Platystemon posted:

I think that this is bullshit, but it’s high‐class bullshit that sells Malcom Gladwell books and David Leonhardt columns.

FreudianSlippers posted:

The Backrooms belong to France and are therefore a part of the EU despite not existing in the same spatial or temporal reality as Europe.

Gravitas Shortfall posted:

Turning a corner in a maze of never-ending corridors to find a disaffected Parisian smoking at a table who absolutely refuses to talk to you.

Edgar Allen Ho posted:

All I know is that in my children’s lifetimes France will outnumber the boches, thus correcting Europe’s natural order. Nature is healing.

Guavanaut posted:

But how will their numbers be distributed?

Phlegmish posted:

^ yeah I think that might be NSFW lol

I have an admittedly completely unverifiable and unscientific theory about that. France's relatively high fertility by European standards is sometimes chalked up to its huge immigrant(-descended) population, but in reality immigrant communities usually adopt their host society's demographic pattern after a generation or two, and I suspect fertility would still be high even if we compared native populations exclusively.

The interesting thing about this is that it follows centuries and centuries of extremely low fertility even by Western European standards (which only differed slightly from the rest of the world by comparison). France in the 16th century was the most populous state in Europe, and it wasn't even close, it was basically in its own order of magnitude, while by the early 19th century this was already no longer the case. There are regions of France that currently have a lower population than in 1789.

So thinking about this, for generations and generations now there must have been a strong selection for various factors (cultural, sociological, possibly even genetic, etc.) that potentially affect fertility, while this wasn't the case to the same extent in the rest of Europe or the world. Hence, France today paradoxically has a robust fertility rate, as opposed to the near-complete collapse seen in the rest of the developed world. You can even see this at the sub-national level in Belgium. Flanders's population growth has outpaced that of Wallonia (which is of course firmly within the francophone cultural sphere) ever since independence, and this is still the case, but currently this is driven exclusively by differences in the net migration rate, at this point the traditional fertility gap has completely reversed.

Like and subscribe for more vaguely plausible-sounding theories that I pulled out of my rear end

Phlegmish posted:

I have an admittedly completely unverifiable and unscientific theory about that. France's relatively high fertility by European standards is sometimes chalked up to its huge immigrant(-descended) population, but in reality immigrant communities usually adopt their host society's demographic pattern after a generation or two, and I suspect fertility would still be high even if we compared native populations exclusively.

/snip for brevity

Guavanaut posted:

We seem to only just be leaving the exponential phase as part of a hopeful transition to the stationary phase, so there's far more to worry about in the immediate future than not enough people.

Guavanaut posted:

We seem to only just be leaving the exponential phase as part of a hopeful transition to the stationary phase, so there's far more to worry about in the immediate future than not enough people.

Koramei posted:

the recent kurzgesagt video on human population decline mentioned a hypothesis along vaguely the same lines; that in a few generations selection pressures might start to make the people/culture that actually survives really like babies and children and so cause a bit of a rebound.

to me (totally ignorant on this subject) it does sound kinda plausible

else we're all hosed anyway

Blut posted:

French people also spend less time working than most nationalities. Having a better work/life balance is a big predictor of birth rates in wealthy countries these days.

Its increasing looking like having both parents working 40+hrs a week just isn't conducive to having kids. Which makes, well, a whole lot of sense.

Blut posted:

French people also spend less time working than most nationalities. Having a better work/life balance is a big predictor of birth rates in wealthy countries these days.

Its increasing looking like having both parents working 40+hrs a week just isn't conducive to having kids. Which makes, well, a whole lot of sense.

The planet as a whole might be in the stationary phase, due to very high birth rates in developing countries, but plenty of countries are in the death phase or heading towards it already so very much do need to worry about it right now. China's population for example is going to decline by 400mn people over the next 50 years, thats a collapse unheard of in human history. Especially in peace time, with no impact from devestating famine, plague or warfare. Its going to be very, very difficult to manage a demographic change like that.

Carbon dioxide posted:

Saladman posted:

This is always the angle The Economist is pushing, but Japan has done fine with 30 years of a stagnant economy and rapidly greying population. Maybe macro indicators are "bad" but daily life is nice for the vast majority of Japanese. Eastern Europe has done even worse demographically, and everywhere is way nicer now than it was 30 or even 15 years ago, albeit a lot of that is emigration.

I’m not expecting to retire before 70 nor to get more than two-thirds of my projected pension, but it’s not like either leads to societal collapse.

Anyway I guess we can all be thankful that Japan is beta testing it and South Korea is doing a speedrun, but even so it’s not Children of Men.

Climate change seems to be a much more fundamental concern than population greying and a decline that happens over 2-3 generations. Population aging doesn’t even seem like it ranks in the top 10 concerns for catastrophic societal upheaval.

Count Roland posted:

Have any counties successfully increased their fertility rates? Lots of countries have attempted it, I can't think of any that have worked.

The cost to society of no going people is immense. I wonder if it will get to the point of effectively paying a woman a salary to be a stay at home mom. I wouldn't be surprised if it would be economically worth it in the long run.

A Buttery Pastry posted:

Why only women? Hell, you're leaving kids on the table by not just making it a UBI and letting gay dudes have the money and time to have kids too.

