Why is it that the more progressive, developed, and social a society becomes, the more its birth rate falls over time? How did the USSR deal with this?

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10 Answers

  1. The more social a society becomes, the poorer entrepreneurs, the creative class, the intellectual and other workers tend to become. Most of the income is taken away by taxes (in many countries under 40%) on various social programs and support for the poor (i.e., instead of your own children, you actually need to support someone else there). And all this ultimately leads to the fact that it becomes quite expensive to support your own families.

    At the same time, the salary in progressive countries may be nominally large, but first it will be gross salary before taxes, and then you need to take into account the cost of rent/mortgage there, the cost of kindergartens – all this will be proportionally tied to the average income level. So the costs there will also be much higher. Therefore, the economy is one of the factors, and from my point of view, one of the main ones (although all the media can sing at the same time – oh, what big salaries we have, etc.).

    And then there's industrialization, the gradual abandonment of religion, and new social norms. If before industrialization, children were used in the economy (rural population) as workers – they started working from 5-7 years – that is, it was economically efficient to give birth a lot, but now children are actually up to almost 23-25 years of age-economic freeloaders of their parents.

    The rejection of religion and new social norms are another reason. If it is considered the norm in society to have 2-3 children, they will have so many, if 1-2 children – then so many. Everyone usually tries to go along with the majority. As for religiosity, for example, religious Israelis still give birth to 5-7 children, secular Israelis give birth to 1-2 children, even though they earn less

  2. The birth rate and population growth are not so much related to the “development of society”.how much with its urbanisation. However-often these phenomena go hand-in-hand. But nevertheless-the key here is precisely urbanization. Why: in rural areas, a child is already an assistant from the age of 3-4, and the older he gets,the higher his labor productivity and value in the family as an extra.an employee. In the city, in a high-rise building , a child is a freeloader, and the older he gets , the more expensive his maintenance becomes for the family, with almost zero return in the family income structure. At the end, we have: in the countryside, parents try to get as many offspring as possible-future almost free workers and household assistants, in the city – child-free, well, or, at most, to have one – “for themselves” and limit themselves to this. Someone – out of greed-after all,the children will take on a part of your income,which you could spend on travel,etc., and someone-skeptically assessing their capabilities – comes to the conclusion that they can hardly “learn and provide”for one or the other…

  3. There are biological and psychological answers here.

    Biological. The birth rate must be high for a high survival rate of the species. As recently as 150 years ago, thousands of children were mowed down by child epidemics. Well, the epidemic of scarlet fever in the 1990s in the USSR led to the death of a couple of thousand children, despite a fairly well-developed medicine and good vaccination coverage.

    To survive, people gave birth. Out of 10 people born, 4-5 died in childhood, and 2-3 died from accidents. 2-4 children lived to adulthood. And it's not just about the peasants. Remember the family of Nicholas II. This is already the twentieth century, after all, and the heir to the throne is terminally ill, and a second heir is definitely needed. Children were regularly ill with all sorts of typhus and almost pediculosis.

    With the development of society, medicine develops, child mortality decreases, and out of 10 children, 9 live to adulthood with a reproduction rate of 2.33… just having three children is enough to make everything OK. Nature is always in favor of minimalism for survival.

    The psychological answer is that with the development of society, a person is recognized as a value. He has admitted it before, but as long as we are talking about survival, people do not reach high values. Then they crawled up. Antibiotics, land reclamation, replacing manual labor with machine labor. People have free time, a person realizes that he has needs – his own, has his own interests, can develop as a person. His life is valuable in itself.

    And at that moment comes the realization of two things:

    1) your happiness consists in self-actualization and development, and this takes time. If there are 10 children in a family, then a person does not have time for himself. If the children are 1-2-3, then there are already options. Today it goes to the extreme-childfries like “I'm not ready to have children, this is a responsibility” and “why do I need children, I can't find time for myself.” As a result, only those who see their self-actualization in raising 10 children have 10 children.

    2) the child is also a person, and it is not enough just to get him to live to 14 years. We need to make him happy, give him a good start, educate him, and educate him. He needs to be given the time of both his father and mother. And this should be combined with the development of parents. Not everyone can do this. With one child, this is relatively easy to do, with two more difficult, with three…for most, it is already unrealistic.

    As a result, a modern developed society with its requirements for parents and children, both from a biological and psychological point of view, comes to a society where the norm is 1-2 children in a family.

