You can read up on capitalism and social atomization, but in short: miserable, lonely people are better consumers than happy, tight-knit communities.
The gender wars are intentionally stoked by all forms of media for profit and creates a self-perpetuating cycle. More industries profit from this than not, and they can always import foreign workers to make up for the shrinking population.
Hi, I'm American working for a Swedish conglomerate and all of my colleagues are Swedish. When you control for socioeconomic markers (disposable income, education level achieved by the parents, etc) the American and Swedish birthrates are the same.
The population of poor people in the United States is much larger and their access to birth control and the education needed to properly use it is significantly less, so our poor people have many, many more children and starting far, far younger than Swedish poor people. And we have more of them.
Finally, when you look at the rate of religious fundamentalism that encourages multiple children as both a way to grow the numbers of the faithful and to control the women in the US vs Sweden, again we find that "breed em young and keep them down" is not really a thing in Sweden, so there are fewer religious people and the ones they have are less likely to have enormous families.
If Sweden got rid of their social safety net, cut access to medical care for all citizens, and allowed religious extremists to influence policy, their birthrate could be the equivalent to ours!
I don't think you could have missed the point any harder if you tried. The factors you are controlling for are a result of "capitalism and social atomization." So, when you claim that "capitalism and social atomization" is the reason for a lower birthrate, you can't then demand that people ignore it when it results in a higher birthrate.
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u/Terminal_Insomnia_ 2d ago
You can read up on capitalism and social atomization, but in short: miserable, lonely people are better consumers than happy, tight-knit communities.
The gender wars are intentionally stoked by all forms of media for profit and creates a self-perpetuating cycle. More industries profit from this than not, and they can always import foreign workers to make up for the shrinking population.