> To get a sense of how powerful the marriage effect is, not just for women but for men, too, look at the exit polls by marital status. Among non-married voters – people who are single and have never married, are living with a partner, or are divorced – Obama beat Romney 62-35. Among married voters Romney won the vote handily, 56-42.
I'd be interested in seeing these numbers adjusted for age, various SES indicators, etc.
The marriage gap is much bigger than the gender gap, age gap, and any socioeconomic gap. I think it falls right below the race gap in terms of size, and is probably on par with the religious/non-religious gap.
3) Rise of robotics outsourced a good portion of typical physical jobs to machines - iRobot, Kiva Systems, Tesla's car-manufacturing robot arms
4) Youth unemployment is on the rise
5) Youth STEM skills, the only applicable skills that matter in current economic climate, are declining
Why does the country need large amounts of young people again? A bunch of the assumptions - you need younger people to slave off to contribute taxes towards the retirement of the elderly - are a bit shaky to say the least. Most of the youth employed at various menial jobs are earning low enough income to qualify them for tax credits, so they're not a huge revenue source.
Is this[1] the problem in Japan that you are talking about? Seems like the main idea is we had to find a way to get the banks to start lending again. The government can't open a shop and lend to small businesses themselves. What other option did we have other than to bail out the banks? Honest question. I don't know very much about these things.
If we are discarding of a distinction between correlation and causation, the best way to increase birth rate is to plunge the public into crippling poverty.
Indeed, the latest figures (2012, CIA World Factbook) show the United States' 13.68 births per theousand persons is still higher than most of Western Europe.
The demographic-economic paradox [1] is fascinating.
It is true that the US has had remarkebly high birth rates during the last 30 years compared to most of Europe and the rich cuntries in Asia. However, once the trend for low fertility has been established it is extremely difficult to break. Even the countries in Europe that have given strong economic incentives to have children have still not managed to keep their fatility rates at replacement level. The only exception is Ireland, which has strong anti- abortion laws. Teherefore it important of the US to confront the problem of declining fertility before it has turned into a permanent problem.
One interesting thing is that this seems a bit self-correcting.
Assuming there is any genetic component to the desire for having children and religiosity (and I believe there is), that means that non-religious people, and people who are not interested in having children are breeding themself out of existence.
It'll probably be many generations before the results are large, but it should cause a dramatic shift eventually. (Which will probably eventually get too large, causing yet another shift in the other direction.)
"Assuming there is any genetic component to the desire for having children and religiosity (and I believe there is)"
The genetic argument should cancel itself it out. After all, if genetic factors should eventually cause people to have more children, then how is it possible for us to have a 55 year trend toward less children (as the article says, since 1957)? If genetics can eventually correct this trend, then why hasn't it already done so? For you to make this argument solidly, you'd have to establish at least 1 of 2 dependent arguments:
1.) there is some critical number that triggers a reaction
2.) there was, in the past, some force that allowed people to defy the genetic impulse to have children, but whatever that force was, it will no longer have as much power in the future
Here on Hacker News I have, several times, seen people invoke the idea that child-raising is a genetic impulse and that therefore the trend toward less children should be self-correcting. The people who advance this idea don't seem to get the irony of the suggestion.
Here is a bit of personal history: my great grandmother had 16 children. My mother had 4 children. Of the 4 of us, we are mostly past the age where we would consider having children. The 4 of us have so far had a total of 3 children, and I don't think there will be any more children, so my mom has less grand-children then she had children. This surprises her.
There are some powerful forces pushing the trend towards less children. My feeling is that some people are glib in their dismissals of the trend. A poorly thought out genetic argument would fall into my category of glib.
I wonder if this is one of the major ways (other than conversion) that the major religions of the modern world spread in the first place. After all, they all seem to emphasize having children to a great degree, something that I don't think existed in many other religions.
...except for the fact that non-religiosity is spreading quite a lot faster than people can breed. Religious indoctrination runs in families, but reason and skepticism are universal.
I wouldn't count on it. Even if it were possible the genetic pool is too vast for single traits to really have an impact. Plus consider that most (if not all?) homosexuals have heterosexual parents - that is more influenced by number children, but it shows that there is more involved than just people who have the traits being selected out. Most of the biggest advocates against religion were born in religious families. Most parents regret having kids, most couples who have kids are less happy than couples who don't have kids. People wanting to be child free is here to stay and it will grow before it has any chance of being bred out. Choosing to be child free is the rational thing to do if you want to be happy. I welcome people to join more people avoiding having kids here: http://reddit.com/r/childfree
Assuming we can handle the "421" problems, a world population in the 1-2 billion range, purely through low fertility rate, would solve a lot of environmental problems. You could have first-world quality of life for everyone, with reasonable technology advances, and still have a much lower impact on the environment than we have now.
Under 2b seems like the right number unless space colonization is seriously in force.
