It's probably going to take way more than just free daycare to make a dent. If declining birthrates can be swung back to a more neutral rate like 2.1, it probably will mean wide reaching financial, cultural, and general societal changes. I think something like the Order of Maternal Glory (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_Maternal_Glory) but for like 3+ kids, where there's additional social standing in addition to significant financial support, would be a good start.
We don't know if there will be a free fall, that's the most central tenet of this issue. You are living in wishful thinking, it's uncharted territory, there is no "knowns" to base your statement on.
Even if one tries to apply first principles it's not something that can be derived easily to hold your statement as fact.
Soviet Union's birth rate did not really rebound the way other nations did even provided the award. Granted, immediately after WW2 there was a large boost which is when this award program started, but fell to just above replacement soon after. I would not draw too much on this social standing/admiration aspect.
Funnily enough, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_Heroine was reinstated in 2022. Russia's current birthrate is ~1.5. Ukraine has something similar as well, they're doing quite poorly, even before their war at ~1.3.
My radical take on all this birthrate stuff is that the single most effective way to boost the birthrate is to entice boredom in any way you can. The internet was a great invention, but the great cost was our attention. It's likely out of the bag that we can't revert to a minimally networked world though. I would (and do) certainly fight against attempts to ruin the internet myself.
> Free day care is amazing. If that doesn’t make a dent then I am not sure what will.
France has a subsidy program for kids. It's not helping much. Current fertility rate is 1.85 (2.1 is breakeven).
The only thing that seems to work is a religion that keeps women home pumping out babies and taking care of them. Islam and Haredi Judaism do that. There's a Christian "quiverfull" movement in the US, but it's not big enough to matter.[1]
Poland has 0 (zero) tax up to 50k$ per household for families with 4 kids. And there many other benefits afaik. And it is a highly religious country. It's fertility rate is 1.4-1.5.
Industrialized and highly educated populations will not go back to 2.1 and higher, it just doesn't work like that in the current social environment.
The issue is non-market housing used to be roughly 30% of the renting market, applying downward pressure on rent prices and thus, house prices. It's now less than 20%, with 95% being 'HLMs' (and a big part of those were from 'loi Pinel' that ended this year). We need to get back to a high percentage of non-market housing.
My father used to be the co-director of a 'chantier d'insertion' where he was teaching basic woodworking/painting/construction/DYI and also artistic skills to people (mostly men) outside of the workforce (from the 16yo dropout to the 54yo ex-farmer), and they did own a few buildings they restored, to help house everyone (they also had people teaching mechanics, electric, plumbing, gardening btw). The local city council changed it's political side, the initiative was shut down and the non-market houses bidded on. The GDP of our city that year probably skyrocketed.
PS: not on the subject: he still had time to clean up an ex-slaughterhouse with his guys, and organize an art exposition inside, with 'mort aux vaches' tagged outside with blood-looking paint, which, considering the new mayor was from a military family, had a not subtle double meaning.
maybe? how is this relevant. My point is this is not very different from what other countries are doing with cash subsidies or tax credits, perhaps with a PR angle of a human touch of a "free daycare". Worth trying of course, who knows what ends up working, so far nothing has worked. But looks pretty bleak. South Korea, one of the richest nations, no excuse for lack of money, plummeting to 0.72 in peaceful, non-Black-Death times. Something is majorly off.
The birth rate is declining faster than expected across the whole world. There aren’t going to be enough young migrants to go around and keep pumping up the numbers.
Radical idea: treat mothers as professionals. Train them, certify them, give them resources and support networks, then pay them to raise kids until school age or even beyond. It is a full time job, and should be treated as such if governments want to incentivise childbirth.
It's ironic that progress that freed many people from hard agricultural jobs and allowed society to free part of the population from daytime jobs was mostly directed at non-child-bearing categories like children and teens (to learn and study for future jobs) and elderly (to retire earlier than in previous centuries). The age ideal for raising children is also ideal for economics to be a part of it
Doesn't part of the reason for the decline have to do with how people are waiting to get married and prioritizing schooling and career? Free daycare allows you to pursue a path that sets you up for the years after the kids go off to school. But I see no reason people who have kids who don't use daycare shouldn't get that credit too.
To be honest, on this I understand what gp mean, I might be sexist for this, but to me decisions to have children is a burden put mostly on the mother (the decision only, not the 40 years after that).
I didn't want any child, but clearly stated that I would support any choice she made, and any children we would have would have my love and support. I don't bear any social pressure to have kids, I don't get pregnant, i don't feel any kind of desire to have children (I used to be a youth camp counselor, my ego about being a role model was well filled by the time I was 25).
Anyway, since the choice is primarily on the mother (as it should be), it stands within reason that the formation and remuneration are given to them in priority.
You're absolutely right, not just mothers should be able to participate. However, the physical and emotional effects and trauma of childbirth are borne by women alone, so they're usually the party that needs to be incentivised. We're also operating within the social framework of Japan, which is deeply patriarchal.
Parenting threads always raise my hackles, and I’ve been up since 1:30 this morning with a sick kid so can’t not take this bait.
In my opinion the issue is social, and it’s this: kids are essential to society but, these days, non-parents have little to no experience with kids. They’re entirely unfamiliar with even basic child physiology and psychology or the requirements of adequate childcare at different ages.
Two top-of-mind examples of this manifesting, in my opinion:
- When someone calls into work and says “I can’t come to work today because my kid is sick, I need to reschedule or hand off all my meetings” do they hear “no problem, thanks for being a parent?” or “can you join for just a little bit?” (“I would very much prefer that, but I don’t think you’ll like having a wailing kid on the call. Where would my kid be while I’m joined? Realistic suggestions only, please.”)
Since I should probably make my comment relevant to TFA: most daycares do not allow you to bring your kid if they’re sick. So free daycare doesn’t at all ameliorate this very common and very stressful problem.
