“The most common reasons people gave for not having more children were concerns about the economic, social and climatic outlook, cited by 30% of those polled. Some 28% said raising children cost too much.”
It occurs to me that this could be the fuel for a vicious cycle in countries where the government assumes high responsibility for social care: low birth rates create a population skewed older, which requires greater taxes on younger citizens, which places them under greater financial stress, which further suppresses the decision to have (or to have more) children.
Another instance of short term cost/benefit ratios not matching up with long term cost/benefit ratios (for the individual and the collective), and in this case the long term spans many decades.
Why can’t seniors living in long term care simply take care of one another?
These discussions about the tax burden of seniors are about two things in the end: health care and assisted living.
Assisted living means: workers to cook meals for seniors, to help them dress, to remind them to take their pills, etc. In our advanced industrialized societies, we offload that burden to young workers in their prime. In more traditional societies like Japan, senior communities don’t need young workers because they rely on one another. Let seniors cook for one another, help one another get dressed, etc. And let young workers go start businesses or work on cancer cures or build software and help society get richer as a whole.
There’s still the health care aspect to deal with (seniors can’t do heart surgery on one another), but we could decrease the tax burden of over 65s by switching to a Japanese model.
Yeah, US model is that we prefer independent living for seniors as long as possible, then living with family, and only then assisted living (not that it always goes that way, but that tends to be the ideal) at which point not enough seniors in assisted living are capable of helping others for the Japanese model to work.
It’s a bit of a chicken-egg problem in the US—we try to keep seniors out of assisted living because it’s incredibly expensive and has a reputation for poor quality; those things are the case because they require lots of paid labor, but also don’t pay great, resulting in high costs but also often-not-great quality; so seniors who have other options tend not to enter assisted living, so capable seniors aren’t around to do any of the work that might reduce reliance of the system on paid labor…
Basically - having supportive family take care of you is great, when you have supportive family. Not everyone does. Even in Japan, with a long Confucian culture, they had problems with elder care being too much for younger family members; with elderly being neglected and left to fend for themselves; and even with elder abuse and homicide. Now try applying that to America, where the social fabric is frayed, the norm since WW2 has been for children to move away from their parents in adulthood, and many people don't even have functioning intergenerational relationships at all.
Looks good thesis. supportive family is important factor. In 1990 to around 2015, Japan had been in notorious deflation, so there were no enough jobs for everyone, hiring women full time wasn't popular in early 90s (especially for not young people), and full-time housewife was somewhat popular. That's part of why supportive family existed. Now it's time to inflation finally, salary haven't increased much so women need to go work, we understand that we might live long and pension may become poor so retiring age is increasing, and worker shortage is now becoming a serious problem. Family support model no longer work.
You see the same sort of thing at the other end. In something like Montessori, older children will make lunch for the younger children. Or in Japan, children will clean their classrooms at the end of each day. When I was in elementary in Calgary, the crossing guards were 3-student teams selected from volunteer students in grade 6. Instead, we dedicate paid adult labour to all of that.
I don't understand all the causes. Some is labour rights history (freeing children from the mills was a social victory), some is weird labour bargaining (a child doing a union job is a scab), and some is class anxiety from parents (only servants should wash a floor). Not to mention that given a choice, the young and old alike will chose free servants over doing their own chores.
For seniors, another cause is the novelty of mass retirement. North America was very young until recently, and we could afford to extend retirement benefits to people who'd never paid a dime in because there were so few of them.
My instincts are egalitarian, so I believe it doing for myself. Silver plate is for suckers, unless you like to cosplay as the help for an afternoon. But the world is full of people who just _must_ have servants.
... and since the economy cannot give pertinent jobs to all households, many need a social accomodation... and the french gov is unable to provide enough "decent" ones (this is a very, VERY, complicated matter, a very slow process). French president Macron did acknowledge openly and recently that France has an immigration issue. Things may start to be uglier: immigrants (1st/2nd gen) are now competing for this resource with natives.
It's like in the UK. They say that immigration is a problem because people are unhappy about it but they do nothing about it and, in fact, push for more.
The French do not usually realise how good they have it.
Income tax depends on number of children.
Nursery fees depend on income.
