World fertility rates in 'unprecedented decline', UN says
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Namrata Nangia and her husband have been toying with the idea of having another child since their five-year-old daughter was born.
But it always comes back to one question: 'Can we afford it?'
She lives in Mumbai and works in pharmaceuticals, her husband works at a tyre company. But the costs of having one child are already overwhelming - school fees, the school bus, swimming lessons, even going to the GP is expensive.
It was different when Namrata was growing up. "We just used to go to school, nothing extracurricular, but now you have to send your kid to swimming, you have to send them to drawing, you have to see what else they can do."
According to a new report by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the UN agency for reproductive rights, Namrata's situation is becoming a global norm.
Fucking good.
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My wife and I made the same decision. We joke that Octomom had our kids.
8 billion people call Earth home. As another commentor has said, we probably should have half that. Your choice and our choice not to have kids enables that, even if only stupid people reproduce. With how the world is turning out right now, I think we both made the right choice.
Honestly thats another reason. I know how hard I've worked to get a decent life and I can only see it getting harder. It feels like it costs $300/day just to exist, I can't do that to another person.
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My wife and I made the same decision. We joke that Octomom had our kids.
8 billion people call Earth home. As another commentor has said, we probably should have half that. Your choice and our choice not to have kids enables that, even if only stupid people reproduce. With how the world is turning out right now, I think we both made the right choice.
But think of the economy!
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Aside from the psychological/sociological side of it, PFAS and microolastics have been shown in some studies to reduce women's fertility and to mess with sperm. So environmental damage is also poisoning us and destroying our ability to procreate. Go team!
The rich will fix it by putting out disinformation campaigns telling you it's all fake.
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Population increase is only important to employers.
It's important to everyone, including you. As the population ages, and fewer young people move into the economy, the tax base shrinks. Who is going to pay for government?
Also, employers will have to compete for the remaining workers, raising wages. That's good to a point, and then everything becomes too expensive, now you're in a depression. It's an economic death spiral.
Taxing the rich only works to a point. Their wealth is mostly in the global stock markets, which will eventually crash. As well, the value of those publicly traded companies will nosedive as fewer and fewer workers are available to produce the goods and services.
We're facing the global equivalent of the fall of Rome. Nation states will splinter into smaller and smaller, self-dependent groups and the riches we enjoy today will be memories of a better time. If you want a contemporary version of that, look at China restricting rare earths. That's impacting about every other country on Earth. Now imagine international trade utterly collapsing.
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We do need to reduce the human population. About 4-5 billion would be ideal.
On the negative side, we don't know how to handle this situation of declining population. The entire human history is one of non-stop growth interrupted only by catastrophic pandemics, which were the only way the population dropped so far.You're right, there is no economic system for dealing with this.
We are royally screwed. Global warming will only exacerbate the population drop, both through weather related deaths and less willingness to produce children.
If you're young, I'd suggest you learn to grow food. Not even joking.
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It's important to everyone, including you. As the population ages, and fewer young people move into the economy, the tax base shrinks. Who is going to pay for government?
Also, employers will have to compete for the remaining workers, raising wages. That's good to a point, and then everything becomes too expensive, now you're in a depression. It's an economic death spiral.
Taxing the rich only works to a point. Their wealth is mostly in the global stock markets, which will eventually crash. As well, the value of those publicly traded companies will nosedive as fewer and fewer workers are available to produce the goods and services.
We're facing the global equivalent of the fall of Rome. Nation states will splinter into smaller and smaller, self-dependent groups and the riches we enjoy today will be memories of a better time. If you want a contemporary version of that, look at China restricting rare earths. That's impacting about every other country on Earth. Now imagine international trade utterly collapsing.
wrote on last edited by [email protected]Humanity desperately needs to move away from capitalism, if it wants any chance of survival. Either that or we install a Universal base income system.
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Namrata Nangia and her husband have been toying with the idea of having another child since their five-year-old daughter was born.
But it always comes back to one question: 'Can we afford it?'
She lives in Mumbai and works in pharmaceuticals, her husband works at a tyre company. But the costs of having one child are already overwhelming - school fees, the school bus, swimming lessons, even going to the GP is expensive.
It was different when Namrata was growing up. "We just used to go to school, nothing extracurricular, but now you have to send your kid to swimming, you have to send them to drawing, you have to see what else they can do."
According to a new report by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the UN agency for reproductive rights, Namrata's situation is becoming a global norm.
When business is the world's first priority, why does it come as a surprise that people don't feel like bringing an innocent life into the orphan crushing machine?
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It's important to everyone, including you. As the population ages, and fewer young people move into the economy, the tax base shrinks. Who is going to pay for government?
Also, employers will have to compete for the remaining workers, raising wages. That's good to a point, and then everything becomes too expensive, now you're in a depression. It's an economic death spiral.
Taxing the rich only works to a point. Their wealth is mostly in the global stock markets, which will eventually crash. As well, the value of those publicly traded companies will nosedive as fewer and fewer workers are available to produce the goods and services.
We're facing the global equivalent of the fall of Rome. Nation states will splinter into smaller and smaller, self-dependent groups and the riches we enjoy today will be memories of a better time. If you want a contemporary version of that, look at China restricting rare earths. That's impacting about every other country on Earth. Now imagine international trade utterly collapsing.
Sure but you can't have an endless increase in population. Whatever the problems of declining or stabilizing the population are, they need to be tackled, not ignored, yes. You can't fix them by saying just keep the pyramid scheme going.