- At the beginning of Covid, Google gave extra leave to parents, and non-parents were up in arms (including on HN IIRC. I’ll see if I can find the thread). How about, you can have extra leave if you spend it caring for kids, since the schools are closed, so there’s a shortage of childcare, which is a society-wide problem. I’m confident you’ll find that programming computers is an easier way to contribute in this crisis.
Another great comment noted that historically society made women do all the childcare and didn’t record what they thought about this, which, yes. It was probably always the case that non-parents knew hilariously little about kids, but back then, Mom had to deal with whatever crises emerged while Dad could work like he was single. No this was not fair.
They aren't super common (like, each town has basically one), but here in Japan there are pediatric clinics with "sick daycare" where you can drop your sick child off in the morning to be looked after all day while you go to work. And they are (basically) free.
Kids are hard. People are selfish. Birth control works. The dating market is torture. Divorce is rampant. We're constantly bombarded with environmental destruction predictions. Most wealthy nations have leaders that seem content to replace the existing populous with poor immigrants. Even the poor nations that these immigrants are coming from are now seeing their birth rates collapse. Culture and laws requiring constant child supervision and care make parenting a full time job (for at least a few years). The prices of basic living expenses keep rising. But don't worry, free child care will save us!
Only the super wealthy and those with no money at all are reproducing above replacement levels, and I'm here to watch as the urban "economic growth at the expense of everything else" culture consumes itself into non-existence in a generation or two.
"Kids are hard. People are selfish." - More people than ever before want to live a life free of the responsibilities of having children, which is totally fine but never gets talked about in this discussion about birthrate. I have a lot of financially secure friends who never want kids.
"The dating market is torture." - Expectations of dating, especially online dating are very different from previous generations and kind of wack. I admit to falling into the trap of feeling like someone else out there is better and not giving the person I met online more of a chance past the first date. I'm sure others who I was with had the same reaction. Next thing you know, you're past the age of wanting or even being able to have a child. Either way, it's crazy when you see online discussions about how such and such city has a dearth of good matches which seems statistically improbable.
When I ask my cousins and siblings why they don't want to have the kids the opinions range from too much of a restriction to my freedoms, too expensive, too much work, it'll ruin my body.
These area all valid reasons and in fact it was a tough sell for my wife and I to convince ourselves whether even we should have children. I'm glad I did, but I had no idea how much work it takes and I honestly would not judge anyone who opts-out of having them - but...it does mean we face demographic collapse and free child care is just not enough.
Give young families cheaper homes, cheaper college education and have a cultural shift which values having a child as much as a career if not more so and maybe we'll start to see things change.
The "people are selfish" is what drives everything, ultimately. If they find no good reason to have kids, and can have a comfortable and satisfying life in other ways, they will.
Falling birth rates is a problem in most wealthy industrialized societies.
Being up a 4am to greet my wife who's been up since 1am with a screaming child. I'm not sure exactly what kind of benefits could convince us that he needs siblings :)
Just saying, that while I certainly applaud the effort. I don't see any easy ways to fix the issue: kids are hard work, there are many other things you could do with your life.
Idk, I love children and being able to comfort kids back to sleep makes me more happy and not annoyed, I’d choose children over a better vacation or a car, I’m not sure why our generation in most countries stopped caring about children.
Until this, people would dedicate their lives to their kids, children were the most important thing in people’s lives, everything from friends, to outings, to day to day life, would revolve around the child’s best interests and wants.
I’m not sure why this link broke, across every major country. Was it the internet ? What was it, even people from less fortunate backgrounds are having fewer kids, like a LOT LESS, what changed, its not about religion, even the religious are having fewer kids (more than non-religious) but still fewer,
It’s truly a big question, my guess is it has something to do with, increasing the avg age of marriage by 10 yrs from 20 to 30, and making pre-marital sex available in-cheap for everyone, before you’d need to get married to be able to sleep with the opposite gender.
> Until this, people would dedicate their lives to their kids, children were the most important thing in people’s lives, everything from friends, to outings, to day to day life, would revolve around the child’s best interests and wants.
Is this actually true? I don’t really believe it. Sending your kids to work in the sweatshops doesn’t seem like “best interests and wants.” I think people were just surviving in their time/environment. Like we are now.
its a complete lie. In the 70s we were treated like luggage. shoved in the back of the station wagon, inhaling cigarette smoke from dad, and playing at construction sites. Im not kidding, that was the affluent kid.
> I’d choose children over a better vacation or a car
I don’t think the burden of children is experienced only financially. I suspect at least some people are choosing sleep, peace, and freedom over children. Not [primarily] luxury goods.
This has been parenting for the last several thousand years.
I say this not to be flippant or sarcastic but rather to ask how our ancestors seemed fine with the above but we seem less so?
(To be fair, I have 3 kids and totally get why your scenario might lower the odds. I'll say that even with the 1am wakeups, the "I love you!" from a toddler is one of the best feelings ever.)
~40% of US and international pregnancies, annually, are unintended. When unintended pregnancies are prevented, there are less children. Educated, empowered women have less children or no children. Desired fertility is less than replacement rate, broadly speaking.
> ask how our ancestors seemed fine with the above but we seem less so?
Maybe they weren’t fine with it. They just didn’t have any other choice. Now we do, and turns out a lot of people choose not to have kids when given the choice.
Honestly, I think we will have a rough couple generations, then nature will take its course and humans will reach a new equilibrium that factors in birth control.
It’s only a choice if you live purely for yourself. It’s the job of the state to make short sighted, self absorbed thinking like this unpalatable since people can only think in self absorbed, short term ways.
I think multi generation housing helped where older generations took care of the child when parents were working, that both parents were not necessarily working, and that kids did not need constant supervision in the sense that they could be left to run around as long as you lived outside major urban centers.
> I say this not to be flippant or sarcastic but rather to ask how our ancestors seemed fine with the above but we seem less so?
