Childcare not being all that relevant in terms of the big things (criminality, mental illness, scholastic/financial achievement) doesn't mean it is irrelevant in terms of the small things. For example, Kibbutznik children are overrepresented in achievement, but have difficulty with more subtle things like forming tight-knit relationships. Plus, this is trivializing the experience of children. Viewing childhood and adolescence as simply a tutorial stage for becoming a functioning adult is the sort of gerontocratic brain worm which contributes to (or at least serves as a post-hoc justification) for the collapse in birth rates in the first place.
Hereditarianism will help to some degree though. People are very scared these days of messing up parenting and place unreachable expectations on themselves (this is why people think it's an issue of unaffordability, when in reality kids in the past obviously grew up in way less luxurious conditions).
"In addition, these associations continued to hold when controlling for gender inequality, female education, contraception, religiousness, social norms, GDP, economic inequality, HDI, amount of white collar jobs, pathohens, climate, precipitation, migration, kinship, and sex ratio."
Also temporal autocorrelation:
Let's say there's a trend over time where a country is slowly declining in fertility and people are also slowly packing themselves into a couple of cities; if there's a particular year where there's a sudden spike in such density which ignores the otherwise-linear trend, this corresponds to a sudden drop in fertility for that year.
Some of the reason cost of living has gone up is because basic necessities have become higher quality and more regulated, and nobody is looking to sell the shoddier products from decades ago if they're even allowed to. Ex: Everyone wants hospital services to be as cheap as they were 50 years ago, but nobody wants to go to a hospital with medical technology which only existed 50 years ago.
Meanwhile for consumer goods, shoddy products are more likely to be competitive and viable.
Not sure why you didn’t emphasize marriage rates and age more. Huge influence on birth rates.
My recommendations are to further explore such fertility enhancing ideas such as:
1) Partial tuition credit for parents with one child, full credit for parent students with 2+
2) Higher tax rates for those without children, lower taxes for those with kids, and extremely low rates for three plus.
3) Free private school and college tuition for the children of families with 3 plus kids, and requirements that elite public universities prioritize applicants from large families
4) Expanded legal immigration for any college educated people who speak English (extremely expanded).
The key for human motivation is to flip elite status around so that those with elite characteristics are seen as having lots of kids early. If we can do this, then the rest of the population will follow the status symbols.
#4 seems like the worst thing you could do for fertility.
What this would mean in practicality would be mass importation from Asia where low fertility is the norm especially amongst the educated. You would be actively changing the receiving countries elite culture to be more anti-natal.
And this doesn’t get into issues of trust, nepotism, cost of living, etc.
Not sure why you're so obsessed with encouraging people with big families to go to college. People should be judged for college based on objective metrics for obvious other reasons but on top of that we've already established that women going to college is clearly a cause of lowering fertility rates. Colleges are clearly bloated and a lot of the bloat in colleges is produced by women who get degrees in less rigorous majors.
Tax credits might have some effect but it really doesn't seem like this is a financial thing. Cutting down on government interference in general seems more effective since it reduces the disproportionately female public sector and minimizes the disproportionately female financial benefit from social programs.
Great points. I am not trying to encourage college. I am trying to incentivize having larger families (earlier) and creating a dynamic where those larger families are seen as prestigious.
"Population density causes lower fertility. Given that population density causes fertility declines, immigration from other countries will reduce the fertility of natives."
I didn't miss that - and think of the mass importation of foreigners into many of these decreasing TFR places. It's not just that they don't fix it - they actively create problems in population gaps. Not to mention that they are huge fiscal and cultural drains.
Could this feeling of being an alien in one's own lands also affect fertility choices?
Hereditarianism may promote fertility. You can ignore childcare stuff if you are hereditarian. Send baby to kibbutz or nursery inc. and move on...