The real problem is more like how many workers for each retired person. So there are other ways to fix that. Personally I'm down with working more years so that people don't have to have kids if they don't want to. I can't imagine forcing people to have children.
And you know what? Employers having to face a tight labor market doesn't sound like it's worse than employees having to find scarce jobs.
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Namrata Nangia and her husband have been toying with the idea of having another child since their five-year-old daughter was born.
But it always comes back to one question: 'Can we afford it?'
She lives in Mumbai and works in pharmaceuticals, her husband works at a tyre company. But the costs of having one child are already overwhelming - school fees, the school bus, swimming lessons, even going to the GP is expensive.
It was different when Namrata was growing up. "We just used to go to school, nothing extracurricular, but now you have to send your kid to swimming, you have to send them to drawing, you have to see what else they can do."
According to a new report by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the UN agency for reproductive rights, Namrata's situation is becoming a global norm.
I would never subject a child to the same life I have had to live
It's abuse
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Namrata Nangia and her husband have been toying with the idea of having another child since their five-year-old daughter was born.
But it always comes back to one question: 'Can we afford it?'
She lives in Mumbai and works in pharmaceuticals, her husband works at a tyre company. But the costs of having one child are already overwhelming - school fees, the school bus, swimming lessons, even going to the GP is expensive.
It was different when Namrata was growing up. "We just used to go to school, nothing extracurricular, but now you have to send your kid to swimming, you have to send them to drawing, you have to see what else they can do."
According to a new report by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the UN agency for reproductive rights, Namrata's situation is becoming a global norm.
Fuck yeah. I got my nads snipped
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Namrata Nangia and her husband have been toying with the idea of having another child since their five-year-old daughter was born.
But it always comes back to one question: 'Can we afford it?'
She lives in Mumbai and works in pharmaceuticals, her husband works at a tyre company. But the costs of having one child are already overwhelming - school fees, the school bus, swimming lessons, even going to the GP is expensive.
It was different when Namrata was growing up. "We just used to go to school, nothing extracurricular, but now you have to send your kid to swimming, you have to send them to drawing, you have to see what else they can do."
According to a new report by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the UN agency for reproductive rights, Namrata's situation is becoming a global norm.
Maybe life shouldn’t be that expensive (food/shelter), and IVF programs be free.
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Maybe life shouldn’t be that expensive (food/shelter), and IVF programs be free.
Damn dirty communist out here demanding
Checks notes
Affordable living and healthcare
Just despicable!
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Namrata Nangia and her husband have been toying with the idea of having another child since their five-year-old daughter was born.
But it always comes back to one question: 'Can we afford it?'
She lives in Mumbai and works in pharmaceuticals, her husband works at a tyre company. But the costs of having one child are already overwhelming - school fees, the school bus, swimming lessons, even going to the GP is expensive.
It was different when Namrata was growing up. "We just used to go to school, nothing extracurricular, but now you have to send your kid to swimming, you have to send them to drawing, you have to see what else they can do."
According to a new report by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the UN agency for reproductive rights, Namrata's situation is becoming a global norm.
I love my kids so much I chose not to bring them into this fucked up world.
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Damn dirty communist out here demanding
Checks notes
Affordable living and healthcare
Just despicable!
Yeah, what are those damn commies going to demand next, human rights?
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Population increase is only important to employers.
I look at long term trends where the global population peaks in a few decades then heads down all too quickly, and find it important to act to stabilize that at a level a bit below here we are now
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Fertility rates and what influences them have been discusses a lot. It's something influences by a multitude of factors, and each region in the world has a different mix or ratio of factors, so that makes it hard to disentangle. Income, inequality, living cost, childcare cost, housing cost, societal expectations, double income families, commuting, urbanization and environment less suitable for children, pressure to be productive, promotions as status, prioritization of spending money on goods and travel, change in gender roles, dating and marriage changed, more single people, pressure to monitor and invest more time in children, economic instability, the increasing threat of AI and robots taking job ... The list continues.
The main problem for modern society is that these things can't be changed without modifying society itself and/or lots of money is involved. So policy makers are stuck. They're under pressure to increase fertility rate but only in a way that it doesn't cost employers money and makes sure that consumption of goods doesn't drop. They also have to make sure there are enough workers but increasing immigration is problematic. The end result is that they do some token gestures and just let it play out. They probably hope that big tech arrives with their AI and robots to do the jobs and help with elderly care.
US has the cheap solution: higher immigration than most developed countries. I’m sure we’re going to encourage that while we try to figure out how to make having children more appealing. No one would mess that up, right?
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I love my kids so much I chose not to bring them into this fucked up world.
It'll be weird if the world gets a lot better and in 20 years everyone wants to have geriatric pregnancies
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I look at long term trends where the global population peaks in a few decades then heads down all too quickly, and find it important to act to stabilize that at a level a bit below here we are now
It will collapse because we don't regulate intake. Look at population collapse for rabbits as an example. We're overconsuming and need to regulate now.
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Namrata Nangia and her husband have been toying with the idea of having another child since their five-year-old daughter was born.
But it always comes back to one question: 'Can we afford it?'
She lives in Mumbai and works in pharmaceuticals, her husband works at a tyre company. But the costs of having one child are already overwhelming - school fees, the school bus, swimming lessons, even going to the GP is expensive.
It was different when Namrata was growing up. "We just used to go to school, nothing extracurricular, but now you have to send your kid to swimming, you have to send them to drawing, you have to see what else they can do."
According to a new report by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the UN agency for reproductive rights, Namrata's situation is becoming a global norm.
Good. We elect fucking fascists and let people murder our world, we as a race deserve to die out.
