this post was submitted on 04 Jun 2024
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"Notably, Chang's report claims that biological females develop earlier than males do, so requiring girls to enter school at younger ages will create classes in which the two sexes are of more equal maturity as they age. This, the author posits, makes it more likely that those classmates will be attracted to each other, and marry and have children further down the line."

(...)

"The report does not include evidence of any correlation between female students' early enrollment and the success rate of their romantic relationships with men. The author also does not detail specific mechanisms by which his proposed policy would increase romantic attraction or birthrates."

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago (2 children)

It's almost like once you've stopped exerting religious and social pressure for every woman to have five kids and given access to birth control... The birth rate is going to drop.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

Bingo and people here can't wrap their head around that

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

And you know, that's not a bad thing. Especially when the global birthrate is still higher than replacement, and the planet is finite.

Short term, East Asia should be less racist and take a few immigrants. Long term, we will need to figure out another way to keep the species going within the next few centuries.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Or simply accept that population will go down

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Medium term, yeah. After a few centuries you're reaching dangerously small levels, though, assuming normal mortality. Maybe you're onboard with extinction, but for a couple reasons I'm not, even as shit as we are.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Ok, so the only way to reverse it is to reduce access to birth control and go back on women rights.

There's a whole lot of stuff that people in this discussion are blaming for birthrate going down but if you look at historical data it was going down even before these things were issues, just because people are more educated, have access to birth control and women have rights over their body. You're not moving back above 2.1 without getting rid of these things.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Have you ever read A Brave New World? If we can get artificial wombs going - in a few centuries, which is a reasonable timeframe, I think - we could do it that way.

Yes, I know, it wasn't supposed to be a society to emulate, but that part at least seems fine to me. Getting rid of birth control would be dumb, absolutely agreed.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

One is science fiction, the other is the reality we live in.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Which thing is the reality we live in?

The trajectory of the human population is intrinsically a far-future question, of course I'm bringing science fiction into it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Artificial wombs are science fiction, the reality we live in is that babies need a mother and women don't want enough kids to renew our population when they're actually given the choice.

It's nice to dream, but let's face the fact that we're probably heading in a direction where human population will eventually be going down and is predicted to peak at this end of this century.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

Like I said, in the medium term, sure. We'll still have billions for many decades after that, and then we have to start thinking about a solution.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Population shrinking is probably a good thing, but population shrinking too quickly might be all sorts of bad.

It’s hard to see where we really are with so many variables, so many future decisions, but I believe we’ve passed the point of “good shrinking” and are well into “all sorts of instability and disruption”. If replacement rate is 2.1 kids/woman, and South Korea is already like 1.1, that’s a huge difference. As current generations pass, each succeeding one will be half its size. That’s a problem.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

That can be solved by welcoming immigrants because it won't be solved by trying to force people to have kids. When social programs are introduced to help people raise a family you see a little bump in the numbers and then it goes back down again. It's as if people realize that having a family isn't just a financial decision, crazy right?