I think this is all that needs to be said on these articles.
(There's a lot more that _could_ be said, such as how few actual birthing HN readers there are, but I think the economics is really simple at the root of it.)
Besides, even the countries with really the worst outlook and conditions aren't falling all that fast. Russia since the high point of the 1990s: https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/russia-popula...
If there is insufficient supply, housing prices go up.
[1] https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2023/7/14/japans-abandoned...
[2] https://www.ey.com/en_us/strategy/declining-enrollment-in-pu...
That could increase demand even if the population decreased slightly (which it didn’t, according to another reply)
Definitely a bit hypocritical of me, since I'm also a part of the problem who doesn't want to have kids. But, at least for me, it's not worth it right at this time.
This is driving up the demand a lot in central areas.
The houses left behind are not desirable for the same reason so many opt to keep them as summer homes, leading to shortages in the districs as well.
A lot of this has to do with jobs. We've lost a lot of jobs in the districs due to various reasons, and at some point these towns collapse. You need a certain minimum number of folks to have a decent school, a hospital etc. Once population drops too low the hospital gets shut down say and it's downhill from there.
[1]: https://www.nrk.no/vestland/byene-vokser-_-distriktene-blor-...
Are you sure most houses in the Nordics are occupied by the same family most of the time?
Another huge problem right now is that the high prices has made it tricky for _older_ people to move, a large rent controlled apartment for an retired person is far cheaper than even the smallest new apartments if the lease is changed, so you have tons of retired people with kids that moved out (or should have moved out) living in 4-5 bedroom flats whilst families are crammed into smaller ones.
The only way out is to buy an apartment/house instead of renting, but here profit-taxation comes into play making elder people hesitant about selling because the huge price increases (often 90%) makes the 30% profit tax almost 30% of their selling price so they actually can't even afford to buy something reasonable since it'd anything relatively smaller would be too expensive for them.
One way out of this would be to lower the profit-tax of a dwelling by 0.5-1% for each year lived in it, that'd make retired people able to sell their dwellings w/o hardly any taxes and should enable a more dynamic market.
https://www.schroders.com/en-gb/uk/individual/insights/what-...
You can clearly see the impact of ww1 and the influenza pandemic in the 1914-18 period.
Interesting. In USA fertility is tub / U shaped [0]. Filthy rich just hire nannies and bang away and dirt poor have none to negative opportunity cost
[0] https://twitter.com/theHauer/status/1222514313723875332/phot...
https://tradingeconomics.com/sweden/the-real-gross-disposabl...
Eg in sweden, deregulation: https://www.thelocal.se/20230627/explained-swedens-plans-to-...
https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-tonEuOE0IXE/WfpBpIzy8rI/AAAAAAAAF...
In fact only Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia of the Northern Europe countries are showing a long term decline.
[1] - https://worldpopulationreview.com/world-cities/stockholm-pop...
Even by just looking at my surroundings, I have some friends who make decent money, and they're still on "no kids" train, even though hiring 24/7 help would just cost them pennies.
If real disposable income is rising, then people have more access to non necessary resources than they did before. So, they have more wealth, but are having fewer babies, which is the general trend.
Near equal (higher) fertility at both extremes might be, but not proof of, the hypothesis the dirt poor and filthy rich are the fertility rate you get when opportunity cost looks near 0.
A bucket you often see stopping at 300+k imo far too low as the lower band of that is usually high stress highly educated long hours professional and small biz owners who have insane opportunity cost to have children.
There's other issues though (see my sibling post to GP)
No, it’s what’s left after taxes, before any actual spending on things like housing occurs.
> Gross disposable household income is the amount of money that individuals in the household sector can spend or save after income distribution measures.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/regionalaccounts/grossdisposa...
Sure, if your goal is to have as many kids as possible, that's a different topic. But that's statistically insignificant amount of people as of now.
More relevant is something like Japan. [2] They are currently losing 1 in every 200 people, every year. And that rate of decline is still accelerating. And they have a similar fertility rate to Finland 1.37 vs 1.42. The only difference is that Japan has had its low fertility rate for longer, and so it's closer to the equilibrium rate of loss that such a fertility rate implies, while Finland is closer to their older higher fertility rates.
[1] - https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/RUS/russia/fertility-r...
[2] - https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/JPN/japan/population
So we really needed to think of this a few years ago. It might still be possible, but now it is an uphill battle and will be a much higher risk pregnancy to boot.
But agreed, there are costs that might not be offset by the rewards. Nevertheless the statistics remain filthy rich and dirt poor are acting as mirrors on the curve.
If we had high birth rates without building housing that would also drive up housing prices.
I'm very much a believer that housing costs are at the root of a whole lot of what's wrong with... everything.
It's long past debate and long past time for neighborhoods to come up with a "vision." We need state and national level mandates for zoning reform and density increase, and if you're against it too bad. NIMBYs had 50 years to come up with something other than obstructionism.
