Comment by silverquiet
1 year ago
I appreciate the response. I feel like half the points in your third paragraph could easily be framed as economic factors rather than cultural (though I don't think those are as separate as people often seem to think).
What is most interesting to me is that you said cultures (plural) when saying that we have deeper problems. But according to the article, this has become a nearly universal issue across all cultures of the world; and what force but economic globalization could cause something like that?
> what force but economic globalization could cause something like that?
This is a good observation. One possibility is that globalism serves as a vector for communicating certain cultural habits. A natural place to look is the US as it has been the primary globalizing force in recent history. American popular culture (TV, cinema), NGOs, the influence of American universities, etc. all serve to spread ideas sell a certain vision of life. It doesn't matter if the ideas are good. These methods appeal to the emotions.
And this is not a bad suspicion, as it seems that the inverse relation between number of children and wealth, when people are otherwise permitted to have children as they wish, seems to be characteristic of consumerist societies.
One issue I see with that theory is that America has been a bit of a holdout on fertility - I believe it has been fairly high amongst developed nations, though it has been in decline along with nearly every other country. I've read that fertility and religiosity are fairly well correlated, and the US has also historically been a bit of an outlier there, though religion is also in decline. I think that would be squarely in the realm of culture.
I doubt that anyone can really say what the cause is at a societal and ultimately global level; I can only really know my own reasons.
Yes, I don't think there's a single factor you can blame, but I suspect there are dominant causes and then particular circumstantial causes. I.e., while the bulk of low fertility can be the result of the same general attitude toward life (what life is about, expectations, etc), factors particular to a given population can nudge the TFR in one direction or the other.