Recently, many social media platforms have been flooded with videos of couples trying in every way to convince the rest of the world that they are doing great and living life to the fullest because they do not have children. These videos mainly focus on material realities, with couples boasting that they can buy the most expensive coffee, spend outrageous amounts on food, sleep more than eight hours a day, eat ice cream in the wee hours, or that snacks must be shared only between themselves, and that everything they buy is just for them.
In general, these are productions that evoke embarrassment or, as young people today call it, cringe, and are the product of couples referred to as DINKs (engl. dual income, no kids – dual income, no children). It all actually boils down to an old saying from these parts: In oneself, for oneself, and to oneself.
DINKs are preoccupied with superficial needs and desires, but they have started to gain more and more space in foreign media, with prominent outlets like Business Insider and the BBC writing that today everyone wants to be a DINK and pushing the narrative that it is actually a great move considering the rising cost of living, global uncertainty, and climate change.
Wide Repercussions
Philosopher and consultant Karlo Jurak states that the DINK phenomenon primarily manifests itself in economic behavior, but is deeply present in all other spheres, and therefore the repercussions are much broader than just economic. While in the past, economic needs led to having as many children as possible, today the situation is reversed.
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— – In addition to changing economic relations and the structure of the economy, this also points to a change in values, which have largely transformed in Western societies from materialistic to post-materialistic, where there is a greater emphasis on personal development, leisure, and similar. And, paradoxically at first glance, these post-materialistic values have inadvertently affirmed materialism, in which it is essential to have as much income, revenue, and material well-being as possible, and as little sacrifice and giving ‘for others’ – explains Jurak. DINK propaganda is based solely on buying, spending, and consuming for personal needs. The whole story revolves around this, so one might think that such couples contribute the most to economic development and the economy. However, there is a problem: they do influence the economy, but only in the short term, as confirmed by Professor Josip Tica from the Faculty of Economics in Zagreb, who states that their impact on the economy is not sustainable.
Unproductive Consumers
– The decrease in the number of children in the population increases the GDP per capita growth rate, i.e., it increases the growth of living standards. It is precisely because of the declining population that Croatia has advanced according to this criterion recently. In our case, of course, it is about emigration, but the effects on GDP per capita are similar. However, the long-term decline in birth rates creates a problem with the growing share of those over 65 in the total population, which then accelerates the decline in the birth rate because this part of the population is outside the fertile and working age. We can say that empty nesters are, in a way, also DINKs. Problems are also manifested in the decline of pensions from the intergenerational solidarity system, labor shortages, increasing immigration needs, and the explosion of costs related to integrating newly arrived workers into the labor market, education system, healthcare, and the political system in general – lists Tica.
