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Every time this sort of news pops up, I think "why aren't they incentivising and subsidizing fertility treatment"? You want to raise the fertility rate, yes?
by julianlam 2mo ago
Every time this sort of news pops up, I think "why aren't they incentivising and subsidizing fertility treatment"?
You want to raise the fertility rate, yes?
You could convince an entire population to have more babies the hard way (social or economic pressure).
Or literally just let the people who are already trying, but can't for some physiological reason, have one. They already want children, if they're pursuing fertility treatment, they're already decently well off, too.
To me it seems like a very obvious, targeted solution!
- skeledrew 2mo agoFar less need for fertility treatment for those trying in their more fertile years (late teens to early 30s); that's when for the most part things "just work".
- nielsbot 2mo agodon’t non-US countries already do this?
- mrweasel 2mo agoYes, and it's not working, birthrates are still declining. The one factor that more than anything triggers declining birthrates are the level of education among women. We're going to have to adjust to smaller populations, unless we wish to devolve as a society.
- nielsbot 2mo ago…or stop educating women! I’m joking. But some religious types say it unironically.
- mrweasel 2mo agoThat is sadly also true, hence my "or devolve as a society". Educating girls, and young women, results in fewer children, but it also yield richer and honestly better societies. You'd struggle to find a rich, first world country, where women don't receive proper education, but it's almost universally true for poor and dysfunctional countries.
- skeledrew 2mo agoThe economics is a sizeable part of the issue. Fix - or preferably replace - the economy so that it's super affordable+rewarding to have and raise children. And make it more acceptable socially to start a family from late teen years (when fertility is just about already at peak).
- thegrim33 2mo agoIt makes sense, but it's probably pretty far down on the list of "what could we put money towards in order to increase birthrate". Could probably get a lot more result for the money by funding efforts to pair people together, make them want to have kids, make them more financially equipped to have kids, etc.
- bdangubic 2mo agothats the problem, it should be at the top of the list (all the way at the top) and nothing else should be close 100th
- fragmede 2mo agoIt's fairly obvious that to raise the birthrate, all you have to do is get rid of proper sex education and promote abstinence-only education to teenagers (because it doesn't work), and get rid of social media for them. Prohibit them from buying alcohol but give them plenty of ways to acquire it. Use teenage rebellious nature to socially engineer them getting drunk together. Teenage pregnancy is how to get them. Of course this is absolutely abhorrent to the left, but the article is discussing the left's lowered birth rates, and giving teenagers, especially women, sex education that works can't be ignored. It's some Handmaiden's Tale shit to dupe teenage women into having kids so they're beholden to a man and their family, so they don't get an opportunity to have their own lives, and are instead merely baby making factories, but this is the future of the human race we're talking about here! No one would ever admit to this being the plan out loud, but it's pretty obvious if you look at it from a societal standpoint, on the level of Dune or the Foundation series of sci-fi writing. Or Idiocracy.
- zdragnar 2mo agoFertility treatment isn't a guarantee. My brother and his wife ended up adopting after treatment failed. The government paying for it also doesn't make it cheaper, it just moves the costs around. A fairer, more effective strategy would be subsidizing the first year or so of the child's care- diapers, food, clothes, cribs, vaccines and such. That would benefit a lot more people.
- bdangubic 2mo agono one (I mean this, not one person on Earth) will be swayed to have a baby given your offer.
- zdragnar 2mo agoChanging the birth rate begins with changing the culture that discourages families of a certain size. Such a program would be a good first step in stating that bearing and raising children is something we value as a society. Coincidentally, I had a similar suspicion about the free/subsidized fertility treatments- the rate of people not having children due to needing medical intervention is small enough that subsidizing it would not meaningfully affect the birthrate of the country. Unless, of course, you believe that being on the left politically makes people less fertile...