  4. The more developed the society, the less careless the attitude towards offspring becomes. In primitive societies-God gave, God took, will survive-well, will not survive-even better, one mouth less. But the more children there are, the more likely it is that at least one of them will survive, and at least one of them will “break out in people” and, perhaps, help their parents. This is the strategy of bacteria, insects, small rodents and fish – that is, all those who live in dangerous conditions of existence: the more, the better, at least someone will survive, the species will not be interrupted.

    But in developed societies, where there is no acute struggle for existence, where you do not need to throw the maximum amount of caviar so that at least someone survives, you do not just want to give birth to children. It would be good for this child to get decent prospects. That is, care, upbringing, and education. If you can't provide it , you don't need to give birth, show responsibility.

    In general, different mentality and different strategy.

    Well, in the USSR, for the increased birth rate (the Soviet leadership was interested in units), they fought with the help of a childlessness tax, which every man had to pay up to a certain age – something too lazy to Google up to what.

  5. Well, calculate for yourself how much money your parents spent on you. It's as simple as that. In a developed economy, and in a modernist society, the family is very expensive

  6. The more intellectually developed a person is, the more educated he is, the more responsible he approaches childbirth. This is also the desire not for quantity, but for quality, when it is preferable to give all the best to one person than to breed need. This is also a more competent awareness of contraception. This includes the desire to develop spiritually, be more mobile, and devote more time to your development and education.�

    In the USSR, there were benefits for large families, as far as I remember.

  7. Everything is simple here. Modern Western society (traditional societies do not know such problems) is focused on personal consumption, the satisfaction of ever-increasing personal needs, overwhelmingly imaginary, ” imposed by advertising patterns. The main value and meaning of life is getting pleasure from consumption, which should continuously grow.

    This is the proverbial “raising the standard of living”. A lot of children in this situation are just a hindrance on the way to getting pleasure.�

    When for most people in society the value of personal pleasure is higher than anything else, then the birth rate falls.

  8. This is not entirely true. Imaginary well-being is just a kind. With a real abundance-good food, and not cheap plastic chickens and buckwheat at extortionate prices, with a large territory-their huts from 100 meters, good social networks, etc. – they breed even better. And where is all this in the world of universal lending and insurance medicine? That's the same thing. Well, the lower the level of education, the greater the desire to be realized in plodyachka. Reducing the birth rate is a positive automation process. The main thing is to reduce the mortality rate of the working-age population. Now Russia is following the course of natalism, which never leads to good results. Well, they banned abortions, well, they introduced a tax, but it doesn't matter

  9. I was interested in this question for a long time, until I came across some research. What is happening now in the developed countries of Europe is very well described and studied in mice ( man, in his sociality, is the same animal) by ethologist John Calhoun in his experiment “Universe 25”. I highly recommend reading it. In short, a perfect world was created, a kind of paradise for four pairs of mice. Unlimited food and drink, conditions and materials for building nests, population safety. So, at first there was a stage of exponential growth – the mouse population doubled every 55 days. Starting from day 315 of the experiment, population growth slowed significantly, and the population doubled within 145 days. At the third stage, the mice began to form certain social hierarchies that prevent reproduction. I won't spoil you, you can easily find all the information about the experiment on the web. I'm sure you'll enjoy reading it. It is very interesting. I can only say that the experiment was completed in 4 years, at that time the mouse population was only 122 mice that were out of reproductive age – some retired:)

  10. There is a demographic transition model that describes this process.

    The first stage. People live little, they die a lot. Therefore, it is necessary to give birth to as many children as possible, so that at least someone survives and continues the birth.

    The second stage. There are hygiene products, vaccines and other benefits of civilization. Because of this, the death rate is falling, and life expectancy is increasing. However, due to the factors described above and the development of society, most children survive and will have to be taken care of and given food. Therefore, the birth rate is also starting to fall, but it is still at a high level.

    The third stage. The development of society and medicine continues. The decline in mortality and birth rates is in full swing. Life expectancy continues to grow, which is why there are more elderly people who can't have children. Even more time needs to be spent on children(providing education, etc.), and child mortality is low. Women may already have rights, career opportunities, and other things in life that are not childbearing.�

    The fourth stage. The variables are about the same. The birth rate is enough to replace exactly one generation with another. The population is practically not growing in number

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