I was away for a day, so this reply comes a bit late in the flow.
You started out by saying
“countries that adopted these principles early enough”
And I guess you could say that “early enough” is the late 19th century. But the way i read it was as if the U.S. was an early adopter in the industrial revolution. Which it most certainly wasn’t. Which is why I couldn’t get it to correlate to a large population.
Thanks for the clarification.
In fact it stole the technology involved. Something taught to me in school as a triumph of American cleverness and daring over British obstructionism and selfishness, which in later years made it outright funny to hear all the complaints about China or whomever “stealing American technology”.
There are some huge differences between Illinois and West Virginia that go way beyond their shrinking populations. Which could be illustrative of the difference between a diversified economy with a significant number of highly educated and highly skilled people and a place that more closely resembles an undeveloped country with fewer options when the population shrinks.
It looks like the “resource curse” to me. Resource extraction areas tend to end up with a narrow economy devoted only to that and little development compared to elsewhere. Then the resource runs out…
West Virginia is also hampered by the fact it’s nothing but mountains - you might be able to pull off some form of subsistence farming but industrial levels of agriculture can’t be done. Unlike Illinois which has a lot of agricultural territory, as well as having some other forms of extractive industry (such as quarries, some coal and natural gas, salt, and some modest amounts of other things). Illinois has always had a diversity of resources to extract, as opposed to West Virginia which heavily specialized in coal. Illinois also has access to navigable waterways to transport goods around (Chicago started as a transportation hub, and continues to be so) but West Virginia has to rely on roads and railroads, which are less efficient.
That’s just on the resources front. In comparisons between, say, educational opportunities, high-tech industries, and so forth the differences are even more stark.
Despite doom-crying by some sectors, and some very real problems, Illinois remains a viable state with a viable economy despite losing population whereas West Virginia seems to be in a death spiral.
For another example - Detroit lost about 5/6 of its population from roughly 1970 through roughly 2020. Yeah, that crashed hard. But finally, after decades, the property values in some parts of the city are starting to go up and since 2024 the population has started to go up. Not by much, but it seems to be stabilizing. Small business are functioning, and some larger businesses have moved into the city. Even a big population loss with its attendant crises does not mean extinction. Detroit does, however, show that losing too many people too fast is painful.
OTOH and pertinent to the discussions of this thread - tax rates, from income, to sales, to property, are all much higher in Illinois than West Virginia.
Yes West Virginia has one of the worst, if not the worst school system in the country. And rates low for healthcare quality and access.
But y’know telecommuting DINKS don’t care much about school quality or even healthcare until they get ill. And manufacturers whose workforce plant needs can be met with those with fifth grade literacy and math skills, if that, don’t care either. Trains work to transport product and supplies.
They may end up with a “better” dependency ratio.
It will be interesting.
True.
And the social safety net in Illinois is MUCH better than in West Virginia.
The city of Chicago has the highest rates of taxation in Illinois due to both county and city taxes on top of state and Federal. On the other hand, Chicago also has a robust public transit system (and to some extent the surrounding suburbs, even into the neighboring state of Indiana where I live - when I lived in Indiana and worked in the Loop I always took public transit to and from work). It has extensive public works projects that mitigate flooding and other problems. So the people living there actually get some benefit from those taxes, benefits that either they would otherwise have to pay for (somehow) themselves or simply do without them.
When I lived in Chicago I could forgo car ownership - an expense anywhere you live. I relied on public transit, taxis (this was before Uber and Lyft), and if I needed to I could rent a vehicle for a longer trip. Where I live now I MUST own a vehicle to hold down a job, and that’s a real expense for folks around here who have little to no local public transit options. So while a lot of Americans seemed to view any and all taxes as irredeemably evil an area with high taxes isn’t necessarily a hellhole or dystopian landscape. Nor is a low-tax area paradise. What you get for those taxes can be a significant factor, especially for the poor in a place like Chicago where they have access to transportation, healthcare, more generous unemployment insurance, more job opportunities, more varied job opportunities, and quite a few charities. Versus West Virginia which has (so far as I know) zero public transit, restrictive Medicaid rules, paltry unemployment (based on what I’ve been told by folks with experience of WV unemployment), fewer job opportunities, less varied job opportunities, and charities tend to be limited to local churches of limited means.