Because by and large our female ancestors raised the children, were offered no choice in whether to raise the children, and their opinions of the situation were not recorded.
I believe the answer is that there is far more interesting things to do with your life. It's quite easy to imagine a life where you're occupied up to your mid thirties with things like university, starting a career in a field you're actually interested in, maybe moving locations once or twice, travelling, working overseas. This plays out even at the relationship level: people in their 20's are far less committal, and prefer the freedom to explore what life has to offer.
Compare this to even just 50 years ago. These options were limited to the highest classes of society. People tended to settle down and have children because that was the sensible next thing to do in life.
I did all of this by 30 and started a family shortly after this. Kids are hard (I have two), but I wouldn't change anything.
I know multiple single people in their 50s and 60s with no kids and they are all miserable human beings.
Another issue is that most of your peers at that age are raising a family and have less time to get together, making it very lonely. If you wait long enough, your friends will retire/kids will move out and they will have time for you again.
This doesn't even include the elderly people with no kids that end up alone in a nursing home one day.
What about the elderly people with kids that end up alone in nursing homes?
I know a few people in the 50s and 60s with no kids and they are perfectly nice and happy. I also know parents who are real shit bags. Let’s stop this false narrative that people without kids are miserable or selfish or evil in some way. We are all just people, kids or no.
Multi-generational families with tighter communities spreading the work.
My parents grew up spending a lot of time with their aunts and uncles. I grew up with my parents because they didn't have extended family or friends that could help. Now my generation, I see at least more "family circles" sharing in child care (eg Friday sleepovers at one rotating family, so the other parents can go out). I can't imagine how easy it would be if more grandparents were nearby.
Plus it was just cheaper to live back then. Now the norm is both parents work full time to stay barely above water economically, maximizing shareholder value.
Single person centuries ago was a weird wizard who was probably secretly communicating with a devil and should be exiled from the village just in case. Or he would just die from the lack of help during the illness or trauma. And most certainly he would starve, from not being able to grow food he requires. Those people didn't have an alternative for kids.
for the last several thousand years it's been a matter of survival, a help in the fields and your social security, and with a crazy high mortality, had to have many
it's objectively hard work that nowadays may not even pay off at all, aside from this feelings part, which to me always has been balanced out with acute paranoia about being responsible for a fragile live human.
Industrialized countries generally have high cost of living. It is much more common for both parents to work than 50 years ago. Also, for many, a career involves moving away from parents, grandparents, and siblings. This all leads to a vastly reduced safety net compared to what was common for most of human history. It is probably unlikely that government could ever fill that void. Eventually, high prices will cure high prices. But, the methods, timescale, and pleasantness in the intervening time is anybody’s guess.
With siblings of similar age, it's much harder in the first 2-3 years (external help is essential), but then the kids considerably shortcircuit to each other, so it becomes easier than having just one, constantly bored child.
Source: I am a father of two daughters with less than 2 years difference; and my brother is also less than 2 years apart from me. So, I lived my advice in both aspects: as a parent and as a child.
Not sure if you have access to affordable child care and parental PTO (after birth but also “my kid is sick I need to stay home” type of PTO). It makes everything a lot more manageable.
With the expectation of both parents working full time jobs and living in small spaces (at least in big cities like in Japan) - the current state of modern urban life is just not right to have kids. Where are they even going to run around and play.
>Falling birth rates is a problem in most wealthy industrialized societies.
The most fascinating part of this is that, against income, fertility is a bathtub-shaped curve. The poorest and richest have the most kids, which the middle class drags the whole nation down.
I get the feeling many have this idea that the more educated /career-oriented you are, the more you delay kids or have less of them. But that is not the case, past a certain point. Look up any of your favorite elite celebrities for example and how many kids they have. They might never talk about them, but I’d bet most of who you look up have 3+
A lot of people can afford nannies. I think it’s more that parents want to raise their kids really well. As opposed to, “what happens, happens.” So naturally you want to do that yourself.
This is pure speculation, but I imagine after you attain a certain degree of wealth, you just hand the kids over to someone and give them a paycheck. Certain megabillionaires in the US have loads of kids and they're treated like goldfish. They're nice decorations for your photo ops, but otherwise, you just pay someone to visit your house and feed them a couple times a day. And it doesn't matter whether you have 1 or 12 because they're all fed at once anyways.
Not just wealthy industrialised societies any more.
Nowadays it’s basically just sub-Saharan Africa keeping the global birth rate up. Even India may now have just dropped below 2.1 along with nearly all of South East Asia.
having kids connects you to humanity like nothing else… I don’t think you must have kids to have a great life or anything like that but with all the hard work (the 1am will pass soon and you’ll talk to your wife how unfair would be to your son/daughter to deprive her/him of experiencing sibling love :) ) it is worth it for the full connection to human existence.
You have to listen to crying and lose some sleep for a couple of weeks? You’re an adult, this is possibly the most self absorbed and shortsighted thinking I seen in a while.
Weeks? Try years. As a parent of a newborn, I can confidently say that my wife hasn't had a full night's sleep for even one night since the kid was born in early July - she watches the kid at night (we live in a one bedroom apartment with the crib in our room - it affects me, too, but I try to tune it out and focus on sleep, as breadwinner). She also watches the kid all day while I work (9-11 hours). She's drained. I don't see this getting any easier for at least 12 months. It's a long road.
We don't have family to support us and we can't afford childcare. So, that's our situation. Not complaining, just saying - it's not weeks of a little bit less sleep. It's chronically interrupted sleep for months, maybe years (according to Dr. Ferber), with severe affects to hormonal regulation and mood and weight.
I hope not, three-month-olds are supposed to sleep 14-17 hours a day. Also, what happened when they dropped naps? Night sleep typically worsens right beforehand, as the residual nap pushes their lengthening wake window into night sleep. How did you manage their congestion when they were sick? Many kids, especially those using a pacifier, lose the ability to link their short, 45-minute sleep cycles and need to be comforted throughout the night even into toddlerhood.