- bdangubic 2mo agoI was commenting on > A fairer, more effective strategy would be subsidizing the first year or so of the child's care- diapers, food, clothes, cribs, vaccines and such. And not anything political. United States is so fucked beyond repair when even commenting on birth rates turns into “being on the left politically”
- zdragnar 2mo agoWell, you proposed fertility treatments in a discussion on an article entitled "Falling fertility on the left as a key driver of US birth decline" so I had wrongly assumed you were engaging with that conversation. We're taking two different approaches to the same problem. I suggested something that will change attitudes (though I will concede it would be only a first step, not sufficient on its own) whereas you suggested making medical intervention for fertility cheaper for patients. Hence, my final line was a bit of a tongue in cheek remark on which of the two approaches was more likely to have an impact on the article's thesis.
- tryagainian 2mo ago[flagged]
- uncletammy 2mo ago* citation needed
- tryagainian 2mo ago[flagged]
- tomhow 2mo agoWe've banned this account for repeatedly posting egregiously abusive comments. If you're the longtime user that you've claimed to be, you surely know this is unacceptable.
- OutOfHere 2mo ago[dead]
- s1artibartfast 2mo agoFertility treatments have a small impact. For example, Israel has universal fertility benefiots and this is predicted to contribute ~0.03 TFR. The US and would need a an effect 2,000% (20x) larger to reach replacment. Many EU countries would need an effect 30X stronger. The bigger challenge is the people wanting to have children in the first place. This is driven by social values, preceived preconditions, and when in life those conditions are met. I was just hanging out with some friends for the 4th of July. Their immigrant parents chose to have a child while in college working on their Phds and residing in the US on student visas. I dont know any of my peers that would intentionally make that choice due to the percarious and unstable position.
- polski-g 2mo agoBecause it encourages society to delay childbirth further. If two groups have kids at 20 and another society has them at 30, over those two generations the first would be twice as large as the second. We know how to raise the birth rates: give money to men, discourage parental co-habitation.
- happytoexplain 2mo agoMaybe I'm wrong, but it looks like the paper just has a misleading title, and this is about having children, not fertility.
- skissane 2mo ago> Maybe I'm wrong, but it looks like the paper just has a misleading title, and this is about having children, not fertility. I think the confusion is that “fertility” means different things in medicine vs demography In medicine, fertility is about your ability to have biological offspring, not about whether you personally choose to make use of that ability In demography, fertility is about how many children people actually have. The completed TFR (total fertility rate) of a population is the lifetime average number of children per a woman. From a demographic perspective, the vast majority of differences in fertility are due to socioeconomic and cultural factors, medical infertility and the availability of treatments for it makes only a very small difference to overall birth rates
- snapplebobapple 2mo ago[flagged]
- tomhow 2mo agoPlease don't make comments wishing that people – or groups of people – could “die off faster”. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. We've asked you at least once before not to post abusive comments. We have to ban accounts that persist with this kind of participation. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
- snapplebobapple 2mo agoI shouldnt have said useless, whether it is accurate or not, i apologize for that. I take issue with the rest of your criticism though. My comment is on a policy discussion about people who have chosen a set of ideas having less kids. Its not about a people with some innate characteristic that they did not choose having less kids. Their less kids is a direct consequence of their poor policy preferences and as such it is a self correcting mechanism that we shouldnt be breaking and certainly should not be spending my tax dollars on. Suggesting other bad policy choices they could take up was perhaps in bad taste as well so i apologize for that as well. the spirit of my comment is still desperately needed in the discussion because it is utterly missing and it is the correct one. When people who choose a set of ideas make moremoney and have way less kids the problem that needs solving is their ideas, not their birthrate
- tomhow 2mo agoYeah, the topic or policy is irrelevant; it’s important to keep to the guidelines, and that includes being kind, and not posting flamebait or engaging in ideological battle.
- mike_hearn 2mo agoIt's obvious but not useful: 1. It's been tried and doesn't work. 2. The main reason people can't have kids is waiting too late (or being unable to find a partner and get married). This happens for social reasons. If you make it easier to wait longer and still have children, then people will just up the amount of time they wait and you're back to square one.