As a father of three, I find it deeply concerning to witness the low birth rates across the globe.
It seems that the birth rate decline can be attributed strongly to the increased access to education for women.
While education is important, it has inadvertently affected birth rates. As women have gained access to education and pursued their careers, the focus on family and child-rearing has shifted.
I'm very much pro education for women, so this is a puzzling finding for me on a philosophical level.
In the past, women lived in close-knit communities where they shared household responsibilities, including childcare. They had a support system of fellow mothers and a sense of camaraderie as they undertook tasks together, such as fetching water from the well. This communal aspect created a tight bond and provided a purpose beyond individual aspirations.
However, in today's fast-paced and urbanized society, this sense of community is often lost. People living in cities are disconnected from such close-knit communities, and the support network that once existed has dwindled. As a result, women feel alone, lacking the emotional and practical support that can make a significant difference in their decisions regarding family size.
If we were to create areas exclusively for families outside the cities, women would have the opportunity to experience the historical support and bond of a close-knit community.
This would alleviate some of the pressures and challenges associated with motherhood, allowing families to thrive.
Here is a study on the topic: https://blogs.worldbank.org/en/health/female-education-and-childbearing-closer-look-data
This also shows the same:
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/womens-educational-attainment-vs-fertility
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What is your take on the issue of low birth rate? Join in the conversation and share your voice. This discussion is open until June 2nd, 2024.
Hmm, I have a different perspective on this. There main factors at play are the economic uncertainties and the increasing costs of raising children...
It (women's education) may be true but it sounds awful and the worldbank research sounds incredibly sexist for publishing such stuff
I agree that living in a crowded city is quite limiting when thinking about having a family. But, and here’s a big but, I wouldn’t want to live outside the city. It would be far to go to work and leisure.
Maybe it’s the problem of work-life balance and doing 50-50 with your spouse? Many companies demand long working hours and many women still carry most of the household/childcare responsibilities on their shoulders while men do less at home
As someone with many siblings, I can tell you that kids are sometimes cute…but they’re are messy, loud, fussy, expensive, annoying, limiting, stressful…and then they grow up and some of them barely even call. So maybe it’s not really all the other reasons, but rather the realization that we gonna die anyway and we live only once, so why not just enjoy our life the way we want? I believe this sentiment is shared by many.
I’m over 40 years old living in a small island and I am a professional archeologist. I have studied for a long time and I am still single and of course I have no kids. So I am pretty sure that too much education for men can also accelerate the low birth rates.
My suggested action plan based on the conversation in the comments:
Shorten working hours/days so that people have more time to form good relationships with the opposite sex
Make the idea of having kids popular through media and teach that in schools
Raise significantly the financial support because minimum wage is not attractive enough to want kids
Give attractive rewards for every number of kids reached: 5 kids per family = yearly vacation in a luxury resort fully covered, 6 kids = home in the suburbs, 7 kids = exemption from tax…
Allow me to disagree with you Rasmus about the great financial benefits for kids by Finnish government. Yes, you get 94 euros per month for the first child and it grows by several euros for 2nd, 3rd, etc. But that just adds up to cover costs of diapers. Kids need clothes, toys, day care, private tutors when they go to school…all adding up to thousands of euros even if you buy second hand and don’t spend on “luxuries”. Of course it’s a better system than some other countries where raising kids cost even more, but the bottom line is that money plays a big role in the decision of how many kids a typical middle class family that’s not bound by religion or ideology, wants to have.
That’s what you get when people work long hours and are expected to keep on studying and self-improving to live a decent life. Here’s a quote from a woman that’s been interviewed to a BBC article. It summarizes all:
“ "Sometimes at the weekends I go and get an IV drip, just to get enough energy to go back to work on Monday," she adds casually, as if this were a fairly normal weekend activity.”
I think that there are many, many different reasons for the globally low birth rate and I find it very interesting that those reasons different by country.
People are just not interested to form serious relationships anymore. I've been on countless of dates like this. My best friend is a single mom and she can't even score the first date.