Baby Boomers - Greatest Victims

[Hamlet]

I'm not clear on why this is neccesarily a problem. It's not like our population is actually dropping.

At some point, doesn't the population have to stabilize? If it grows forever, we're going to face serious resource constraints at some point.

I think this is going to be a huge problem over time. There have been massive disincentives put in place to have kids today and so people my age and younger have responded as rational economic actors generally do. Of myself and my 3 siblings, I have two kids, my younger sister has one and will probably have a second (and suffer dearly for it money-wise). My other two siblings and their spouses/SOs will have zero. That is half the replacement rate, not including premature deaths. DW and her sisters have done better, but between 3 sisters they only have one surplus kid in excess of the number of parents. None of us feel like we can afford more than one or two kids and the sister with 3 is stretched, to put it lightly.

 

[brewer12345]

I'm not clear on why this is neccesarily a problem. It's not like our population is actually dropping.

At some point, doesn't the population have to stabilize? If it grows forever, we're going to face serious resource constraints at some point.

Go look at Japan. Look at SS. Do a tiny bit of math.

 

[NotMyFault]

So the point is if I have 10 kids they each get a &10,000 share of the debt we are leaving them instead of $100,000? Why not just open the borders would that not accomplish the same thing? I have gone with an equal replacement. Two kids is all I have the energy to handle. Why would I want more? I do not have a farm for them to work on.

NMF

 

[EveryLady]

You can solve it yourself, just figure out why regularly employed, taxpaying Americans are not having many children today, and reverse engineer to what might make them able to have more. Ha

We've gone from 8 in my boomer generation to 5 offspring in the next. No babies among the 5.

As for more reproducing, the issue for my very bright, college-educated, hard working niece and her husband are jobs. They work "semi-professionally" in what used to be entry level jobs that now go nowhere. So far no proceeding on the long-wanted (at least by my niece) baby. Her husband is concerned they can't afford kids.

This is a huge problem. Admittedly, it's true that my niece graduated in German and philosophy. I as a boomer had an undergraduate decree in anthropology but was able to self-finance a professional graduate degree. The financial returns on many graduate degrees are now degrading. In this thread, I mentioned a friend recently fired. Her biggest plus right now is that her dd wants to be an engineer.

I'm so grateful I only had one child. And can pass-on assets amassed in part from opportunities (educational grants, job opportunities, pension) that aren't as readily available to my kid, nephews, niece.

 

[ejman]

The tax incentives are laughable in the face of the other impediments.

I guess I'll have to go back to my original question - so what would work as pro natal policies?

 

[brewer12345]

I guess I'll have to go back to my original question - so what would work as pro natal policies?

Again, I will point to France, as they appear to have had some success. A very lazy search found the following:

"
France was a country with concerns that professional women were choosing not to have children. The government were worried that the population was not going to replace itself over time.
The policies that were put in place to encourage three-children families were:

• a cash incentive of £675 monthly (nearly the minimum wage) for a mother to stay off work for one year following the birth of her third child
• the 'carte famille nombreuse' (large family card), giving large reductions on train fares
• income tax based on the more children the less tax to pay
• three years paid parental leave, which can be used by mothers or fathers
• government subsidised daycare for children under the age of three, and full time school places for over threes paid for by the government

This has resulted in mothers considering having children and remaining in work. The fertility rate in France is one of Europe's highest."

BBC - GCSE Bitesize: Case study: pro-natalist policy in France

I am not necessarily advocating what France did as a model since I have no idea if it would translate well to the US, but it is an example.

 

[Hamlet]

Sure, we'll have some demographic problems, but those will have to come eventually, either in this century or the next, or we'll all be stacked like cord wood on top of each other.

Go look at Japan. Look at SS. Do a tiny bit of math.

 

[ejman]

Again, I will point to France, as they appear to have had some success. A very lazy search found the following:

"
France was a country with concerns that professional women were choosing not to have children. The government were worried that the population was not going to replace itself over time.
The policies that were put in place to encourage three-children families were:

• a cash incentive of £675 monthly (nearly the minimum wage) for a mother to stay off work for one year following the birth of her third child
• the 'carte famille nombreuse' (large family card), giving large reductions on train fares
• income tax based on the more children the less tax to pay
• three years paid parental leave, which can be used by mothers or fathers
• government subsidised daycare for children under the age of three, and full time school places for over threes paid for by the government

This has resulted in mothers considering having children and remaining in work. The fertility rate in France is one of Europe's highest."

BBC - GCSE Bitesize: Case study: pro-natalist policy in France

I am not necessarily advocating what France did as a model since I have no idea if it would translate well to the US, but it is an example.

So France does all of the above and they have a fertility rate of 2.08. US does none of the above (except for the tax deductions) and it has a fertility rate of 2.06. Doesn't sound too encouraging for government programs to increase fertility does it?

 

[gerrym51]

I guess I'll have to go back to my original question - so what would work as pro natal policies?

a booming economy would help the birth rate.

