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PaperclipPerfector  18d ago (text post)   27026 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 13, 2024

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Just saw this geographic fertility map of Turkey on reddit. The statistics were released yesterday:

https://old.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1ctccjz/turkish_fertility_rate_20162023_comparison_oc/

Population map for comparison (urban rate is a whopping 75%):
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Visualizing-Population-Density-in-Turkey-Full-Size.html

In 7 short years FTR crashed from 2.11 in 2016 to 1.5 in 2023.

https://ilkha.com/english/health-life/turkiyes-birth-rate-declines-despite-ranking-high-in-europe-393736

Women get children later (average is now 29 years; which is older than in the US (27 years in 2021)) and there is an increase in one-person households (14.4% -> 19.7%)

And despite President Erdoğan being more powerful and way more conservative (out of touch?) than other leaders:

https://www.turkishminute.com/2024/05/16/turkey-records-dramatic-decline-in-its-fertility-rate-official-data/

The alarming decline in Turkey’s birth rate comes against the backdrop of frequent calls from President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who advises families to have at least three children to boost the country’s population, drawing the ire of feminist groups and women’s rights associations. He also advises “Muslim families” not to use birth control or family planning and opposes C-sections as well, angering the same organizations.

The solution is simple. If the state wants women to give up their careers, their education, their financial independence so that they will have and raise children then the state needs to adequately compensate those women for what it is asking them to give up. No state on earth is prepared, or could afford, to do this, which is why functionally all efforts to increase fertility fail.

We might further ask: why can't states do this? The answer here is also simple. Women's work outside the home generates a lot of economic value. The issue at the heart of raising fertility by having women work less is that society will be poorer, which people are generally opposed to.

Why could this work historically? Partially because much more of women's labor was needed inside the home (and so unavailable for work outside the home) and partially because there were actual legal restrictions on the work women (especially married women) could do outside the home.

I mean, were talking like 0.5-1 more kids per woman, it isn't that big a change. We've lived in that world and with the same FLPR.

Also, the state doesn't necessarily have to compensate people, it could punish them instead. Currently we only have (tiny) carrots but perhaps we should introduce some sticks as well and possibly increase the carrots for those that actually contribute until we reach something sustainable.

Or try any number of other ideas a Instead of throwing up our hands and declaring that we've tried nothing and are all out of ideas.

I mean, it's not that big of a change, like, numerically. I bet it would be a pretty big change in the lives of the women having the children. It's true the state could punish people but, being a liberal, I am pretty averse to that as a strategy.

Indeed. You can't have one half of a child. If you have a child, it's at least one. (I'm so smart, right?) It's a relatively small change in the life of the mother only if she has 3 or more children already, assuming there are zero health complications, which is not realistic in many cases sadly.

Three to four can be bigger than two to three, because that's when you have to buy a mini van, at least. Or one of those huge extra row SUVs, but it's pretty difficult to access kids in the back row to help with buckles and whatnot.

The normal sedan can accommodate two car seats at the back, but not three (I remember reading a surprisingly informative post about this whole issue on the old subreddit). Also, two double-bed rooms are no longer sufficient during a family vacation with three children instead of two. So I'd argue the big change is from two to three in terms of effect on the whole family.

Looks up relevant laws.

Well, I'm still not buying another vehicle, so will apparently just have to live in mild violation of the law for a year and a half.

My friends with many children(I have many friends with normal-for-tradcaths family sizes) say that they have to buy special slim fit car seats to use a sedan for three children. I don’t know where these car seats are sold, and also wonder why slim car seats aren’t simply the default due to their occupants being, definitionally, small.

Of course no one is actually going to question a mother about the age of her children if there’s any room for doubt at all; my friends who do that pretty much all have 3 under five or something like that.

The normal sedan can accommodate two car seats at the back, but not three. (I remember reading a surprisingly informative post about this whole issue on the old subreddit.)

Study

We estimate that car-seat laws prevented only 57 car-crash fatalities of children nationwide in 2017. Simultaneously, they led to a permanent reduction of approximately 8,000 births in the same year, and 145,000 fewer births since 1980, with 90% of this decline being since 2000.

LessWrong article

In the context of Sweden, which has very generous parental leave benefits, an extra child per woman would amount to ~0.75 lost work years per person over their lifetime.

Personally, going from 1->2->3 kids werent big changes and I feel like I share the parenting equally with my wife. The big change was going from 0->1.

I agree that the opportunity costs are much lower if women work while also raising kids but I've been operating on the assumption people want women to become full time homemakers, which I think is much more disruptive. I do not have any kids of my own but your experience makes sense to me. I'm under the impression there are a lot of up-front cost for kid 1 that can probably be re-used for subsequent kids (toys, clothes, etc).

Things like toys and clothes aren't that expensive in rich countries. Time and personal attention are. The main upfront cost is not having the freedom to go do adult things without a babysitter, and having to plan everything around the children. It's a sunk cost, and the second child might play with the first, slightly lowering the attention burden at some point in the future. On the other hand, if the parents are paying for daycare, that adds up very quickly, and to have a fourth child, parents have to change vehicle class, which is not just expensive, but can also be quite inconvenient.

Why would you assume that? Or are you talking about people here specifically?

I think people concerned about TFR often advocate it as a mode of social organization and I had received some other replies downthread suggesting it was the way we ought to be going to boost TFR. So, mostly people here I think.

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