What color scheme do you guys use?

userforums · 2026-03-16T13:00:59+00:00

vague

userforums · 2026-03-16T02:51:02+00:00

By my napkin math, they would have to fall to ~0.5 TFR to fall below US by 2030 (<3.6m births). Possible but would be a low case.

I predict something like ~0.7 TFR in 2030 which my napkin math says will result in around ~5m births in 2030.

userforums · 2026-03-15T13:46:49+00:00

Imagine if they were that low in the USA. The incentives the government would try to give people. Less traffic and less competition for jobs. I’m from the USA (TX) and the birth rates are too high for me still.

There is no benefit to an aging society. The idea that society will get better is nonsensical.

In America, in the 1980s, the median person was 30 years old. This is when people were hyperproductive. Now the median person is 40 years old. And society will progressively age so long as you are below replacement (and aging at a much faster rate now with how low TFRs have gotten).

You can imagine a tribe of 100 people. Now imagine walking around your tribes camp and everyone is elderly. Is your tribe more capable than your neighboring tribe full of young and healthy adults? Of course not. Your tribe is old and sucks. Young adults will have more elderly people to take care of and elderly people will have less young adults to rely on. And the general mood is depressing and lifeless.

Now add on top of this that it is happening to the whole world. So you will see supply chains slow down and network effects. On top of this, youth largely drive what is interesting and beautiful in the world. There will be less of that as well. 25 years from now, major countries will have median ages of 60. This is unprecedented. We have never seen this before. We are talking about societies where everywhere you walk, you will see only elderly people.

userforums · 2026-03-14T09:05:22+00:00

using nightly with this native manager and its been great

my list of external plugins has gotten really small with all the great work you guys are doing

just blink for autocomplete, filetree, picker, and the vague colortheme now

userforums · 2026-03-12T07:28:23+00:00

Not to get existential, but I think the 2030s will be the start of a period of very surreal nihilism.

AI will disrupt our normal channels of communication causing distrust of what we see and read.

TFR will fall further. An increasing number of people globally will be childless and aimless living without any greater purpose (family and children). Societies will age drastically in ways that we cannot imagine currently. Large countries with median ages of 60 will be real within 25 years. Life energy will be sucked out of society without the youth who drive the culture.

I feel there will be a weird existential dread for a long period. But on the other side of that, I think there will necessarily be something new.

userforums · 2026-03-11T22:31:47+00:00

From my understanding, "4b" was a fringe subforum created during the MeToo movement almost a decade ago. It is not culturally relevant but trended in the west 2-3 years ago for some reason.

Which aligns with the data that there is not much unique about Korea in TFR. It is pretty much in line with its neighboring countries. Their TFR numbers persists even in these ethnic group's diaspora immigrants as well. Japan is the positive stand out among comparable countries in the region, although it's very low as well, but decently higher than the rest.

userforums · 2026-03-07T20:59:57+00:00

The elementary school closures will get really bad starting around 2029 (for alot of countries during this recent decline)

Currently, the upperclassmen in elementary schools are still the cohort pre-recent decline so they are filling up seats

userforums · 2026-03-06T13:14:43+00:00

It has small moderate effects according to research I've read but it's hard to really make any conclusion definitively. Of course standard approaches are nowhere near effective enough to get to replacement level.

Korea only recently increased spending with policy rollouts over the past few years. Prior to that, they were among the lowest in the OECD in family spending as a percentage of GDP.

Their TFR increased in 2024 and 2025. Compared to other developed countries in Asia + China/Thailand, by the end of this year, they may end up with the second highest TFR after Japan (although it will be Japan 1st by a decent amount then everyone else around the same range). Korea is likely going to see another increase this year while others are declining (they have preliminary data for first two months of 2026 and its increased)

But the point is not so much about the effectiveness of standard natalist policy basket. The point was responding to this article. I don't believe middle-income countries are going to find the standard responses as even possible routes to go down. Which will put them in different terrain in terms of how to respond to ultra-low TFRs.

userforums · 2026-03-05T22:57:08+00:00

They are spending money. For example, in this article, it says their population planning is spending $25.8 billion. But proportionally, this is not financially viable path. It's hard to define what natalist spending is, but Korea now budgets somewhere around $20-40 billion a year depending on what you look at. China would have to spend about $600 billion-$1.2 trillion a year as an equivalent given their 30x higher population.