I believe cost of school meals depend on income.
Child benefits payments. I think this is now based on income but it used not to be.
Cash payment at beginning of school year to help pay for school stuff, etc. though I think this is also depending on income.
So sure lower earners benefit more but everyone gets something.
Many countries would think this is very good.
I am French and I moved to the UK a long time ago. My income tax actually went up. In the UK income tax depends on... income. Your children are irrelevant.
so the only thing you get is 0,5 person tax deduction per children. everything else is for lower incomes. you are right its not nothing but knowing these children will pay for the current generation retirement this is a very small upside
0.5 for the first and second child, 1 for the 3rd? Also you get "free" retirement semester per child (4 for giving birth for the mother, 4 for taking care of a child for at least 9 years, to be divided between both parents (biological or not). Free education is for everyone, as is free healthcare. Really cheap meals if whatever your income is, almost free to cheap music classes, almost free club participation (even if you have a QF of 10, 50% of the cost is still paid by the relevant state echelon, or the CAF). And let's be honest, if your QF is 8 or more in a big city with a single child, you aren't middle class: it mean your monthly revenue (pre income taxes, since those are influenced by your QF) is higher than 8k.
A lot of benefits do disappear when your QF is higher than 6 to be fair with you, but still.
I had no idea about the family quotient stuff. I'm actually considering moving to France some years down the line, and assuming my partner and I marry and have kids, then based on the current income difference between us, being able to rebalance that (which you may know you can't do in the UK) and the reduction for a child, we'd pay significantly less than we do in the UK..
The French government just rammed through raising the retirement age from 62 to 64. Macron cited the long term demographic and knock on economic risks of not doing it.
In an economically declining country that prioritizes social spending on pensions to the point of crowding out investment in the future, the young might just emigrate.
I could have bought, say, a Tesla with cash for just what our three kids cost in medical expenses for their first five years of life. And ours weren’t that expensive.
I could take a $4k trip to Japan every year for the next 20 years and not approach childcare costs before they were in school.
Extra monthly housing costs for a good school district versus a more-conveniently-located and similarly-safe but worse-schools area nearby would cover the payment on a pretty damn good car.
US perspective (if you couldn’t tell from the reference to high healthcare costs) but still. Kids are crazy-expensive.
no one in france can afford a 50k car lease. think more like 25k. america left us in the dust a few decades ago and we cannot be compared to the us anymore. we are indeed getting poorer
People may say they want kids but their actions say another thing. I always get a chuckle out of seeing right wing people talking confidently about how they could increase birth rates.
Well a bunch of men proposing that they have a solution to make women have babies is ridiculous on its face. And decreased birth rates are a worldwide phenomenon cutting across all different types of societies, economies, and races. I think it's pretty clear that right wing droid #3491 does not have a solution to decreased birth rates.
i think you might want to check your claim about this being a worldwide phenomenon but then it might hurt your personal beliefs and you might be seen as intolerant for pushing your ideas into the people you claim to protect and you will end up being like a colonizer. right?
So basically natives don't reproduce, we import more immigrants who reproduce much faster, and those immigrants leaving their homeland allows more "growth space" for the existing people there.
That's essentially a population replacement on the planet-scale, isn't it?
Yup it's a very straightforward concept (notice how my post contained nothing false, emotional, or bigoted), and yet it gets downvoted by a sect of people who simply cannot allow "this type" of free speech to exist.
It would take a very simplistic understanding of human migration to think it is in any way "straightforward". I think the downvotes come form the extreme over-simplification present in comments like yours.
What part of my proposition is unfleshed or unsupported by facts? It's not like some 100 page dissertation, it's a comment on HN. Of course you could spend weeks discussing anything in the detail it deserves.
The causes may be complex, the outcome however is extremely simple.
Worth noting that a few down votes have no reflection on the truth or accuracy of a particular comment, they are merely an expression of opinion and/or ignorance - in much the same way my comments are simply an opinion and/or ignorance.
1. France accepts large amounts of immigrants - Fact.
2. There is no separation in these stats by country of origin, race, etc - Fact.
3. It is proven in numerous stats around the world that immigrant reproductive rates are much higher than native peoples in the West - Fact.
