UK Politics
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!ukpolitics@lemm.ee appears to have vanished! We can still see cached content from this link, but goodbye I guess! :'(
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I strongly suggest that you make sure there's some sort of credence to your opening paragraph before you go on to make consecutive ones that appear discretided by association.
"Often, couples with lower level of education have three, four or more children. This is linked to an increase in ‘multipartner fertility’, or, having a child with more than one partner. Highly educated men and women are more likely to have exactly two children"
https://fluxconsortium.fi/the-highly-educated-often-have-two-children-childlessness-and-high-numbers-of-children-more-commonly-seen-among-low-and-medium-educated-persons/#:~:text=Often%2C%20couples%20with%20lower%20level,to%20have%20exactly%20two%20children.
Bugger me you must have hunted high and low for that one.
Great except it is Finland and Sweden based. This is a UK forum based on the UK. There are people in Africa that are under educated and breed like rabbits. What has this to do with the UK?
On you go. Imagine the statistics in Finland not being totally different to the UK.
https://www.cpc.ac.uk/docs/BP29_Educational_differences_in_childbearing_widen-in_Britain.pdf
The study ends in 1969. This is based on people aged 50 and above. This is not relevant to the kids of today. The cost of living crisis is now. Kids are not having kids because they are really struggling to live.
There are some huge caveats missed in that study. It is akin to stating people who eat ice cream are more likely to get sun burned. There is not enough correlation between the stats of education level and child birth. They only suggest that is the case. In this era education was free. If a woman was not rearing kids, then education was at your disposal. Now it is not. Having kids stops education dead in the water for a lot of kids, because now it is a debt trap.
Again critical thinking goes a long way.
Here's a UK source from 2023. A person of such critical thinking would probably be able to start connecting the dots at this point.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2003/apr/25/graduation.highereducation
Mate give it up.
The article is 20 years old. It misses a massive point. Kids are struggling enough today without families. Birth control is better understood now than it ever has been in the past. Do you even read the news out side of the Tory media?
Being poor means less chance at education, being poor means you cannot afford a family, and will actively look to stop having kids. It is a consequence of not having the finances to do other stuff, like pay for an education, that makes the stats skewed. Having an education gives better access to better financial rewards from employment, which enabled you to give a child a better chance at stability. The prevalence of being childless is not a consequence of being under educated; it is purely down to the fact that the Tories have turned the screw to much on the least fortunate in the UK.
Again Ice cream does not give you sunburn. It is just that more people eat it on hot days.
I think, where we both agree is that we need better education across the country to give kids a better chance. The Tories have demolished funding for schools in the north of England. It needs rectifying. This is only one of the many other things the Tories have demolished in the last 14 years.
I understand your point and I don't contest it. But to claim that there is no correlation between education and the number of kids you have and to claim that it isn't least partly causative is denial.
If you came out of uni with thousands of pounds worth of debt, 7 years behind others who have already joined the work force, no high skilled job to move in to, not married because you were focusing on your studies and unable to afford a house, having kids would probably be quite far down your priorities list.
You might be the sort of pendant that says "it's not the fall that kills you, it's the sudden stop!"
Actually, It is the sudden strop that kills you, or at the very least hitting something that slows you on the way down. Having no kids is a symptom not a cause, and education would help alleviate that. Demonising those who are less well is a blight in this country that needs to stop.
Sure, and it's the amps that kill you not the voltage! (Unless you ignore the fact that without voltage, there can be no amps). And guns don't kill people, bullets do!
Ok, well I think the evidence is overwhelming that higher educated people have less kids, I don't think that's the only reason people have less kids but it's obviously a factor. I think we're at the point where we have to agree to disagree, we're not going to change each others minds here.
Good day, and good luck!