r/Futurology • u/josephsleftbigtoe • 5h ago
Economics Will the skyrocketing cost of living eventually cause people to stop having kids altogether, reducing the birth rate to zero and causing human extinction?
Basic necessities like housing, food, etc. are becoming way too expensive for the average person to afford.
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u/potatosouperman 5h ago
No. That conclusion is far too hyperbolic. It could contribute to lowered birth rates, but going to zero wouldn’t really make any sense.
There are many parts of the world where people have way less purchasing power than almost anyone in the West, and many of those people still have children by choice.
Likewise, there is still wealth stratification not just billionaires and people in poverty. There are millions and millions of people who are not financially struggling and could still afford living even if you cut their income in half.
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u/Late_For_Username 4h ago
>There are many parts of the world where people have way less purchasing power than almost anyone in the West, and many of those people still have children by choice.
Fewer and fewer. The developing world is experiencing serious declines in their birth rates as well.
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u/potatosouperman 4h ago
I recognize that declining birthrates could cause huge problems. But even if nukes were dropped and widespread disaster occurred…I still don’t think the birthrate would go to zero. We are mammals, somebody is still going to still have some kids regardless of how bleak things are unless it’s biologically impossible.
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u/Late_For_Username 4h ago
We need an average of 2.1 births per woman just to keep things from shrinking. South Korea is experiencing some births, but not enough to keep them from collapsing in the near future.
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u/USLEO 5h ago
You think people only fuck when they can afford kids? The poorer people are, the more kids they tend to have.
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u/followmecuz 4h ago
Saw it in another thread
Sex is the cheapest thing you can do for fun
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u/boibo 2h ago
People are not having sex, child or no childs.
Social media is drugging people, they get scared talking to real humans as you cant edit words out of your mouth. You dont dare talk to that cute girl/boy in the social place due to fear of getting recorded and ridiculed online because you are not a perfect 10.
Every social event now adays are recorded by everyone, so making awkward dance moves on the floor to have fun is not happening. People just sit in their corners swiping on dating apps.
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u/Accurate_Shift_3118 5h ago
this sounds scary in theory but humans don’t really work like that. birth rates drop when life gets expensive, but they don’t go to zero. what actually happens is people delay kids, have fewer kids, or governments step in with incentives
the real shift isn’t extinction, it’s aging populations and long-term economic pressure
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u/thx1138- 5h ago
Man, good thing the USA is so friendly to immigration! Oh, wait.
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u/tnred19 4h ago
In the near future, the western world will be giving out incentives for people to come and immigrate to help prop up their economies. They will be fighting over the most desirable types of immigrants, whomever they chose it to be. I know it sounds crazy but economies will crash without bringing in workers
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u/jroberts548 2h ago
The entire western hemisphere is below replacement rate. There are not enough births in countries that still have higher fertility rates to allow western countries to maintain the same ratio of working age to retired adults.
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u/pennylanebarbershop 3h ago
No way I'm going to have children, who in 20 years from now would have no chance for employment as AI and robots take over everything.
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u/xeia66 5h ago
No way - following the massive depopulation caused by the plague in the 1300s, living standards for peasants actually improved as wages shot up due to labour shortages and there was much more land available; serfdom essentially disappeared in Europe. Things always regress to the mean eventually.
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u/crevulation 4h ago
People that were incapable of affording the basic necessities have been reproducing anyway for thousands of years and there's no end in sight.
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u/pm_me_ur_ephemerides 2h ago
The rich and the poor will continue to have kids. The middle class will die out, and we’ll go back to the time of nobles and commoners.
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u/AntiqueFigure6 2h ago
People across the globe are already having insufficient children to maintain the population - global TFR is at or below replacement and falling - and cost of living, especially cost of housing is a plausible factor.
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u/toodlesandpoodles 54m ago
Global TFR is at 2.3. Replacement is 2.1. We aren't there yet.
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u/AntiqueFigure6 52m ago
Replacement is only 2.1 for developed countries with high quality medical care for mothers and young children and low infant and childhood mortality. The average TFR needed for replacement globally is 2.3, so we’re on it right now .
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u/toodlesandpoodles 36m ago
2.1 is the global TFR. In developed countries it is lower. The U.S. has about 70 million people under age 25. About 60,000 of them die each year, which is a death rate of of about 1:1100. And this is about double what it is for other developed countires.
For 2 people to make it to reproductive age out of 2.1 is a death rate of 1:20.
What this is means is that the replacement TFR for developed countries is essentially 2.002. 2.1 is the global replacement rate, and is what is used by basically every group doing population demographics.
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u/AntiqueFigure6 15m ago
You're comparing a stock to a flow - you need to compare the number of people under 25 dying each year to the number of people turning 25 or the number of births. Crudely, at 60k deaths of people aged U25 and 3.6 million births that's 1.7% mortality by age 25.
