That is demonstrably false though. Richer countries have WAY fewer kids than poorer ones, and even in developed countries, richer households have fewer kids than poorer ones.
Here's a whole ass Wikipedia page dedicated to your ignorance on a well known worldwide phenomenon. Jesus Christ, please be one of the people that does not have kids because we do not need more people like you.
Because data is concrete and verifiable whereas your "vibes" are not. Here's a whole ass Wikipedia page dedicated to this very well known worldwide phenomenon.
Cool man, good luck with the data for a blanket explanation across all of society. I’ll keep using my eyes and common sense if you wanna call that “vibes”
Poorer countries dont have strict rules about child labour, they can be used for work there. This is not the case in rich countries where a child is a bigger liability.
There are African countries where this is true for a much larger part of the population. In fact, while being the poorest continent in the world, most African countries have fertility rates over 3 and only Tunisia is lower than replacement rate(1.9)
Having high fertility rates is easy to achieve when your standard of living is have at least 1 meal a day, sleep in a shack with no electricity and maybe go to school til 3rd grade (optional).
Lack of standard of living increase is what I believe to be one of the biggest factors in this, if you can’t provide at least as much for your kids as your parents provided for you, chances are you are not going to have kids(at least in a society where having kids is commodity rather than necessity). But again blaming a system that has consistently led to improvements in standards of living for hundreds of years in different countries and regions for not improving standards of living is a weak take at best. There are a lot of factors unrelated or weakly related to capitalism that affect this.
Seeing as society can’t exist without children, children can never be a commodity. Our leaders are failing us at the most fundamental level by ignoring and gaslighting us about the CoL crisis that is one of the primary causes for our decrease in birthrates.
That's a non sequitur. Many things are essential for mere existence (IE food, water and labor). But we regularly treat them as commodities in an economic sense. Morally and philosophically speaking, children SHOULDN'T be treated as a commodity, but to present that as a logical deduction to your point does not make sense. The necessity of something does not logically prevent its commodification.
A society can’t, but an individual in a society can. And since society consists of individuals, the situation where children are a commodity can arise, even if it threatens the existence of society itself. Pretty much every developed country is like this, as an individual you don’t need children to survive, pension system, own savings and investments provide a much better safety net for the old age than having children. Which for an individual means that having children is optional. Cost of living crisis is mainly centered around housing prices and taxation which are also affected by a lot of societal issues like centralisation where everyone from rural areas wants to live in a city and everyone from a city wants to live in a city centre because it gives better access to education, work and services, which are the basis for a chance at better standard of living than your parents in developed countries. Or increase in life expectancy where total population keeps increasing despite declining birthrates. I wont deny the impact of big fuckup of 2008 here, but right now the aftermath of COVID recession plays a way bigger role. Heavy taxation also comes from the fact that new generations must support social programs for more and more people and pay out pensions for more retirees and service the debt which was taken to allow the existence of those programs in the first place.
Because children are a big investment (monetarily, physically and emotionally) that rich people don't want to deal with. If it can't help them get richer, they don't want it.
You know what WOULD help that? Kids not being a massive monetary investment. Poorer countries have lesser access to education, contraception and abortion, which naturally means more kids getting made.
And that's the conundrum we're in. The people who want to have children can't afford them, the people who can afford them don't WANT to afford them, and the, and the people who either don't know how bad things are, or couldn't afford a condom, a pill or an abortion are having children.
You keep making it about money but it's not and never has been. There is no data that indicates it is. Denmark and Germany are rich countries with tons of protections for pregnant women and children in terms of healthcare and education and their natality is abysmal. The USA, which has less of all of this, has a higher birthrate, because the reality is the opposite of what people here claim: having people poor and keeping them poor makes more babies.
If you want to argue otherwise then provide some proof.
It's cultural, people in developed countries are focused on hedonism, consumerism, and hyper individualism over the traditional family. It is what it is.
You do know Africa is also one of the countries with the largest number of starving and malnutritioned children right? It's not about fertility
Edit: to those saying africa isn't a country, yes it isn't but I used it as an umbrella term since more than 30 of the 54 countries in Africa are under the international poverty line
The actual answer is that they just aren’t as developed leading to worse access to healthcare and higher infant mortality rates. Fertility rates and infant mortality rates go hand in hand. So while yes in more underdeveloped parts of the world the fertility rates are higher, in more developed parts of the world capitalism is a very large part of why birth rates are declining.
Because there's a threshold in any society when it comes to fertility.
If you can’t keep all your children alive past a certain age, the logic would be to have multiples so at least one woule survive. This then become a cultural thing more than anything else.
When you're certain your kids won’t starve to death, you begin as a population to have fewer and fewer, until all your needs are met.
But then you have depression, hopelessness, lack of funds, etc... all because of capitalism, that prevents people from having children. Why have a child when you don’t know how your life will go in 2 years ?
And this is not something new, a similar fashion appeared during the cold war, because people were scared and depressed.