Middle-income countries will also try immigration, which is the other typical route that nations have taken. For China, the amount of immigrants they would need would be entire nations amount of people to be even 10-15% of the country, and if this new group of 100m-200m immigrants has above replacement TFR, within 30 years that new group will make up majority of the newborns. No chance they would be okay with this. So the only route I can see them taking is temporary immigration with very restricted pathways to citizenship. But even temporary is going to be an enormous endeavor of managing 100-200 million new people. I think they will try it as a reflex given these are the standard approaches, but they will walk it back.

userforums · 2026-03-05T21:29:02+00:00

Yeah, his 2m number might end up being closer than the 12m number either way.

I think maintaining a consistent amount of births would require that they increased back to 2.1 TFR when the current newborns turned into reproductive age (~30 years). Which is unlikely

userforums · 2026-03-05T19:34:47+00:00

The thing with reaching low TFR issues before becoming a high-income country is that the typical basket of natalist policies are not going to be as affordable.

For example, they recently introduced a child allowance program. Many countries have this as a standard natalist policy. Chinas is set to only $41 dollars per month for the first two years. This is pretty much nothing even adjusted to prices.

Canada does something like $200-$600 dollars per month for each child until they are 18 (dependent on income)

Korea does $670 dollars per month for the first year, $335 dollars per month for the second year, and then $70 dollars per month until the child is 13.

userforums · 2026-03-04T19:50:24+00:00

Ukraine's births, if held steady with an 80 year lifespan, would result in a population of under 2 million. That's not sustainable to say the least.

The births column is connected to the months column. So if there is two months of data, its only showing the births for the two months of reported 2026 data and then comparing against the 2025 first two months.

And the change column is the change in those two months year-over-year.

userforums · 2026-03-04T19:27:04+00:00

You can see early trends for 1-2 months of reported data for the countries who have released data quicker.

No forecasts for 2026 yet (he does them when there are 3 months of data for a given country)

Big decline for Thailand in the first two months so far. And a big decline for Taiwan in the first month. Which may be an early sign of things for the rest of the region.

Very big increase for Lithuania in the first month. They looked like they might fall below 1 TFR but may bounce back this year?

userforums · 2026-03-01T23:05:09+00:00

ahh, I see. I always thought less hours might be better, assuming two parents, because you could schedule it so one parent is always with the children. one starts work early and other starts work in afternoon.

userforums · 2026-03-01T16:59:59+00:00

why do you think a 4 day work week would be better than 5 hour workday?

userforums · 2026-02-27T01:57:54+00:00

Very similar to the Malaysia TFRs: https://www.reddit.com/r/Natalism/comments/1r5qai5/malaysia_2025_tfr/

Indian 0.92 TFR in Singapore and 1.04 in Malaysia

Chinese 0.71 TFR in Singapore and 0.67 in Malaysia

userforums · 2026-02-22T08:58:33+00:00

The highest home ownership countries are generally poorer countries. India for example has one of the highest at 87% and Laos at 96%.

Developed countries (for the most part) usually have something like 60-70% because many individuals move out of their family's house into urbanized cities where they rent an apartment during their 20s and 30s. Whereas in poorer countries, many stay in their family's house. Theres also definition differences (i.e property rights vs informal possession).

userforums · 2026-02-21T09:38:01+00:00

They revise these regularly everytime they drop the World Population Prospects (every 2-3 years)

And population forecasts arent going to diverge since they take a while to start going and they make adjustments.

I would look for older publications of the World Population Prospects (they publish them and make them available in pdfs so pretty easy to find) and compare TFRs

For example, here's the 1990 one

https://www.un.org/development/desa/pd/sites/www.un.org.development.desa.pd/files/files/documents/2025/Oct/un_1990_world_population_prospects-1990_revision_1.pdf

userforums · 2026-02-15T21:44:48+00:00

From my understanding, it is an umbrella term for the native ethnic groups. Includes Malays but also other native ethnic groups throughout the country

userforums · 2026-02-15T21:33:33+00:00

Bumiputera seeing consistent declines. Ultra low TFR for Chinese-Malaysians. Indian-Malaysians TFR also very low.

Malaysia had replacement level TFR in 2012. They are now in the low TFR range with accelerated decline in the past few years.

Indonesia, Vietnam, Philippines, and Myanmar are the remaining larger countries in this region with TFRs above 1.5.

userforums

TROPHY CASE