This report came across my feeds:
Are we ready for all the other societal changes?
I keep running into men who want to create families, and women who think it’s beneath them to create the next generation (and that a career is somehow better). Somehow feminism managed to turn women into men instead of celebrating women-who-are-women, in a very ironic twist.
The silver lining is that the women who don’t want to be mothers (“I want to sit in a government cubicle and stamp papers!”) are removing themselves and their DNA from the gene pool. So the population drops? Arguably not a Bad Thing. And the children born to those women who want to be women are the future of society.
I haven’t seen anyone explain why it is happening. I don’t believe the common explanation that kids are unaffordable. Without understanding, I don’t know if selection is good or bad.
I think it is the rise of pensions and state safety nets. People are no longer concerned about who will help them in old age.
The cost of motherhood is greater now that women have more opportunities to participate in the economy. There are historical examples of this phenomenon, such as how the rising wealth of women in ancient Greece and Rome is associated with population decline.
The consistently higher TFR among insulated religious subcultures, such as the Amish and Mormons, suggests a future in which a larger fraction of the population is faithful.
“percent of women workers who receive wages”? What do the rest of them get? No! Don’t answer that.
The correlation between rising GNP per capita and declining fertility is very strong – but correlation is not causation. The female worker who does not receive wages is excluded from GNP, but there are many who would argue that the women workers who did not receive wages historically were contributing more to society than those who became mere wage earners.
Why did women want to become wage earners? In WWII, it was a national duty for Rosie the Riveter. Then society changed to adjust to the two-income family – everything became more expensive. Women found they had to work, because they needed the income to afford the higher cost of living. This dissuaded women from being able to have children. And then … the grapes being sour … feminists began to denigrate motherhood.
A future world with fewer people may not be a Bad Thing.
Unfortunately Mormons and Amish are a low population relative to Muslims who are also reproducing.
This is for homeless?