I suffer from confirmation bias in this, but the Japanese women I know all live outside mainland Japan, and are mostly in mixed marriages with non-Japanese men and to a woman they say childbirth in Japan, and expectations on new mothes in Japan are net-negative compared to the english-speaking west, with some small things the other way. Aspects of family mean they are more likely to have a support network in Japan, and there are quite a lot of good child friendly social experiences for them. None of them said the birth experience in Japanese Maternity Hospitals was good, or as good as in the west.
The birth rate problem in the developed economies is not just a Japanese problem, but if this biased view is true, more generally accurate, it cannot help: Why would you want to have kids, if its a shit experience?
Free daycare is sensible but I suspect they will have to start 9 months back in the flow pipe, and also do some things around labour laws for return-to-work.
I live in Japan and am friends with foreign women who chose to live here, so I guess I have the opposite confirmation bias, but the people I know who gave birth here have been super happy with the help that mothers get here, getting to stay in the maternity ward for a week with 24/7 nurse support to help recover and getting breastfeeding going. Along with the government paying for the procedure making it free and a bunch of other support.
I also have friends who had such bad experiences in the west to the point they ended up going with home birth...
From my experience talking to people, the reason for the low birth rate here is the same as in any other country.
Thank you for reversing my bias. Probably the women who I know left Japan 10-15 years ago, and thats a lifetime in terms of healthcare, social interactions, you-name-it.
Everyone I know who gave birth in the netherlands commented on the low levels of pain relief available!
Too late, I think. Once not having kids becomes "normal" and socially acceptable, it'll take a lot of heavy handed propaganda and much stronger incentives to convince people otherwise. Raising kids is a civilizationally necessary hard work that needs to be "normalized" and "expected" for people to actually do it.
People in my country dont even want to pay taxes for the roads we drive on. The same people are trying to force others to have kids with no incentives and lackluster futures. It’s just a bad deal.
You do understand that those who do not procreate inevitably die out in the long run, right? That does not bode well for the taxable base either, and therefore for the roads.
This won't work and it is fine. Nothing is permanent, world population has fallen considerably in other times in history.
Yeah, the GDP will probably drop, but necessarely the per capita GDP. Yeah, a falling GDP is not good news for people who lend money and expect compound interest over a long horizon of time, some defaults will happen, probably we would end up having to forgive some debts and writing off a lot of stuff, but so what?
People seem to be downvoting this but it’s true. We are entering a dip in population growth. Shit happens. We will come out the other side. Did they think “infinite growth” would be a sustainable strategy? Hopefully we will come up with an economic system that’s more focused on human fulfillment than productivity.
Retirement is about having other people take care of you. If there are less people overall there are less resources to care for the elderly who aren't working. With expanding populations this is easier to manage because the fraction of people who are elderly is smaller, but it can be a huge drain if that changes. This is about resources and no amount of financial engineering can solve it, though financial engineering will probably keep people off the streets
Last time I checked, the birthrate in Tokyo is actually pretty robust,I think it was 2.3 or something like that. It's the rest of the country where young people are reluctant to start families for a variety of economic and social reasons.
A few of the leftish parties in Japan decentralization policies as part of their platform, and indeed much of the LDP's support comes from rural constituencies so you'd think they'd be in favor of it. But economic incentives for childrearing sometimes find themselves at odds with conservative mores around family roles and employment.
Sorry, I remembered it backwards. IT's the rural areas which have the fertility rate around 2.3 (which I also remembered as little high, but only by a few %):
It's probably going to take way more than just free daycare to make a dent. If declining birthrates can be swung back to a more neutral rate like 2.1, it probably will mean wide reaching financial, cultural, and general societal changes. I think something like the Order of Maternal Glory (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_Maternal_Glory) but for like 3+ kids, where there's additional social standing in addition to significant financial support, would be a good start.
Study in Brazil found that housing access lead to 33% higher birth rates among 20-25 year olds: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5046571 . Housing affordability is probably a big factor.
Shrinking populations should make housing very affordable
We don't want to wait until we're in freefall to correct the decline.
There will never be a free fall. You guys are watching too many dystopic movies.
I wonder if people on Easter Island were telling each other this.
We don't know if there will be a free fall, that's the most central tenet of this issue. You are living in wishful thinking, it's uncharted territory, there is no "knowns" to base your statement on.
Even if one tries to apply first principles it's not something that can be derived easily to hold your statement as fact.
somehow, it doesn't work that way. For example, Latvia lost 30% of its population but housing didn't get cheaper.
yup, and we just lost 10,000 homes in California. We will be losing housing every year. Where I live they just build mansions.
Soviet Union's birth rate did not really rebound the way other nations did even provided the award. Granted, immediately after WW2 there was a large boost which is when this award program started, but fell to just above replacement soon after. I would not draw too much on this social standing/admiration aspect.
Funnily enough, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_Heroine was reinstated in 2022. Russia's current birthrate is ~1.5. Ukraine has something similar as well, they're doing quite poorly, even before their war at ~1.3.
My radical take on all this birthrate stuff is that the single most effective way to boost the birthrate is to entice boredom in any way you can. The internet was a great invention, but the great cost was our attention. It's likely out of the bag that we can't revert to a minimally networked world though. I would (and do) certainly fight against attempts to ruin the internet myself.
Free day care is amazing. If that doesn’t make a dent then I am not sure what will.
Probably free daycare and relaxing immigration would be best to increase population
> Free day care is amazing. If that doesn’t make a dent then I am not sure what will.
France has a subsidy program for kids. It's not helping much. Current fertility rate is 1.85 (2.1 is breakeven).