Given these facts as I've laid out, it is really quite inflammatory to call a proposition "BS" - especially without any contradictory evidence provided.
Free speech is vital to a functional democratic society.
i am lucky i cant be called a racist by them as i am myself an immigrant but as I prefer programming rather than woke politics I am quite factual and this is indeed a blatant fact than can be proven by any kind of statistics
Yup. And some will even try to discount your opinion by "assaulting the messenger", saying that you're economically privileged by being a programmer etc etc.
It's very hard for people on both ends of the spectrum to take, analyze, and respond to a statement by itself and not to the person who is saying it.
> All children born in France are counted in the stats
That's completely irrelevant.
Even leaving aside the "conspiracy" aspect there is a valid point in using the term "replacement" to describe the trend when you combine the effect of immigration and relative birth rates.
Immigration is not a static phenomenon. The birthrates of immigrant groups drop to more closely match the existing population, and the origin nations of immigrant groups change over time, sometimes eventually becoming nations with net positive immigration. Colombia for example was a nation with net negative migration due to the drug war and political violence, but is now about even due to a surge of immigrants from Venezuela and the US. Or just think about the patterns of Irish or Italian immigration to the US.
There's also a huge historic and geographic factor, specifically colonialism, that creates connections for immigration that would otherwise be unlikely. It's not like this is some clockwork system where every citizen migrates to the richest country that can reach at any given time. It's people, by the tens of millions, making the best decisions they can for themselves and their family based on the political and economic realities.
Everything you said is factual. Colombia - great it was a drop in the bucket, they speak the same language and integrate, and it still is a big albatross on society there. US - mass European immigration meant that people needed to learn english to integrate, same religion caused easier integration, etc.
It's not nearly 1:1 with the current situations in the US and Europe, respectively.
I'm just saying that mass immigration has effects on the country, the people, the economy/housing, the way of life, etc.
People should fully understand this and then vote accordingly. It's something to openly discuss and digest, not something to be swept under the rug or "downvoted".
You specifically speculated that it is "population replacement on the planet-scale" which is not only simplistic to the point of being untrue, but also references language widely used by people and organizations who oppose migration specifically due to racial concerns.
If you ever want to have a reasonable, productive conversation about immigration, don't use words like 'replacement' that almost everyone knows are racially charged.
And by the way I upvoted your original comment for visibility because I believe these issues should be discussed openly.
Cool, and thanks. I think my comment is completely reasonable and obv it started some decent discussions.
Replacement is defined as "a person or thing that takes the place of another"... when a town has 100 people who are German, and then in the future it is 50 Germans and 50 French -- the Germans have been half replaced by the French. It's a simple term, and I'm using it 100% as it is defined in our English language.
spoiler birth rates kept decreasing for the past decade. one of the main reasons is our government shifted from helping families to helping retired people for electoral reasons.
its pure evil and it happened in two way.
1. francois hollande and leftist ideals wanted more equity and decided it wasnt fair that “wealthy” people where getting government money when they had children (for them wealthy was anyone middle class or higher in france which whatever you think is way lower than usa in terms of income). they passed this law ten year ago and now only lower income families are incentivised to make children. pretty crazy and suicidal if you hear me. the wave of educated people saying not to make children for the environment due tompropaganda is alarming, at the end only people making children in france are immigrants so that they can get enough money from government to survive without a job (because the jobs dont exist we have 10% unemployment)
2. then macron presidencies just followed this wave. he got elected by boomers while the majority of the active working population voted for the oponent.the boomer generation will benefit from the retirement ponzi that is in place in france, getting back more than they paid to retirement funds during their carreers. the following generations are paying for this robbery. he then decided to reward them by raising pensions by 5% while advocating against raising salaries to tackle inflation.
the major idea behind this is that families vote right rather than left , they want to pay less taxes and are not easy to control. the solution: remove the middle class from the genetic pool, import mass immigration from less developed countries that will forever be lower class and forever vote left to get enough money to survive in a country without industry and with very few blue collar or unqualified jobs.
Wow, I didn't expect to read once in my life that François Holland was a leftist, except maybe in Valeurs Actuelles (MAGA-like in France)
Are you sure the higher middle class is not having children because of the lack of state support ? Doesn't being higher middle class suggests that you own your house and have at least 3000 euros a month salary ? Isn't it enough for one child ?
