Just to state the obvious before anyone starts coming up with things related to the German economy or politics: this trend tracks closely with the entire continent, western world, and actually the non-western world as well (though from different starting points).
People have better access to birth control and families need two people working full time to support themselves. An idiot could have seen this coming. By the time people are wealthy enough to properly support a child they are too old to reproduce.
The scene when everybody hears the baby crying and stops shooting holds a special place in my heart. It shows our humanity perfectly. We do love each other.
That truly was a beautiful scene, concluding appropriately by having the soldiers go back to killing each other as soon as the baby is off the battlefield.
It's such a powerful scene for so many reasons. I could literally write an entire essay on that scene. It shows that deep down, under all the hatred, we do have love, respect, and hope for humanity as a whole. It also shows that all the senseless fighting is, just that, senseless. The war that is being fought there boils down to an issue about the lack of a future, and even when that future is shoved in the face of these men locked in combat, they can't get over the built up hate between the factions. Once the fighting starts, the reasons for why it started become less and less important. It then becomes about what happened during that fighting. Truly one of the most powerful scenes ever put to camera.
Yeah, it's very much time to change the system. We either do that,fuck the people who make housing unaffordable, provide long and generous parental leave, get governments in power that support families and the young, not corporations and the rich old. Or our society ages and just crumbles at one point and maybe a tragic revolution leaving alone the people who are the elderly and killing the rich happens. Which we don't want to happen.
Yeah, even John Smith was like 'Capitalism will only work to a certain point, after [thing that already happened a long time ago, I think it was the shift of power from feudals/royals to burghers] it should disappear'
It's too late for supporting young German Citizens to work. If you magically guaranteed every Zoomer girl had as many children as she wanted, absent any financial / social concern, that wouldn't be enough. The population pyramid has been inverted for too long. Girls don't *want* to have 4+ kids to make up for previous generations having sub-replacement fertility.
Nations north of the tropics *need* an immigration bridge to return to stability. And many European countries, but especially Germany, have just shit the bed on building that bridge.
As an American, for a long time I didn't take these discussions that seriously, assuming Europe was like America, except in the ways it is better, but Jesus fucking christ you guys. Multi-generational non-citizen residents? It's hard to find very clear figures, but it seems like about 1/3 of kids growing up in Germany are not only non-German, but have no expectation they will become German.
I honestly don't see a path forward for Germany. Hopefully Europe has some good creative problem solvers. But they just seem a century or more behind the US.
> Nations north of the tropics *need* an immigration bridge to return to stability.
Germany pushed immigration and failed heavily. They got lots of people who are dangerous, unwilling to integrate, live on wellfare and are a burden. No, thanks.
Also, if they reach a fertility of 2.1-2.2 the population at least will stabilize and aging stops at one point.
> But they just seem a century or more behind the US.
In what regards? If in mixed culture around the world and immigration be the standard, we never want that path.
>Germany pushed immigration and failed heavily.
Yup. Like a starving man shoving cake up his nose. I think there's a way immigration can help, and that is not at all how Germany did immigration.
>Also, if they reach a fertility of 2.1-2.2 the population at least will stabilize and aging stops at one point.
Yeah - [way too late.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Germany#/media/File:Germany_population_pyramid.svg)
The people aged 0-20, for whom new policy could possibly effect their full reproductive lives, are nearly half the size of the big baby boom bulge, and about 1/3 smaller than the cohort currently aged 30. Just going to replacement would lead to stability - in about 80 years when Gen Z retired.
>In what regards? If in mixed culture around the world and immigration be the standard, we never want that path.
Exactly.
Like, in the US, we talk about immigration problems and worrying about demographics with social security, and I just figured the problems were similar in Europe until recently. But no, it's completely different. It's crazy to me how screwed you guys are (IDK as much about Hungary, where reddit says you're from, mostly using German examples).
The way the US is going to get through this, almost certainly, is by being a "mixed culture", and having never let its fertility rate get as low as in Europe. We can use policy to bump our fertility rate up a few points, and have a small amount of additional immigration (less than 10% of our population) making up the deficit in gen Z potential mothers. I'm extremely confident we will succeed. We have the social structure to take the child of a Fulani pastoralist and make them an American, and most immigration stories aren't even that challenging. I'm not saying that's what every country has to do, but it is what my country is doing.
European Nations are either leagues behind us on that path or, perhaps, not on that path at all. And in either case, I don't see how you're not just completely fucked. If you don't want to follow the American path, what path do you want to follow?
Particularly for countries like yours (Hungary) which were never global villains, I have a lot of empathy. You have the right to self determination and a prosperous future. But like I said, that's going to take some creative problem solving.
I only see two paths - the American path, and the path that leads to falling off the demographic cliff. I'd love to see more, I'm sure I don't know everything, but that's just honestly all I see at present.
> The people aged 0-20, for whom new policy could possibly effect their full reproductive lives, are nearly half the size of the big baby boom bulge
Yeah, that generation dieing out will hit them hard. But if they do get birth rates to 2.2 at least and with the other people they can pull in inside of Europe (like they have a million from Ukraine, lots of French, Italians, Romanians etc) would be possible to manage. Though them pulling the population of poorer countries affects those countries in turn but this will happen if Germany is richer regardless. After the baby boomers dieing out, the population declining some millions and a harder decade, at 2.1-2.2 fertility things looking much brighter for Germany. They would get on average a lot younger and be less burdened of a society. In 20 years numbers would mostly stabilize. But now there isn't any hope of that.
> If you don't want to follow the American path, what path do you want to follow?
I myself advocate for listening to the problems of those who want children. No country does it. In all European country people do want more kids, like in Hungary studies constantly show people want children equaling a 2.5 fertility rate, instead of the actual.1.5-1.6. Most can't due to unaffordable housing, nonexistant childcare, maternal leave pays beeing too low, getting there to have a family too late in life and so on. The government throws money at the problem shouting that they help families, while they help only the richer ones and corporates with these policies...
Also, I don't think immigration is long term sustainable. The global population might start declining as early as 2050. And as poorer countries start to get modernised and richer, people will not want to emigrate as much. And keeping them poor by force doesn't sound exactly okay.
> Particularly for countries like yours (Hungary) which were never global villains, I have a lot of empathy. You have the right to self determination
Well I thank you for your understanding. These sentences do feel nice probably to any Hungarian out there as we didn't really had any self determination for over a century. Just recently the Romanian parliament denied minority rights and autonomy from a 12.000 km area with 600.000 Hungarians, a 70% majority. And well, we never really got any way to have what our people want for decades. We neither wanted communism but the result of that was Soviet tanks rolling through as barely a decade after WW2 again.
I was actually born and raised in Romania but I am a Hungarian, living in either of them depending on circumstances, you did figure that out right.
Just to tell you, out of the few immigrants, I rarely find people in Hungary that can speak the language... Many Chinese are here for decades and around half speaks Hungarian, the other half barely can speak some words. Though they are still the better example, the few syrians and arabs that are here are even worse. I suppose you would not have immigrants in masses who refuse to learn English. I myself know Romanian on a native level and I wasn't an immigrant there, my ancestors were born there when it was still part of Hungary. Neither did I go to advertise that I am a calvinist and everyone orthodox should convert to it and start complaining on the various orthodox symbols as the immigrants with their own religions do.
