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    With a record-low 1.25 children per Canadian woman, stop dismissing falling fertility rates as a choice


    Nothing more to say other than yikes. We've been bashing Japan for years on this, now Canada is at a level WORSE than Japan btw 🙂

    Posted by Gooner-Kissinger

    View 6 Comments

    6 Comments

    1. Approximation_Doctor on

      >stop dismissing falling fertility rates as a choice

      >When the cost of something goes up, people choose to use less of it.

      ?!¿

    2. ddddddoa on

      Very bad time for anti-immigration sentiments to be soaring. But at least we don`t have a government that’s actively hostile to it.

    3. SleeplessInPlano on

      I’m sure this thread will be calm and uncontroversial. Given these low rates, when are the negative effects predicted to appear? I’ve been watching China to see how they’re handling it, but they are still in the early phases. 

      At a local level I see it happening to schools, but that’s also a problem of single family home suburbs. 

    4. Lux_Stella on

      >The distinction between choices and preferences matters a lot when talking about birth rates. A 2023 Cardus study found that Canadian women without kids wanted an average of 2.2 children, and expected to have 1.9.

      its good to start framing it this way (that a lot of women are having less children then their stated preferences). although this article basically concedes the problem that we have no actual solution to this lol

      im actually pretty skeptical (based solely on priors and vibes) with the article’s assertion that home prices are a major driver of this vs general career-related oppertunity costs

    5. workingtrot on

      Fertility Crisis: Here’s Why Solving My Pet Social Issue Will Fix It

      Look, whatever your Pet Social Issue is, some other country has tried it and it hasn’t worked. The only things that work are being Amish and/ or having high infant mortality, and I never see anyone advocating for that

    6. Golda_M on

      I’m in that one place famously *not* experiencing the birth dirth. 

      Anecdotally, I will say that much of the increased “cost” of childraising is increased expectations. The amount of time, attention and materiale required for “adequacy” is far, far higher than it was when I was a child. 

      A statistic I’ve heard is that paternal childcare time is up 500% while female childcare time is up 150%. The inflation is simImilar fir financial inputs. 

      It’s easy to think of these things as choices, and they are. But Otoh… Sub-normative childcare doesn’t *feel* like a choice. People will go into debt, sleep deficit and whatnot to avoid it. 

      For the secular subculture, people have about as many kids as they can afford, and parents ad use each other to be sober about what costs actually are. 

      China is a very good example of the cultural shift. The one-child policy created a culture of investing a lot in children. The idea of investing less to have more becomes unthinkable. 

      That said, I’m largely sympathetic to the argument that a culture and an economy that cannot afford children is pathological… but this is a value statement. 

      That said, modern politics is high cadence… especially western politics. That pretty much puts fertility out of scope. You have to be thinking in generational time scales to affect fertility. This isn’t pure economics. Cultural changes are gradual. 

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