Child marriages plunged when girls stayed in school in Nigeria

But it does mention accelerated catch up programs just for them, assisting financially, and vocational training.

Which is clearly more than just "stayed in school". Meaning it is something that can't just be replicated by encouraging being in school but actively needing a program like this. Which is not a bad thing obviously, but it is important that the right lesson is taken out of this.

The way this is phrased makes it seem like the children are making the choice to marry.

For example, I could read the actual details on this and possibly determine that they replace school with some other (cheaper) program that just keeps the girls busy.

Or I could determine that all we really need to do is launch an outreach marketing program encouraging that girls stay in school and ignore all of the other support that was given.

One of those is supported by the headline and one is supported by the lack of information about what actually helped.

If by your example there was a study on how we made a previously unlivable area, suitable for humans in their homes but all it said was "well the temperature is X" than you would have questions on how exactly that was achieved.

Same with living in space, if NASA told us that the way astronauts are living on the space station with "well there is oxygen" we wouldn't accept that because there is obviously more going on.

Wanting to actually know what the full picture is allows us to reproduce it.

We can say the factory is better.

It's wild how much Western people in topics like this use a mindset of complete black-and-white thinking, and an assumption that everywhere should be exactly like us - to hear these people talk, in sub-Saharan Africa, the age of majority should be exactly 18 like us, marriage should be strictly an individual decision undertaken purely for romantic love like us, women should consider working outside the home as their most important activity in life like us, etc.

I don't understand where people get so much confidence that their own particular culture has correctly solved every question of how life should be lived, as though it's a math problem that can be checked.

Now, I'm not saying 10-year-olds should be sold to the highest bidder and never be allowed to leave the neighborhood. But describing a 16-year-old having an arranged marriage in a way that is traditional in her culture as a "child bride" with heavy doses of sneering judgment is being dishonest.

I agree that some arranged marriages are poor matches. Some certainly have a power imbalance which is a bad thing if it leads to abuse or domination. But:

1. Let's not pretend that young people, even in our culture that values their autonomy, don't make their own terrible decisions too. Look at the divorce rate and the rates of reported DV in the West.

2. The Western way ("love marriage" + "women must work or the family will be in poverty") has led to most Western countries being on a downward spiral to literal extinction, so arguably we can't claim we've solved anything. We've just made a different tradeoff: More perceived freedom for women ("You're free to work any job as long as it's outside the home, for money, so your family can afford the high rent") in exchange for population collapse and kids being mostly raised by strangers. I'm not even arguing whether that tradeoff is worth it... I'm sure some families are happier 'our way'. but I bet others are more miserable.

This contains the answer: we aren’t paying enough.

Kids used to confer private, excludable benefit through their labour. Without child labour, their economic value is no longer exclusive to their parents. This transforms children, economically, from a private good to a common resource. Our low birth rates are a tragedy of a commons. A known problem with a known solution.

If we want a higher birth rate, we should have a massive child tax credit. One that can rival the rising cost and opportunity cost of childrearing.

But since you mention the Nordic countries, it's worth driving home just how high the amounts are:

In Norway it's 100% of pay for up to 49 weeks or 61 weeks at 80% of pay, capped at ~$111k (based on a your salary, capped to "6G" - 6x the national insurance base rate)[1].

So not even up to $111k is enough to convince enough women to have more children to maintain replacement rates (and I don't blame them).

And this is in addition to e.g. legally mandated right to full-time nursery places with the fee cap dropped to a maximum of ~$130/month as of last year.

When people think money will be enough, they need to realise just how much money some countries have tried throwing at parents without getting back above replacement...

[1] in Norwegian: https://www.nav.no/foreldrepenger

I thought they were built for that. For tens of thousands of years women had on average 7 children or more, it looks like the process is very reliable. These days birth-giving mortality is very close to zero, also post-birth care is quite good, so we are in a better place than ever and still concerned?

The more educated/developed a nation, the lesser their birth rate is going to be.

I understand the "shoulds" but that's not what the data suggests.

In essence, we can't have the pie and at the same time eat it.

The most useful thing education does for children is reduce child-mortality rate.[1]

Sources: https://raphael-godefroy.github.io/pdfs/mali_final.pdf

[1] https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED503923

This will only reduce birth rates. I have two kids and it's hard. I would still have them if I knew just how hard it would be (especially during winter, when everyone is sick).

There are also many men that just don't care if they have a child, what it does to a woman's body. This won't change with more education.

If someone things the population on the planet is too big, then plan for a reduction that is manageable and change the pay-as-you-go pension system that exists in most of the world, that is based on working age people paying the pension for retirees. Even at replacement rate the pension systems will collapse, they were built in a time when the average number of children per woman was around 7 and the age of retirement was higher than average life expectation.

Everyday we prove it slightly more. To exhaust the nutrients in all the mud in the world would take a lot more farming, but we thought that ip4 addresses would never run out either, so maybe it will happen.