Why do you think people not wanting children because they are worried about the state of the planet for their children is because "propaganda" ? Are you saying climate change is propaganda ? Isn't every expert on the subject saying that we are not doing enough and that things are going to be worst even in the best scenarii ?
thanks for proving my point.
1. francois hollande is from parti socialiste. a left wing movement and was elected with leftist idea such as removing merit grants at the highschool exam, removing financial support to middle class all in the name of equity
2. you consider 3000 a month salary high middle class I consider it barely enough to survive with a family. 3000 salary is 2300 euros after tax with a 1300/months apartment in paris and an apartment buying price of 700-800k euros lol. with 3k€ a month you wont ever own a house… what is wrong with leftist to be deluded in a way that they dont understand that literaly everyone in france is far from wealthy due to cost of life. 3k is def not enough to raise a family knowing government wont support you financially because they thin you are rich.
3. to adress your last point. yes it is propaganda because only western people discuss this topic that way. if you really want to do something about it you should go to africa tell people not to make children rather than promoting your delusion in countries below renewal rates
france is nuclear so i guess we can continue forever as we have the only working renewable energy. we should forbid people that uses coal to do any kind of trade wdyt? i suggest we put a fence in germany and expand the great wall in china so that the pollution they emit doesnt affect us. wdyt?
I think any leftist would laugh at the idea that the Parti Socialist is even remotely socialist. The name is historical, they converted to market economics and modern liberal state management as soon as 1981 if not before.
I don't think François Hollande is remembered because of removing merit grants lol. If anything he will be remembered for the Loi Travail to make laws around employment more flexible and advantageous to business and for the CICE which was basically free money for businesses if they pinkie promised they would hire more (spoiler they did not)
If your spouse also makes 3000 euros you can totally live very well and raise a family.
I am not deluded thank you. I don't have a family but I live with 1200 euros a month around Paris and although I am poor I am nowhere near miserable. Of course most people own houses thanks to parents participation and of course Paris is too expensive duh.
Now I am curious to know what's your standard of living.
my point is that you cannot use salary as a wealth indicator especially in a cou try where real estate costs are crazy, unemployment rampant and cost of live climbing every week. and that 3k is def poor in term of wealth building prospects. the goal is to climb the ladder not bring everyone down. right now france like uk is failing its people due to low wage, ppp that is climbing down to developed economies
Seems like France has one of the highest total fertility rates in the developed world. Nearly twice as high as South Korea. (1.7 vs 0.9 birth per woman, with 2.1 as the population replacement level). If any country is too far down the population implosion road, it would seem to be South Korea.
I'm pretty sick of reading the ponzy scheme practitioners whine about population decreases.
With 8 billion ape men on the planet, overrunning every natural support system, the human species needs a major reduction.
If it hadn't reched this over-burdended level, then the reduction also wouldn't be so painful.
But the real problem of "paying for it" must be held in the light of Bozo and Elon racing to see who can be the first trillionaire.
There's plenty of money, it's just spent on stupid shit like Mars vacation planning instead of taking care of the population that is largely responsible for creating that wealth...
If you want to deal with luxury goods of the rich, go after Louis Vuitton. It has a market cap of $362B. The world doesn't need expensive handbags. Atleast SpaceX is lowering the cost of launching satellites into space.
69 comments
[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 136 ms ] threadIt occurs to me that this could be the fuel for a vicious cycle in countries where the government assumes high responsibility for social care: low birth rates create a population skewed older, which requires greater taxes on younger citizens, which places them under greater financial stress, which further suppresses the decision to have (or to have more) children.
These discussions about the tax burden of seniors are about two things in the end: health care and assisted living.
Assisted living means: workers to cook meals for seniors, to help them dress, to remind them to take their pills, etc. In our advanced industrialized societies, we offload that burden to young workers in their prime. In more traditional societies like Japan, senior communities don’t need young workers because they rely on one another. Let seniors cook for one another, help one another get dressed, etc. And let young workers go start businesses or work on cancer cures or build software and help society get richer as a whole.
https://www.wionews.com/entertainment/lifestyle/news-_-secre...