The only thing that seems to work is a religion that keeps women home pumping out babies and taking care of them. Islam and Haredi Judaism do that. There's a Christian "quiverfull" movement in the US, but it's not big enough to matter.[1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quiverfull
Poland has 0 (zero) tax up to 50k$ per household for families with 4 kids. And there many other benefits afaik. And it is a highly religious country. It's fertility rate is 1.4-1.5.
Industrialized and highly educated populations will not go back to 2.1 and higher, it just doesn't work like that in the current social environment.
1.85 is actually the highest in Western Europe and higher than Canada and USA.
But we had 2.1 not so long ago.
The issue is non-market housing used to be roughly 30% of the renting market, applying downward pressure on rent prices and thus, house prices. It's now less than 20%, with 95% being 'HLMs' (and a big part of those were from 'loi Pinel' that ended this year). We need to get back to a high percentage of non-market housing.
My father used to be the co-director of a 'chantier d'insertion' where he was teaching basic woodworking/painting/construction/DYI and also artistic skills to people (mostly men) outside of the workforce (from the 16yo dropout to the 54yo ex-farmer), and they did own a few buildings they restored, to help house everyone (they also had people teaching mechanics, electric, plumbing, gardening btw). The local city council changed it's political side, the initiative was shut down and the non-market houses bidded on. The GDP of our city that year probably skyrocketed.
PS: not on the subject: he still had time to clean up an ex-slaughterhouse with his guys, and organize an art exposition inside, with 'mort aux vaches' tagged outside with blood-looking paint, which, considering the new mayor was from a military family, had a not subtle double meaning.
I think relaxing immigration for more women immigrants to provide childcare would be fine with most Anericans.
Able to live on one salary comfortably?
it's just a form of subsidy, $500-$2000/month worth depending on where
paid for by the people who don't have kids
not very different than just giving out cash or tax credits
Just like pensions, that are from the people that have invested in kids to those that didn’t.
maybe? how is this relevant. My point is this is not very different from what other countries are doing with cash subsidies or tax credits, perhaps with a PR angle of a human touch of a "free daycare". Worth trying of course, who knows what ends up working, so far nothing has worked. But looks pretty bleak. South Korea, one of the richest nations, no excuse for lack of money, plummeting to 0.72 in peaceful, non-Black-Death times. Something is majorly off.
Maybe if they were more open to immigration culturally, a lot of people would happily integrate to their society.
There aren't enough babies worldwide -- TFR is rapidly falling even in poor countries. Immigrating our way out of it doesn't scale to the world.
Immigration won’t save us.
The birth rate is declining faster than expected across the whole world. There aren’t going to be enough young migrants to go around and keep pumping up the numbers.
i don't have the numbers, but i started seeing Indian clerks at 7-11 there. never seen them when i lived there a couple decades ago
Immigration is just a band aid. It won't make Japanese people have more babies.
Radical idea: treat mothers as professionals. Train them, certify them, give them resources and support networks, then pay them to raise kids until school age or even beyond. It is a full time job, and should be treated as such if governments want to incentivise childbirth.
It's ironic that progress that freed many people from hard agricultural jobs and allowed society to free part of the population from daytime jobs was mostly directed at non-child-bearing categories like children and teens (to learn and study for future jobs) and elderly (to retire earlier than in previous centuries). The age ideal for raising children is also ideal for economics to be a part of it
Doesn't part of the reason for the decline have to do with how people are waiting to get married and prioritizing schooling and career? Free daycare allows you to pursue a path that sets you up for the years after the kids go off to school. But I see no reason people who have kids who don't use daycare shouldn't get that credit too.
Why just mothers?
To be honest, on this I understand what gp mean, I might be sexist for this, but to me decisions to have children is a burden put mostly on the mother (the decision only, not the 40 years after that).
I didn't want any child, but clearly stated that I would support any choice she made, and any children we would have would have my love and support. I don't bear any social pressure to have kids, I don't get pregnant, i don't feel any kind of desire to have children (I used to be a youth camp counselor, my ego about being a role model was well filled by the time I was 25).
Anyway, since the choice is primarily on the mother (as it should be), it stands within reason that the formation and remuneration are given to them in priority.
You're absolutely right, not just mothers should be able to participate. However, the physical and emotional effects and trauma of childbirth are borne by women alone, so they're usually the party that needs to be incentivised. We're also operating within the social framework of Japan, which is deeply patriarchal.
Parenting threads always raise my hackles, and I’ve been up since 1:30 this morning with a sick kid so can’t not take this bait.
In my opinion the issue is social, and it’s this: kids are essential to society but, these days, non-parents have little to no experience with kids. They’re entirely unfamiliar with even basic child physiology and psychology or the requirements of adequate childcare at different ages.
Two top-of-mind examples of this manifesting, in my opinion:
- When someone calls into work and says “I can’t come to work today because my kid is sick, I need to reschedule or hand off all my meetings” do they hear “no problem, thanks for being a parent?” or “can you join for just a little bit?” (“I would very much prefer that, but I don’t think you’ll like having a wailing kid on the call. Where would my kid be while I’m joined? Realistic suggestions only, please.”)
Since I should probably make my comment relevant to TFA: most daycares do not allow you to bring your kid if they’re sick. So free daycare doesn’t at all ameliorate this very common and very stressful problem.
- At the beginning of Covid, Google gave extra leave to parents, and non-parents were up in arms (including on HN IIRC. I’ll see if I can find the thread). How about, you can have extra leave if you spend it caring for kids, since the schools are closed, so there’s a shortage of childcare, which is a society-wide problem. I’m confident you’ll find that programming computers is an easier way to contribute in this crisis.
Another great comment noted that historically society made women do all the childcare and didn’t record what they thought about this, which, yes. It was probably always the case that non-parents knew hilariously little about kids, but back then, Mom had to deal with whatever crises emerged while Dad could work like he was single. No this was not fair.
They aren't super common (like, each town has basically one), but here in Japan there are pediatric clinics with "sick daycare" where you can drop your sick child off in the morning to be looked after all day while you go to work. And they are (basically) free.