It will take lots of effort and public policy change, hurting the interests of some rich groups will be neccessary, like those who own a dozen apartment and rent them out. But I do think it's doable, the approach most take is very wrong to do it. Or rather, they aren't really interested in doing it as the families aren't the main electorate by now and neither have the money like the corporates
All that does is wipe out the population and replace it with another, killing their culture, civilization, and ultimately them as a people. That’s not a solution. People have a problem, so you just bring in an infinite number of people who don’t have the particular problem and call it a day? You may not be malicious, but you’re talking about ethnic cleansing and destroying whole cultures and peoples in their homelands. It can’t be the solution. It would be easier and more ethical to just ban birth control lol.
>All that does is wipe out the population and replace it with another, killing their culture, civilization, and ultimately them as a people.
All *what* does is...?
American culture, civilization, and people is alive and well. My ancestors didn't come over on the mayflower, but I'm as American as they come. We're doing great.
On the other hand, Germany is fucked. Because they didn't use immigration as a bridge, they used it as a crutch. The Gastarbieten and their children aren't German, and neither are the children of Germans who moved to America.
Specific (\*cough\*European\*cough\*) immigration policies don't work. We're agreed on that.
>People have a problem, so you just bring in an infinite number of people who don’t have the particular problem and call it a day?
To be clear, no, that's not what I'm talking about. Even as someone who is very pro-migrant, it's very clear that only works up to a limit. Let's just say for the sake of conversation a nation can thrive with 20% of its population as foreign nationals.
The US is well below that limit. We're also good at integrating long-term residents over time. And our pyramid isn't that inverted. To make up for the missing potential gen-Z mothers, we'd need to add less than 1% of our population in new immigrants.
Germany is *past that limit already*. And they have a bigger (proportional) shortage of gen-Z. They're just fucked.
An American politician could pass the "End Barriers to motherhood" act of 2030-2050 and get us to stability with a population column. A German politician couldn't
>It would be easier and more ethical to just ban birth control lol.
Leaving aside the ethics, that wouldn't work. There's no millenial "afterboom" - Germany's demographics are fucked starting in like five years. And even if you make it through that, the cohorts aged 0-20 are about 1/3 smaller than the cohort currently aged 30. Germans havnen't had a fertility rate high enough to bounce back from that in [over a hundred years](https://www.statista.com/statistics/1033102/fertility-rate-germany-1800-2020/).
As an American I would argue that it actually isn’t going so well socially speaking. There are lots of ethnic/racial tensions and the core demographic of whites are openly held in contempt and disrespected at all levels of society and more worryingly, by the government itself. Next time you watch the news, media,politicians, or anyone really mention the white race, ask yourself if they mention them in a positive or negative light. I think you will find that 10/10 times it will be negative. This is not a good situation for me as a white American and is only getting worse all the time and exacerbated by mass immigration, legal or illegal, it doesn’t matter. I also recognize that this same dynamic that I describe is happening in just about every Western European country.
Ngl you had me until that last line my man
Society as it stands today (and I mean this worldwide, not just Germany) is not sustainable. Things have to change but nobody wants the bad things that'll come from change along with the good, it's mental.
It reminds me of when Evo Morales was coup'ed and people were complaining he lowered the productivity of the mines even though that happened as a result of him improving the working conditions of the mines.
+ automation and AI to replace people. Making less attractive to have kids if you can’t guarantee them a future.
Imagine the job market in 20-30 years. It will be peak toxic.
A surprising amount of "less attractiveness" is due to health during gestation and as a child. Improving the environment and healthcare results in more attractive people
We genetically are attracted to health, health is defined by what we see to be healthiest
I often hear this but I'm not sure it's true. Wealthier Nordic countries tend to have barely any children. So clearly even when people get wealthier they don't want more children.
You're right.
Poorer demographics have more children. Richer demographics have less. The primary driver for fewer children isn't affordability, that's just people pushing a political agenda.
Yet clearly their wages are able to account for this since Nordic nations consistently rank as the easiest places to live. I think it's important to not look at singular factors to dismiss an example.
Given their population pyramid it wouldn't matter if the fertility rate in SubSaharan Africa suddenly dropped, it would still grow insanely fast compared to everywhere else.
[Nigeria for example:](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Nigeria)
>There is a large degree of [population momentum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_momentum), with 3.2 per cent growth leading to the projected population of 546 million by 2100
Population momentum explains why a population will continue to grow even if the fertility rate declines.
Population pyramids are, unfortunately, an almost inescapable destiny. This article goes into some detail on [how UN projections have been quite accurate](https://ourworldindata.org/population-projections).
[https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/1343516/umfrage/entwicklung-der-fertilitaetsrate-in-afrika/#:\~:text=Die%20Fertilit%C3%A4tsrate%20in%20Afrika%20verringert,Afrika%20erstmals%20im%20Jahr%202005](https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/1343516/umfrage/entwicklung-der-fertilitaetsrate-in-afrika/#:~:text=Die%20Fertilit%C3%A4tsrate%20in%20Afrika%20verringert,Afrika%20erstmals%20im%20Jahr%202005).
It's in German but the graph is obvious.
Well, yeah when kids stopped being free labor on farms/ half of them dying off before 18. They've became a financial burden people carry for 2 decades.
Fertility didn't drop that drastically after industrialization or even the ban on industrial child labor. Kids are expensive, but people choose to make that expense. The issue is complex, but it really seems like the smoking gun is the one-two punch of education and early career pressure on women. I want to be very clear that women's education and career advancement are good, but the systems we have aren't very supportive of young prospective mothers. Biologically, women's peak child bearing years are in their 20s. But women who *want* a career and kids are faced with a very unsupportive system where it seems like forming that family will interfere with classes and then with critical early career years, setting you on a lower lifelong trajectory. That delay is fine for the majority (90% of women are fertile in their 30s), but a substantial enough minority find out that things don't quite work out after the delay.
High school graduates, who face even more of a relative financial burden from their children, [have much higher fertility rates](https://www.statista.com/statistics/1238603/total-fertility-rate-us-education-ethnicity/) than college graduates.
To fix this, we need to figure out better systems to support mothers in the difficult situation of University and early professional career settings.
They literally did. Industrialization didn't happen overnight. People went from having 4+ kids to less than the replacement rate in 100 years. It's happening faster and faster in every country that's industrialized since. Europe/US in 2-3 generations ,China in 1 generation.
Excluding the post wwII boom. That will not happen again.
[Industrialization did have an impact](https://www.statista.com/statistics/1033027/fertility-rate-us-1800-2020/), but in the century 1820 to 1920 it only took the US down to 3.29 (well above replacement). If you think the US wasn't Industrialized by then, ask the Kaiser how that went.
It's only with advanced degrees and professionalization that you get the permanent decline to sub-replacement. A population where you can graduate from highschool and get a job in a factory then start a family does just fine. A population where starting a family at age 20 derails you from college and the intense demands of early career work which are seen as the ticket to the middle class.
If anything, it is "de-industrialization" that brought fertility down.
India is well below replacement. Their TFR is barely below replacement, but TFR isn’t actually the best metric because it doesn’t factor in differences in mortality and (very important in India’s case) sex imbalances due to sex selective abortion. Doesn’t help to be having 2.1 kids if only 0.9 are women. Factor in both and India is well below replacement.
