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| Home Front: Politix |
| Making Kids Worthless: Social Security's Contribution to the Fertility Crisis |
| 2007-01-27 |
| Posted by:tipper |
| #7 Here's a variation on the standard homily: "You know, in China, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . they're aborting children like you". |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2007-01-27 23:46 |
| #6 A: So ironically, not only are people not having children to preserve themselves from physical and economic ruin; they are doing it to avoid the risk of depriving their children of what society expects children to have. Which is kind of silly, because the most important thing *any* kid can have is life. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2007-01-27 23:42 |
| #5 Pappy: Yep, that is the sorry case. The message endlessly repeated to young people is don't have children you can't support. But there is a big difference between what children need and what the government and society want children to have. As a culture, we have developed a dread fear of the idea that someone had "a deprived childhood", even using it as an excuse for adult misbehavior. It is a convenient ploy to claim to be a victim, or to feel you are a victim, because of something your parents couldn't buy you. It is even fodder for humor, like in the movie the Addams Family Values, where the baby sitter turns into a homicidal maniac, solely because when she was a girl she wanted a Malibu Barbie, and her parents bought her a Ballerina Barbie, or visa versa. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2007-01-27 21:11 |
| #4 So ironically, not only are people not having children to preserve themselves from physical and economic ruin; they are doing it to avoid the risk of depriving their children of what society expects children to have. "We had to not have kids in order to save them"? |
| Posted by: Pappy 2007-01-27 20:13 |
| #3 we had three children because a) that is the number we felt we could afford (i.e.: support in a level we felt comfortable, financially) and b) we felt that was the number (and years spacing) that felt best. Unfortunately (in some respects, post divorce) I ended up raising all three. That was enough for me, and I felt (the kids agree) I did a good job. Four or more....I don't know... |
| Posted by: Frank G 2007-01-27 19:03 |
| #2 There are two factors at work in modern nations demographics. The first is an economic plateau, which is relative to a nation. It can be shown that when the vast majority of people in that nation reach that plateau, the birthrate drops to 2.1-2.3 It is a sharp and distinct plateau. This is almost unavoidable. However, the other factor is governmental and social factors that, while they generally cannot *raise* the birthrate, they can very noticeably *lower* it even further. This means that if people have a choice, and do not have to have many children to support the family and them in their old age, they just prefer to have two or three. Children are difficult to produce and raise and most people can only manage two or three before they are exhausted. Biologically, fertility also drops when people are not living in starvation conditions. However, government and society can add additional pressures and hardships to having children. This is often done out of good motives, wanting children to have "good lives", more material possessions, better education, etc. The list goes on and on. But each governmental or social demand is just one more straw to the overburdened camel's back. And each new requirement means fewer couples will want to have more than that first or second child. In the early 1960s, the costs of raising a child to their parents was estimated in the tens of thousands of dollars. By the year 2000, a child living a "good life" and graduating college supported by their parents can approach one million dollars. This is leaps and bounds beyond the rate of inflation. It long ago surpassed the anticipated ability of a family to pay, and so some of the cost is passed on to the government; however, the stress on prospective parents is enormous. So ironically, not only are people not having children to preserve themselves from physical and economic ruin; they are doing it to avoid the risk of depriving their children of what society expects children to have. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2007-01-27 18:34 |
| #1 In fact I think that the retirement scheme only could work if you told people: no kids, no retirement. What we have now is people who have been able to spare (because they had no kids, getting the same retirement pension than those who spent their money on educating their kids and spared less. In fact, specially between women, very often the childless people have higher pensions due to better carreers because they had no kids |
| Posted by: JFM 2007-01-27 17:27 |