Kids are hard. People are selfish. Birth control works. The dating market is torture. Divorce is rampant. We're constantly bombarded with environmental destruction predictions. Most wealthy nations have leaders that seem content to replace the existing populous with poor immigrants. Even the poor nations that these immigrants are coming from are now seeing their birth rates collapse. Culture and laws requiring constant child supervision and care make parenting a full time job (for at least a few years). The prices of basic living expenses keep rising. But don't worry, free child care will save us!
Only the super wealthy and those with no money at all are reproducing above replacement levels, and I'm here to watch as the urban "economic growth at the expense of everything else" culture consumes itself into non-existence in a generation or two.
Couldn't agree more.
"Kids are hard. People are selfish." - More people than ever before want to live a life free of the responsibilities of having children, which is totally fine but never gets talked about in this discussion about birthrate. I have a lot of financially secure friends who never want kids.
"The dating market is torture." - Expectations of dating, especially online dating are very different from previous generations and kind of wack. I admit to falling into the trap of feeling like someone else out there is better and not giving the person I met online more of a chance past the first date. I'm sure others who I was with had the same reaction. Next thing you know, you're past the age of wanting or even being able to have a child. Either way, it's crazy when you see online discussions about how such and such city has a dearth of good matches which seems statistically improbable.
I have 13 cousins. My two kids have 2.
When I ask my cousins and siblings why they don't want to have the kids the opinions range from too much of a restriction to my freedoms, too expensive, too much work, it'll ruin my body.
These area all valid reasons and in fact it was a tough sell for my wife and I to convince ourselves whether even we should have children. I'm glad I did, but I had no idea how much work it takes and I honestly would not judge anyone who opts-out of having them - but...it does mean we face demographic collapse and free child care is just not enough.
Give young families cheaper homes, cheaper college education and have a cultural shift which values having a child as much as a career if not more so and maybe we'll start to see things change.
Best comment here.
The "people are selfish" is what drives everything, ultimately. If they find no good reason to have kids, and can have a comfortable and satisfying life in other ways, they will.
Falling birth rates is a problem in most wealthy industrialized societies.
Being up a 4am to greet my wife who's been up since 1am with a screaming child. I'm not sure exactly what kind of benefits could convince us that he needs siblings :)
Just saying, that while I certainly applaud the effort. I don't see any easy ways to fix the issue: kids are hard work, there are many other things you could do with your life.
Idk, I love children and being able to comfort kids back to sleep makes me more happy and not annoyed, I’d choose children over a better vacation or a car, I’m not sure why our generation in most countries stopped caring about children.
Until this, people would dedicate their lives to their kids, children were the most important thing in people’s lives, everything from friends, to outings, to day to day life, would revolve around the child’s best interests and wants.
I’m not sure why this link broke, across every major country. Was it the internet ? What was it, even people from less fortunate backgrounds are having fewer kids, like a LOT LESS, what changed, its not about religion, even the religious are having fewer kids (more than non-religious) but still fewer,
It’s truly a big question, my guess is it has something to do with, increasing the avg age of marriage by 10 yrs from 20 to 30, and making pre-marital sex available in-cheap for everyone, before you’d need to get married to be able to sleep with the opposite gender.
> Until this, people would dedicate their lives to their kids, children were the most important thing in people’s lives, everything from friends, to outings, to day to day life, would revolve around the child’s best interests and wants.
Is this actually true? I don’t really believe it. Sending your kids to work in the sweatshops doesn’t seem like “best interests and wants.” I think people were just surviving in their time/environment. Like we are now.
> Is this actually true?
It is true in Asian countries and most pre-industrialised nations
its a complete lie. In the 70s we were treated like luggage. shoved in the back of the station wagon, inhaling cigarette smoke from dad, and playing at construction sites. Im not kidding, that was the affluent kid.
> I’d choose children over a better vacation or a car
I don’t think the burden of children is experienced only financially. I suspect at least some people are choosing sleep, peace, and freedom over children. Not [primarily] luxury goods.
This has been parenting for the last several thousand years.
I say this not to be flippant or sarcastic but rather to ask how our ancestors seemed fine with the above but we seem less so?
(To be fair, I have 3 kids and totally get why your scenario might lower the odds. I'll say that even with the 1am wakeups, the "I love you!" from a toddler is one of the best feelings ever.)
~40% of US and international pregnancies, annually, are unintended. When unintended pregnancies are prevented, there are less children. Educated, empowered women have less children or no children. Desired fertility is less than replacement rate, broadly speaking.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40982392 (citations)
https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate#what-explains-the-...
https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2024/07/25/the-exp...
https://www.axios.com/2024/07/25/adults-no-children-why-pew-...
> Stunning stat: 64% of young women say they just don't want children, compared to 50% of men. (US specific survey data)
> ask how our ancestors seemed fine with the above but we seem less so?
Maybe they weren’t fine with it. They just didn’t have any other choice. Now we do, and turns out a lot of people choose not to have kids when given the choice.
Honestly, I think we will have a rough couple generations, then nature will take its course and humans will reach a new equilibrium that factors in birth control.
It’s only a choice if you live purely for yourself. It’s the job of the state to make short sighted, self absorbed thinking like this unpalatable since people can only think in self absorbed, short term ways.
What a misanthropic world view.
How about we make it easier for people who want kids to have them, and we stop vilifying people who don’t want kids?
There are many ways to contribute to society. Some of the kindest most selfless people I know don’t want kids. It’s fine, humanity will manage.
If he is misanthropic , then amigo, Nature is the most misanthropic existence in the whole universe, by your logic, lol.
I think multi generation housing helped where older generations took care of the child when parents were working, that both parents were not necessarily working, and that kids did not need constant supervision in the sense that they could be left to run around as long as you lived outside major urban centers.
> I say this not to be flippant or sarcastic but rather to ask how our ancestors seemed fine with the above but we seem less so?