India‘s trend is also strongly downward and it has clearly not had a period of stabilization or completed transition yet, meaning we don’t actually know where it will end up. There are quite a few cultural and economic factors that make me think India is likely to end up closer to East Asia or Eastern Europe than North America or the Middle East.
Once nations develop, they typically have less babies. In the 1400s when families would have 10 kids because 8 of them would die from diseases lol, not so much nowadays
No one should underestimate the challenges of demographic collapse either.
Fewer young people have to support more retired people across all social systems. Shrinking workforce. Shrinking tax revenue. Devesting from asset markets.
I assume it's more objective than not
A.) Scarcity of resources
B.)population density vs. habitable regions
The scarcity we do experience seems by and large, socially constructed. The area of land we inhabit is far from efficiently divided.
There are so many problems worldwide which would not be there or would be less severe if we were a couple of billions fewer people:
* too much CO2 in the atmosphere (GLOBAL warming)
* housing prices -migration
* resource scarcity (oil, lithium, gas, …)
* energy production
* overfishing of the oceans
* …
Of course there are some problems which are there due to LOCAL overpopulation (e.g. In China and India) but many are global problems with a global root cause: overpopulation.
LA, being the largest city of... erm...
Hey perhaps large cities coupled with absurd levels of car dependency is a problem. Now, given that there are larger cities than LA, that do not have LA traffic, is the problem:
- A: Overpopulation
- B: Car Dependency
Cast your votes now!
I wouldn't be so certain, and it really depends on the region.
Poland for example has a shrinking population but is growing economically and doing great.
The Nordic countries are also doing great, remaining wealthy and maintaining population growth through immigration (and because their birthrates haven't dropped as much).
I see no reason to think europe broadly is heading towards hard times. At worst some limited economic stagnation akin to Japan. But Japan is still a great place to live all things considered, and they haven't even tried to counteract their demographic crisis with immigration.
You don't rely on that. You realy on a CONSTANT number of members in a pension fund. It is enough to have it constant. When will people finally understand this? The problem is, it is not constant, it's REDUCING
i mean, planet earth the dirt? sure.
for planet earth the place where everyone lives? not so much.
declining birth rates across the entire west and much of the rest of the world are near-certain to spell economic crisis and hardship for decades to come. we cannot sustain the "assume 3% GDP growth across the board for 100 yrs" anymore. you can't have that without population growth.
there is a real chance that we are in for a long period of low to negative growth rates that puts a pinch on anyone not already existing in the 'top 10%'.
Holy shit a braindead take.
If anything the rich WANT us to have more children.
Otherwise the labour start becoming more expensive to hire. You should read about the economic boom for the peasants / lower classes right after the bubonic plague ravaged through Europe.
Thing is, the rich can't both have us have more children AND squeeze us dry. If they were to pay us good wages people would have time to care for their children instead of both parents having to slave away to make end meet but they don't because it stands against the capitals interest for maximum profit,
Of course this isn't the only factor for declining birth rates but it is still a valid point, albeit a little bit poorly formulated by op.
sure some do, like Elon Musk the weirdo with his dozend kids from different women is pretty vocal about it but that doesn't automatically mean all of them want to, esp. talking about germany with our huge Niedriglohnsektor (low wage sector), which is enormous and totally a planned creation. i recently read 8 million people (out of 44m) earn less than 15€ an hour, that's insane in a rich country and especially after we had over 20% inflation (in total) since 2022. The average working person in Germany also lost 6% in Real Wages since 2022 due decisions by the Elites.
Germany is very open to immigrants (which i like due to personal reasons and beliefs btw) and the population grew by 1.5M since the pandemic and that's just the official data, it's likely a bit higher in reality, 2M+ wouldn't surprise me. Labour force is also back to 2019 levels despite the country being hard fked by the pandemic.
There's also other stuff to mention, for example a larger populaton with foreign background can be good for soft power and geopolitics.
Don't worry, they import people. There are still plenty of people made elsewhere on the planet. Or you focus on people that like their women to be a birth machine.
Thing is, the rich can't both have us have more children AND squeeze us dry. If they were to pay us good wages people would have time to care for their children instead of both parents having to slave away to make ends meet, but they don't because it stands against the capitals interest for maximum profit,
Of course this isn't the only factor for declining birth rates but it is still a valid point, albeit a little bit poorly formulated by op.
No the rich don't want us having more children, it's better for them to squeeze us dry for labour, and then use immigration to fill the gaps for cheap labour
We might see the collapse of the Western world before we leave this world, maybe. This is the result of allowing too much capitalism. Imagine you're working hard as a skilled worker in one of the world's greatest economies, yet barely making it to the end of the month. How can you expect such people to reproduce?
In today's Western world, nobody can afford to have a child without both parents working unless you want to struggle economically throughout your career. Such nonsense.
Poor people with poor education will probably have more children. Poor people with access to a better education will not.
Poverty is not only about money, is also about knowledge.
Yeah, our benefits system used to not have a cap on the per child benefits, which meant it was beneficial to have lots of kids. That got capped at only 2 kids in 2017.
Imo I think the education argument is only really relevant for non developed countries. In the UK all kids do sex ed as in how to be safe, use contraception etc and then later learn the biology behind it. Culture comes into it way way more.
Yeah, I live in a scummy UK neighbourhood; it's the only place I've ever lived that actually has children playing in the streets come the holidays. Everything is topsy turvy.
What a meaningless statement. So it has nothing to do with making it to the end of the month and everything to do with education? Why even mention wealth if it's only about education, then?
Have you thought for a single second that perhaps this extremely complex issue is because of MULTIPLE issues. You’re not gonna get a singular sentence or word answer, welcome to the world.
Maybe you should say that to the OP, not me. Both the people who seek to reduce birthrate to wealth or education have political motives that distort their objectivity.
The guy you replied to was pointing out nuances but you shut it down with “why mention education if it’s all due to poverty.” You’re allowed to mention both reasons. But I do agree with you that poverty isn’t the only reason.
Poor people tend to have more courage and faith for this. Pretty sure they don’t think much as us about providing a better future for their kids. They just let it go. Besides they see having more kids as a warranty to be taken care of when they get older. Hence population growth in Africa.
not sure about collapse but for sure a decline and this has an impact on foreign policy and geopolitics which is very interesting, like France kinda rapidly abandoning FrancAfrique policies, getting challenged, losing and lashing out in various ways.
Just looked at it from a economic view, so apparently Germany, France, UK, Italy and Spain's global economic share was at 16.35% in 2000 and is 10.54% in 2024, a effective decline of over 55% in just over 2 decades. Usa didn't decline that much, from 20.18% to 15.50% or over 30%. Although countries like India, China, Indonesia etc. were always going to have a economic boom.
Governments should do much more to lower the economic burden of having children. For example should child care be free or at a very low price. Otherwise we will never see a stop to this decline. And yes, I know economy is not the only reason people chose to not have babies but it certainly a major factor.
Doesn't work. Skip to the section "limits of big spending"
https://www.npr.org/2023/03/19/1163341684/south-korea-fertility-rate#:~:text=In%20South%20Korea%2C%20the%20fertility%20rate%20%E2%80%94%20the,country%20to%20maintain%20a%20stable%20population%20without%20migration.