Count Roland posted:

Have any counties successfully increased their fertility rates? Lots of countries have attempted it, I can't think of any that have worked.

The cost to society of no going people is immense. I wonder if it will get to the point of effectively paying a woman a salary to be a stay at home mom. I wouldn't be surprised if it would be economically worth it in the long run.

A Buttery Pastry posted:

Why only women? Hell, you're leaving kids on the table by not just making it a UBI and letting gay dudes have the money and time to have kids too.

Hunt11 posted:

As someone who benefited from a stay at home parent, it should be viewed as a job and rewarded as such.

Phlegmish posted:

Take a look at the TFR world map posted on the previous page. The country of Iran is a literal theocracy. I'm not sure what their government's policy on modern contraception is, but I would assume it's at least heavily restricted or discouraged (I don't actually know so correct me if this is wrong). Doesn't matter, the fertility rate in Iran is on par with most of Europe, because structurally its population has very high levels of urbanization and education compared to its neighbors, and consequently it has reached the final stages of the demographic transition.

SlothfulCobra posted:

There's also a whole crisis going on with the daycare and preschool industry where there aren't enough people getting into the field, so there's a pretty big shortage. Boosting fertility is not just about trying to convince the childless to make the decision become child-ful, it is about making it easier for those who choose to have children to maybe have an extra, which I think is relatively less of a lifestyle change and cost compared to going from zero to one.

What definitely doesn't seem to work is trying hard to shut down women's opportunities to force them to have nothing else to do but have children. South Korea going all in on misogynistic incels seems to be driving a big drop in fertility, and China's current misogynistic swing towards natalism also seems to be doing the reverse of what it was supposed to.

Count Roland posted:

Back in the 80s Iran had both it's revolution as well as a brutal war with Iraq. The result was a baby boom. After a few years it was recognized that there were downsides to this so the theocratic government actively encouraged family planning to get the birth rate down, which I believe worked. I'm afraid I don't remember the specific policies, and I have no idea what policies are in place today.

SlothfulCobra posted:

There's also a whole crisis going on with the daycare and preschool industry where there aren't enough people getting into the field, so there's a pretty big shortage. Boosting fertility is not just about trying to convince the childless to make the decision become child-ful, it is about making it easier for those who choose to have children to maybe have an extra, which I think is relatively less of a lifestyle change and cost compared to going from zero to one.

SlothfulCobra posted:

What definitely doesn't seem to work is trying hard to shut down women's opportunities to force them to have nothing else to do but have children. South Korea going all in on misogynistic incels seems to be driving a big drop in fertility, and China's current misogynistic swing towards natalism also seems to be doing the reverse of what it was supposed to.

AAAAA! Real Muenster posted:

edit: I realize I have not posted any maps so I'll stop replying on the fertility topic

Saladman posted:

This is always the angle The Economist is pushing, but Japan has done fine with 30 years of a stagnant economy and rapidly greying population. Maybe macro indicators are "bad" but daily life is nice for the vast majority of Japanese. Eastern Europe has done even worse demographically, and everywhere is way nicer now than it was 30 or even 15 years ago, albeit a lot of that is emigration.

I’m not expecting to retire before 70 nor to get more than two-thirds of my projected pension, but it’s not like either leads to societal collapse.

Anyway I guess we can all be thankful that Japan is beta testing it and South Korea is doing a speedrun, but even so it’s not Children of Men.

Climate change seems to be a much more fundamental concern than population greying and a decline that happens over 2-3 generations. Population aging doesn’t even seem like it ranks in the top 10 concerns for catastrophic societal upheaval.

Count Roland posted:

Have any counties successfully increased their fertility rates? Lots of countries have attempted it, I can't think of any that have worked.

The cost to society of no going people is immense. I wonder if it will get to the point of effectively paying a woman a salary to be a stay at home mom. I wouldn't be surprised if it would be economically worth it in the long run.

Blut posted:

Japan's population only began declining around ten years ago, its population grew from 30 to 10 years ago. Its only barely a decade yet into its declining population, which is only down 2.7mn from peak (128mn) so far - circa 2%. It hasn't even hit the steepest part of the curve yet.

Come back to me in 2050 when its population has declined by another rather more meaningful 22mn, and aged rapidly at the same time, and we'll see how well its handling the demographic change. Thats a very real, imminent, societal disaster on a time scale where climate change won't have done anything meaningful to the population of the country.

Threadkiller Dog posted:

Frankly, my experience from working office jobs in sweden is that almost every upper-middle class couple seems to get 2-3 kids while working full time in their thirties. It's certainly perfectly possible and practical to have kids for middle to upper middle class people where both the man and woman are getting their 10-12 months or whatever of parental leave, daycare is affordable and employers have simply adapted to people disappearing off the face of the earth randomly for a year every now and then. Now, if we want them to get litters of 4-5 kids to compensate for if a significant percentage dont get kids at all, I'm not sure any incentives are going to suffice.

I guess my point is that with the support structure here it is perfectly possible for those who want a bunch of kids to get them while still having careers, and also that my impression is that those who want and can get kids do seem to be getting them. Those who don't want kids probably still have a myriad of reasonable reasons for that though. Economical of personal is anyones guess.

DTurtle posted:

The relevant number to look at from an economic perspective is working age population. And that grew rapidly until it peaked in the 1990s and has shrunk quite a bit since then.