People are not optimistic about the future, and why should they be?
The previously "looming" climate crisis that we did little to nothing to slow down is here, now, and the real-world negative effects of it are getting worse faster than the predictions that a lot of people used to label as alarmist.
Economic inequality is teetering nearly all of the world's economies on the brink of runaway major crises.
I'm stuck here in this ridiculous society we're running off a cliff, but I don't have to doom anyone else to this fate by having kids.
that is not true - this is ignorant of facts
funny enough before people used to make estimates of how earth won't have resources to carry a large population. hence some people would need to settle in space or that there needs to a massive drive in birth control, which led to Chinese 1 child policy which has had a devastating effect.
Wait, now I'm nervous...
The boomers will continue to choke the young into extinction and young people will die alone because they don’t have sex or form relationships.
On the plus side, with everyone else going extinct, if I can have lots of children who also have lots of children, within a few hundred years my descendants will rule the barren wasteland. The time of the munchkins has come!
- Sent from my Lovesense Gush 3
I've heard explanations for South Korea's low birth rate but they seemed country specific. What is it about Argentina?
> Yesterday, I told you Mexico’s total fertility rate is at 1.2. Today, let me remind you that Argentina’s total fertility rate is at 1.05: screenshot from the Argentine statistical agency below. Yes, 1.05. Argentina, in 2014, was at 2.3: a drop of more than 50% in a decade.
> And before you tell me “it’s Milei’s/the Peronists’/Leo Messi’s fault,” remember the following: of the 236 countries and territories on the planet, 219 have a clear negative trend in fertility. Of the remaining 17, I’d say the trend is negative as well in probably 16, although statistical methods have a hard time picking it up for one reason or another. The remaining one? Israel.
> So, if you think fertility is going down in your country because of some country-specific reason X, well, you might want to think twice.
https://ourworldindata.org/population-simulation-tool?demogr...
https://ourworldindata.org/which-countries-have-already-pass...
Peak population forecasted for 2050.
South Korea – A cautionary tale for the rest of humanity - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46230576 - December 2025 (177 comments) ("Childbearing decisions are memetically influenced. They are shaped by the decisions peers make and the examples they see around them in everyday life.")
Birthgap [video] - https://youtube.com/watch?v=m2GeVG0XYTc
Surely this explanation is circular. People look around and see that their peers are having fewer kids. But why are their peers having fewer kids to begin with? There has to be a backstop somewhere otherwise you get infinite regress.
Terra Incognita: The Economics of a Shrinking World [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49352811 - August 2026
> "As of 2026, humanity is likely below replacement fertility. That has never happened before, not in wars or pandemics. But the real surprise is that the fall has been concentrated in low- and middle-income countries and among poorer and less educated women. We fit a single-factor model to 236 countries since 1950: the common component peaked in 1978, and what drives fertility down today are country-specific trends, 219 of them negative and not one leveling off. None of the commonly cited mechanisms can account for this pattern, so we offer a conjecture: modernity itself, which makes a third child expensive and childlessness cheap. Children come in integers, so it takes very little to move a cohort’s fertility rate from 1.8 to 1.3. And nothing in an economy pushes fertility back to 2.1. We close with the main economic consequences, in particular slow growth."
> There has to be a backstop somewhere otherwise you get infinite regress.
In summary, the global population boom happened because women were not educated and empowered to assert their reproductive choices. They are now. We are currently performing neutral fertility rate discovery via who does and does not choose to have children when it is a choice, versus when it is not a choice or forgone conclusion. A byproduct of this was economic growth, which is coming to an end, and will not repeat in our lifetimes based on demographic trends and trajectories.
More seriously, who can start a family when economy is this unstable?
also, by many stats Argentina is more stable of what it was before. what stat you refer indicates less stability?
seems peronista detected here.
It's just a term of art with a longstanding specific meaning, just like any other term of art. No one even passingly familiar with the topic would be confused by it here.