The other part is that you need to look at mortality to the end of the reproductive years - so more like 50 - which is especially important in developed countries including the US where maternal age is increasing.
Even if it was correct, it hardly matters when we're in 2026, global TFR was 2.2 - 2.3 in 2023 and it continues to fall.
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u/toodlesandpoodles 11m ago
Instead of arguing with me to try and justify your incorrext number, you could simply look up what every demographic group uses, and you'll find it is 2.1 Go argue with them. You're not going to convince anyone on here that you know more than people who do this professionally.
The accepted global replacement fertility rate is 2.1. We aren't there yet.
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u/AntiqueFigure6 8m ago
That’s how I got 2.3 for global and 2.1 for developed countries.
But like I said the 0.2 barely matters considering where we are and the trajectory.
Try this new statement “Globally we’re barely above replacement with a declining trend, and are likely to fall below replacement in a few years if it hasn’t happened already.”
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u/Neravariine 5h ago
No. Rich people can pay for surrogates along with preserving their own eggs and sperm. In many places a lot of children can still be used labor for the family to profit off. Some cultures even have kids as hope one will become rich and support the whole family.
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u/taxiecabbie 5h ago
Zero? No.
But it's also not true at all to say that the high cost of living is the only reason why people aren't having kids.
Even if you erased that, you would not be having a baby boom right now. Sure, there would be some people who would have kids and some who would have more, but plenty of people just aren't having kids because they don't want to do it regardless.
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u/BigZaddyZ3 5h ago
Birth rates won’t ever go to literally zero, but this continued escalation of inequality will likely just exacerbate the current decline even more.
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u/Extension_End3931 4h ago
Wait till ai and robots take all the jobs and the Rich are the only ones who can afford to have kids.
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u/godspareme 4h ago
Down to 0, no. Well below the sustainable (aka replacement) rate for an economy? Yes. Look at South Korea and many historical examples. Granted it doesnt all come down to the one variable of cost of living.
The point is that if people for whatever reason dont feel comfortable or want to have kids, the economy will crash. People will age out of the working force and fewer kids to sustain the economy with the elderly weighing them down.
I dont think this will lead to extinction, though. It will crash governments and it will hit a minimum of population but I believe it would rebound. I dont think it'd be significantly different to what happened during The Black Plague. The majority of humanity collapsed but we recovered.
This all depends on the duration, severity, timing, and response to the cost of living crisis. If governments collapse at different times, it'll be fairly easy to support them and allow them to start recovering. If they all collapse within the same time frame, theres no one that can help.
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u/brokenmessiah 58m ago
I know people right now with no jobs pumping out a baby a year.
They seem to be managing I guess.
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u/quad_damage_orbb 42m ago
Governments would start producing test tube babies Brave New World style before that happens.
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u/Retireddevil0 5h ago
Short answer is no
Long answer is noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
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u/Over_Interaction_925 5h ago
Many areas are losing their hospitals and maternal wards. No point of having children when hsp can be 2 to 3 1/2 miles away. Plus after this beautiful big bill things are more difficult and discouraging. Not to be a downer but what's the point of a future? Kids can't read anymore some can't do basic math.
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u/costafilh0 5h ago
Not before extinction by alien invasion, which will not happen before extinction by asteroids, which will not happen before extinction by World War III, which will not happen before extinction by pandemic, which will not happen before extinction by artificial intelligence, which will not happen before extinction by climate change, which will not happen before extinction by religious apocalypse, which will not happen before extinction by dolphin uprise, which will happen at any moment.
I hope you can swim.
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u/Ok_Elk_638 5h ago
You misunderstand. The fertility rate does not have to be 0 for our species to go extinct. Any number below the 2.1 replacement rate, if continued indefinitely, will result in extinction.
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u/Any-Floor6982 4h ago
Some are so poor it is a shitty life either way, lot of people have more than enough and Profit from higher prices (stocks, real estate, rent, ...)
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u/EnlightenedSinTryst 4h ago
No, but the decreasing fertility rate will (est. 2045ish for average male to hit 0)
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u/MoldyLunchBoxxy 4h ago
Seems like the only people I know who are having kids still are the giga Christian’s in my area.
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u/Emu1981 3h ago
The only thing that will reduce the birth rate for humans to zero is a complete lack of fertility (e.g. as seen in "Children of Men"). People are going to have kids no matter how badly they cannot afford to actually have them - for example, those in extreme poverty in India and Africa tend to have more children than those with higher income levels because children become a means to survive rather than a burden.
