Comment by cyberax
10 days ago
We do. It's called "urbanization".
Large cities are inherently inimical to living in large families. And yes, it was apparently the case even in the Roman Empire.
10 days ago
We do. It's called "urbanization".
Large cities are inherently inimical to living in large families. And yes, it was apparently the case even in the Roman Empire.
Decline happens also in territories that had been urbanized decades or even centuries ago but had positive fertility rate until 2010s. As I said you can pull a patchy blanket of micro-theories explaining each region but not one theory that accounts for them all.
Yes, but it happened in stages. The fertility fell each time people moved into higher density areas.
You can even see mild recovery when de-densification happens. It's very interesting to compare the fertility rate in Denmark and Netherlands:
https://www.macrotrends.net/datasets/global-metrics/countrie...
https://www.macrotrends.net/datasets/global-metrics/countrie...
You can see the dip and a recovery in Denmark and essentially no recovery in Netherlands (until post 2000, but that was due to immigration). Why?
Here's the answer:
https://www.macrotrends.net/datasets/global-metrics/cities/2...
https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/cities/21930/amst...
Denmark de-densified its cities during the late 70-s (that's why Copenhagen is the world's most liveable city, btw).
Generally when people say urbanisation is the cause of fertility decline they mean people moving out of 7 child families at subsistence farms and rice paddies to city factories. Not any developments in Denmark or the Netherlands in last 150 years.