There’s still the health care aspect to deal with (seniors can’t do heart surgery on one another), but we could decrease the tax burden of over 65s by switching to a Japanese model.
It’s a bit of a chicken-egg problem in the US—we try to keep seniors out of assisted living because it’s incredibly expensive and has a reputation for poor quality; those things are the case because they require lots of paid labor, but also don’t pay great, resulting in high costs but also often-not-great quality; so seniors who have other options tend not to enter assisted living, so capable seniors aren’t around to do any of the work that might reduce reliance of the system on paid labor…
https://www.historyandpolicy.org/policy-papers/papers/the-ca...
Basically - having supportive family take care of you is great, when you have supportive family. Not everyone does. Even in Japan, with a long Confucian culture, they had problems with elder care being too much for younger family members; with elderly being neglected and left to fend for themselves; and even with elder abuse and homicide. Now try applying that to America, where the social fabric is frayed, the norm since WW2 has been for children to move away from their parents in adulthood, and many people don't even have functioning intergenerational relationships at all.
I don't understand all the causes. Some is labour rights history (freeing children from the mills was a social victory), some is weird labour bargaining (a child doing a union job is a scab), and some is class anxiety from parents (only servants should wash a floor). Not to mention that given a choice, the young and old alike will chose free servants over doing their own chores.
For seniors, another cause is the novelty of mass retirement. North America was very young until recently, and we could afford to extend retirement benefits to people who'd never paid a dime in because there were so few of them.
My instincts are egalitarian, so I believe it doing for myself. Silver plate is for suckers, unless you like to cosplay as the help for an afternoon. But the world is full of people who just _must_ have servants.
I think people feel the pinch because growth has been at best very low for a long time while inflation has accelerated in the past few years.
On the other hand, population has to stop growing at some point and, say, immigration has already been causing huge problems in France.
Income tax depends on number of children.
Nursery fees depend on income.
I believe cost of school meals depend on income.
Child benefits payments. I think this is now based on income but it used not to be.
Cash payment at beginning of school year to help pay for school stuff, etc. though I think this is also depending on income.
So sure lower earners benefit more but everyone gets something.
Many countries would think this is very good.
I am French and I moved to the UK a long time ago. My income tax actually went up. In the UK income tax depends on... income. Your children are irrelevant.
A lot of benefits do disappear when your QF is higher than 6 to be fair with you, but still.
In an economically declining country that prioritizes social spending on pensions to the point of crowding out investment in the future, the young might just emigrate.
It's not.
Society has changed, values have changed, and arguably it's good for the planet if there's less of us.
Only loser is the neverending idea of endless economic growth.
We need different economic models. If we'll be poorer, so be it.
I see so many people in Europe my age as I described blaming it on money yet spending like there's no tomorrow.
I could take a $4k trip to Japan every year for the next 20 years and not approach childcare costs before they were in school.
Extra monthly housing costs for a good school district versus a more-conveniently-located and similarly-safe but worse-schools area nearby would cover the payment on a pretty damn good car.
US perspective (if you couldn’t tell from the reference to high healthcare costs) but still. Kids are crazy-expensive.
https://www.ariababu.co.uk/p/beliefs-that-kill-birth-rates ("Beliefs that kill birth rates")
This is a NOP news.
That's essentially a population replacement on the planet-scale, isn't it?
Worth noting that a few down votes have no reflection on the truth or accuracy of a particular comment, they are merely an expression of opinion and/or ignorance - in much the same way my comments are simply an opinion and/or ignorance.
Given these facts as I've laid out, it is really quite inflammatory to call a proposition "BS" - especially without any contradictory evidence provided.
Free speech is vital to a functional democratic society.
i am lucky i cant be called a racist by them as i am myself an immigrant but as I prefer programming rather than woke politics I am quite factual and this is indeed a blatant fact than can be proven by any kind of statistics
It's very hard for people on both ends of the spectrum to take, analyze, and respond to a statement by itself and not to the person who is saying it.
That's completely irrelevant.
Even leaving aside the "conspiracy" aspect there is a valid point in using the term "replacement" to describe the trend when you combine the effect of immigration and relative birth rates.
