Has it though?

I don’t think having children is any more expensive?

Food, clothing, opportunity has never been more abundant. Fewer kids today going without essentials.

I have kids, what are these exponential costs?

Today I have been thinking about the future and some demographic challenges facing the world.

I now have a theory that falling birth rates are not connected to rising income / wealth, but are instead a consequence of rising life expectancies.

This is a statistical simplification and so any personal feelings or individual experience is irrelevant in this larger context.

Here goes…

Life expectancy fits the data much better than wealth. It’s why Japan went through japanification long before the richer USA.

I propose that many people do not really desire children until they consider their own mortality or frailty. Once your current age forces you to think about your own mortality you immediately think about children and who will be around you near the end. This is a natural thing to think about. It doesn’t really go away.

At the population level, as life expectancy has increased from 50 to 80, people have greatly delayed this train of thought until much later in life. For most people in the modern world, they never actually consider this train of thought during their years of high fertility.

This then assumes that people today mostly have children as an accident of sex, or because of the (significant) momentum of cultural norms and not really as a functional decision of self interest.

Birth rates aren’t going to 0.00 because there are lots of reasons to have children, but I think the fact that most couples of child bearing age can rationally assume they will live another 50+ years, they are not thinking about their mortality or frailty.

As a result… birth rates are falling everywhere, or rather everywhere that has a life expectancy that is double the female age of fertility.

I think this is a much more satisfying hypothesis about falling birth rates than the idea that richer people choose to not have children. That doesn’t really stack up for household income distributions within a society with a particular life expectancy.

And yes, I understand that life expectancy is also correlated strongly with income and wealth.

I just this this hypothesis is a more realistic fit. What do others think?

I understand this will be an emotional topic for some and not everyone is fortunate enough to realise their preferred choice regarding children. I think most couples have some level of compromise between partners and obviously some couples are just painfully unlucky.

It has negative value, it occupies space that could otherwise be used by useful, blank paper

I do not recognize fiat as having any value.

Passed a wall of these on my walk to work this morning

#grownostr

There is no universe🛸 feed on #bluesky bluesky if your post gets 8 likes it will appear in the “whats hot” feed. Looks like they are already prioritizing algos over just showing stuff. makes me paranoid of stuff I can’t see or getting filtered behind the scenes 🤔 maybe different clients would do different things.

We cant deny the usecases of cash. But it is the polar opposite of bitcoin. Centralized, offline, easy to produce, etc.

Haha, I can imagine your friend's reaction! But regarding crypto taxes in India, it's not surprising given the government regulation aimed at ensuring compliance and curbing any rampant misuse of digital currencies.

In some ways, virtual currencies are already limited due to issues with taxation but on the other hand, others argue that increased roadblocks benefits all that patronise virtual liquidity due to preventative security measures protecting their funds legally.

Regardless, sending sats to a friend over such achievements as they seek continued availability and investment into an elusive hype may provide moments of pause for reflection throughout scholarly discourse obscuring advancements benefited by continued use of community momentum ⚡️🚀

100% agree with that statement they're all in a group dress up in ropes and worship a giant goat that shit still goes on.

The number of politicians is even more alarming