Lower fertility is changing the world for the better

http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?story_id=14743589

by l0stman • 17 years ago

48 54 17 years ago

bh23ha8• 17 years ago

Is it too early to start a media panic about the shrinking humanity?

In all seriousness, I've always looked at birth control and education and affluence as a virus which drastically reduces fertility. But obviously some people, besides their sex drive, have another not so common drive. Despite money, education and condoms they really, really want, not sex, but kids. And over time this trait will become more widespread in the population. We better have colonized space by then.

mseebach9• 17 years ago

What makes you think that this not so common (as you yourself call it) drive will become more widespread? The graph in the article suggest a very strong correlation between wealth and low fertility.

Another trait is that of children-less lifestyles (sexual, medical or otherwise). If we're to keep up with the replacement-rate, that obviously means that someone needs to have more kids.

bh23ha8• 17 years ago

Think of it as a virus that impacts fertility.

Some people will be child-less, others will have just one, maybe 2 kids. A few will strongly want to and will have 3,4 and more. It's basic natural selection in practice. Wealth and the pill are still very recent, fertility will stay low in the industrialized world for quite a while, a few generations at least, but things will turn around.

xiaoma2• 17 years ago

>What makes you think that this not so common (as you yourself call it) drive will become more widespread? The graph in the article suggest a very strong correlation between wealth and low fertility.

Evolution.

Right now, most people aren't that well adapted (in a Darwinian sense) to life in an affluent society. There's no reason to assume this will always be the case. The current speed of human evolution is over 100 times what it was in prehistoric times. Extreme environmental changes invariably lead to evolutionary changes.

randallsquared• 17 years ago

What makes you think that this not so common (as you yourself call it) drive will become more widespread? The graph in the article suggest a very strong correlation between wealth and low fertility.

We do know of examples of high-income (and high-education) groups with high fertility, though. Mormons come to mind. There was a recent discussion about this I found interesting here: http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/09/future-fertility.html

araneae• 17 years ago

If the desire to have children has a genetic component, and those with this genetic component are more likely to have offspring that survive until adulthood, then the trait will spread.

Given that plenty of heritable traits (like religiosity) are correlated with increased brood size, I'd say it's pretty likely.

Also, given that in first world countries even the offspring of poorer folks survive to adulthood, that removes any benefit of giving birth to fewer children.

tybris• 17 years ago

Mankind evolves itself.

bh23ha8• 17 years ago

Hey, we're not the only ones. A known form of specialisation is when a mutant female prefers a slightly different kind of male. And her daughters have the same preference, and eventually you end up with reproductively isolated populations.

ramidarigaz• 17 years ago

This is pure speculation, and I have no facts to back this up, but I suspect that if humanity begins to shrink, it will become an age of robotics. I think the biggest boost to robotics will happen when the number of people available for hard/simple labor drops off.

But that's just speculation.

bh23ha8• 17 years ago

I think it's more then speculation. Japan very anti immigrant has relied on much more robotics. The rest of the industrialized world, especially the US, prefers immigration.

radu_floricica2• 17 years ago

Japan does something else which is very interesting and less known: starts hiring at _very_ low ages. My Japanese teacher told me her first job interview was in secondary school, and it is pretty standard for somebody her age.

radu_floricica2• 17 years ago

I don't understand why you're downvoted. America relies on outsourcing and immigration, Europe relies heavily on immigration (see the muslim immigrants issues)... it's pretty obvious that when those countries that provide immigration and/or cheap labor become developed there will be a huge increase in robotic labor. Not because the humanity will be shrinking (it won't for a while), but because the active population vs retired will force it.

mr_dbr• 17 years ago

Futurama proposes a different reasoning for the inevitably changing human-robot ratio (I couldn't find a clip of it, so.. use your imagination):

Fry: Well, so what if I love a robot? It's not hurting anybody.

Hermes: My God! He never took middle school hygiene. He never saw the propaganda film.

