Alright then, here we go.
(06-27-2011 11:04 PM)Samseau Wrote: This is a contradiction in terms. How can a rising standard of living come from higher costs of living? 
In 19th century France, a family with ten or more children could not only afford to sustain such a size, but could actually gain a financial advantage over smaller families. This was because during this time (and pretty much all of human history before that point) children were the most viable source of wealth there was. Those ten children, should they survive infancy(and most were doing this by the 19th century due to medical advances) could very quickly be turned into productive wage earners well before puberty, either through agricultural labor or in cheap, unskilled and abundant factory work.
In 21st century France, a ten child family is an easy candidate for bankruptcy. Why? Kids are too expensive. The 19th century family could send its six year olds to work and bring home money, but the 21st century family can't do this. Why? Technological advancement. This technological advancement has raised our standard of living, but also increased its cost-if children are to be productive in such an advanced society, they must now go to school for what can at times amount to 20 years or more. Society is no longer primarily agricultural and skilled jobs dominate the employment scene-there is simply no longer a market for cheap pre-pubescent laborers. Far more educated employees are needed.
Because of this, having a child now is far more expensive than it once was-that child requires a lot more investment than it once did, and it can no longer generate large returns early on.
This is where my argument for increased cost of living coming with technological advancement (and, by extension, higher living standards) comes from. It costs much more in the way of time, money and effort to become a contributing member of this society simply because technological advancement has necessitated far more schooling and preparation before livable wages can be earned. This has also made it far more expensive to reproduce and bring children to maturity. 6-12 year olds could earn you plenty of money before, but they cost you much more now because there aren't as many earning opportunities for them, and the law often actively discourages their employment.
You must pay for their education and housing for what is usually a period of about 16 years before they can truly earn a living wage, and generally 1-3 more years on top of that are required as a bare minimum before they can fully strike out on their own. In this increasingly complicated economy, it is becoming increasingly likely that they will need to go on to 4-8 more years of schooling on top of that in order to be competitive for societal contribution and earn a good living, and this is just more time spent supporting them as a parent. Quite a few will contribute relatively little until their mid-20's.
When analyzing long term trends in societal development (I am focusing here on changes beginning in the 19th century, accelerating in the 20th, and coming to fruition in the present), it is clear that higher standards of living have come with a higher cost of living-reproduction is far more expensive, and contribution for the offspring takes far longer to become a reality. Kids just aren't the wealth generating assets they one were, and there is thus less incentive to have them.
Quote:If it is expenses that keep people from having children, then...
- Why do third-world shitholes have high birthrates? They have no money, so how can they have children?
Consider the example I mentioned earlier juxtaposing two French families each with ten children, with one living in the present and another living in the 19th century.
If you were to put the status of many third world societies on a continuum between these two examples, they would fall far closer to the 19th century example than modern first world societies would. This is the core of your answer.
Agriculture is still more prevalent in the developing world, and cheap unskilled labor is in higher demand due to a level of technological advancement that is not quite on par with what you see in the west.
The end result is a society in which children can still be major sources of wealth. They can provide valuable manpower on farms (general rule in agriculture: more hands = more wealth) and there are still plenty of unskilled jobs in industry and services that are open to them and do not require an extended formal education. Kids in these societies can generate income for you quite early in life without a ton of investment(read: formal education).
Kids can also play a role as a safety net-many of these nations do not have the strong welfare systems and the rule of law that we enjoy in the west. In quite a few of these parts of the world, there are no retirement homes, and your children are your social security fund.
To sum it all up, there is simply a far greater incentive to have larger families in the third world than there is in the USA because kids are still arguably the best ways for average people to generate wealth. More hands = more money and security.
It was once this way in the west as well, but that has changed for reasons already mentioned. Kids are pricy and we have other ways of generating wealth here (on top of technological aid and governments that cover our welfare).
Quote:- And in developed countries, it is the poor who have the most children as well. Why?
Same phenomenon as before-on the continuum, the poor come closer to the old 19th century standard than the rich in developed countries, though they're still not quite close to their 3rd world peers. This is also why more conservative rural areas have higher birth rates as well-more hands=more wealth.
For the urban poor, welfare receipts can increase with the number of children birthed.
Quote:And it has nothing to do with economic prosperity.