Because by and large our female ancestors raised the children, were offered no choice in whether to raise the children, and their opinions of the situation were not recorded.
It is kind of humorous that the majority of people advocating for lots and lots of kids seem to be men.
I find when the people with the least accountability want the most power; many people suffer
I believe the answer is that there is far more interesting things to do with your life. It's quite easy to imagine a life where you're occupied up to your mid thirties with things like university, starting a career in a field you're actually interested in, maybe moving locations once or twice, travelling, working overseas. This plays out even at the relationship level: people in their 20's are far less committal, and prefer the freedom to explore what life has to offer.
Compare this to even just 50 years ago. These options were limited to the highest classes of society. People tended to settle down and have children because that was the sensible next thing to do in life.
I mean yea did that till I got bored at 37/38 and had kids
Over half of US households (58.4%) contain no kids, 17.9% are married parents raising kids, 7.4% are single parents.
Some have them, many are not.
https://www.voronoiapp.com/demographics/Over-Half-of-Househo...
I did all of this by 30 and started a family shortly after this. Kids are hard (I have two), but I wouldn't change anything.
I know multiple single people in their 50s and 60s with no kids and they are all miserable human beings.
Another issue is that most of your peers at that age are raising a family and have less time to get together, making it very lonely. If you wait long enough, your friends will retire/kids will move out and they will have time for you again.
This doesn't even include the elderly people with no kids that end up alone in a nursing home one day.
What about the elderly people with kids that end up alone in nursing homes?
I know a few people in the 50s and 60s with no kids and they are perfectly nice and happy. I also know parents who are real shit bags. Let’s stop this false narrative that people without kids are miserable or selfish or evil in some way. We are all just people, kids or no.
Multi-generational families with tighter communities spreading the work.
My parents grew up spending a lot of time with their aunts and uncles. I grew up with my parents because they didn't have extended family or friends that could help. Now my generation, I see at least more "family circles" sharing in child care (eg Friday sleepovers at one rotating family, so the other parents can go out). I can't imagine how easy it would be if more grandparents were nearby.
Plus it was just cheaper to live back then. Now the norm is both parents work full time to stay barely above water economically, maximizing shareholder value.
Single person centuries ago was a weird wizard who was probably secretly communicating with a devil and should be exiled from the village just in case. Or he would just die from the lack of help during the illness or trauma. And most certainly he would starve, from not being able to grow food he requires. Those people didn't have an alternative for kids.
for the last several thousand years it's been a matter of survival, a help in the fields and your social security, and with a crazy high mortality, had to have many
it's objectively hard work that nowadays may not even pay off at all, aside from this feelings part, which to me always has been balanced out with acute paranoia about being responsible for a fragile live human.
> This has been parenting for the last several thousand years
Maybe, we are treated better than our ancestors. Most certainly this was the case for women.
(To be clear, I'm not saying that kids isn't worth it, just that it's hard for a government service to move the needle)
I say this not to be flippant or sarcastic but rather to ask how our ancestors seemed fine with the above but we seem less so?
Life as a non-parent has gotten much better, especially for high earners.
Industrialized countries generally have high cost of living. It is much more common for both parents to work than 50 years ago. Also, for many, a career involves moving away from parents, grandparents, and siblings. This all leads to a vastly reduced safety net compared to what was common for most of human history. It is probably unlikely that government could ever fill that void. Eventually, high prices will cure high prices. But, the methods, timescale, and pleasantness in the intervening time is anybody’s guess.
With siblings of similar age, it's much harder in the first 2-3 years (external help is essential), but then the kids considerably shortcircuit to each other, so it becomes easier than having just one, constantly bored child.
Source: I am a father of two daughters with less than 2 years difference; and my brother is also less than 2 years apart from me. So, I lived my advice in both aspects: as a parent and as a child.
Not sure if you have access to affordable child care and parental PTO (after birth but also “my kid is sick I need to stay home” type of PTO). It makes everything a lot more manageable.
With the expectation of both parents working full time jobs and living in small spaces (at least in big cities like in Japan) - the current state of modern urban life is just not right to have kids. Where are they even going to run around and play.
>Falling birth rates is a problem in most wealthy industrialized societies.
The most fascinating part of this is that, against income, fertility is a bathtub-shaped curve. The poorest and richest have the most kids, which the middle class drags the whole nation down.
I get the feeling many have this idea that the more educated /career-oriented you are, the more you delay kids or have less of them. But that is not the case, past a certain point. Look up any of your favorite elite celebrities for example and how many kids they have. They might never talk about them, but I’d bet most of who you look up have 3+
I think it's the point at which you can hire a nanny - being able to offload a lot of parenting responsibilities to someone else helps.
A lot of people can afford nannies. I think it’s more that parents want to raise their kids really well. As opposed to, “what happens, happens.” So naturally you want to do that yourself.
This is pure speculation, but I imagine after you attain a certain degree of wealth, you just hand the kids over to someone and give them a paycheck. Certain megabillionaires in the US have loads of kids and they're treated like goldfish. They're nice decorations for your photo ops, but otherwise, you just pay someone to visit your house and feed them a couple times a day. And it doesn't matter whether you have 1 or 12 because they're all fed at once anyways.
Not just wealthy industrialised societies any more.
Nowadays it’s basically just sub-Saharan Africa keeping the global birth rate up. Even India may now have just dropped below 2.1 along with nearly all of South East Asia.
having kids connects you to humanity like nothing else… I don’t think you must have kids to have a great life or anything like that but with all the hard work (the 1am will pass soon and you’ll talk to your wife how unfair would be to your son/daughter to deprive her/him of experiencing sibling love :) ) it is worth it for the full connection to human existence.
What if they provided your child nightcare too
You have to listen to crying and lose some sleep for a couple of weeks? You’re an adult, this is possibly the most self absorbed and shortsighted thinking I seen in a while.