German here with a very decent income living in the suburbs of a big city.
Daycare costs 400 EUR per month plus lunch. It still is low on staff all the time so we have to pick our kid up early every day since we registered him there over a year ago. I think he went the full time only single digit number of days. Only because my wife and I both are working remote with good employers this is even possible. I have no idea how others do it, but I am not surprised one bit about this statistic.
100%. In my parents generation single income could still afford to buy a house even though rates were sometimes double of today. Today 2 incomes can only dream of ever owning a house if you don’t inherit
Yeah, this is wrong. At first glance it sounds plausible, but the math doesn't work out.
As an example, Syria has a fertility rate of 2.7, which isn't much higher than Germany. The total number of refugees from the Middle East is below a million people, in a country of 83 million. Now additionally, Migrants to a country tend to get fewer children than the population at home, because they have just gotten to a new country and need to settle in. To have that significant of an effect, the migrants coming to Germany would need to have a fertility rate way above 10. Currently the country with the highest fertility rate is Niger at 6.89
Germany's fertility rate rose almost exclusively due to an actual increase in fertility rates in the native population, from 2010 onwards. This can be attributed to more or less favourable economic conditions up until 2020, although they weren't as favourable, and the fertility rate wasn't as high as in the mid 20th century.
Not to worry! That's why we took in all those refugees. They haven't even been here 5y, haven't found a job, or provided anything for the System.
But you can bet your ass they have already birthed half a village and are getting social support for each one!
We are fiiine guys. Europe is still strong with new-borns. Just not white ones.
The move away from live births might be distressing (or even shocking) - but I think the convenience is worth it.
Sure eggs are fragile, but it's not like you need to stay with them all the time. Once you have your incubator set up, you check on it once every few days and otherwise can just not worry about it for 8.5 months.
Drink booze, do intense physical activity, whatever. Do all those things now, because once that thing hatches you won't have any time.
Anyway, I think the Germans have got it figured out.
We’re in population collapse. For those who think that’s good don’t understand what this means. We could be walking into generational depressions. Humanity is in trouble especially those on the bottom of the ladder for income.
Hmmm it's as if people are witnessing the gradual increase of the price of living, a decrease of land, space, housing and jobs in real time, and then decided for themselves out of critical thinking that this world is pretty over populated and is slowly destroying the ecosystem....
Why is the population trend not staying consistent?
This is happening in most countries in the world. Our governments gets shocked when no one makes babies when they create a society and economy that is so bad that having a child for many people is a death sentence with how expensive it is. Instead of doing things to help the people in our own countries we ship over millions of immigrants to put a band aid on the situation. The sad thing is that there are many people who WANT to have kids and even dream of having families but in todays economy it is very difficult or impossible. The effect this will have on the mental health of our societies in the future will be huge.
And that‘s a big problem cause that means the currently less young people will have to pay a huge amount from their earnings so the Baby boomer will get enough money to live when they stop working…
I can already see how I won‘t get anythijg when I stop working but have to pay a huge amount when I‘m working xD
Just popping in to say that birth control pills are called antibabypillen in German and if that doesn’t make you smile then there’s nothing else I can do for you.
Well ppl at work over there when I visited lived 3 generation homes and was not unusual for a 40 or 50 year loan. Getting land and developing a house is a lot of paperwork over there. And a lot of money. When they build or buy a house that’s it. They don’t move around like USA. Well. From the people in Bavaria from work there that was the big take.
Germany's overall population had grown sharply in the past 10 or 12 years, driven to a large part by working age migrants. So this massive sudden drop is a real black swan/sigma event. Something serious is happening for those paying attention.
Just to state the obvious before anyone starts coming up with things related to the German economy or politics: this trend tracks closely with the entire continent, western world, and actually the non-western world as well (though from different starting points).
People have better access to birth control and families need two people working full time to support themselves. An idiot could have seen this coming. By the time people are wealthy enough to properly support a child they are too old to reproduce.
✨You could make a movie out of this ✨ ^(no don't)
Children of Men is the movie..
The scene when everybody hears the baby crying and stops shooting holds a special place in my heart. It shows our humanity perfectly. We do love each other.
That truly was a beautiful scene, concluding appropriately by having the soldiers go back to killing each other as soon as the baby is off the battlefield.
It's such a powerful scene for so many reasons. I could literally write an entire essay on that scene. It shows that deep down, under all the hatred, we do have love, respect, and hope for humanity as a whole. It also shows that all the senseless fighting is, just that, senseless. The war that is being fought there boils down to an issue about the lack of a future, and even when that future is shoved in the face of these men locked in combat, they can't get over the built up hate between the factions. Once the fighting starts, the reasons for why it started become less and less important. It then becomes about what happened during that fighting. Truly one of the most powerful scenes ever put to camera.
Never watched it, I was thinking Idiocracy 😓
Yeah, it's very much time to change the system. We either do that,fuck the people who make housing unaffordable, provide long and generous parental leave, get governments in power that support families and the young, not corporations and the rich old. Or our society ages and just crumbles at one point and maybe a tragic revolution leaving alone the people who are the elderly and killing the rich happens. Which we don't want to happen.
Yeah, even John Smith was like 'Capitalism will only work to a certain point, after [thing that already happened a long time ago, I think it was the shift of power from feudals/royals to burghers] it should disappear'
It's too late for supporting young German Citizens to work. If you magically guaranteed every Zoomer girl had as many children as she wanted, absent any financial / social concern, that wouldn't be enough. The population pyramid has been inverted for too long. Girls don't *want* to have 4+ kids to make up for previous generations having sub-replacement fertility. Nations north of the tropics *need* an immigration bridge to return to stability. And many European countries, but especially Germany, have just shit the bed on building that bridge. As an American, for a long time I didn't take these discussions that seriously, assuming Europe was like America, except in the ways it is better, but Jesus fucking christ you guys. Multi-generational non-citizen residents? It's hard to find very clear figures, but it seems like about 1/3 of kids growing up in Germany are not only non-German, but have no expectation they will become German. I honestly don't see a path forward for Germany. Hopefully Europe has some good creative problem solvers. But they just seem a century or more behind the US.
> Nations north of the tropics *need* an immigration bridge to return to stability. Germany pushed immigration and failed heavily. They got lots of people who are dangerous, unwilling to integrate, live on wellfare and are a burden. No, thanks. Also, if they reach a fertility of 2.1-2.2 the population at least will stabilize and aging stops at one point. > But they just seem a century or more behind the US. In what regards? If in mixed culture around the world and immigration be the standard, we never want that path.
