The low Euro birthrate thing has come up again, so allow me to...
eugyppius@eugyppius1
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Aug 28, 2024
~3 min read
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1
The low Euro birthrate thing has come up again, so allow me to speak about this, in 12 points:
1) Low birthrates are a consequence of industrialisation. Almost all industrially developed countries right now have below-replacement fertility. Asia is having a much harder time than the West.
2) European countries saw fertility decline roughly in tandem with the industrial revolution – with much local variation! with a lot of noise! – for very logical reasons.
3) These reasons: In pre-industrial society, infant mortality is high. You invest less in offspring. You have as many kids as possible because they're useful labour in agricultural economies where individual productivity is low. This is a reproductive strategy tilted towards the 'r' end of the r/K spectrum. In industrialised society, infant mortality is minuscule. Offspring require enormous training. Their individual productivity is incredible. Industrialisation tilts everyone towards extreme 'K' reproductive strategies, and that means fewer kids.
4) The developed world is seeing radical, unprecedented 'K' reproductive strategies right now. The symptoms are everywhere: The dreaded helicopter parents, higher education expenses as a form of social signalling, childhood extending into the mid-20s and beyond.
5) A lot of the things cited as causes for this shift seem to be epiphenomenal. As women's childbearing role becomes less important, you have feminism (i.e., women lusting after men's roles, as the traditional women's role of child-bearing becomes less important). Feminism makes its first appearance just before the first collapse to below-replacement fertility in the 1920s and 1930s. You also have medical birth control and medical abortion, whereas in pre-industrial society you have folk medicine oriented hugely around fertility enhancement.
6) The baby boom was a massive exception to fertility decline in the industrialised West. It hints that you can have higher fertility in technologically advanced societies despite it all. The baby boom reversed the secular decline in fertility for a whole generation, but afterwards low fertility returned.
7) The central factor driving the baby boom was earlier nuptiality, in particular women marrying at much younger ages.
8) Across much of the West even today, long-term married couples have above-replacement fertility. These people will populate the earth in coming generations. A great weeding-out is happening right now.
9) It is nevertheless true that second- (and later-)wave feminism, abortion, birth control all played a role in ending the baby boom.
10) AT THE SAME TIME, these developments just seem to have restored the prior trend-line of pre-baby-boom declining fertility. The implication, again, is that industrial society in favouring 'K' reproductive strategies devalues traditional female social child-bearing roles and causes them to aspire to male social status instead.
11) The 'demographic transition' describes a shift from high mortality, high birthrate societies, to low mortality, low birthrate societies in industrial conditions. There is, conceptually, somewhere in the future, a second 'demographic transition' awaiting the industrialised world, where replacement fertility is reattained – either because labour shortages cause industrial society to de-complexify and tilt more in the 'r' direction, or because natural selection favours those who can maintain above-replacement fertility even in industrial conditions. Probably both will play a role.
12) Mass migration to the West threatens to fuck up this second demographic transition catastrophically. It is a false near-term solution that can't work even on its own terms.
1) Low birthrates are a consequence of industrialisation. Almost all industrially developed countries right now have below-replacement fertility. Asia is having a much harder time than the West.
2) European countries saw fertility decline roughly in tandem with the industrial revolution – with much local variation! with a lot of noise! – for very logical reasons.
3) These reasons: In pre-industrial society, infant mortality is high. You invest less in offspring. You have as many kids as possible because they're useful labour in agricultural economies where individual productivity is low. This is a reproductive strategy tilted towards the 'r' end of the r/K spectrum. In industrialised society, infant mortality is minuscule. Offspring require enormous training. Their individual productivity is incredible. Industrialisation tilts everyone towards extreme 'K' reproductive strategies, and that means fewer kids.
4) The developed world is seeing radical, unprecedented 'K' reproductive strategies right now. The symptoms are everywhere: The dreaded helicopter parents, higher education expenses as a form of social signalling, childhood extending into the mid-20s and beyond.
5) A lot of the things cited as causes for this shift seem to be epiphenomenal. As women's childbearing role becomes less important, you have feminism (i.e., women lusting after men's roles, as the traditional women's role of child-bearing becomes less important). Feminism makes its first appearance just before the first collapse to below-replacement fertility in the 1920s and 1930s. You also have medical birth control and medical abortion, whereas in pre-industrial society you have folk medicine oriented hugely around fertility enhancement.
6) The baby boom was a massive exception to fertility decline in the industrialised West. It hints that you can have higher fertility in technologically advanced societies despite it all. The baby boom reversed the secular decline in fertility for a whole generation, but afterwards low fertility returned.
7) The central factor driving the baby boom was earlier nuptiality, in particular women marrying at much younger ages.
8) Across much of the West even today, long-term married couples have above-replacement fertility. These people will populate the earth in coming generations. A great weeding-out is happening right now.
9) It is nevertheless true that second- (and later-)wave feminism, abortion, birth control all played a role in ending the baby boom.
10) AT THE SAME TIME, these developments just seem to have restored the prior trend-line of pre-baby-boom declining fertility. The implication, again, is that industrial society in favouring 'K' reproductive strategies devalues traditional female social child-bearing roles and causes them to aspire to male social status instead.
11) The 'demographic transition' describes a shift from high mortality, high birthrate societies, to low mortality, low birthrate societies in industrial conditions. There is, conceptually, somewhere in the future, a second 'demographic transition' awaiting the industrialised world, where replacement fertility is reattained – either because labour shortages cause industrial society to de-complexify and tilt more in the 'r' direction, or because natural selection favours those who can maintain above-replacement fertility even in industrial conditions. Probably both will play a role.
12) Mass migration to the West threatens to fuck up this second demographic transition catastrophically. It is a false near-term solution that can't work even on its own terms.
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gf complaints to me that there are feminists and proto-feminists well before 1900. this true, but a) they all align very well w/ declining industrial-era fertility, and b) they are not meaningful political force until the tfr falls off a cliff in early 20th c.