Neonatalism among educated women

[ren0312]

Is it a good idea for governments in rich countries to consider programs that encourage highly educated women to increase the number of children that they have, considering that IQ is heritable, and fertility is inversely related to education among women, with women with post graduate studies basically having only around 1 child per woman in developed countries? Maybe with subsidized child care and tax breaks? Or maybe encourage women to prioritize parenthood and having 2 kids by the time they hit 30, instead of climbing the corporate ladder, by which time if they finally decide to have children, it will be in their early or late 30s, already, by which time the most optimal time for a woman to give birth, which is until their late 20s, has passed?

 

[tomar]

I think the priority right now is to reduce birth rates in countries with high birth rates.... it is beyond ridiculous to whine about climate change for example without addressing the growing population issues (the earth population has tripled since the 1950s) .... Conversely I do not see a problem with decrease in population...... if the earth population goes back to around 2 billion what would be the big deal ?

 

[aggienation]

You can't have both. Women can't be professionals while still being baby factories. As long as society is geared toward duel income livelihood, then the children will suffer.

 

[Chlodio]

I doubt subsidized childcare or tax breaks would increase the birth rate. Instead, they would make it easier for parents to raise the one or two children they are having without the subsidies or tax breaks. People do not consider the tax code when making important life decisions like whether to have or not have children.

 

[arkteia]

What about encouraging educated women to freeze their eggs? So that they are not pushed into marriage by the fear of biological clock ticking away, and can look for more appropriate partners?

 

[Fox]

What about encouraging educated women to freeze their eggs? So that they are not pushed into marriage by the fear of biological clock ticking away, and can look for more appropriate partners?

I just read an article the other day about a woman who thought this was a clever approach, but later, when she tried, all her eggs failed, meaning she essentially paid to lose her chance at reoroduction. If we encourage this as an option, then we will see more women trying it, with some portion of them successfully reproducing when they would have succeeded anyway, and some portion failing where they would have succeeded. Accordingly, this sounds like an effective way to further decrease fertility while also increasing its cost.

Society might be wise to simply be honest with women: the overwhelming majority of "careers" produce little lasting value for society in comparison to reproduction, and doubly so for the sorts of careers educated women often pursue. If you enjoy being an H.R. manager, or a social worker, or a psychologist, or a lawyer, or an anthropologist, or whatever, then that's fine, but society would gain more in the long term from you simply staying home and propagating your genes than from whatever H.R. policies you'd push at Wells Fargo or whatever. There are exceptions, but they are rare enough to be not worth configuring social messaging and culture around, especially since the exceptions will probably just ignore the messaging and culture anyway.

 

[arkteia]

I just read an article the other day about a woman who thought this was a clever approach, but later, when she tried, all her eggs failed, meaning she essentially paid to lose her chance at reoroduction. If we encourage this as an option, then we will see more women trying it, with some portion of them successfully reproducing when they would have succeeded anyway, and some portion failing where they would have succeeded. Accordingly, this sounds like an effective way to further decrease fertility while also increasing its cost.

Society might be wise to simply be honest with women: the overwhelming majority of "careers" produce little lasting value for society in comparison to reproduction, and doubly so for the sorts of careers educated women often pursue. If you enjoy being an H.R. manager, or a social worker, or a psychologist, or a lawyer, or an anthropologist, or whatever, then that's fine, but society would gain more in the long term from you simply staying home and propagating your genes than from whatever H.R. policies you'd push at Wells Fargo or whatever. There are exceptions, but they are rare enough to be not worth configuring social messaging and culture around, especially since the exceptions will probably just ignore the messaging and culture anyway.

If her eggs fail, have not you heard about egg adoption? Another high IQ woman who has ten frozen and may need two or three, will donate.

About jobs. Women control fertility now. They know the allure of having own job (which soon will be paid at the same level as a guy's one, thank god) as compared to sitting at home, waiting for "the provider" to come back. And let us be honest, a one-income family economically is rapidly sinking pretty low. So instead of having three kids, renting a house and sending kids to a school in mediocre neighborhood, the woman thinks, OK, let me have one kid but provide him with as much as I can. So that he does not complain that he has no money for college.
And also - how about talking a woman into producing kids and a man, her partner, into sitting at home and raising them? Both propagate their genes. It is unfair that a guy gets the chance of career advancement and a woman is merely changing diapers.

P.S. two more points. The most recent study about declining birth rate was done in Oregon. Women there specifically mentioned not being secure in the future.

Now, what would a high-IQ university grad woman do with Oregon job market? She could move to the Silicone Valley where marriage market favors women and marry a high-IQ-IT guy who can provide for her kids. She'll mate her DNA with his DNA, and at least there will be the incentive to leave the posterity as guys there are paid well. So I think there will be tiny enclaves where fertility rate will be at least at sustainable level. But - women with high IQ want to live in style, and I don't blame them, so these will be the places with stable jobs.

(And deserving men). When Brandon Tarrant complained about white women not reproducing in his manifesto, I thought, he was one of the prime examples why! A guy without University degree, a gamer without a decent job that could provide for the family, investing inheritance into traveling but bringing back killer's ideas and some weird imaginary world, total waste of society's resources, what university graduate woman would want to reproduce with him, sorry?