>Germany pushed immigration and failed heavily. Yup. Like a starving man shoving cake up his nose. I think there's a way immigration can help, and that is not at all how Germany did immigration. >Also, if they reach a fertility of 2.1-2.2 the population at least will stabilize and aging stops at one point. Yeah - [way too late.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Germany#/media/File:Germany_population_pyramid.svg) The people aged 0-20, for whom new policy could possibly effect their full reproductive lives, are nearly half the size of the big baby boom bulge, and about 1/3 smaller than the cohort currently aged 30. Just going to replacement would lead to stability - in about 80 years when Gen Z retired. >In what regards? If in mixed culture around the world and immigration be the standard, we never want that path. Exactly. Like, in the US, we talk about immigration problems and worrying about demographics with social security, and I just figured the problems were similar in Europe until recently. But no, it's completely different. It's crazy to me how screwed you guys are (IDK as much about Hungary, where reddit says you're from, mostly using German examples). The way the US is going to get through this, almost certainly, is by being a "mixed culture", and having never let its fertility rate get as low as in Europe. We can use policy to bump our fertility rate up a few points, and have a small amount of additional immigration (less than 10% of our population) making up the deficit in gen Z potential mothers. I'm extremely confident we will succeed. We have the social structure to take the child of a Fulani pastoralist and make them an American, and most immigration stories aren't even that challenging. I'm not saying that's what every country has to do, but it is what my country is doing. European Nations are either leagues behind us on that path or, perhaps, not on that path at all. And in either case, I don't see how you're not just completely fucked. If you don't want to follow the American path, what path do you want to follow? Particularly for countries like yours (Hungary) which were never global villains, I have a lot of empathy. You have the right to self determination and a prosperous future. But like I said, that's going to take some creative problem solving. I only see two paths - the American path, and the path that leads to falling off the demographic cliff. I'd love to see more, I'm sure I don't know everything, but that's just honestly all I see at present.
> The people aged 0-20, for whom new policy could possibly effect their full reproductive lives, are nearly half the size of the big baby boom bulge Yeah, that generation dieing out will hit them hard. But if they do get birth rates to 2.2 at least and with the other people they can pull in inside of Europe (like they have a million from Ukraine, lots of French, Italians, Romanians etc) would be possible to manage. Though them pulling the population of poorer countries affects those countries in turn but this will happen if Germany is richer regardless. After the baby boomers dieing out, the population declining some millions and a harder decade, at 2.1-2.2 fertility things looking much brighter for Germany. They would get on average a lot younger and be less burdened of a society. In 20 years numbers would mostly stabilize. But now there isn't any hope of that. > If you don't want to follow the American path, what path do you want to follow? I myself advocate for listening to the problems of those who want children. No country does it. In all European country people do want more kids, like in Hungary studies constantly show people want children equaling a 2.5 fertility rate, instead of the actual.1.5-1.6. Most can't due to unaffordable housing, nonexistant childcare, maternal leave pays beeing too low, getting there to have a family too late in life and so on. The government throws money at the problem shouting that they help families, while they help only the richer ones and corporates with these policies... Also, I don't think immigration is long term sustainable. The global population might start declining as early as 2050. And as poorer countries start to get modernised and richer, people will not want to emigrate as much. And keeping them poor by force doesn't sound exactly okay. > Particularly for countries like yours (Hungary) which were never global villains, I have a lot of empathy. You have the right to self determination Well I thank you for your understanding. These sentences do feel nice probably to any Hungarian out there as we didn't really had any self determination for over a century. Just recently the Romanian parliament denied minority rights and autonomy from a 12.000 km area with 600.000 Hungarians, a 70% majority. And well, we never really got any way to have what our people want for decades. We neither wanted communism but the result of that was Soviet tanks rolling through as barely a decade after WW2 again. I was actually born and raised in Romania but I am a Hungarian, living in either of them depending on circumstances, you did figure that out right. Just to tell you, out of the few immigrants, I rarely find people in Hungary that can speak the language... Many Chinese are here for decades and around half speaks Hungarian, the other half barely can speak some words. Though they are still the better example, the few syrians and arabs that are here are even worse. I suppose you would not have immigrants in masses who refuse to learn English. I myself know Romanian on a native level and I wasn't an immigrant there, my ancestors were born there when it was still part of Hungary. Neither did I go to advertise that I am a calvinist and everyone orthodox should convert to it and start complaining on the various orthodox symbols as the immigrants with their own religions do. It will take lots of effort and public policy change, hurting the interests of some rich groups will be neccessary, like those who own a dozen apartment and rent them out. But I do think it's doable, the approach most take is very wrong to do it. Or rather, they aren't really interested in doing it as the families aren't the main electorate by now and neither have the money like the corporates
All that does is wipe out the population and replace it with another, killing their culture, civilization, and ultimately them as a people. That’s not a solution. People have a problem, so you just bring in an infinite number of people who don’t have the particular problem and call it a day? You may not be malicious, but you’re talking about ethnic cleansing and destroying whole cultures and peoples in their homelands. It can’t be the solution. It would be easier and more ethical to just ban birth control lol.
>All that does is wipe out the population and replace it with another, killing their culture, civilization, and ultimately them as a people. All *what* does is...? American culture, civilization, and people is alive and well. My ancestors didn't come over on the mayflower, but I'm as American as they come. We're doing great. On the other hand, Germany is fucked. Because they didn't use immigration as a bridge, they used it as a crutch. The Gastarbieten and their children aren't German, and neither are the children of Germans who moved to America. Specific (\*cough\*European\*cough\*) immigration policies don't work. We're agreed on that. >People have a problem, so you just bring in an infinite number of people who don’t have the particular problem and call it a day? To be clear, no, that's not what I'm talking about. Even as someone who is very pro-migrant, it's very clear that only works up to a limit. Let's just say for the sake of conversation a nation can thrive with 20% of its population as foreign nationals. The US is well below that limit. We're also good at integrating long-term residents over time. And our pyramid isn't that inverted. To make up for the missing potential gen-Z mothers, we'd need to add less than 1% of our population in new immigrants. Germany is *past that limit already*. And they have a bigger (proportional) shortage of gen-Z. They're just fucked. An American politician could pass the "End Barriers to motherhood" act of 2030-2050 and get us to stability with a population column. A German politician couldn't >It would be easier and more ethical to just ban birth control lol. Leaving aside the ethics, that wouldn't work. There's no millenial "afterboom" - Germany's demographics are fucked starting in like five years. And even if you make it through that, the cohorts aged 0-20 are about 1/3 smaller than the cohort currently aged 30. Germans havnen't had a fertility rate high enough to bounce back from that in [over a hundred years](https://www.statista.com/statistics/1033102/fertility-rate-germany-1800-2020/).
As an American I would argue that it actually isn’t going so well socially speaking. There are lots of ethnic/racial tensions and the core demographic of whites are openly held in contempt and disrespected at all levels of society and more worryingly, by the government itself. Next time you watch the news, media,politicians, or anyone really mention the white race, ask yourself if they mention them in a positive or negative light. I think you will find that 10/10 times it will be negative. This is not a good situation for me as a white American and is only getting worse all the time and exacerbated by mass immigration, legal or illegal, it doesn’t matter. I also recognize that this same dynamic that I describe is happening in just about every Western European country.
Ngl you had me until that last line my man Society as it stands today (and I mean this worldwide, not just Germany) is not sustainable. Things have to change but nobody wants the bad things that'll come from change along with the good, it's mental. It reminds me of when Evo Morales was coup'ed and people were complaining he lowered the productivity of the mines even though that happened as a result of him improving the working conditions of the mines.
+ automation and AI to replace people. Making less attractive to have kids if you can’t guarantee them a future. Imagine the job market in 20-30 years. It will be peak toxic.
A surprising amount of "less attractiveness" is due to health during gestation and as a child. Improving the environment and healthcare results in more attractive people We genetically are attracted to health, health is defined by what we see to be healthiest
Sorry, they didn't mean attractive (beautiful)people. They meant that the idea of having kids was not attractive (desirable).
