https://www.npr.org/2025/10/31/nx-s1-5551108/housing-costs-b...
The Boomer generation has perpetuated and intensified restrictive zoning. The lack of new homes where well-payong jobs are located has caused housing prices to soar.
The Boomer generation has also led the de-growth movement. I guess they are going to get their way by making it too expensive for their grandkids to have children and cause the population to plummet.
This census investigation is talking about people under the age of 18, meaning it includes people who were conceived almost two decades ago.
Several states on the list also have significantly above average housing affordability (home price to income ratios) like West Virginia or Pennsylvania.
It is cultural. Having kids is low status in the modern world. And it fucking makes a lot of sense. I only like kids because I have kids, my wife wanted to have kids, and I was kind of forced into it. Now, I love having kids, but because I already have them.
I would say you have high birthrates despite low material growth in patriarchal countries, where men have more leverage over women. Whereas in countries struggling with birthrates, women have higher standards. For example, home ownership is a bottleneck. In the USA the supply of homes is artificially constrained by the older property-owning class to boost the value of their investment (but really it will result in a crash due to resulting population changes). In china, you have different shenanigans in the construction industry.
"Third world" immigrant groups have lower standards at first, but after they reach a certain material status in a "first world" country, they have the same birthrate trend as their native peers.
West Virginia is a surprise to me, I can only guess that is because of young people moving out. Same could probably be said for Rhode Island, Maine and Vermont.
I can't think of a single year in human history when the world wasn't crazy (maybe with the exception of a couple years in the late 1990s)
We face the largest demographic crisis ever and we're passing the problem onto the young while draining them via taxation, whislt demanding ever increasing benefits in an all out land grab.
In 1950 the ratio of those paying into the system versus withdrawing was 15:1, were now at 2:1.
Please go advocate for the Chinese to take immigrants from everywhere on earth at the same time, which they currently do not at all. Or do you not care about that for some reason?
It is far from evident what size of real productive population is needed to sustain a society. With modern tools it does feel like it could be in the realm of sub 10% of the population. This will get even more wild if the techno-optimists are correct.
Depending on how close we are to biophysical bounds trying to increase the population to the historically required productive ratios is just going to make living conditions worse for the average person.
I have my own ideas, but I'd love to hear your opinion.
It makes no sense to have kids when you can't afford your own existence.
Tax the fucking rich.
Comparing the affordability crisis for the middle class in the US to that of historically poor developing countries as it relates to birth rates is not a very good argument.
It might be somewhat comparable a decade or so from now if we keep letting wealth inequality run away at current rates, but it isn't right now.
Is this a serious question?
The average price of a home in 1950 was like $7,500 - $10,000.
The average price of a home in 2025 is like $410,000 - $530,000
Of all the (generally) rising numbers that factor into the US economy, wages is one of the major things that has risen the least since the 1950s, and especially so since 1980.
Empires are fucking resilient creations. The news of US hegemony demise are vastly exagerated.
All the climate change problems, wars, pandemics and natural disasters won't devastate human simply because we been through all those and we recovered. But demographic collapse because of high living standard? It's uncharted territory here and I am really, really worry.
Phrase things with the blame assigned accordingly. Your phrasing blames people for not becoming parents. A more accurate phrasing is '....because their wealthy elites are so greedy they make having children unaffordable'
"Demographic collapse" is because people can't afford rent, can't afford food, can't afford healthcare - childbirth is ABSURDLY expensive in the US, can't afford childcare, and so many other things.
Why is that? Because of greed. More and more of everything is swallowed up by private equity and corporate management who have no empathy, no flexibility, only a demand for eternal growth. The human piece is irrelevant and actively undesirable. Far simpler to just pay for some GPUs and write articles blaming ordinary people for having no more options.
A few examples of fertility rates (higher is better, 2023 data):
Sweden: 1.45
US: 1.62
Kenya: 3.21I would surmise it’s the opposite cause, people are wealthier now and so kids are less desirable because the opportunity cost is higher.
Most families had only one person working, and one available for childcare. Housing was dramatically cheaper. So was a university education. So was food.
And no - unregulated capitalistic greed has dramatically accelerated in the last few decades. It hasn't always been this way. Corporations are buying up everything so they can extract rent and using algorithms and regulatory control to extract every possible dime. Where before you might rent a small home from a landlord who would understand if you were laid off and had to skip a month or two (and who might not raise rents every year) now you have an apartment owned by equity using software to talk to all the other landlords and fix prices as high as possible who will file eviction if you're a minute late.
To get some sober second thought though, you could watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIDnr646tLA&t=1452s
It tears down the strawman case of demographic collapse, but I'm with you that its still pretty scary looking and quite unprecedented.
thijson•5h ago
https://www.populationpyramid.net/world/2024/
I noticed some middle eastern countries have a very skewed male female ratio among people born roughly 30 years ago.
bentcorner•4h ago
zeroonetwothree•1h ago
whatsupdog•3h ago