Everyone is freaking out about this graph

The primary reason why people aren't having kids in industrialized nations is because most people are aware that their kids will have a lower standard of living than they did. Real wages have barely moved since the 80's, while cost of living is up several fold. And the trend is only getting worse. Looking to immigration for a solution is like treating a symptom without addressing its cause.

I’m from Japan and hearing that in 2045, statistically, 1/4 of the population could have dementia is absolutely terrifying

It's crazy how this was predicted at least 13 years ago, and it's taken this long for it to become common knowledge.

I remember my Political Science professor in college explaining how educated women have fewer children (It makes sense, because then they have more options to be independent and not just be a wife and mother), so he said that the best way to prevent over-population is to get the women educated. This ties in with what was said in the video about there being a lower birth rate in countries where women have more equal rights (they would probably also have more access to contraceptives, etc.).

“We designed income tax for future investments, plan infrastructure to keep our citizens healthy and happy, and organise healthcare and education around our population sizes.” Oh brother have I got a story for you…

Wealthy nations also refuse to keep their own people out of poverty

Having a kid nowadays is a luxury most people can’t afford the time nor the money

imagine wanting to bring a child into a world that is on the brink of ecological and economic collapse

A major shift not discussed here is the movement from labor force to industrialization. My grandmother grew up in a family of 10 kids and on a farm. There was no child care costs because they all lived on and worked on the farm. They also expected the kids to help and having a large family was necessary to make that work. Also, there was little to no birth control options so kids “happened”. They also had some child mortality rates far higher than now. With rising costs of living, moving to suburbs, families required two incomes and family sizes trended downwards. It would also be interesting to see how the worldwide pandemic and subsequent supply chain issues and economic impacts have impacted birth rates in these past few years and in the next few. People who are struggling to afford housing and food also may make a conscious effort to limit reproduction.

I live in Canada, and our biggest problem isn't what will happen in a few decades, but what is happening right now, which is cost of living being unaffordable, and housing costs being out of control. It's hard to think about decades from now when we can't even afford to live now. My spouse worked for MAID, and there are people applying for MAID because they cannot afford to live. How insane and sad is that? We need to fix this first. We need the infrastructure and improved cost of living before we can have more immigration, as we can't even support what we have now.

Even with the phrase from Neil deGrasse Tyson "The universe is under no obligation to make sense to you", you guys can get a complicated theme and present it in a way that helps us understand better! Thank you for that! I am an immigrant in Canada and live in Toronto, and I completely understand the mind-blowing of the number of immigrants in other countries.

“Immigration isn’t happening enough” Really? Because I was thinking that that’s crazy that 2-4% of people have decided to leave their country and go somewhere else.

I'm Gen Z, and I fully believe that a lot of us have no hope for the future and do not want to bring children into a dying world.

I’m in the group that thinks the population decline could be the best possible thing to humanity, hahaha.

I honestly can't understand this fear of decrease. If the world has worked with less population, and it only seems to get worse as the populations increases.

Bro the fertility rate isn't about actual fertility. It's about the fact that a lot of the current generation cannot afford to have children. We're plenty fertile, it's just that a certain generation decided to horde all the wealth and make it impossible for us to be financially stable enough to start families. It's just not feasible for most of us.

Having kids these days is expensive! I want to have 3 kids, but I just can't afford it now.

I think a big part of it is that in at least some wealthier nations there's also just a lot of financial cost to just being alive, making having and raising kids seem infeasible and even cruel to the kids in a way

We’ve talked about some of this in my environmental studies coursework, like the Demographic Transition Model and fertility rates. Personally, I might not have any kids, and I might prefer to adopt/foster; part of it is my worry of the impact having any biological children would add (as opposed to already-born kids), part of it is worry over their potential quality of life, and part of it is because pregnancy scares me to some extent.

Thank you for more information on this very touchy(some would say taboo)but vital subject. Quite frankly, there seems to be no easy way out. It would be foolhardy to continue the current rate of consumption of resources particularly in "wealthy" countries but no one wants to give up conveniences, comfort, and hopes for security. Some things are going to change, whether we like it or not.