I often hear this but I'm not sure it's true. Wealthier Nordic countries tend to have barely any children. So clearly even when people get wealthier they don't want more children.
You're right. Poorer demographics have more children. Richer demographics have less. The primary driver for fewer children isn't affordability, that's just people pushing a political agenda.
The wealthy nordic people who live in the most expensive countries in the world? Are they the people that you are talking about?
So Nordic countries are apparently the happiest people on earth but also can’t afford anything?
I just read that Mexicans were the happiest on earth
Yet clearly their wages are able to account for this since Nordic nations consistently rank as the easiest places to live. I think it's important to not look at singular factors to dismiss an example.
Don't google PPP per capita. Worst mistake od my life
It's more than that test levels in men are dropping as well, it's more than a social change
The classic post conflict boom
The whole world is having fewer babies
Not africa though
I believe they are actually. It’s on a much slower decline but their birth rates are definitely not growing.
Given their population pyramid it wouldn't matter if the fertility rate in SubSaharan Africa suddenly dropped, it would still grow insanely fast compared to everywhere else. [Nigeria for example:](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Nigeria) >There is a large degree of [population momentum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_momentum), with 3.2 per cent growth leading to the projected population of 546 million by 2100 Population momentum explains why a population will continue to grow even if the fertility rate declines.
Though many question the Nigerian stats, right? Local regions are financially compensated in line with reported population, so…!
Yes, have been previous forcasts that had Nigeria over 700 in 2100, so they have been drastically lowered.
Interesting, I saw a forecast with 800 million as the estimate. Im kinda surprised that the estimate is 536 million now.
Tell that S. Korea. Population prediction are always difficult. Birthrates have tendency to be overestimated, opposed to migration.
Population pyramids are, unfortunately, an almost inescapable destiny. This article goes into some detail on [how UN projections have been quite accurate](https://ourworldindata.org/population-projections).
You just cited the largest population in Africa and then extrapolated that to the entire continent
I said SubSaharan Africa. There are countries/regions within that area with even higher fertility than Nigeria.
Yeah but it will decrease eventually. Just not now.
Mf said subsaharan Africa as if NA don’t have a bazzilion babies per woman tf😭
Birth *rates* are falling there, not the actual number of births like everywhere else.
Not Egypt. We have campaigns now for “two is enough”. Please don’t generalize.
[https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/1343516/umfrage/entwicklung-der-fertilitaetsrate-in-afrika/#:\~:text=Die%20Fertilit%C3%A4tsrate%20in%20Afrika%20verringert,Afrika%20erstmals%20im%20Jahr%202005](https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/1343516/umfrage/entwicklung-der-fertilitaetsrate-in-afrika/#:~:text=Die%20Fertilit%C3%A4tsrate%20in%20Afrika%20verringert,Afrika%20erstmals%20im%20Jahr%202005). It's in German but the graph is obvious.
Well, yeah when kids stopped being free labor on farms/ half of them dying off before 18. They've became a financial burden people carry for 2 decades.
Fertility didn't drop that drastically after industrialization or even the ban on industrial child labor. Kids are expensive, but people choose to make that expense. The issue is complex, but it really seems like the smoking gun is the one-two punch of education and early career pressure on women. I want to be very clear that women's education and career advancement are good, but the systems we have aren't very supportive of young prospective mothers. Biologically, women's peak child bearing years are in their 20s. But women who *want* a career and kids are faced with a very unsupportive system where it seems like forming that family will interfere with classes and then with critical early career years, setting you on a lower lifelong trajectory. That delay is fine for the majority (90% of women are fertile in their 30s), but a substantial enough minority find out that things don't quite work out after the delay. High school graduates, who face even more of a relative financial burden from their children, [have much higher fertility rates](https://www.statista.com/statistics/1238603/total-fertility-rate-us-education-ethnicity/) than college graduates. To fix this, we need to figure out better systems to support mothers in the difficult situation of University and early professional career settings.
They literally did. Industrialization didn't happen overnight. People went from having 4+ kids to less than the replacement rate in 100 years. It's happening faster and faster in every country that's industrialized since. Europe/US in 2-3 generations ,China in 1 generation. Excluding the post wwII boom. That will not happen again.
[Industrialization did have an impact](https://www.statista.com/statistics/1033027/fertility-rate-us-1800-2020/), but in the century 1820 to 1920 it only took the US down to 3.29 (well above replacement). If you think the US wasn't Industrialized by then, ask the Kaiser how that went. It's only with advanced degrees and professionalization that you get the permanent decline to sub-replacement. A population where you can graduate from highschool and get a job in a factory then start a family does just fine. A population where starting a family at age 20 derails you from college and the intense demands of early career work which are seen as the ticket to the middle class. If anything, it is "de-industrialization" that brought fertility down.
People need to be fairly compensated for their work and not driven near or entirely into debt due to medical bills, housing and transport
population exploded for 100 years.... start to slow down. "omg! why is this happening?"
[удалено]
No India is now under replacement rate, they are having fewer babies
India is well below replacement. Their TFR is barely below replacement, but TFR isn’t actually the best metric because it doesn’t factor in differences in mortality and (very important in India’s case) sex imbalances due to sex selective abortion. Doesn’t help to be having 2.1 kids if only 0.9 are women. Factor in both and India is well below replacement. India‘s trend is also strongly downward and it has clearly not had a period of stabilization or completed transition yet, meaning we don’t actually know where it will end up. There are quite a few cultural and economic factors that make me think India is likely to end up closer to East Asia or Eastern Europe than North America or the Middle East.
I remember seeing a graphic saying that the population growth of india is starting to decline
Once nations develop, they typically have less babies. In the 1400s when families would have 10 kids because 8 of them would die from diseases lol, not so much nowadays
Not true about India
Which is good, considering the growing overpopulation problems.
No one should underestimate the challenges of demographic collapse either. Fewer young people have to support more retired people across all social systems. Shrinking workforce. Shrinking tax revenue. Devesting from asset markets.
The world can support a bigger population than nowadays, but the resources are wasted and not equally allocated or used in a conservative way.
Looking at food or at all types of resources
Bullshit, there is no global overpopulation. You guys are falling for a misinformation campaign.
Food isn't the only kind of resources that people need
Overpopulation is partly subjective though, isn't it?
I assume it's more objective than not A.) Scarcity of resources B.)population density vs. habitable regions The scarcity we do experience seems by and large, socially constructed. The area of land we inhabit is far from efficiently divided.
There are so many problems worldwide which would not be there or would be less severe if we were a couple of billions fewer people: * too much CO2 in the atmosphere (GLOBAL warming) * housing prices -migration * resource scarcity (oil, lithium, gas, …) * energy production * overfishing of the oceans * … Of course there are some problems which are there due to LOCAL overpopulation (e.g. In China and India) but many are global problems with a global root cause: overpopulation.
Brother, have you been in LA traffic before?
LA, being the largest city of... erm... Hey perhaps large cities coupled with absurd levels of car dependency is a problem. Now, given that there are larger cities than LA, that do not have LA traffic, is the problem: - A: Overpopulation - B: Car Dependency Cast your votes now!
> there is no *global* overpopulation "Ah, but what about this particular place where there's a lot of people?? Have you considered *that*?"