Farnsworth: It's just lucky I keep a copy in the VCR at all times.

[He presses a button and a film title, I Dated A Robot!, appears on the screen. In the movie a couple sit in a cafe and stare into each other's eyes. A narrator walks into the scene.]

Narrator: [in movie] Ordinary human dating. It's enjoyable and it serves an important purpose. [He turns the table over and a crying baby appears. He turns it back again.] But when a human dates an artificial mate, there is no purpose. Only enjoyment. And that leads to ... tragedy.

[The woman behind him turns into a blank robot and the man downloads a celebrity onto it.]

Billy: [in movie] Neat-o! A Marilyn Monroe-bot!

Monroe-bot: [in movie] Ooh! You're a real dreamboat, (mechanical voice) Billy Everyteen.

Narrator: [in movie] Harmless fun? Let's see what happens next.

[The scene cuts to Billy's bedroom where he kisses the Monroe-bot. His mother walks through the door.]

Billy's Mom: [in movie] Billy, do you want to walk your dog?

Billy: [in movie] No thanks, Mom. I'd rather make out with my Monroe-bot.

[Enter his dad.]

Billy's Dad: [in movie] Billy, do want to get a paper route and earn some extra cash?

Billy: [in movie] No thanks, Dad. I'd rather make out with my Monroe-bot.

[The girl from the cafe, Mavis, walks in.]

Mavis: [in movie] Billy, do you want to come over tonight? We can make out together.

Billy: [in movie] Gee, Mavis, your house is across the street. That's an awfully long way to go for making out.

Narrator: [in movie] Did you notice what went wrong in that scene? Ordinarily, Billy would work hard to make money from his paper route. Then he'd use the money to buy dinner for Mavis, thus earning the slim chance to perform the reproductive act. But in a world where teens can date robots, why should he bother? Why should anyone bother? Let's take a look at Billy's planet a year later. [The scene changes and a foam hand rolls across an empty football field.] Where are all the football stars? [The foam hand drifts across an empty laboratory.] And where are the biochemists? [The scene changes to a split screen of human and robot couples making out on beds.] They're trapped! Trapped in a soft, vice-like grip of robot lips. All civilisation was just an effort to impress the opposite sex ... and sometimes the same sex. Now, let's skip forward 80 years into the future. Where is Billy?

[The scene changes to a post-apocalyptic world. Billy is an aged man but still with his Monroe-bot and still making out with her.]

Billy: [in movie] Farewell!

[He dies.]

Narrator: [in movie] The next day, Billy's planet was destroyed by aliens. [A fleet of flying saucers destroy buildings with laser shots.] Have you guessed the name of Billy's planet? It was Earth. Don't date robots!

[A "Don't Date Robots!" caption appears on the screen and the movie ends. The Space Pope is displayed on the screen with "Crocodylus Pontiflex" written around him in English and alien.]

Announcer: [voice-over; in movie] Brought to you by the Space Pope.

(stolen from http://www.futurama-madhouse.com.ar/scripts/3acv15.shtml )

patrickgzill2• 17 years ago

There is a lot wrong with this article, but I don't have the patience to go through all of the unstated assumptions; so I will just use one point as an example:

"And everywhere, it is changing traditional family life by enabling women to work and children to be educated."

How is it that women working outside the home is better than women working inside the home? There is an unstated assumption that working outside is better; an assertion unsupported by any data.

Concerning children's education, one need only point to US literacy rates from 1850 to the present to see that the two (women working, children educated) are not connected.

As a secondary point I will point out that demographics are not mentioned in this article, apparently the author has never viewed the movie "Idiocracy" ...

bh23ha8• 17 years ago

How is it that women working outside the home is better than women working inside the home?

Depends on your definition of better. Ignoring difficult to measure benefits and focusing on easy to measure ones like economic output, it is easy to see how outside the home there's more opportunity to produce a lot more toasters, cars, etc, then inside the home. Unless you happen to live in a factory!