There's also a huge historic and geographic factor, specifically colonialism, that creates connections for immigration that would otherwise be unlikely. It's not like this is some clockwork system where every citizen migrates to the richest country that can reach at any given time. It's people, by the tens of millions, making the best decisions they can for themselves and their family based on the political and economic realities.
It's not nearly 1:1 with the current situations in the US and Europe, respectively.
I'm just saying that mass immigration has effects on the country, the people, the economy/housing, the way of life, etc.
People should fully understand this and then vote accordingly. It's something to openly discuss and digest, not something to be swept under the rug or "downvoted".
If you ever want to have a reasonable, productive conversation about immigration, don't use words like 'replacement' that almost everyone knows are racially charged.
And by the way I upvoted your original comment for visibility because I believe these issues should be discussed openly.
Replacement is defined as "a person or thing that takes the place of another"... when a town has 100 people who are German, and then in the future it is 50 Germans and 50 French -- the Germans have been half replaced by the French. It's a simple term, and I'm using it 100% as it is defined in our English language.
its pure evil and it happened in two way.
1. francois hollande and leftist ideals wanted more equity and decided it wasnt fair that “wealthy” people where getting government money when they had children (for them wealthy was anyone middle class or higher in france which whatever you think is way lower than usa in terms of income). they passed this law ten year ago and now only lower income families are incentivised to make children. pretty crazy and suicidal if you hear me. the wave of educated people saying not to make children for the environment due tompropaganda is alarming, at the end only people making children in france are immigrants so that they can get enough money from government to survive without a job (because the jobs dont exist we have 10% unemployment)
2. then macron presidencies just followed this wave. he got elected by boomers while the majority of the active working population voted for the oponent.the boomer generation will benefit from the retirement ponzi that is in place in france, getting back more than they paid to retirement funds during their carreers. the following generations are paying for this robbery. he then decided to reward them by raising pensions by 5% while advocating against raising salaries to tackle inflation.
the major idea behind this is that families vote right rather than left , they want to pay less taxes and are not easy to control. the solution: remove the middle class from the genetic pool, import mass immigration from less developed countries that will forever be lower class and forever vote left to get enough money to survive in a country without industry and with very few blue collar or unqualified jobs.
Are you sure the higher middle class is not having children because of the lack of state support ? Doesn't being higher middle class suggests that you own your house and have at least 3000 euros a month salary ? Isn't it enough for one child ?
Why do you think people not wanting children because they are worried about the state of the planet for their children is because "propaganda" ? Are you saying climate change is propaganda ? Isn't every expert on the subject saying that we are not doing enough and that things are going to be worst even in the best scenarii ?
2. you consider 3000 a month salary high middle class I consider it barely enough to survive with a family. 3000 salary is 2300 euros after tax with a 1300/months apartment in paris and an apartment buying price of 700-800k euros lol. with 3k€ a month you wont ever own a house… what is wrong with leftist to be deluded in a way that they dont understand that literaly everyone in france is far from wealthy due to cost of life. 3k is def not enough to raise a family knowing government wont support you financially because they thin you are rich.
3. to adress your last point. yes it is propaganda because only western people discuss this topic that way. if you really want to do something about it you should go to africa tell people not to make children rather than promoting your delusion in countries below renewal rates
I am not deluded thank you. I don't have a family but I live with 1200 euros a month around Paris and although I am poor I am nowhere near miserable. Of course most people own houses thanks to parents participation and of course Paris is too expensive duh.
Now I am curious to know what's your standard of living.
It's not because people in third world countries don't think about it that it's propaganda.
It's not about doing something about it, it's about not putting out in the world a person who is going to have it worse.
Why do you care so much about renewal ? What is it you want to renew so much ? A gene pool ?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_fer...
With 8 billion ape men on the planet, overrunning every natural support system, the human species needs a major reduction.
If it hadn't reched this over-burdended level, then the reduction also wouldn't be so painful.
But the real problem of "paying for it" must be held in the light of Bozo and Elon racing to see who can be the first trillionaire.
There's plenty of money, it's just spent on stupid shit like Mars vacation planning instead of taking care of the population that is largely responsible for creating that wealth...