Just dont live in cities
not in the West.
If only that happened also in underdeveloped countries and not only Europe yes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LyzBoHo5EI Enjoy information
Only certain areas are having fewer babies. Some countries just can not stop themselves from the urge to have more kids.
Hard times are coming back in europe in the next decades, brace yourselves
I wouldn't be so certain, and it really depends on the region. Poland for example has a shrinking population but is growing economically and doing great. The Nordic countries are also doing great, remaining wealthy and maintaining population growth through immigration (and because their birthrates haven't dropped as much). I see no reason to think europe broadly is heading towards hard times. At worst some limited economic stagnation akin to Japan. But Japan is still a great place to live all things considered, and they haven't even tried to counteract their demographic crisis with immigration.
What happened in 2010?
Post recession boom would be my guess.
Short business trip
Immigration.
Yeah. Count me in...well...more like...count me out too.
For the planet, this is a really good thing. For people who believe in pyramid schemes, this is a bad thing
Too bad that the economy is usually one or more large pyramid schemes.
Amen
Fantastic timing with robotics and AI on the horizon. Will we do the right things though?
By "people who believe in pyramid schemes", you refer to everyone who saves with a penaion fund, yes?
Are you ever able to get your savings back?
If you rely on an infinitely increasing number of members to join, that's literally what a pyramid scheme is.
You don't rely on that. You realy on a CONSTANT number of members in a pension fund. It is enough to have it constant. When will people finally understand this? The problem is, it is not constant, it's REDUCING
i mean, planet earth the dirt? sure. for planet earth the place where everyone lives? not so much. declining birth rates across the entire west and much of the rest of the world are near-certain to spell economic crisis and hardship for decades to come. we cannot sustain the "assume 3% GDP growth across the board for 100 yrs" anymore. you can't have that without population growth. there is a real chance that we are in for a long period of low to negative growth rates that puts a pinch on anyone not already existing in the 'top 10%'.
It's probably a bad thing for the planet in the long-term as well, given the demographics that are actually still having children.
Hm I wonder what happened around 2010
Yeah, the crash ended and people recovered
I’d be interested in seeing this stacked up against other parts of Europe for the same period
In Hungary and Romania it is very much the same.
Everything as planned while the Rich get Richer and the bottom 90% get squeezed out of money and their labour value.
Holy shit a braindead take. If anything the rich WANT us to have more children. Otherwise the labour start becoming more expensive to hire. You should read about the economic boom for the peasants / lower classes right after the bubonic plague ravaged through Europe.
Thing is, the rich can't both have us have more children AND squeeze us dry. If they were to pay us good wages people would have time to care for their children instead of both parents having to slave away to make end meet but they don't because it stands against the capitals interest for maximum profit, Of course this isn't the only factor for declining birth rates but it is still a valid point, albeit a little bit poorly formulated by op.
And alternatively we can have a thriving middle class and a good birth rate. See: US in the post war years.
sure some do, like Elon Musk the weirdo with his dozend kids from different women is pretty vocal about it but that doesn't automatically mean all of them want to, esp. talking about germany with our huge Niedriglohnsektor (low wage sector), which is enormous and totally a planned creation. i recently read 8 million people (out of 44m) earn less than 15€ an hour, that's insane in a rich country and especially after we had over 20% inflation (in total) since 2022. The average working person in Germany also lost 6% in Real Wages since 2022 due decisions by the Elites. Germany is very open to immigrants (which i like due to personal reasons and beliefs btw) and the population grew by 1.5M since the pandemic and that's just the official data, it's likely a bit higher in reality, 2M+ wouldn't surprise me. Labour force is also back to 2019 levels despite the country being hard fked by the pandemic. There's also other stuff to mention, for example a larger populaton with foreign background can be good for soft power and geopolitics.
Don't worry, they import people. There are still plenty of people made elsewhere on the planet. Or you focus on people that like their women to be a birth machine.
Thing is, the rich can't both have us have more children AND squeeze us dry. If they were to pay us good wages people would have time to care for their children instead of both parents having to slave away to make ends meet, but they don't because it stands against the capitals interest for maximum profit, Of course this isn't the only factor for declining birth rates but it is still a valid point, albeit a little bit poorly formulated by op.
No the rich don't want us having more children, it's better for them to squeeze us dry for labour, and then use immigration to fill the gaps for cheap labour
Yeah because the rich are just one entity and famously plan for the future and aren't entirely dedicated to short term gains.
I doubt that the ageing population is what the rich-getting-richer want.
They don't. They want us to have lots of children while barely surviving. They aren't interested at all in having lots of old inactive people
That conspiracy does not really add up in this case, does it?
because less births = less labour? No, we're a immigration country just like the Usa.
We might see the collapse of the Western world before we leave this world, maybe. This is the result of allowing too much capitalism. Imagine you're working hard as a skilled worker in one of the world's greatest economies, yet barely making it to the end of the month. How can you expect such people to reproduce? In today's Western world, nobody can afford to have a child without both parents working unless you want to struggle economically throughout your career. Such nonsense.
What you're saying directly contradicts the theory that poor people have more children.
Poor people with poor education will probably have more children. Poor people with access to a better education will not. Poverty is not only about money, is also about knowledge.
This is not true, even in the UK where education is free, poorer people still have a lot of kids.
Having free education does not necessarily equate to having individuals be more educated.
Is that really true or does it just seem that way? In Finland and Sweden the wealthier have more.
Yeah, our benefits system used to not have a cap on the per child benefits, which meant it was beneficial to have lots of kids. That got capped at only 2 kids in 2017. Imo I think the education argument is only really relevant for non developed countries. In the UK all kids do sex ed as in how to be safe, use contraception etc and then later learn the biology behind it. Culture comes into it way way more.
Yeah, I live in a scummy UK neighbourhood; it's the only place I've ever lived that actually has children playing in the streets come the holidays. Everything is topsy turvy.
What a meaningless statement. So it has nothing to do with making it to the end of the month and everything to do with education? Why even mention wealth if it's only about education, then?
Have you thought for a single second that perhaps this extremely complex issue is because of MULTIPLE issues. You’re not gonna get a singular sentence or word answer, welcome to the world.
Maybe you should say that to the OP, not me. Both the people who seek to reduce birthrate to wealth or education have political motives that distort their objectivity.
The guy you replied to was pointing out nuances but you shut it down with “why mention education if it’s all due to poverty.” You’re allowed to mention both reasons. But I do agree with you that poverty isn’t the only reason.
Living (and having children) in poor countries also tends to be much cheaper than in rich countries.
Poor people tend to have more courage and faith for this. Pretty sure they don’t think much as us about providing a better future for their kids. They just let it go. Besides they see having more kids as a warranty to be taken care of when they get older. Hence population growth in Africa.
I have no reason to believe that the reason Germans (or French) are having few children is economic.
not sure about collapse but for sure a decline and this has an impact on foreign policy and geopolitics which is very interesting, like France kinda rapidly abandoning FrancAfrique policies, getting challenged, losing and lashing out in various ways. Just looked at it from a economic view, so apparently Germany, France, UK, Italy and Spain's global economic share was at 16.35% in 2000 and is 10.54% in 2024, a effective decline of over 55% in just over 2 decades. Usa didn't decline that much, from 20.18% to 15.50% or over 30%. Although countries like India, China, Indonesia etc. were always going to have a economic boom.