Unless we see huge advances, I think we are doomed with space colonisation, since we put more energy in than we can take out, i.e., it produces non-self-sustaining space colonies reliant on Earth.
The problem is the world isn't shrinking. It's just the wealthy educated bits of it that are. So we're going to have a shrinking number of first world citizens surrounded by ever increasing numbers of the global poor.
Now, if you wipe out poverty entirely and bring everyone up to the same standard of living and education you'll probably see a shrinking global population. But that isn't happening yet and won't happen for a long time.
Marriage is also lower because feminism made all women paranoid, made them want to be victims. Man can't approach woman as easily these days - will be accused of rape, harrasement, day rape if he tries. Example - suggest cup of coffe to woman in elevator - instant rapist (I hope everyone still remembers that incident) . By the way, was't there some statistics that it's men don't want to marry thesedays (for obvious reasons - women start most of divorces and takes almost everything. And men that stars divorce are famous for getting their pen1s cut off and thrown in garbage disposer.)
Why it's hard to approach feminism indoctrinated wiman (victim syndrome) kateharding.net/2009/10/08/guest-blogger-starling-schrodinger%E2%80%99s-rapist-or-a-guy%E2%80%99s-guide-to-approaching-strange-women-without-being-maced/
very interesting, but the part about singles being less concerned with the future is more than slightly ridiculous. IMHE, parenthood brings on a set of priorities that override longer term, less tangible issues in favour of supporting children.
Thank god someone else picked up on this. I'm willing to take the article at face value in its description of the results of the research; but the analysis is all nut job territory.
The singles not caring about the future is one perfect example. If it were true, and it were only the regions with high concentrations of parents caring about the future, then you would see much stronger support for actions to prevent climate change in areas where there are higher birth rates. The thing is, you don't - it's the cities - the places that the author is bemoaning for the lack of kids (he even calls cities "pleasure centers") that are at the forefront of trying to fix the big problems. The areas with the high birth rates are the ones that seemingly don't care about the future.
So yeah, take every last bit of his analysis with a grain of salt. He strikes me as a "America has been going backwards since the 1950s" type and he's trying to back the data in to fit his preconceived notions of how the world should work.
People live longer; diseases of old age are not cured yet and are considerably expensive and labour intensive. You need lots of people earning money and paying taxes to provide for that older generation. You also need lots of people to do the physical care of that population.
Birth rates are low but population continues to grow. The US is still a nation of immigrants, once we accept that with our Immigration laws we'll be fine.
The problem is health-related - physical, mental, and emotional - along with not getting the proper support of the community that it takes to raise a healthy child, not just for the child, but for the parents.
Personally, anecdotally, I would find it exhausting to try to catalog all the ways in which child-rearing has been disincentivised in my own life.
I find this all another instance of the outsized hypocrisy in the U.S. Bemoaning something, while simultaneously taking seemingly every action to reinforce it.
(There are a lot of secondary effects, that I won't go into here, that seem to trigger... "outrage" in some of the very people contributing most strongly to the primary condition. Deceit, or stupidity. Seems to be some of each.)
Less stupid people being brought into the world? I see nothing wrong with that. It's about time.
EDIT:
And seriously: "The US birth rate has continued to decline to a record low since the recession of 2007-2009. This is alarming."
This is not alarming. The depression never ended. It'll be 2013 soon and we're still in a depression. This is supposed to be a serious educated article? Fail!
s/Less/Fewer/; But anyway, saying things like "stupid people being brought into the world" is meaningless. That's not a birth issue, but an education one; you can argue that fewer people in the country makes education a simpler problem, but I don't know that that really matters in the grand scheme of things. Especially since birth rates for lower socioeconomic class families aren't dropping, to my knowledge, and those are the ones generally in the worst position for education.
It's certainly alarming if you have pay-go pension schemes like Social Security and Medicare. The way things are going either the young will live under a crushing tax burden or people who paid into social welfare programs for fifty years won't see any benefit. That's not a recipe for a stable society.
[+] [-] usaar333|13 years ago|reply
I'd be interested in seeing these numbers adjusted for age, various SES indicators, etc.
[+] [-] clarkm|13 years ago|reply
The marriage gap is much bigger than the gender gap, age gap, and any socioeconomic gap. I think it falls right below the race gap in terms of size, and is probably on par with the religious/non-religious gap.
[+] [-] tomjen3|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eli_gottlieb|13 years ago|reply
You bailed out the banks. Now you're turning into Japan.
Mazal tov, America! You're committing national suicide!
[+] [-] prostoalex|13 years ago|reply
Let's see a couple trends here though:
1) US life expectancy is on the rise, I guess one of the most expensive healthcare systems in the world is good for something.
2) Average retirement age is moving farther ahead - Reuters recently ran an article about startup founders who are 60+ y.o. http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/11/27/us-valley-ageism-i...
