Jokodo
Veteran Member
What???I already suggested a mechanism by which a third factor could be causal in both, leading to a correlation that is not causal.Ok, then can you demonstrate the mechanism by which the wealth of a nation leads to a lower birthrate, if not by making childcare costs much more expensive?
my strong suspicion is that the underlying cause of both high birth rates and poverty is a lack of educational opportunities, and that it's education that's the major factor.
The wealth of a nation may well NOT lead to a lower birth rate; Rather, the availability of education may lead BOTH to a wealthy nation, AND to lower birth rates.
You're asking me to suggest a mechanism by which increased ice-cream consumption leads to more murders*, when I merely noted that the two were correlated, and explicitly said that they likely were not cause and effect.
*Clearly that's absurd; It's obvious that the correlation is due to the fact that successfully murdering someone is usually celebrated with an ice-cream.
I don't disagree that education is a factor, but to call it the main factor seems unlikely to me. The reality is that most people do want children, and they'll have as many as they can afford.
In the 19th and early 20th century, people in places like Europe and North America had 7, 8 or 9 children while living in a 25 square meter flat with not enough beds for everyone to sleep at the same time, only being able to afford meat on Sundays (*maybe* dad had the privilege of getting a slice of sausage on weekdays, but only because the hard physical labour he was doing required extra nutrition), with the kids playing unsupervised in the streets while both parents worked.
LIterally, a a professional in a first world economy, you could afford 40 kids, probably on a single wage. Which is about 30 times more than the average first world professional family is having.
sure, there were also people who lived in splendid manors with a dozen servants and a carriage of four well-fed horses on permanent standby. Do you want to make an estimate what was their percentage of the overall population, and what was their contribution to their generation's overall birth rate? Here's a small hint: Victorian novels rarely paint a representative picture of their day.
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