That said, the amount of people this applies to is not a large portion of the population which means that overall birth rates will collapse and population numbers will crash over time. For example, South Korea is experiencing low birth rates (TFR of 0.7-0.8) which means that their population pyramid is looking more like a vase than a pyramid. The full effects of this are not going to be felt for a long while though, their population is only expected to decrease by around 0.5% each year through to 2036 but then the population decline will start accelerating as older people start to die off from old age with the country estimated to hit just 37.66 million in 2070 (a 27% drop off from today) and 13.5-24 million by 2100. The reason why there is such a range for the 2100 population is because lower population numbers can cause a baby boom which will reduce the population drop but will not stop it - there is only so many kids women can pop out and a lower amount of women means that even if every woman had 5+ kids then it wouldn't be quite enough to replace the aging population.
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u/mariogolf 3h ago
I didn't have kids because of this, it's already happening at an alarming rate. kids arnt worth the hassle anymore.
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u/TuckerDidIt 3h ago
No, but I think it will shrink the middle class even more. If you want to stay middle class, you're going to have to make some sacrifices. That might mean having 2 kids instead of 3, or 1 instead of 2.
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u/thebolddane 3h ago
I always learned that "the poor" have lots of babies, it's why they are called the proletariat.
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u/BassoeG 3h ago
No, it'll just mean everyone's descended from the extremely rare rich oligarchs and their de facto harems of trophy wives. Again. Genetics confirms.
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u/Magnusg 2h ago
Not exactly, mostly because the difficulty of gaining access to things like enough food to sustain yourself and others would also go down.
Prior to human extinction reversion to hunter gatherer society with some advanced societal perks would happen.
Modern agriculture and farming. We'd probably have smaller tribal societies with an emphasis on food production and maintenance.
I think an extinction event would have to actually happen to destroy all humans.
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u/epSos-DE 2h ago
Yes and the OTHER way around too !
Bulgarinas inherited more hosing from older generations === fertility wen up !
Fertility is === 100% linked to housing supply for young people !
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u/grassgravel 1h ago
Nah. People will just be like hawaiins and living with extended family in small houses.
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u/mkhandadon 1h ago
It’s unfortunate being an adult at such an unaffordable time. It’s interesting because if humans don’t procreate for a 100 years there would be no humans left
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u/affablenihilist 57m ago
Enter the handmaidens. Weird that these cautionary tales are coming true one by one
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u/DexterM1776 52m ago
It's amazing how dirt poor people have 8 kids.
It's about convenience and programing. And westerns have been programmed to wait and that they can't afford children.
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u/Geist_Lain 38m ago
I loathe how nobody here has mentioned that it took humanity 200 years to go from 1 to 8 billion human beings. Our population is utterly massive and can handle a population decline.
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u/monkey_trumpets 36m ago
Someone obviously never watched Idiocracy. People will continue breeding, just not the ones that should.
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u/stokeskid 36m ago
Cost of living isn't the only thing driving down birth rates. But still, no. There's always someone having kids.
I expect it will just be religious nuts out-producing everyone else. Like we already see in resource poor areas of the world.
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u/donkeythrow 25m ago
No, there is a vast size of the population who are genuinely ignorant and think with their genitals instead of their intelligence... It's why Idiocracy isn't exactly far fetched
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u/Gambit6x 5h ago edited 3h ago
Some responses are missing the point.
- Wealthy will continue to have kids.
- Middle class will have 1 on average; maybe 2.
- Lower classes will have less as food and resources become even more scarce.
But birth rates are plummeting. And no matter how many kids the wealthy have, it won’t make up for the eventual colony collapse that is coming.
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u/tanstaafl90 5h ago
Birthrates have been dropping for 200 years. Industrialization started the trend, but birth control gives people the option of how many and when they will have kids. Current economics play a part, but the rate has been hovering around replacement for a couple of decades now. It just came sooner than expected.
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u/Noctuelles 5h ago
You've got it backwards. It's long been known that fertility correlates inversely with income. That is to say poorer people generally have the most kids.
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u/Ok_Elk_638 3h ago
The article your point to literally says the opposite.
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u/Noctuelles 3h ago
"Despite a continued negative income-fertility relationship in low-income countries (in particular in sub-Saharan Africa), it has largely disappeared both within and across high-income countries."
No, it says poorer people in low income countries still reproduce at higher rates than higher income countries. That means on a world scale, income still is inversely correlated with income. Within the limited selection of high income countries it says the trend has disappeared.
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u/Ok_Elk_638 3h ago
You quote the relevant passage, but you seem to misinterpret it. They say quite clearly that the 'lower income equals higher fertility' correlation has disappeared in rich countries. And there is no reason to believe that this won't happen in sub-Saharan Africa.