A lot of real estate is being built and most of it is "low cost" economy class, which in the end lets a lot of people who want that, own an apartment and have children. Home ownership statistics are also great.
The pay is meager but at least jobs are there, meaning that if you own an apartment or a house (often inherited from your ancestors in some form) and is employed, and can fall back to Babushkas' safety nest, you can have children and that will not ruin you. Also, actual child care benefits are fine. Long parental leave et all.
Russia also actually saw a lot of economic growth since both 1999 and 1991. Perhaps the most of all ex-USSR countries, save for Baltic states, but in case of Baltics there's a serious job crunch as far as I know. The pay is nice but securing it becomes a headache. In the end it's easier to move westwards.
I'm not sure why you would assume Russian outlook is particularly bad, especially if we're talking before the 2022. After 2022, too early to say.
[1] https://yandex.ru/images/search?text=мурино
[2] https://yandex.ru/images/search?text=кудрово
Russia has lower fertility rate than EU average, at 1.50 vs 1.53. And a higher and faster growing share of Muslim population than Europe.
Overall, death rate is about 1.37x more than birth rate in Russia (999.14 vs 728.02 per 100K in first 10 months of 2023 - link to official stats https://statprivat.ru/demo2020?r=3). In EU it's 10.7 vs 9.5 per 1000 (in a full year), so only 1.12x the difference. Births are 8% lower per 1000 and deaths, 12% higher. Plus, Russia has a higher proportion of Muslim population than any EU country and it grows faster too, so for white population situation is beyond dire: in ethnic Russian majority regions apart from Moscow and St. Petersburg, death rate at 2.5-3x the birth rate is the norm.
If you've been under impression that Russia somehow has some sound demographic policy and/or family culture and is doing better in this respect than any European country, you're just a victim of Putin's propaganda. Compared to EU states, Russia is only better than Bulgaria in this respect.
People vehemently do not want density increases around them or "changes to the character of the neighbourhood", and if driving the birth rate down helps with that goal then they're fine with it.
That said, your analysis is a bit misleading. Because while deaths/births are ultimately what fertility comes down to, it's a long lagging result. Taken to extremes, if a country of 20 year olds had a rapid extinction level fertility rate of 0.1, births would still far outpace deaths for many decades. Vice versa if there was a country made up of mostly of the elderly and then a small number of high fertility youth, deaths would outpace births for many years - in spite of [now] healthy demographics.
So fertility is what matters. And no, I don't think Russia is the epitome of what we should do. They have endless problems including alcohol abuse, a hugely imbalanced sex ratio, high suicide rates, and more. But I do think they're working to solve their problems in a way that is likely to create a better and more sustainable future for themselves. By contrast much of the Western world today seems content to behave in a generally myopic and reactionary fashion. Even in this very thread you see some people positive about lower fertility rates because climate. It's like seeing your house burning down and being happy that you won't have to fix that leaking sink anymore.
[1] - https://www.statista.com/statistics/1033851/fertility-rate-r...
So it would probably be reasonably affordable, but only because you'd make it less desirable to live there. Then enter the general problem of people's complete disregard for other's property in many places in the Western world and those places would become highly unpleasant, if not unsafe, quite quickly - especially if they were very affordable. There's a reason "the projects", everywhere, end up the way they do.
[1] - https://avatars.mds.yandex.net/i?id=e67240f3f995f865b864bee1...
[2] - https://avatars.mds.yandex.net/i?id=05678345cd91e9579bd7e719...
As years go by, life becomes more complicated, not less. With or without children.
Having children also involves sacrifice, improvisation, unpredictability, suffering... and lots of people are apparently allergic to all of those things.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_federal_subjects_of_Ru... (the data is copied from https://fedstat.ru/indicator/31517# - Federal Statistics service of Russia - but it's closed for access from outside).
1.42 is worse than in 20 out of 27 EU countries and worse than in EU overall (1.53). With much lower readings in Russian-populated regions, i.e. it hangs on Muslims. Of which Russia has more and they grow faster than in any EU country. Some almost purely Russian-population regions rival South Korea in low fertility with <1.0 readings. Probably fertility of Russians themselves is under 1.0 in all regions except Moscow.
Not sure why you are trying to find something good where it simply isn't.
Once you get this rolling you can improve your situation every few years.
The problem with "the projects" is that undesirable people get to live there practically for free. But that is not the case in Russia or China. Everybody lives in some sort of high-rises and has a middle class life.
But, you can also absolutely have a kid there as well.
Otherwise, people would love to be able to afford a house or at least a townhouse, but modern economy gets in the way of that wish, especially from scratch.
Rightfully so. There is no extra credit for unnecessarily burdening yourself.
...in pretty much no sense of the word a "Western" country.