Birth rates today are linked to wealth (less economic wealth/technological advancement = higher fertility rates, richer country = lower total fertility rate), so I do not see how you can contend that economic prosperity has nothing to do with the topic at hand. These trends are quite clear and well understood.
This aside from the fact that relative economic prosperity and rising living standards(tied to rapidly accelerating technological advancements) during the 20th century allowed for women to live much longer than they did in previous eras and, as I explained earlier, helped to make children far more expensive and less compelling to have.
Rising wealth, health, tech advancement and general prosperity had everything to do with the decrease in fertility rate seen in the west. It made kids less compelling and gave women more options (and more time to exercise them) than ever before.
Quote:The Romans, Spartans, Native American Indians, to name a few cultures, all experienced massive declines in their birthrates and never recovered. All of them came from varying degrees of wealth, so wealth cannot be held as anything more than one factor among many.
I never said that wealth was the ONLY factor capable of causing significant population decline.
Sparta's decline was linked closely to a series of crushing military defeats that undermined its system of inherited blood citizenship.
Native American decline was linked to disease.
Roman decline was a bit more complicated than those, but is often claimed to be a result of decadence and cultural dilution.
Quote:The one thing, however, the Romans, Spartans, and Native Americans had in common was the proliferation of casual sex between many different partners.
Rome-decline in civic pride, influx of foreigners, weakening of centralized rule(to keep it simple).
Sparta-Insurmountable military losses (too heavy for recovery to be possible under a blood-citizenship system).
Native America-European disease.
Those are, according to general historical consensus, the main factors that triggered the decline (both in population and significance) of these peoples. Now, if you'd like to contend that casual sex within these societies superseded these aforementioned reasons for decline and was in fact the primary cause in all three cases then be my guest, but that isn't a horse I'd bet on.
Such a contention is farfetched, to say the least.
Quote:Suffice to say, your reasons make no sense and explain nothing.
And your alternative?
Quote:Conversely, historical analysis will show you that women's morals dictate the birthrates much more than any other factor. When women are sluts, birthrates fall; when women stay virgins, birthrates explode.
That is a bold claim. Were the act of making such a claim enough to warrant its being taken seriously I would commend you, but alas, far more substantiation is needed to justify such a statement.
Would you care to present the detailed historical analysis that led you to this rather interesting conclusion? You are going against quite a large and established body of academic consensus relating to the causes of decline in various civilizations throughout time, so I'd expect to see some very detailed, extensive and compelling analysis from you to prove the contrary.
I'll assume you have obtained and analyzed a host of primary and secondary sources that have made clear the specific levels of "virginity" and "sluthood" present in the world's major civilizations(you'll need to analyze more than just Rome, Sparta and Native America[which, btw, is not actually a civilization, but a vague description of several pre-colonial civilizations in the Americas] to prove your larger point), and how exactly the presence of these factors rendered other more commonly accepted causes of decline(example: disease) minor, along with historical precedents to supplement things.
I look forward to your elaboration.
Quote:Money has nothing to do with it. Having children is cheap and easy.
Wrong.
Having children in 21st century America (and by "having children" I refer not simply to the act of birthing them, but to the act of successfully raising them to adulthood that is the implicit goal of all parents) is far more expensive than it was in 19th century America(or any time period before that).
This isn't debatable.
Quote:If people were simply content with only living with the barest of necessities, like, say, good Christians, generation after generation would be able to have ten children each.[quote]
And we would forego all notion of economic, social and technological advancement.
It is a moot point-such a scenario runs contrary to both reality and human nature.
[quote](Let's not bring up the issue of whether or not earth could support such exponential increases in population; I just want to show that increasing population rests just as much on morals as it does material necessities.)
Also a moot point-without technological/medical advancements(they won't be present in a world where people were content with only "the barest of necessities), humans simply would not live long enough to support a population boom of any threatening magnitude. Infant mortality would be too high and life expectancy too low.
Between 1900 and 2000, our population doubled from 3 Billion to over 6 Billion, the largest recorded jump in history. This was not due to an increase in birth rates, but rather to a decrease in infant mortality an a rise in life expectancy brought on by technological/medical advancement. Take those away and you have no population boom.
Quote:Hoover gets it. There is such a dearth of good woman that it's basically fruitless to try and find a wife in a developed countries.
I'll not agree entirely with this either.
America is close to hopeless, but there are developed nations remaining with good women and potentially good wives in them(ex. Japan, S. Korea, France, etc).