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Cross-posted from Twitter:

I’ve heard several other people report similar things about what their friends are planning. I think you’re on to something.

At the same time, there are two major caveats as to what your observations imply about overall fertility:

One: sorting. Other people’s “observations of friends” have produced very different averages. In the linked thread, many people report <1.0TFR averages, even >35yo.

People who want kids (or don’t) tend to disproportionately make friends with each other.

Two: the “friendship paradox”. Your friends very likely have more friends than the average person, because if they didn’t have friends, they wouldn’t be your friend!

And we know that people with fewer friends are less likely to get married or have kids. So “observations of friends” are likely to systematically overestimate fertility.

I’m curious if you have data on a cohort that is _not_ selected (e.g. a plausibly random sample of your high school classmates).

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All very true - I’m planning to look at data on cohabitation by age for a follow up which might indicate how atypical my friends are since all but one are married or engaged. But, my sample is *somewhat* random - 4 of the girlfriends included are from elementary school, 2 from college, 3 are my fiancées friends from college and the other two are old colleagues who I happened to keep in touch with. Could still be selection but less than you might assume.

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Molson wrote: The average number of kids had by my college classmate is:

0.8 We are in our late 30s and the median salary for our school at graduation is ~$90,000.

Total demographic disaster.

--- Saying the median salary for the graduates' parents is ninety thousand or for the graduates?

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Another thing I’ve heard some other people who work on this propose for the college educated class, is shortening the length of college degrees by a year or two.

The current 4 year college pathway means you enter the workforce in your mid-twenties and will end up being financially stable only in your early thirties.

If the time to attain those qualifications was shortened a bit, you could enter the workforce in your early 20s and have the same duration of time earning money and as a result become financially stable in your late 20s instead. Which could be a potential sweet spot where you’re still highly fertile and now financially stable.

Also gives some more time to people at that stage of their career to date more if they haven’t already since women in their early 30s stress out but if they were in their late 20s instead but still in the same financial position, they could vet men better and date better too.

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Yeah, I’m certainly open to those sort of proposals. I think many women, especially smart ambitious women, benefit from some years of being an adult without kids before they’re ready to be a mom - and being in the workforce earlier would help with that. For many people, certainly for me, in the college years you’re still living as a semi child and I think people need some time to mature. So yeah, think that would help. Also think more women with the means/access should freeze their eggs, I think fertility preservation is very undervalued.

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Freezing eggs may soon be banned I hear.

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(This obviously applies specifically to the highly educated group of society which is only about 33-40% of the population. So not the majority).

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To some extent, this problem solves itself though it may take a while. There will still be variation in the number of children and those that for whatever reason desire larger families will pass that preference on to their kids who will make up a larger portion of the population with each generation.

More personally, I think if I were to go back and do it again, I’d have a third child but at 46/41 that ship has mostly sailed.

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Yes, agreed, but I still think that shorter term the issue is whether the people who are having the most kids have cultures that are also productive and pro-progress. Most of the high fertility sub-cultures are relatively disconnected from science, technology etc. and I think that's reason for concern at a societal level.

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Thank you for such a well-researched, thoughtful piece. I’m inclined to agree with you - anecdotally, my friends in their twenties and thirties either want no kids, or several.

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Thank you, Liv!

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But why is declining fertility a problem at a historic period of all time peak population? I think we will see some economic problems like working until 80 except no one will hire us, but I think right now some more room would be nice.

I like the term “peopling”. Peopling happens when there is a big empty prairie and people just feel like this place needs to be peopled. There is the opposite kind of feeling when there are ten million people in your city, the roads cannot deal with the traffic but the bus, too, is very full. I think there is a certain feeling of overcrowdedness.

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You are probably right about the reasons for delayed family starts being things that a simple child subsidy won't fix, but that doesn't mean they're not fixable at all. Reducing the workist mentality in high-status jobs, and making it easier for twentysomethings to achieve financial stability and solid romantic relationships, seem like things very much worth doing for human flourishing generally, and if they also enable people who want more kids to have them, so much the better, no?