Childcare not being all that relevant in terms of the big things (criminality, mental illness, scholastic/financial achievement) doesn't mean it is irrelevant in terms of the small things. For example, Kibbutznik children are overrepresented in achievement, but have difficulty with more subtle things like forming tight-knit relationships. Plus, this is trivializing the experience of children. Viewing childhood and adolescence as simply a tutorial stage for becoming a functioning adult is the sort of gerontocratic brain worm which contributes to (or at least serves as a post-hoc justification) for the collapse in birth rates in the first place.
Hereditarianism will help to some degree though. People are very scared these days of messing up parenting and place unreachable expectations on themselves (this is why people think it's an issue of unaffordability, when in reality kids in the past obviously grew up in way less luxurious conditions).
If you felt you had no control over your kids outcomes it’s just as likely to make you less likely to have kids as to have more.
"In addition, these associations continued to hold when controlling for gender inequality, female education, contraception, religiousness, social norms, GDP, economic inequality, HDI, amount of white collar jobs, pathohens, climate, precipitation, migration, kinship, and sex ratio."
Also temporal autocorrelation:
Let's say there's a trend over time where a country is slowly declining in fertility and people are also slowly packing themselves into a couple of cities; if there's a particular year where there's a sudden spike in such density which ignores the otherwise-linear trend, this corresponds to a sudden drop in fertility for that year.
Some of the reason cost of living has gone up is because basic necessities have become higher quality and more regulated, and nobody is looking to sell the shoddier products from decades ago if they're even allowed to. Ex: Everyone wants hospital services to be as cheap as they were 50 years ago, but nobody wants to go to a hospital with medical technology which only existed 50 years ago.
Meanwhile for consumer goods, shoddy products are more likely to be competitive and viable.
Not sure why you didn’t emphasize marriage rates and age more. Huge influence on birth rates.
My recommendations are to further explore such fertility enhancing ideas such as:
1) Partial tuition credit for parents with one child, full credit for parent students with 2+
2) Higher tax rates for those without children, lower taxes for those with kids, and extremely low rates for three plus.
3) Free private school and college tuition for the children of families with 3 plus kids, and requirements that elite public universities prioritize applicants from large families
4) Expanded legal immigration for any college educated people who speak English (extremely expanded).
The key for human motivation is to flip elite status around so that those with elite characteristics are seen as having lots of kids early. If we can do this, then the rest of the population will follow the status symbols.
It's an old post - I put it up out of obligation, not passion.
>age
I think this is reverse-causal - bad birthrates cause the average age to go up.
#4 seems like the worst thing you could do for fertility.
What this would mean in practicality would be mass importation from Asia where low fertility is the norm especially amongst the educated. You would be actively changing the receiving countries elite culture to be more anti-natal.
And this doesn’t get into issues of trust, nepotism, cost of living, etc.
Not sure why you're so obsessed with encouraging people with big families to go to college. People should be judged for college based on objective metrics for obvious other reasons but on top of that we've already established that women going to college is clearly a cause of lowering fertility rates. Colleges are clearly bloated and a lot of the bloat in colleges is produced by women who get degrees in less rigorous majors.
Tax credits might have some effect but it really doesn't seem like this is a financial thing. Cutting down on government interference in general seems more effective since it reduces the disproportionately female public sector and minimizes the disproportionately female financial benefit from social programs.
Great points. I am not trying to encourage college. I am trying to incentivize having larger families (earlier) and creating a dynamic where those larger families are seen as prestigious.
"Population density causes lower fertility. Given that population density causes fertility declines, immigration from other countries will reduce the fertility of natives."
I didn't miss that - and think of the mass importation of foreigners into many of these decreasing TFR places. It's not just that they don't fix it - they actively create problems in population gaps. Not to mention that they are huge fiscal and cultural drains.
Could this feeling of being an alien in one's own lands also affect fertility choices?
I believe that for the past decade of birth declines, lumbar flexion caused by smartphones explains most of the decline.
>lumbar flexion caused by smartphones explains most of the decline.
How does the back relate to fertility?
The low back should not stick into your genitals! I suspect sex drive is affected by low back flexion for the same reason walking/running ability is.