 

[NordicDemosthenes]

I think you should implementation policies the mirror image of all this: at least in Sweden. Make childcare (we have quite substantial government grants to all families) into a tax-deduction rather than a lump sum the government hands out.

As for low birthrates in the Western world more generally... While there is no doubt an economic dimension to it, with high real estate prices, taxes etc playing a role I think it is really a cultural issue more than anything. One of the prime examples I can think of to illustrate this point is Israel. In recent years the Jewish birthrate has increased, even among secular Jews, while the arab one has decreased. Under the right circumstances, I do think it is possible to combine modernity with a fertility situation that isn't dysgenic and longterm suicidal.

What are the other options to be honest? Drive the women out of the workforce? I'm not convinced by this explanation, if you look around the world it is quite clear that societies with less historical equality between the sexes that are also economically developed (East Asia, Southern Europe) consistently have lower birthrates than the more gender-egalitarian countries in Northern Europe, the Anglo Saxon world, France etc. Part of this is no doubt due to migration, but if you try to delve into the statistics there still seems to be a 0.2-0.3 deviation between comparative demographics (native Norwegians with native Italians for example). The only counterexample I can think of to this is Russia, but Russia is... A special case.

 

[Fox]

If her eggs fail, have not you heard about egg adoption? Another high IQ woman who has ten frozen and may need two or three, will donate.

Raising another woman's genetic child really isn't the same thing, either from an individual emotional perspective, or a collective gene-preservation perspective. No society is going to meet replenishment fertility relying upon this kind of thing; they'll merely ensure they fall further and further away from meeting that mark.

About jobs. Women control fertility now. They know the allure of having own job (which soon will be paid at the same level as a guy's one, thank god) as compared to sitting at home, waiting for "the provider" to come back. And let us be honest, a one-income family economically is rapidly sinking pretty low. So instead of having three kids, renting a house and sending kids to a school in mediocre neighborhood, the woman thinks, OK, let me have one kid but provide him with as much as I can. So that he does not complain that he has no money for college.

Your society can do what it likes in this regard, but the mathematics of the situation are what they are, so if the scenario is as you describe, it will persist until those women who "control fertility now" drive themselves nearly extinct through their short-term view of the matter are replaced by those who see the matter otherwise. Reality is uncompromising.

And also - how about talking a woman into producing kids and a man, her partner, into sitting at home and raising them? Both propagate their genes. It is unfair that a guy gets the chance of career advancement and a woman is merely changing diapers.

That's fine with me, but evidently largely not fine with women, who frequently divorce men whose earning potential they view as inadequate. Even you acknowledge this implicitly when you say, "... marry a high-IQ-IT guy who can provide for her kids. She'll mate her DNA with his DNA, and at least there will be the incentive to leave the posterity as guys there are paid well." What most women are truly looking for in mates is not particularly mysterious, and it's not a stay at home dad. My wife would assuredly not be pleased, for example, with the notion of me quitting my job and staying at home while she worked, and she is hardly unique in that regard. By contrast, many women are content enough to do that, assuming society isn't doing everything in its power to convince them that such a choice is the "wrong" thing to do.

To be clear, I don't especially care if any particular society wants to drive itself into extinction by handling the matter of fertility and labor in accordance with your ostensible views. If the people of, say, Israel, want to choose to continue, while the people of, say, Germany, want to opt for extinction because they care more about feminism than continued national existence, that's their collective choice.

 

[Fox]

What are the other options to be honest? Drive the women out of the workforce? I'm not convinced by this explanation, if you look around the world it is quite clear that societies with less historical equality between the sexes that are also economically developed (East Asia, Southern Europe) consistently have lower birthrates than the more gender-egalitarian countries in Northern Europe, the Anglo Saxon world, France etc. Part of this is no doubt due to migration, but if you try to delve into the statistics there still seems to be a 0.2-0.3 deviation between comparative demographics (native Norwegians with native Italians for example). The only counterexample I can think of to this is Russia, but Russia is... A special case.

1) It's worth bearing in mind that when there was "historic" inequality between the sexes in East Asia, there was also above-replenishment fertility. Consider South Korea, for example: we see increased induction of women into South Korean universities in the 1980s, and we also see Korea plummet below replenishment fertility in the 80s. I won't say that the two are directly causally related, but rather, suggest that the two might be influenced by the same underlying cultural trends. Right now, the state of culture in South Korea is to the point where I recently saw a news report on women who choose to remain single their whole lives and focus on their work, with the underlying message being, "These women don't have enough saved for retirement; the government needs to help them." That shows well enough where the "Overton Window" is and has been on this matter, and how far it is from any sort of "historic inequality."

2) What happens if you control for population density? For example, South Korea has 515 people per square kilometer; Japan has 334 people per square kilometer; Italy has 200 people per square kilometer. By contrast, Norway has 16 people per square kilometer; Sweden has 23 people per square kilometer; Finland has 16 people per square kilometer; and your exception, Russia, has 9 people per square kilometer. Again, note that I'm not necessarily suggesting an absolute, 1-to-1 causal link. The U.K., for example, has a population density of 272 people per square kilometer, yet a higher fertility rate than Italy. Rather, I wonder if it might not be a factor, especially in the case of East Asia, where mountainous terrain and intensive urbanization actually mean those population density figures understate just how crowded the countries in question are, something that can have not only an economic impact, but also a psychological one.