Maggie's Farm

Aaron Bady's essay on parenting is asinine. He thinks children are punishment. The fact that the birth rate is below replacement (everywhere in every society that is not sub-Saharan) shows that there is something seriously wrong in modern society. In Darwinian terms, any species going extinct (as is the present human condition) is maladapted to its environment.

The proximate cause in our current situation is that we keep young women in school during their peak reproductive years. The correlation between level of education and the number of children a women has is strongly negative. Women with Ph. D.'s seldom have children. For that reason, universities are called IQ shredders.

Based on the correlation between reaction times and IQ, it has been argued that at least in the UK the average IQ has fallen by 15 points since the late 1800's, one point per decade. That is one full standard deviation. Since the downtrend starts before young women were usually sent to school, its not clear how this relates to "excess" schooling.

World population generally follows the UN's low estimate, because that estimate uses actual fertility rates. The population should peak around 2030, or a little later, at about 8.5 billion, and then decline steadily throughout the remainder of this century. The decline has already started in Japan, South Korea, Spain, Italy and other countries. There are abandoned villages in eastern Germany occupied by feral cats and wolves.

Can you have a modern technological society when the population is decreasing and elderly?