fucked up part no one is talking about? Blacks just crashed way below pretty much everyone else. Their fertility window is earlier than the rest, their optimal is something like 14-25, and they slide into geriatric pregnancy around 30 (for europeans and asians, that's usually around 35). So when rich white women finally got the "don't have kids early, have them only after you have full education and career" fertility suppression strategy affect blacks, their ethnic group's fertility crashed much harder than the rest. The sheer amount of "DEI boss babe" black woman types being genuinely distressed that they're in their early 30s and they find out that they're actually so far into their geriatric pregnancy stage that they have low single digit percentage to get pregnant even with modern IVF is staggering, and their ethnic fertility rate is showing it.
Seriously, look up a few of those videos on tiktok. It's genuinely distressing to watch if you have any empathy. These women really want children, they have been told by rich white women that they should put it off as a part of female intersexual competition (human females' primary intersexual competition mechanism is suppressing fertility of other women). And whereas their european and asian colleagues can actually start having kids in early 30s with only minor difficulties, africans are basically off the cliff into geriatric pregnancy/borderline sterility at that point. So system told them their whole lives that if they do this, they'll have the dream family. They structure their whole lives around this lie, and then the dream is shattered when for the first time in their lives, MD tells them the actual truth about their biological limits.
It's heart breaking stuff.
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When googling "blacks" and "geriatric pregnancy", the only relevant article is your slashdot posting, about 1/2 way down the first page. When Googling the same via "african american", the same -- no relevant results. It would be helpful if you cited any form of study, statistics, or .. well.. anything to validate what you are saying about age differences for ethnic backgrounds. And yes, I 100% agree that there are differing medical issues for different ethnicities, it's merely that nothing is validating
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Btw, what does going to church have to do with fertility?
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Btw, what does going to church have to do with fertility?
Obviously nothing. But for the religiously deranged, "church" solves anything. Obviously, in actual reality it is a massive problem and routinely a massive manifestation of evil.
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When my sons are old enough to start thinking about marriage, they'll remember how bad their Dad got boned in the divorce.
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Already indistinguishable from the christian nationalists in charge.
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The proximate reason is that there are no editors on Slashdot.
The broader reason is that the fortunes of tech companies are often caught up in financial headlines, so publications that cover economics are invariably syndicated here. The intended audience of these publications—the capitalist class—is deeply anxious about any changes in their host organism that may result in the contraction of their debt-based casino, so they eat up stories with pearl-clutching themes. Naturally, slave shortages a
Re: Why is this the responsibility of nerds to fix (Score:4)
If the cheerleaders would have dated us in high school this never would have happened
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