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I guess it depends on the person, but I personally am happy I had the extra time to develop as an adult before having kids. I think there are many women who benefit from some time to mature, especially given how protected and sheltered middle class childhood and college years can be. That said, I also had the ability to freeze eggs when I turned 30 which most women don’t have easy access to. And I’m also personally biased because I had financial stability and a stable partner in my 20s and it didn’t work out and I’m grateful we didn’t have kids. I also have a number of friends who similarly would’ve had kids with the “wrong person” and are now in better relationships and having babies. I don’t know about the typical young woman or young man, but most of us didn’t know what we should be looking for in our early 20s because we didn’t know ourselves or what we wanted out of life. Final thing I’ll say is that for ambitious couples having kids young won’t necessarily lead to higher fertility;in my family it was the opposite, my parents had me at 19 and their 20s were so stressful they didn’t have the capacity to have a second baby. By the time they were stable they didn’t want to go back to the “baby stage” and so only had one but I’m pretty sure they would’ve had two if they started a bit later. Ok one more final thing is that outcomes for older mothers are very good these days - if you’re starting at 34 you can still fit in 3 kids without even necessarily needing reproductive tech to help. I think the real issue is that people don’t want to have 3 kids, or at least they don’t want it enough to make sure they space their pregnancies close etc. one of the things I’ve seen with friends is that they’re quite flexible on number of babies and that’s why I think some will end up having only one. They could fit two or even three but would have to be intentional to do so and many are not.

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I also think waaay more women who have the means/access to freeze eggs should be doing this, but I recognize this will always probably make sense only for a minority of women

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Right now “don’t have kids” is the cheat code to outbidding people of similar class for rival goods.

It would take large re-ordering of the tax structure to fix that “hack”, but its not impossible.

New Child Tax Credit (simplified, CBO balanced)

1) $15,000, 0% refundable (including regressive FICA solves this)

2) Taxes based on Income + FICA (15.3%)*, not just income

3) Eliminate SALT, Mortgage Interest, and SS Income CAP* ($168k+)

USDA: kid costs $18k/year to raise to age 18

*FICA benefits same

Eliminate three rich people tax breaks to provide up to the full cash cost of raising a kid if you pay that much in taxes.

Eliminates “double taxation” of making people pay cost to raise kids and taxes to support the state/entitlements.  Many high tax will pay when empty nesters.  Majority households don’t have children.

Makes debate about protecting tax breaks for rich childless versus supporting families.  SALT versus children.

SALT: $210B

MORTGAGE: $70B

SS CAP: $250B

Total: ~$530B

$2,000 refundable CTC = $122 billion, with $74 billion in tax reductions and $48 billion in refundable tax credits.  Most people won’t collect $15,000 per kid because they don’t pay enough tax.

This should ballpark work, but you can write into the legislation that the $15k will be whatever the CBO says balances to $0.

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Thanks for the mention. I think you make your case convincingly, but this should really be addressed to Stephen J Shaw. As you sort of hint, if anything, it works better for my theory if lower birth rates are driven more by family size than semi-involuntary childlessness. I don't really remember why I even mentioned it.

Anyway, I think the main point of contention (with him, not me) concerns the proportion of women like you already in their 30s who intend to have children and actually will. His point is that it will be a lot hard for you to couple up than you think, and, after that, a lot harder to conceive than you think.

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Most of the childless women I know in their 30s are married or engaged.

Agree that this works with your theory which is why mentioned you - I think the socially recursive decision making is right and that’s what worries me about more single child families. You just mentioned the childlessness as a throwaway comment - had seen it several times before and wanted to address it

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So, as I say, this should really be directed more at Stephen J Shaw. I'm happy that post did well by the standards of a small Substack, but he has YouTube videos with 500,000 views. He seems very affable and I'm sure he'd be happy to appear on Moral Mayhem.

Thinking about it, I got the idea of socially recursive fertility from watching his documentary, and then when I wrote the post, I thought it would be correct to reference him, but when I went back and re-watched the documentary it turned out my memory of it was substantially hallucinatory and he spend the great bulk of it talking about his involuntary childlessness theory. If you're correct, the most efficient way of spreading your message is probably to persuade him.

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Thanks, will check him out!

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The huge rise in infertility, pregnancy complications, still births and miscarriages since 2021 is likely to make all previous statistical analysis and predictions worthless. I think we are entering into uncharted territory. Some midwives are reporting more dead babies than live births during some shifts. Some fertility clinics are reporting previously fertile clients (or the partners of their clients) have now become infertile since 2021.

While all the trends seem to be nosediving, this might cause a reversal of the 'It's fine to leave it until I'm 35" mentality. I suspect many women (by which I mean vaccinated women) will soon begin to rethink their priorities and try to have kids during their most fertile years, to maximise their chances of success. We've already seen vaccinated women lying about their vax status on dating apps which suggests they already acknowledge the issue.