Concerning children's education, one need only point to US literacy rates from 1850 to the present to see that the two (women working, children educated) are not connected.

Really? And isn't comparing "work" before 1925 (arbitrarily picked) and after kind of like comparing apples and oranges?

patrickgzill2• 17 years ago

The reason I chose 1850 to the present is that it was well past the chaos of the American Revolution and yet far enough away in time to show a trend.

Further this time period covers the change from nearly all women working inside the home (or working on the family farm), to many working outside the home.

Many posters seem to have missed my point; perhaps I could have stated it clearer.

To restate it, there is little causation between women working outside the home and whether or not children are educated; and if there is, the Economist article quotes no sources to establish that.

kungfooey• 17 years ago

Obviously, the movie "Idiocracy" is a source of scholarly learning.

Freebytes3• 17 years ago

That movie is fantastic. The entertainment value is beneficial, but the predictive warning is certainly as influential as the book The Time Machine which contained similar analogies.

bokonist• 17 years ago

http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2009/06/tfr-by-class-and-nation.php

m0th87• 17 years ago

http://xkcd.com/603/

mechanical_fish2• 17 years ago

How is it that women working outside the home is better than women working inside the home?

Perhaps you could ask some women.

You'll also find that there's not exactly a shortage of literature on this topic.

I'll offer just one feature: If you have a job outside the home, you are free to quit your job and take a better job when conditions change. Not so easy to "quit" the "job" of raising your kids, or of living in your home when you have no other home to live in and no work experience that you can use to find a job somewhere else.

US literacy rates from 1850 to the present

These have little to say about the question. Literacy rate in the USA is a poor proxy for "education" because it's just too basic (you can be considered literate in American English and still have only a fourth-grade education) and is covered by the universal primary education system that we've had for years. The US population has grown largely through immigration since 1850, which makes it misleading to attribute changes in literacy rate directly to trends in childhood education. And, even apart from that, the major factor in the US literacy rate from 1850 to the present is likely to be the difference in education available to different subsets of the population, and the relative sizes of these subsets:

http://nces.ed.gov/naal/lit_history.asp

In 1870 80% of the black population was illiterate, presumably because it was composed of former slaves who had generally been forbidden to learn to read. And this illiteracy rate among the black population declined fairly slowly and remains higher than among the white population, a fact which has a lot to do with the hundred-year period of Jim Crow segregation that started soon after the Civil War was over and continued through the civil rights movement, with legacy effects lasting to this day.

mcd• 17 years ago

> Perhaps you could ask some women.

Quite a few women I know would rather be at home with their children than work. I hear that same complaining line from a family member often. It is not torture for someone to stay at home and raise kids.

I personally would like to be a house-dad when I eventually have kids (while my wife works). I think the importance of raising children is quite underrated. And the modern trend of outsourcing the raising of your kids (to day-care centers and after school programs, etc…) is wrong.

> I'll offer just one feature: If you have a job outside the home, you are free to quit your job and take a better job when conditions change. Not so easy to "quit" the "job" of raising your kids, or of living in your home when you have no other home to live in and no work experience that you can use to find a job somewhere else.

You can’t really quit raising kids – whether you like it or not. I would also offer a flipside: In my parents’ generation it was common for women to work half-day (half-day secretarial work, etc…). Yet today it isn’t so – the majority of jobs require you to work from 8 to 17h00.

dgabriel• 17 years ago

> How is it that women working outside the home is better than women working inside the home?

In an industrialized, modern society, you can nearly double your workforce. Educated women increase the number of knowledge workers. This, in turn, increases productivity, etc. Some women may briefly opt to stay home with their children, but the majority of women in industrialized nations return to work at some point. This is considered good.

Can you think of an industrialized nation experiencing significant growth (either recently or currently) where women are discouraged from working?

Lower fertility is changing the world for the better

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