3) Rise of robotics outsourced a good portion of typical physical jobs to machines - iRobot, Kiva Systems, Tesla's car-manufacturing robot arms
4) Youth unemployment is on the rise
5) Youth STEM skills, the only applicable skills that matter in current economic climate, are declining
Why does the country need large amounts of young people again? A bunch of the assumptions - you need younger people to slave off to contribute taxes towards the retirement of the elderly - are a bit shaky to say the least. Most of the youth employed at various menial jobs are earning low enough income to qualify them for tax credits, so they're not a huge revenue source.
[+] [-] 3825|13 years ago|reply
[1]: http://web.mit.edu/krugman/www/bailout.html
[+] [-] tsotha|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jlgreco|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ThomPete|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aes256|13 years ago|reply
The demographic-economic paradox [1] is fascinating.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic-economic_paradox
[+] [-] sterna|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pbateman|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] henrikschroder|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ars|13 years ago|reply
Assuming there is any genetic component to the desire for having children and religiosity (and I believe there is), that means that non-religious people, and people who are not interested in having children are breeding themself out of existence.
It'll probably be many generations before the results are large, but it should cause a dramatic shift eventually. (Which will probably eventually get too large, causing yet another shift in the other direction.)
[+] [-] lkrubner|13 years ago|reply
The genetic argument should cancel itself it out. After all, if genetic factors should eventually cause people to have more children, then how is it possible for us to have a 55 year trend toward less children (as the article says, since 1957)? If genetics can eventually correct this trend, then why hasn't it already done so? For you to make this argument solidly, you'd have to establish at least 1 of 2 dependent arguments:
1.) there is some critical number that triggers a reaction
2.) there was, in the past, some force that allowed people to defy the genetic impulse to have children, but whatever that force was, it will no longer have as much power in the future
Here on Hacker News I have, several times, seen people invoke the idea that child-raising is a genetic impulse and that therefore the trend toward less children should be self-correcting. The people who advance this idea don't seem to get the irony of the suggestion.
Here is a bit of personal history: my great grandmother had 16 children. My mother had 4 children. Of the 4 of us, we are mostly past the age where we would consider having children. The 4 of us have so far had a total of 3 children, and I don't think there will be any more children, so my mom has less grand-children then she had children. This surprises her.
There are some powerful forces pushing the trend towards less children. My feeling is that some people are glib in their dismissals of the trend. A poorly thought out genetic argument would fall into my category of glib.
[+] [-] w1ntermute|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] henrikschroder|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Pkeod|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rdl|13 years ago|reply
Under 2b seems like the right number unless space colonization is seriously in force.
[+] [-] TazeTSchnitzel|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pbateman|13 years ago|reply
Now, if you wipe out poverty entirely and bring everyone up to the same standard of living and education you'll probably see a shrinking global population. But that isn't happening yet and won't happen for a long time.
[+] [-] onetwothreefour|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chriscool|13 years ago|reply
http://blog.couder.net/post/2012/06/30/Sex-and-Power
[+] [-] lifebar|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] WalterSear|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hype7|13 years ago|reply
The singles not caring about the future is one perfect example. If it were true, and it were only the regions with high concentrations of parents caring about the future, then you would see much stronger support for actions to prevent climate change in areas where there are higher birth rates. The thing is, you don't - it's the cities - the places that the author is bemoaning for the lack of kids (he even calls cities "pleasure centers") that are at the forefront of trying to fix the big problems. The areas with the high birth rates are the ones that seemingly don't care about the future.
So yeah, take every last bit of his analysis with a grain of salt. He strikes me as a "America has been going backwards since the 1950s" type and he's trying to back the data in to fit his preconceived notions of how the world should work.
[+] [-] tomwalker|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DanBC|13 years ago|reply
People live longer; diseases of old age are not cured yet and are considerably expensive and labour intensive. You need lots of people earning money and paying taxes to provide for that older generation. You also need lots of people to do the physical care of that population.
[+] [-] hayksaakian|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gte910h|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] loceng|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Ygg2|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pasbesoin|13 years ago|reply
I find this all another instance of the outsized hypocrisy in the U.S. Bemoaning something, while simultaneously taking seemingly every action to reinforce it.
(There are a lot of secondary effects, that I won't go into here, that seem to trigger... "outrage" in some of the very people contributing most strongly to the primary condition. Deceit, or stupidity. Seems to be some of each.)
[+] [-] rorrr|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lucian303|13 years ago|reply
EDIT: And seriously: "The US birth rate has continued to decline to a record low since the recession of 2007-2009. This is alarming."
This is not alarming. The depression never ended. It'll be 2013 soon and we're still in a depression. This is supposed to be a serious educated article? Fail!
[+] [-] daeken|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tsotha|13 years ago|reply
It's certainly alarming if you have pay-go pension schemes like Social Security and Medicare. The way things are going either the young will live under a crushing tax burden or people who paid into social welfare programs for fifty years won't see any benefit. That's not a recipe for a stable society.