Weeks? Try years. As a parent of a newborn, I can confidently say that my wife hasn't had a full night's sleep for even one night since the kid was born in early July - she watches the kid at night (we live in a one bedroom apartment with the crib in our room - it affects me, too, but I try to tune it out and focus on sleep, as breadwinner). She also watches the kid all day while I work (9-11 hours). She's drained. I don't see this getting any easier for at least 12 months. It's a long road.
We don't have family to support us and we can't afford childcare. So, that's our situation. Not complaining, just saying - it's not weeks of a little bit less sleep. It's chronically interrupted sleep for months, maybe years (according to Dr. Ferber), with severe affects to hormonal regulation and mood and weight.
I have two kids. After the first 3 months they were sleeping 7-8 hours through the night.
I hope not, three-month-olds are supposed to sleep 14-17 hours a day. Also, what happened when they dropped naps? Night sleep typically worsens right beforehand, as the residual nap pushes their lengthening wake window into night sleep. How did you manage their congestion when they were sick? Many kids, especially those using a pacifier, lose the ability to link their short, 45-minute sleep cycles and need to be comforted throughout the night even into toddlerhood.
7-8 hours at a stretch, there are more hours of sleep that happen on either side of that stretch.
Congestion with those little pipe things that you can used to suck the snot out of the baby’s nose.
We never used a pacifier. The baby slept in the same room and my wife nursed her for three years.
Not all kids are the same. Shocking I know…
I suffer from confirmation bias in this, but the Japanese women I know all live outside mainland Japan, and are mostly in mixed marriages with non-Japanese men and to a woman they say childbirth in Japan, and expectations on new mothes in Japan are net-negative compared to the english-speaking west, with some small things the other way. Aspects of family mean they are more likely to have a support network in Japan, and there are quite a lot of good child friendly social experiences for them. None of them said the birth experience in Japanese Maternity Hospitals was good, or as good as in the west.
The birth rate problem in the developed economies is not just a Japanese problem, but if this biased view is true, more generally accurate, it cannot help: Why would you want to have kids, if its a shit experience?
Free daycare is sensible but I suspect they will have to start 9 months back in the flow pipe, and also do some things around labour laws for return-to-work.
I live in Japan and am friends with foreign women who chose to live here, so I guess I have the opposite confirmation bias, but the people I know who gave birth here have been super happy with the help that mothers get here, getting to stay in the maternity ward for a week with 24/7 nurse support to help recover and getting breastfeeding going. Along with the government paying for the procedure making it free and a bunch of other support.
I also have friends who had such bad experiences in the west to the point they ended up going with home birth...
From my experience talking to people, the reason for the low birth rate here is the same as in any other country.
Thank you for reversing my bias. Probably the women who I know left Japan 10-15 years ago, and thats a lifetime in terms of healthcare, social interactions, you-name-it.
Everyone I know who gave birth in the netherlands commented on the low levels of pain relief available!
Too late, I think. Once not having kids becomes "normal" and socially acceptable, it'll take a lot of heavy handed propaganda and much stronger incentives to convince people otherwise. Raising kids is a civilizationally necessary hard work that needs to be "normalized" and "expected" for people to actually do it.
People in my country dont even want to pay taxes for the roads we drive on. The same people are trying to force others to have kids with no incentives and lackluster futures. It’s just a bad deal.
You do understand that those who do not procreate inevitably die out in the long run, right? That does not bode well for the taxable base either, and therefore for the roads.
then you should pay prople for their labor. Seriously, would you do this kind of all consuming labor for free?
Our society has lived off the free labor of women and has gotten lazy and thankless.
We're talking about _Japan_. They, presumably, already "pay people for their labor" and collect enough taxes for infrastructure.
show me how they are paying women?
Efficiency is the new growth
This won't work and it is fine. Nothing is permanent, world population has fallen considerably in other times in history. Yeah, the GDP will probably drop, but necessarely the per capita GDP. Yeah, a falling GDP is not good news for people who lend money and expect compound interest over a long horizon of time, some defaults will happen, probably we would end up having to forgive some debts and writing off a lot of stuff, but so what?
People seem to be downvoting this but it’s true. We are entering a dip in population growth. Shit happens. We will come out the other side. Did they think “infinite growth” would be a sustainable strategy? Hopefully we will come up with an economic system that’s more focused on human fulfillment than productivity.
A large class of people who loan money are people looking to fund a retirement. This will be devastating to them
I'm sure financial engineering will find a way to make it work in the end
Retirement is about having other people take care of you. If there are less people overall there are less resources to care for the elderly who aren't working. With expanding populations this is easier to manage because the fraction of people who are elderly is smaller, but it can be a huge drain if that changes. This is about resources and no amount of financial engineering can solve it, though financial engineering will probably keep people off the streets
Retirement will be a thing of the past soon enough so the problem will solve itself.
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Standards changed, lots of people are too unattractive to marry now.
Funny I'm being downvoted for this comment when it's you engineers that created the social media and dating apps that contributed to this situation.
Last time I checked, the birthrate in Tokyo is actually pretty robust,I think it was 2.3 or something like that. It's the rest of the country where young people are reluctant to start families for a variety of economic and social reasons.
A few of the leftish parties in Japan decentralization policies as part of their platform, and indeed much of the LDP's support comes from rural constituencies so you'd think they'd be in favor of it. But economic incentives for childrearing sometimes find themselves at odds with conservative mores around family roles and employment.
https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-data/h02015/
> June 2024: Japan’s total fertility rate hit a new low of 1.20 in 2023, with the rate for Tokyo falling to 0.99 for the first time.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/06/asia/tokyo-government-4-day-w...
> December 2024: Tokyo government gives workers 4-day workweek to boost fertility, family time
Sorry, I remembered it backwards. IT's the rural areas which have the fertility rate around 2.3 (which I also remembered as little high, but only by a few %):
https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-data/h01975/