this post was submitted on 14 Apr 2025
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[–] ininewcrow@lemmy.ca 147 points 1 week ago (55 children)

I keep saying it all the time

It isn't about the QUANTITY of life

It's about the QUALITY of life

What sense does it make if you raise your population and everyone is miserably poor or on the edge of becoming poor?

It makes more sense if you just concentrate on making life more manageable, comfortable and sensible for the population you already have. Once you have a comfortable stable population of people who no longer worry about their future .... then they will be more likely to have a family.

[–] TheBat@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago (6 children)

Once you have a comfortable stable population of people who no longer worry about their future .... then they will be more likely to have a family.

Somehow India is an exception to this. People worry about the future and still have kids. Nearly every married couple I know has at least one child or planning for one.

I don't get it.

[–] WoodScientist@sh.itjust.works 12 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Because all forms of poverty are not the same. It's only confusing if you insist on measuring things in dollars instead of stability. If they own their own land, a subsistence farmer in rural India has a much more secure and stable life than a precarious retail worker in the US. Yes, the precarious retail worker might have more trinkets and consumer goods than the Indian farmer, but the Indian farmer owns their own livelihood.

Having a child is ultimately an act of selflessness and generosity. People have children when they are fairly confident that they will be able to ensure those children will enjoy a quality of life that they find acceptable. And "acceptable" is context dependent. If they own their own land, a subsistence farmer in rural India can have a couple kids and guarantee that their children will have a secure future. If nothing else, they can pass the farm onto their children. At the worst, the farmer's children will have the same standard of living as the farmer. Most such farmers would hope their children would get an education and do even better than they did. But if nothing else they can always just take over the farm. The same isn't true for a wage slave working for Walmart. The Walmart worker knows their existence is incredibly precarious. If rents spike again and wages don't keep up, they will be living on the street. Their existence is precarious, and few people want to bring children into such a precarious life.

Stability is the key to birth rates. It has nothing to do with dollars earned. A US retail worker makes far more dollars in wages than the market value of the Indian subsistence farmer's crops. But the US retail worker has to live in a much, much more expensive country. And the Indian subsistence farmer owns their own land, a plot that's been in the family for generations. They don't have to pay rent. They don't have to worry about getting fired. The only thing they have to worry about is crop failures. But farmers have had to worry about those since the dawn of time.

[–] Maeve@kbin.earth 3 points 1 week ago

Hence my comment about poorly aware people and outmoded ideas. It's shocking how we allowed our educational system to become so gutted, basic inferential logic has suffered so much, and how poor and stressed we've allowed ourselves to become that neutral and ambiguous comments are triggering visceral emotions rather than curiosity and exploration. I was busy and am decreasing screen time in general, so I didn't take time to type all that out. Instead I returned to my work, had a nap, went for a walk, had lunch, finished my work for the day and am relaxing. And have decided to spend screentime learning something exciting and interesting - re-creating. Thank you for taking the time to type it up. Enjoy your day/afternoon/evening.

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