Some researchers have expressed concerns that the children born to vaxxed mothers today will turn out to be infertile in 20 years time, in which case all of this is moot anyway and we're stuffed. At least there are still SOME anti vaxxers out there who managed to resist the offer of a free burger and fries. Most of the 'elite' class obviously didn't get it either so they'll be OK.

As one twitter comment from April this year read: "My daughter is a freshman at U Michigan. She might be one among the 100 unvaxxed students in the entire 50,000 student population. She knows 3 other unvaxxed kids. All are heirs to billionaires. The Vax were meant for the peasant class. It's just that some of us peasants knew it."

However bad it gets, I feel there will be a major shift in values from 'babies threaten my fulfilling lifestyle' to 'my fertility is my greatest concern'. A worsening economy (less 'fulfilling careers' out there) will only speed up this change in attitudes.

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Even with all the DEI discussion for or against it up in the air, It’s not nearly as bad as East Asia.. do Americans really need to worry about this issue prematurely? I’m sure that when fertility rates go below 1.4 nationally or below 1.2 for whites, they SHOULD treat this as a national-level imminent threat, which should come in 30-40 years, but until then..

And if it reaches 2050, most adults pondering this question right now will (almost) reach seniority and can safely toss the problem to their children and/or pets. The social structure will only start seriously crumbling away in probably 2070 or smth.

Whereas…. Some countries will face America’s 2070 much, much, much earlier and it will be nasty for South Korea. I mean, Europe and America manage to foresee population structure implosion way before it actually gets irrecoverably serious, where’s the introspection coming from SK? My view is that China and Japan are at least trying to assess the issue.

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Are single men with pets demonized as much as "cat ladies" are?

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"Population collapse" is overblown. Human will flourish more without more humans around. There is so much poverty and suffering amongst us right now that a reduction in that will be a net benefit. Less humans, less suffering. This idea that the planet will be full of old, sick people with no young people out there working and paying taxes to keep them alive is ridiculous. There will be less of both old and young people but there will be enough of both to keep things going. We are at maximum number of people we've ever had now. Does that mean 60 years ago the world was ending because there were so much less people? Please don't come at me saying there were more young than old people back then. Doesn't matter. The population balances out in any case. Less young means less old too as they die off. Then the population again skews younger as a whole.

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Since absence of a suitable partner as well as pursuit of education and career account for delayed childbearing, I’ve often wondered about the potential impact on fertility rates of making it easier and more acceptable for single women to have children e.g. co-housing communities, etc.

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I guess this is why Israel needs that beach front property in Gaza.

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Boomer here, Iwonder how much the economy has a factor. Back when we married (24 &21) not only were SAHMs the norm but starting a family, buying a house and settling in by your mid to late 20s was the norm. My 15 year nephew told me the other day that he'll probably never leave home, much less own one. Well marriage, kids, I think you can draw some clear conclusions from that.

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Judaism is a shame culture. Being barren incurs some social cost among Jews.

For Christians, on the other hand, you either believe or you don't -- that's between you and God. Hence Christians don't push an ethnic/nationalist (i.e. natalist) agenda on society at large.

Childrearing is very much an obligation, and the tradeoff as presented in culturally Christian societies is that those who make that sacrifice earn a reward in heaven, while those who don't get more out of the world.

Today, due to the full-scale assault on non-materialist outlooks, the balance has tipped decisively in favor of "the world". That's really all there is to it. Nothing complicated at all. Do I serve myself in this world or God in hope of the next? The same shift is happening all over the world -- not just here.

Jews, for their part, are promised world-domination for their efforts. It is very much an immanent religion so the reward is presented as a tangible thing in this world and their women are urged to get with the program for their own and society's material benefit.

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"Jews, for their part, are promised world-domination for their efforts. "

What?!

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It's spelled out fairly clearly in the OT:

Isaiah 60:10-12 “Foreigners will rebuild your walls, and their kings will serve you. Though in anger I struck you, in favor I will show you compassion. Your gates will always stand open, they will never be shut, day or night, so that people may bring you the wealth of the nations. their kings led in triumphal procession.For the nation or kingdom that will not serve you will perish; it will be utterly ruined."

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"Foreigners will rebuild your walls, and their kings will serve you. "

Hmmmm.... is this a prediction to what's happening now?

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