One of the political podcasts I’ve been listening to lately is Common Sense with Dan Carlin, which is fairly interesting, even though I don’t always agree with his views. Sometimes he comes up with some far-out ideas and opinions, and in his latest show, he argues that prosperity leads to a lower birthrate. He draws this conclusion from the fact that America and Europe are fairly prosperous, compared to other parts of the world, and that prosperity causes people to be more self-centered or materialist, or something, and stop having gaggles of kids.
I’ve always believed that it was more the other way around: that once women got control of their reproduction and got the right to work, that countries became more prosperous.
This is more like trying to argue a fact rather than just a regular debate. Increased prosperity causes a decline in birthrates in all larger populations. I didn’t know that came as a surprise to anyone and it has been documented for years. We have discussed it many times on this board. The only things left to discuss are the specifics how’s and why’s.
I shouldn’t be so dismissive. Money and prosperity aren’t the only direct factors that cause a declining birth rate. We can’t ignore the availability of easy to use, effective birth control pills for example. Tying all these factors together can be long so I will just say how I see it.
The reason poorer people and people in time’s past had so many children was that childhood mortality rates were very high. Generating too many was preferable to having too few because they really needed kids and the kids were put to work helping support the family as soon as they were able.
Moving into modern times, better health conditions and effective birth control meant that females (and the family as whole) could generally pick about how many children they wanted. It turns out that, given a choice, most families will choose to have fewer children and pump more resources into them. There aren’t many families that will choose to have say, 8 children without some other reason like religion when given a choice.
At the same time, women started pouring into the workplace in droves even when they had small children. Workplaces typically aren’t especially friendly to working mothers even if they honestly try. Trying to juggle both limits birthrates for women for obvious reasons.
I would say the general argument is more correct than you are although the way you phased the debate requires a huge scope. Birthrates fall when prosperity climbs even among women that stay at home and serve more traditional roles.
You also seem to presume that the declining birthrate is the result of abortion rights if I read you correctly. Abortion rights certainly don’t hurt but you missing the fact that the new expected family size has shifted downward for everyone and most women don’t get abortions.
Oh, sorry if I misread that. Condoms have been around for a very long time though. I did mention the pill and it should have some effect even without prosperity but poor, uneducated populations aren’t good with birth control in general. If so, we could just carpet bomb most of Africa with BCP and condoms. They have tried that to some extent and it doesn’t work great even if people hear that it will stop them from dying of AIDS if they use it every time. There is something about prosperity that makes people, especially women, start operating at a higher level of planning in their lives.
Instinct, I bet. In Darwinian terms, the more resources you have, the more sense it makes to invest more in fewer offspring. If you are impoverished, it makes more sense to have many children, and hope one gets lucky. Especially since we evolved in a time and place when “impoverished” generally meant a very good chance of death in a society where death was already common, not just living in a worse part of town.
By the same token, higher status women are statistically more likely to have boys than girls; high status boys are better in evolutionary terms than girls ( easier to attract women ), whereas a low status girl has a much better chance than a low status boy at attracting a high status mate.
I think both effects are true.
A good economy, where children are not seen as sources of farm labor leads to fewer children.
Better health means people expect children to survive childhood diseases and will have fewer.
But also, wherever fewer children are encouraged the economy will improve because of that.
I am not going to get into guessing the exact reasons why the phenomenon occurs, but the facts are that properity precedes lower birth rate. There may be some level of feedback loop that allows a group with a lower birth rate to continue a situation of prosperity, but the initial drop in birth rate always follows an increase in prosperity (with a concomitant increase in general health and a drop in childhood deaths). Arguing that we could increase prosperity in any location by reducing the birth rate runs counter to all the history and evidence we currently have. If we want fewer births, we first need to improve the economy and health of the population and the breeding population will reduce the birth rate on their own.
Cite? Or maybe just explain this more? Why would the status of a woman be linked to the gender of her offspring, considering that she does not control gender?
It is financial. When kids are needed on the farm or to obtain employment to help the family to survive every kid is an assset. When they cost money they have less of them.
Well, that’s basically what Dan was arguing, as a method of getting the population under control. It’s a pity, since the other way around seems like it would be easier to pull off. I guess we’ll have to stick to our traditional ways of war, disease and famine.