This is the "red wine cures cancer" thing again. It's not the poverty, it's the lack of education that goes with it. Among well educated people one of the most common reasons for not wanting children is financial burden.
i’m gen z, i won’t be having kids because capitalism has made it in my country so that on average i won’t be able to buy a house until im 36 years old (and that statistics is steadily rising). the cost of living and AI greed is so fucked here that my friends who spent years in university doing various tech related degrees are now being laid off or having a hard time just getting into the industries they studies for. if you can’t see how capitalism has fucked our society then you have your head in the sand
The economy has been much worse and people were having more kids at the time. Nobody is talking about the value of capitalism or whatever. Not everyone talks about the conversation you’ve tied your value as a person to all the time. Sometimes facts can be neutral. Poorer people have more kids than richer people and that statement gets truer and truer the bigger groups of people you’re looking at.
And do not ignore that last part. This is a pattern much bigger than you that mathematically disagrees with your fundamental view on this topic.
I’m sorry you wanted it to just be a punchy talking point, but there’s levels to this shit.
capitalism is directly tied to our distribution of resources since it’s a political ideology and more important economic policy. in nature when resources are scarce the smartest of the species will have less kids because they can recognise they won’t be able to support their offspring, in our society resources are hoard by the wealthy which naturally has led the majority to have children less on average. when global economies have been worse in the past people still have access to resources because our society was still in the tranisitional phase from having feudal survival capabilities such as growing our own food and preparing dishes with as little as possible, however nowadays our society is heavily reliant on the money to access resources to the point where we are not taught these basic survival skills in school anymore meaning the majority of people need companies to survive, if those companies provide less resources by doing things like raising the price of food or education or childcare without raising wages then we naturally have less access to resources. which brings it all back to the fact that when resources are scarce the smartest of the species will not reproduce.
if you have any questions i’ll be glad to answer them, i wrote entire study papers in university about this exact topic 👍
edit: looking back i forgot to mention your claim about poorer people having more kids than rich people, it isn’t due to income, it’s due to access to healthcare, poorer people who want kids, will have to give birth more because some will die. since income is correlated to access to healthcare that makes it appear like wealth is the deciding factor of how many children you have. similar to how rabbits breed like crazy, its because of survival since a lot of their children will die, not because they want more kids
I can't fucking afford to live alone. Why would I have children? My own needs aren't being met because homes are overpriced and sitting around empty and unused because profits are more important than people.
It's not capitalisms fault. It's socialism's. Literally remove social security and Medicaid and the kids will finally have financial breathing room to start families.
Capitalism brings the goods, socialism takes it away.
Socialist policies make up over half of US spending and taxes. Social security will become insolvent in less than 10 years and already isn't enough to pay for someone's retirement.
You know what would fix insolvency? If the rich were properly taxed, which happens with socialist policies. You know what would make it easier to raise children? If every citizen was guaranteed healthcare, which happens with socialist policies. You know why inflation is increasing at an abnormal rate? Capitalist policies. Insurance companies charging whatever they want because they set their own prices, capitalism. Rent increasing rapidly because private equity firms charging whatever they want because they set their own prices, capitalism.
Capitalism isn't the problem. Unchecked capitalism and lobbying are the problem. The VA is proof we have a long way to go before we can even think of universal Healthcare. Not to mention, when it is perfect, its really only beneficial for medicines. But you can die if you need a life saving procedure.
Capitalism leads to "Unchecked capitalism", the rich and powerful,in an effort to grow even richer, will dismantle any checks and balances, slowly but with certainty, this administration and it's absurdity is the result of 4 decades of neoliberal policies started by Regan , the "system" cannot be reformed it must be destroyed , least it destroy the planet and humanity with it on
You're using terms you don't fully understand to support someone whose interests are at odds with your own. Giving money to poor people means they spend it in the community, and stimulate the economy. Every dollar spent of these "socialist" programs generally returns 2-3 in return through economic growth. Giving money to billionaires doesn't create jobs, it just creates bigger numbers in their Cayman Islands account.
I mean fair enough, totally fair to blame the democrats and neoliberalism in general for selling out the working class, I’m just surprised we’re the same age with the same problems and that somehow pushed you further right while I got shoved left
I just can’t fathom someone my age believing in trickle down economics in the year of our lord 2025, I really thought that was a boomer thing
I can break it down, but don't know the modern interpretations. Theft politics.
And I don't believe in trickle economics. Just economics. My preferred source being Thomas Sowell. His best book, in my mind, is Wealth, Poverty and Politics where the general understanding is to not trust politicians because ordinary people know their business better than bureaucrats even 100 miles away.
If a business can't survive without handouts, sucks to suck, but they don't get any money from me for failing at business.
My taxes in the US are lower than in Europe, but I'm working more for roughly the same amount of money and have spent way, way more on healthcare in the US in 1 year than I did over the course of several in Europe, and I had far more medical issues and doctors visits while in Europe than the US.
Absolute delusion. There's only 1 thing to blame for our real pay being stagnant for the last 50 years while the 1% gets richer, and it's sure as hell isn't "socialism".
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u/BigJSteal 1d ago
blame capitalism