If I have to be poor (again) I’d rather be poor in Chicago than in West Virginia. If I have to be unemployed (again) I’d rather it be in my current area where I actually have a reasonable chance to get another job than in West Virginia.
Chicago is dealing with declining population a LOT better than West Virginia. Also, a certain number of people still want to move to Chicago, including young people with educations and skills. West Virginia? Not so much.
The US has not been more accepting of immigration before. The foreign born share of the US population recently exceeded the record high of 14.8% set in the 1890s, and anti-immigrant sentiment was on the rise back then as well, culminating in a bill that drastically cut immigration.
The UK is at 16% foreign born, France at 13.6%, Germany at 20.2%. You keep talking as though the US and Western European countries are Japan, rather than nations that have had, and continue to have, extremely high, historically unprecedented levels of immigration.
These countries are what being unusually accepting of immigration looks like. If that’s not good enough, I think you need to find another solution.
The UK has a similar GDP per capita to the poorest state in the US (Mississippi). Even most of the richer countries in Europe are pretty mid compared to US states, and there are still several poor countries in Europe.
Most countries in Europe were much less diverse than America until recently; after WWI, the empires in Europe were divided along ethnic and linguistic lines, which proved far more stable than the arbitrary divisions made in Africa and the Middle East. Except in the Balkans, where the different ethnicities were too mixed up to separate - and they had a genocidal war as recently as the 90s.
And it’s silly to say welfare states aren’t expensive. Tax to GDP ratio was 27% in the US in 2021, while nearly all of Western Europe was above 35%, with many countries above 40%.
Yes, okay, I shouldn’t have written that. Reading @Der_Trihs’s post made me feel gloomy last night. I know it’s a lot more complicated than ‘too comfortable’.
It’s just rather depressing. I know multiple people who not only have no kids and aren’t likely to have any, but who don’t have any nieces or nephews to have relationships with either. They are missing out on an important and valuable part of life for no better reason than that we have accidentally created a culture that in multiple small-but-compounding ways encourages people not to have kids, rather than to have them. It’s not only bad for them, but for society as a whole, because it’s causing all kinds of social problems. And hardly anyone even recognises it’s a problem, let alone being willing to do anything about it.
It’s only a “problem” because there are societal effects, some of which can be viewed negatively. Not having kids in-and-of-itself is not necessarily a problem for the individual. As for missing out on a valuable part of life, that’s a tradeoff that everyone makes for a wide range of experiences. Someone may decide to go on an expensive cruise rather than redo the bathroom. The child-free people may relish their experiences traveling the world, being able to spend lavishly on themselves, enjoying hours of uninterrupted quiet solitude reading, doing hobbies, socializing with friends, etc. If they felt that having kids would be more fulfilling than other experiences, they would make the tradeoff of having kids rather than the experiences.
And it’s important to recognize that not everyone enjoys being a parent. For some people it is extremely fulfilling to be a parent and they can’t imagine living any other way. But for others, it is extremely stressful and aggravating. Some people will abandon their kids because they find being a parent too stressful. Some people will exploit their kids. Being a parent is not a universally wonderful experience for everyone. For some people, their enjoyment of life and sense of fulfillment will go down if they have kids.
Well, yeah, I think that’s a cultural problem.
If someone decided that they relish being single because they can leave their house messy and watch porn whenever they wanted, and they felt that this is more fulfilling than working at a relationship - I’d find that really sad. I’d think that they’re missing out on important parts of life, and that if enough people did this, it would be bad for society.
The real issue here, ISTM, is that humans are facing a largely unprecedented situation in which for more and more people, parenthood really is a voluntary decision, albeit one influenced by a whole heap of factors outside the individual’s control.
Before reliable birth control and recognition of women’s rights, maintaining the birthrate was taken care of simply by the fact that most people want to have sex and most young people are reproductively fertile. Now that people can realistically have sex, even lots of sex, without pregnancy, and many women are able to decide for themselves whether to have sex and whether to use contraception, parenthood needs to be presented to young people as a genuinely attractive life option.