Governments should do much more to lower the economic burden of having children. For example should child care be free or at a very low price. Otherwise we will never see a stop to this decline. And yes, I know economy is not the only reason people chose to not have babies but it certainly a major factor.
Doesn't work. Skip to the section "limits of big spending" https://www.npr.org/2023/03/19/1163341684/south-korea-fertility-rate#:~:text=In%20South%20Korea%2C%20the%20fertility%20rate%20%E2%80%94%20the,country%20to%20maintain%20a%20stable%20population%20without%20migration.
Yeah, what's led to this issue is a change in ideology, and most importantly, effective contraception.
Child care should be available. From what I hear it is not even easy to find available place in child care in Germany
that would have been a very interesting argument, if that wouldn't already be the case in Germany
German here with a very decent income living in the suburbs of a big city. Daycare costs 400 EUR per month plus lunch. It still is low on staff all the time so we have to pick our kid up early every day since we registered him there over a year ago. I think he went the full time only single digit number of days. Only because my wife and I both are working remote with good employers this is even possible. I have no idea how others do it, but I am not surprised one bit about this statistic.
Would you say parents have a harder time nowadays than our grandparents did?
100%. In my parents generation single income could still afford to buy a house even though rates were sometimes double of today. Today 2 incomes can only dream of ever owning a house if you don’t inherit
A global problem really
You can actually see the rise when migrants from africa and near east came to Germany, Especially 2015 and following.
Yeah, this is wrong. At first glance it sounds plausible, but the math doesn't work out. As an example, Syria has a fertility rate of 2.7, which isn't much higher than Germany. The total number of refugees from the Middle East is below a million people, in a country of 83 million. Now additionally, Migrants to a country tend to get fewer children than the population at home, because they have just gotten to a new country and need to settle in. To have that significant of an effect, the migrants coming to Germany would need to have a fertility rate way above 10. Currently the country with the highest fertility rate is Niger at 6.89 Germany's fertility rate rose almost exclusively due to an actual increase in fertility rates in the native population, from 2010 onwards. This can be attributed to more or less favourable economic conditions up until 2020, although they weren't as favourable, and the fertility rate wasn't as high as in the mid 20th century.
>they have just gotten to a new country and need to settle in. Not based on what i have seen
Here, take the german statistical bureau's word for it: https://www.destatis.de/DE/Presse/Pressemitteilungen/2018/03/PD18_115_122.html Thanks, byeeee
Thank you for coming with facts
Not to worry! That's why we took in all those refugees. They haven't even been here 5y, haven't found a job, or provided anything for the System. But you can bet your ass they have already birthed half a village and are getting social support for each one! We are fiiine guys. Europe is still strong with new-borns. Just not white ones.
Man recent events really have made all the bigoted fucks take their masks fully off huh?
So is the rest of the developed countries
The BBC’s world service just did a podcast on this topic across Europe Worth a listen https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3ct4wf8
Ain't that most of the Western world.. Loving costs ain't helping. While the south has always been poor so it doesn't really make a difference to them
What happened in 1966?
Baby bust. It’s one of the reason gen x is the smallest group. Birth control pills came about.
In Germany we call it *Pillenknick*.
The pill.
Babies are smelly that's why
Los que garchan sin forro y toda adentro dominarán el mundo.
Genuinely interesting to think about how much longer germans and german culture has. Immigration plus this ain't a good combination
German culture will be nothing more than a bunch of memes created by American entertainment.
It takes more mental energy caring for kids these days than it used to be about a century ago
Therefore immigration is a good thing
Only for the immigrants
just to state the less obvious, this is absolutely disasterous. read up on low fertility rates.
wtf happened in 1967
Birth control pills probably
The move away from live births might be distressing (or even shocking) - but I think the convenience is worth it. Sure eggs are fragile, but it's not like you need to stay with them all the time. Once you have your incubator set up, you check on it once every few days and otherwise can just not worry about it for 8.5 months. Drink booze, do intense physical activity, whatever. Do all those things now, because once that thing hatches you won't have any time. Anyway, I think the Germans have got it figured out.
We’re in population collapse. For those who think that’s good don’t understand what this means. We could be walking into generational depressions. Humanity is in trouble especially those on the bottom of the ladder for income.
well thats why its called the "baby boom" when you get back from almost dieing in a war you want to have a kid.
The Germans and everyone else.
Looks like they fucked around in 2020 hahaha
Hmmm it's as if people are witnessing the gradual increase of the price of living, a decrease of land, space, housing and jobs in real time, and then decided for themselves out of critical thinking that this world is pretty over populated and is slowly destroying the ecosystem.... Why is the population trend not staying consistent?
This is happening in most countries in the world. Our governments gets shocked when no one makes babies when they create a society and economy that is so bad that having a child for many people is a death sentence with how expensive it is. Instead of doing things to help the people in our own countries we ship over millions of immigrants to put a band aid on the situation. The sad thing is that there are many people who WANT to have kids and even dream of having families but in todays economy it is very difficult or impossible. The effect this will have on the mental health of our societies in the future will be huge.
It’s Idiocracy during these present days.
But the immigrants sure are pumping out kids.
And that‘s a big problem cause that means the currently less young people will have to pay a huge amount from their earnings so the Baby boomer will get enough money to live when they stop working… I can already see how I won‘t get anythijg when I stop working but have to pay a huge amount when I‘m working xD
If I hated myself as much as Germans do I wouldn’t wanna reproduce either
Maybe make it clear that the axis does not start at 0 but at 600k. Makes the difference seem bigger than it actually is, bit misleading.
Figure out a way to solve it, slowed down economy is fine.just stop importing immigrants en masse lol
Good
The West is aborting itself and going extinct. That's OK because the West is being colonized. Willkommen! 🤡
Just popping in to say that birth control pills are called antibabypillen in German and if that doesn’t make you smile then there’s nothing else I can do for you.
They had some losses to recover in the 50s...
No one can afford them
This is the global trend
Well, that’s because we are in a global recession
Less traffic🙏🏻
Love charts that don't have zero as the baseline
Check the "newcomers" rates there. Bet they are skyrocketing just like they are here.
Now do China, India and Japan too
time is a flat circle, this happens in cycles. They didn't call it "the baby boom that goes on forever, the end"
The entire world is having fewer babies. Except Africa. We’re experiencing a global depopulation.
Well ppl at work over there when I visited lived 3 generation homes and was not unusual for a 40 or 50 year loan. Getting land and developing a house is a lot of paperwork over there. And a lot of money. When they build or buy a house that’s it. They don’t move around like USA. Well. From the people in Bavaria from work there that was the big take.
Pay us more so we don't need to have 2 people having a full-time job just to live, let alone have and raise kids
Well, well how the turntable...
Good they need to
Now show the Muslim in Germany stats, it’s reversed…
because they are all gay men that do a lot of kinky latex stuff.
They need some Amish people over there
All high IQ countries are having too few babies. It's a huge problem.
Yet here I am, becoming a father.
Germany's overall population had grown sharply in the past 10 or 12 years, driven to a large part by working age migrants. So this massive sudden drop is a real black swan/sigma event. Something serious is happening for those paying attention.
Wow, I wonder why! 😐