 

[brewer12345]

So France does all of the above and they have a fertility rate of 2.08. US does none of the above and it has a fertility rate of 2.06. Doesn't sound too encouraging for government programs to increase fertility does it?

I suppose it might be more appropriate to view before and after stats, since there might be just a few differences between France and the US (or so I am told).

 

[brewer12345]

a booming economy would help the birth rate.

Indeed. Similarly, I saw a suggestion in a Bloomberg article this morning that another 5 to 10% bump in home prices would probably get a lot of inventory flowing into the market because then a lot of sellers would be able to cover their outsized mortgages plus selling costs so that they can get on with their lives.

 

[ejman]

I suppose it might be more appropriate to view before and after stats, since there might be just a few differences between France and the US (or so I am told).

I don't know what the timing was for France's implementation of their plan but the statistics I can readily find show very little change since 2000. But I'll readily admit that a statistician I ain't. Thanks for bringing this up though. It's interesting to poke around this website France - Birth rate - Historical Data Graphs per Year

 

[youbet]

It's not like our population is actually dropping.

At some point, doesn't the population have to stabilize? If it grows forever, we're going to face serious resource constraints at some point.

Makes sense. Unless we find a way to genetically modify humans to be much smaller and consume much less, population growth has to stabilize eventually. Even just one more doubling of earth's population will stretch resources significantly.

 

[obgyn65]

Agree. I also assume that the financial crisis has caused a significant rise in suicide rates across the US also.

Agree?

Is the danger a result of not LBYM? or a loss of income in the peak earning years? Since the beginning of time, the economy has always been subject to ups and downs, but it seems that the current uncertainty is causing more stress than usual, with less surety of a solid recovery.

... or something else?

 

[brewer12345]

Makes sense. Unless we find a way to genetically modify humans to be much smaller and consume much less, population growth has to stabilize eventually. Even just one more doubling of earth's population will stretch resources significantly.

Then we had better remake our economy because without population growth it does not work well as is.

 

[youbet]

Then we had better remake our economy because without population growth it does not work well as is.

Agreed. I've had that concept in the back of my mind for decades. It's a puzzle to me.

How can an economy with programs that depend on population increases survive in the long term if 2 or 3 more doublings of the population are likely going to overwhelm the available space and resources?

Nothing for me to fret about, I'm 65 yo. But a few generations down the road things will likely get interesting if we're depending on constantly increasing our headcount to keep things rolling.

Perhaps, despite our rapidly evolving technology, nature will step in and provide a "correction."

 

[haha]

Agreed. I've had that concept in the back of my mind for decades. It's a puzzle to me.

How can an economy with programs that depend on population increases survive in the long term if 2 or 3 more doublings of the population are likely going to overwhelm the available space and resources?

Nothing for me to fret about, I'm 65 yo. But a few generations down the road things will likely get interesting if we're depending on constantly increasing our headcount to keep things rolling.

Perhaps, despite our rapidly evolving technology, nature will step in and provide a "correction."

The near term risk is not to biological survival, but to quality of life. Most of us have spent our lives in almost ideal conditions. The people who may overpopulate forward from here are not the same groups that built this very nice world that we are used to. These democratic builders are experiencing sub-zero population growth, wherever they are found.

Is Egypt attractive? Maybe for a tourist staying in the Hilton, but not otherwise.

The world and life very likely continue, maybe even the US. But overall, I am glad my tenancy is the period that it has been and is now.

Ha

 

[ziggy29]

This may not be what some people want to hear, but overall world population doesn't need to grow any more. We already risk significant shortages of critical resources, and more people in the world would only make that worse. Think about all the wars in history which have started at least in part over control of resources. We'd be better off solving demographic problems by encouraging targeted immigration for young, educated families, IMO.

 

[brewer12345]

We'd be better off solving demographic problems by encouraging targeted immigration for young, educated families, IMO.

Good luck with that. Dealt with the US gubmint lately? If I were one of these target people I would go to Canuckistan.

 

[youbet]

Is Egypt attractive? Maybe for a tourist staying in the Hilton, but not otherwise.

Interesting that you would use Egypt as an example. My son was an exchange student in Egypt about 25 yrs ago. He stayed with the family of an MD. The pics he took and his accounts of his stay indicated that despite being in the home of a doctor and going to a private school, things were no nicer than here in our very blue collar home and neighborhood in the Chicago suburbs. When the Egyptian young man my son was paired with came and stayed with us, he indicated our modest home and cars were nicer than his family's in Egypt but that he had expected to be staying in a mansion since this was "the USA!" Nevertheless, he seemed to survive his stay just fine and was a nice kid.

BTW Ha, I agree with you that our lives have taken place in good times!

 

[mickeyd]

I read this article recently somewhere else and thought of this ER group. I kinda figured that it would eventually post here and we would all have a good time patting ourselves on the back since none of us seem to be in the predicament that most boomers seem to find themselves.

I say good for us. Good for LBYM.