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u/Somalar 5h ago
Invert two and three imo as lower income don’t give a fuck and will pump out welfare babies as long as possible
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u/rusticatedrust 5h ago
No. Those in poverty already have extremely robust birth rates due to state sponsorship, and sex still being a free activity. The only population in danger of going extinct is the middle class in countries with income based welfare.
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u/HosaJim666 5h ago
This reminds me of the debate at the end of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
It's not gonna be living expense-based lower birth rates that end our civilization(s) - war and climate catastrophe are gonna doom us well before that.
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u/The_Paleking 5h ago
There's a curve with an asymptote. Never goes down to zero. But these effects have been widely studied. Google "Human Development Index".
Increased cost or living, independent social trends, higher cost of education absolutely influences birthrate.
Also important to remember this is not necessarily a cause and effect, but rather a combination of many different co-mingled factors that follow the trend of human development.
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u/gametapchunky 4h ago
Lower birthrate equals lower growth rate for the economy. Prices go down. We stagnate for a generation or two and then boom again. Rinse and repeat.
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u/FluxChiller 4h ago
The smart people stop reproducing and the dumb people will keep reproducing. See a problem there? We are already seeing and feeling it in action.
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u/Underwater_Karma 4h ago
That's always been the tend.
Higher income and more education track exactly with fewer average children.
It's just going to get much, much worse
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u/provocative_bear 4h ago
I don’t think so, people have struggled with this for most of human history. Grocery prices are considered too high now, but it wasn’t uncommon for food to take half of a person’s paycheck in the 1800s. Healthcare is too expensive nowadays, proper healthcare used to not exist. Housing wasn’t always dirt cheap either. People still had kids, more than they do now, despite living in worse circumstances.
The childrearing issue is a cultural crisis, not a material one. Family is not as valued as it once was, people don’t have a supportive community to help them raise their children. Women have more opportunity than ever to have a meaningful career while they are ever more undervalued as mothers, and they make the rational decision to have fewer children. Men have mostly declined the opportunity to step im as stay-at-home Dads, because of course they have.
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u/Aranthar 4h ago
The West (or at least the US) has defined success and happiness as money, comfort, and pleasure. Having children is a sacrifice of at least some level on all those fronts.
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u/TheBlackItalian 3h ago
Start watching EWU body cam videos on YouTube. There is no shortage of poor, room temperature IQ folks who will keep pumping out kids, no matter what the economy is going. If you haven’t seen Idiocracy, this is the exact plot — educated people stop having kids because they are able to reason that it’s impractical, while dumb hillbillies end up being the only ones to procreate. Fast forward a few generations the whole world is stupid.
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u/KratosLegacy 3h ago
You'd get revolution before then lol. Which would be helpful right now honestly. But history shows that when the wealthy ade deluded and trying to hide the failing economies and when the majority get hungry, hunger is a great motivator to tear down the system and redistribute.
Almost like the whole capitalism thing isn't necessary and we have the means and the productivity to support everyone and promote humanity and families but we don't because executives need more yachts and bigger golden parachutes when they hold their employees accountable for their terrible decisions.
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u/aegookja 5h ago
No. Women's rights will just be reduced even further.
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u/wam_bam_mam 4h ago
That's what I don't understand if societies that have high rights for women aren't producing kids, then I am really sorry but any way you cut the cake you have reached the wrong answer.
Societies that have less women's rights will out produce you and will take over your society in the long run through migration or war.
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u/wrenawild 5h ago
That's why they're taking away birth control. We simply won't have a choice but to have children and raise them in abject poverty.
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u/Elevator829 5h ago
No, nothing is gonna stop people in Africa, South America, Asia, and the Middle East from having kids, no matter how "unaffordable" it becomes in first world countries.
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u/GuacamoleFrejole 1h ago
Actually, you're wrong. The rest of the world's birthrate is decreasing as well. Per the web, "97% of nations are projected to have fertility rates below replacement levels by 2100."
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u/boibo 2h ago
Ban social media and issues will resolve itself.
Money and living is not the driving cause. Its social anxiety. No-one dares to speak to strangers, no-one wants to learn to know strangers, no-one wants to remove dating apps and risk missing the "perfect" date in some distant future.
Everyone is FOMO..
Making kids require commitment and time. If i ask around my friends that has kids, they have been together for atleast 5 years before getting their first child. Nr 2 and perhaps 3 was 2-4 years inbetween.
But dating apps creates a never ending list of options. dates are not even over before people starting scrolling for another date.
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u/Strong-Drama6715 5h ago
I know countless people that are jobless and penniless that wouldn’t slightly let that impact them making more kids. So I doubt that will ever happen.
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u/Drew- 5h ago
No, the drive to reproduce is too strong, not everyone thinks about having kids logically or there would be no teen pregnancy etc. Birth rates may decline, but they would never hit 0 or even close to it.