For millennia (hundreds of millennia, probably), human societies have been telling their members that sex is permitted only within this or that specific mating-related social structure, and participation in the social structure of mating is essentially coerced. Either outright by forced marriage, or indirectly by shaming and fear (you’re not complete as a person if you don’t mate and reproduce, you’ll be destitute and uncared-for as you age, etc. etc.).
We’ve got to think of ways to promote parenthood that don’t involve coercion anymore. Yes, to some extent we’ve all got to be, and should be, somewhat coerced to participate in caring for society’s children: we need to pay taxes for schools, and build buses to accommodate strollers and prams, and so on. But we can no longer expect that coercion to extend to what individuals do with their own bodies and intimate relationships.
If we can’t make parenthood seem truly desirable to more people without subjecting them to nasty alternatives if they don’t choose parenthood, then we will eventually die out. I’m not particularly worried about that, because I have more faith than you seem to have that parenthood will continue to be fulfilling and sought out by many individuals, if societies can help make it less burdensome for them.
I think you’re assuming extremes here that don’t exist.
I was married for 30 years to a wonderful human being and very happy in that relationship. I am so glad I had those years. Now, though, I am a widow and single, and I’m enjoying that state of being and very happy to have some time as a single person only needing to worry about myself.
It is possible for both states to be satisfying and healthy, even in the same person (although obviously not at the same time).
It’s possible to be happy with or without children. NOT having children does not automatically make people into slobs, or porn watchers, or whatever negative you seem to imagine. Having kids doesn’t automatically make people organized, neat, and not watchers of porn.
Having children should be an option, not ever something forced on people.
That said, there are a number of factors that influence whether or not people have kids, either biological or adopted (or sometimes both). It would be a wonderful world if we were wise enough to manipulate those factors to encourage sufficient numbers of people to make decisions that benefit society without needing to coerce anyone. Or at least reduce the factors that limit choice.
If anything, it tends to do the opposite.
Jumping in this thread so apologies it this is rehashing something already said.
Parenting is different than it used to be. I think it’s borne of a generation not wanting to repeat parents’ mistakes combined when overestimating risks based on social media exposure. But the level of surveillance you are expected by society to have over your child is, as far as I know, unprecedented. The dominant expectation for one’s parenting approach is to monitor them at all times, validate every feeling, always remain calm, and in some cases not even use the word “no.” You can’t say, “good job” either, according to the experts. It’s not just kids being surveilled, but parents too. With the rise of “gentle parenting,” the only thing that researchers have figured out so far is that it makes parents miserable. The amount of time parents are expected to spend with children has increased as well. What has also changed is that parents are expected to do it entirely on their own, with no community or family support, which again, unprecedented.
Childcare costs about the cost of college tuition at this point, too. And grandparents are increasingly either too old or otherwise unwilling to assist with the logistics. School and other required activities are still structured around the assumption that one parent is not working, and we all know that’s no longer the case.
Speaking as someone with zero logistical support for our child, we don’t get a break unless we pay someone.
All that said, I think people’s willingness to discuss the difficulties, especially in online spaces, may contribute to a chilling effect on people having kids. Because everything I discussed is really stressful and real, but it doesn’t diminish the joy of having a child. And I think there’s maybe a disconnect there. To be sure, I’m not suggesting all people should have kids. People should do what they want. But when you have a culture that mostly magnifies the struggles, it looks less appealing than perhaps it actually is. I also think when people think about not wanting kids, they think of not wanting babies, which is a fraction of a child’s lifetime. Because there are a mountain of essays about how much having a baby sucks (it does.)
I’ve met a fair amount of people my age who do want children but they are hyper-aware of the drawbacks so they just sit in the fence. The problem is if you can only conceive of the drawbacks, but not the benefits, you lack the full picture.
We might benefit from a happy medium. Like, yes, this is hard in XYZ ways. But here are specific factors or ways that it can be a more pleasant experience.
I’m not really talking about people living on the edge of poverty with a bunch of hurdles, I’m talking about your average middle class or upper middle class people and how they conceptualize having children. I think it’s skewed negative.
Oh, I also wanted to add that I was child-free until age 37. I had time to get an education, start a career, for quite some time I only worked part-time, I honestly have no idea what I did with all that free time, I suppose I spent most of it writing. My life was fine. I wanted kids pretty badly, but I didn’t feel a big gaping hole in my heart or anything. I could have lived a fulfilling life without children. I even said cute things like, “I’m not going to be one of those parents who makes my children the center of my universe.”
LOL.
Now that I have a child, though, I sometimes wish I could have more, and I would have started sooner to make that more likely. It’s untenable for a variety of reasons, one being the particular child we have. I’m not sure we could meet his needs if we had divided attention.
Anyway, my view of my life before my son is pretty dim. Meaning it’s hard to see and remember. It took some time, but parenting remade me. The old life feels like it belonged to someone else.
There’s no way to conceptualize that when you don’t have children. To a very large extent you have to decide without having all the information.
I think the problem is that everyone has opinions on how to raise children and too many people thrust their opinions on on others. In the past all these opinionated people, like extended families and neighborhoods, also provided support. But these days, we get the opinions and not the support. It’s not just social media, but endless books and videos that eagerly tell you how to be a better parent. But not so many people actually helping you and telling you what you’re doing it right.
For example, the advice “you can’t say, ‘good job’ either, according to the experts” simply demonstrates how unhelpful some people are at raising children. How can anyone (including a child) know they’re doing something correctly if there’s no positive feedback? It’s terrible advice on the face of it. Of course, today’s parents don’t have the community support they used to, so that terrible advice isn’t softened with physical or emotional support.
The emotional support for parents these days is on Facebook and Reddit, and that backfires as often as it helps. For new mothers it becomes a contest for who can sacrifice the most. I don’t have a Mom so that’s what I had. I would say it’s inadequate.
Most of the actual experts I know mock that position.
Which isn’t to dispute your point, just your attribution of it to some expert consensus.
IMHO the parenting surveillance is partly because there isn’t the structure of support: a neighborhood of parents with their eyes out; extended families around. There is also an elevation of fear of highly unlikely but nonzero risk events. “Free range” parenting may be too far but the basic bit has a lot to support it.
That said, kids given more ability to be out without supervision at young ages is more the norm in Japan. And we know the fertility issues they have. So that as the major factor seems unlikely.
There is no expert consensus, just trends. But the ubiquitous nature of the Internet makes it difficult to really see any alternatives. Right now you’ve got gentle parenting and you’ve got right-wing whack jobs encouraging you to abuse your children, there isn’t really a middle option that I’ve seen.
(I tell my kid “good job” every day, FWIW.)
I was really just using that as an example of how weird things are now.
I did have abusive parents, but they did some things right, and one of those things was equal measures of responsibility and freedom. I routinely left the house for hours at a time to play outside with friends or go to the lake or whatever, and I think it was good for me. I had to earn it, though.
Sure. And the great majority of parents do get chance to travel, dedicate themselves to hobbies, or whatever else they want to do, both before having kids and after they leave home.
But culture and the people around you necessarily have a great impact on this decision, because unlike with dating, you can’t try out having kids and go back to being childless if you hate it. So I don’t think it’s enough to say people are making a rational decision about what is best for them. I spent most of my life not wanting kids, and now that I have one, I know my earlier decision was wrong, and made with no real understanding of what being a parent is like. (And I also wish I had started earlier, so I could have had at least one more child.)
I’m sure there are people who are genuinely better off never having kids, but that number is unlikely to change much between generations. One thing that has changed is attitudes towards having kids, and this is a good description (better than what I was writing 
) of the sort of things that are likely putting people off from doing something they’d enjoy:
And there is a positive feedback loop, because lack of personal contact with children and babies in an atomised and low birthrate society is a big contributor to people not realising they’d like to be parents. This is a major reason I don’t think we’ll see birthrates rebound naturally if population falls. If you don’t see people around you having kids, you are less likely to do so either.