Bryan Caplan on heritability; Jay P. Greene and Lindsey M. Burke on government causes; Noah Carl and Bo Winegard on population density as a cause; Dan Hess on culture as a cause
Claudia Goldin distinguishes two patterns. ("Babies and the Macroeconomy," NBER Working Paper 33311, December 2024.)
One pattern is gradual decline in fertility in countries that developed modern economies over a long period. Her examples are the U.S., the U.K., Germany, France, Sweden, and Denmark. The other pattern is sudden, deeper decline in fertility in countries that developed rapidly since the 1960s. Her examples are Japan, Italy, Spain, Greece, Portugal, and Korea. She makes a case that the latter group has a "lowest low" birth rate due to emergence of a sharper battle of the sexes (conflict of norms between traditional men and modern women) in the context of rapid economic growth and massive migration from rural areas to cities.
Here (below) are excerpts from the gated article:
"Among the most astonishing facts in the history of the decline of fertility has been the plummeting of birth rates in tradition-bound countries in Asia, as well as in Catholic and Orthodox Europe. [... .]
to make sense of the fertility decline, we must also pay attention to the speed with which countries advance economically. Thus, the framework shifts attention to the macroeconomy—the rate of growth in GDP per capita (measured in constant price PPP for comparability) and the resultant migration from low-productivity rural areas to high-productivity urban areas. [... .]
Migration is important to the story of fertility change because those who move from rural areas enter the urbanized world having with more firmly-held beliefs and more traditional ways. Among the children of the migrants, the daughters gain more from modernity as they are offered considerably more options than they once had. The sons, however, gain from maintaining parts of the past. How much they gain is evident from the division of labor in the home. Men in developed countries that modernized very rapidly do considerably less housework and care for others in their homes, relative to women, than do men in countries that had more continuous growth experiences. [.... .]
Nations that had rapid and sudden economic growth and large movements of population from rural to urban areas experienced sharp drops in fertility. The declines far exceed those for nations that had more continuous growth and did not have substantial internal migration. These facts are consistent with the notions of the model that rapid change leads to disagreements between young men and women in part because of generational clashes for which sons agree more with their parents than do daughters. The model is also consistent with data on the fertility preferences of couples and their disagreement. [... .]
women spend more time with their children often by sacrificing their careers or by having lower incomes and thus becoming economically vulnerable. If they are divorced or separated, they and their children may suffer. They know this in advance and, in consequence, will resist having more children. But if fathers and husbands can credibly commit to providing the time and the resources, the difference in the fertility desires between the genders would disappear. [...] One method of commitment is to live in a country or state in which social opprobrium dictates that men provide the finances, time, and mental resources to the family. ... .]
The U.S. baby boom is one of the few examples of a country with TFR less than two that greatly increased. The baby boom was partly accomplished by glorifying marriage, motherhood, the “good wife,” and the home. Can a turnaround today be accomplished by glorifying parenthood, especially fatherhood, and changing workplace rules so fathers are not penalized by taking time off and requesting fllexible work arrangements? One thing is clear: unless the negative relationship between income and fertility is reversed, the birth rate will probably not increase."
"women spend more time with their children often by sacrificing their careers or by having lower incomes and thus becoming economically vulnerable. If they are divorced or separated, they and their children may suffer. They know this in advance and, in consequence, will resist having more children."
But no one can ever be sure that the husband will not leave. Isn't popular culture full of break-ups? Thus, the feminist columnist Ellen Goodman used to argue that women should never become full-time wives and mothers.
I am coming to believe that above-replacement fertility is only possible in societies that are 1) poor, and 2) sexually unequal. That characterized almost all of human history. It is less and less true today.
Something I wonder about, is equal rights for both sexes only compatible with a particular faith that cannot be publicly questioned: men and women are pretty much the same. They should pretty much live the same lives, pretty much do the same things.
The idea that a woman could live a decent life as a full-time wife and mother then becomes, without anyone having to say a word, a thoughtcrime. As is the idea that she could get more out of parenthood than the father, and that the father therefore needn't share the burdens equally.
The other end of this idea can be seen in a 2021 episode of Conversations with Tyler [Cowen] featuring a British-Indian female philosopher(?) Amia Srinivasan. Cowen grilled Srinivasan on this subject and cornered her into telling him outright that "You [Cowen] might want to just hold out and say, “It’s only under conditions of intense coercion and desperation that women are willing to have children.” If that turns out to be right, I [Srinivasan] ’ll bite the bullet and just say, fine."
I wouldn't go nearly that far. But in modern affluent conditions, having more than one seems to require a real commitment to the outcome that most people just don't have.
(I wasn't sure who was saying what--or meaning what--in the quote(s?).)
She sounds a little bit like commenter Handle, who has said that tax breaks and bonuses will not get births above replacement. What would be required are substantial penalties for being childless.
The basis of a sexual "grand bargain"? Only men are drafted into the armed forces and only women are "drafted" into pregnancy.
As an older Gen-Xer, my highly unscientific and anecdotal observations:
1. I think peer behavior is probably the #1 cause. I remember when people my age started having children, the answer I heard the most when I asked "how did you know you were ready?" was "well, our other friends were starting families." And in my own experience, that was exactly what made me want a baby - two other couples we were friends with were having babies, and it made me think "hey - I could do that!" Not only does it reinforce the idea of "we're actually grown up enough to have a child," but there's also the incentive of "our kids can play together!" "we can go on family camping trips together!" "we can swap babysitting with each other!"
2. Corollary to #1 is that if childbearing is considered a bit declasse by one's social set, one is more inclined to be extremely vigilant about avoiding pregnancy. I grew up in a wealthy NYC suburb, and there really was a strong undercurrent of "having a baby in your 20s is low-class behavior; People Like Us have children at 35+ because we are educated and have careers." I moved away when I was in my early 20's to a part of the country where it was totally normal middle-class behavior to have children in your 20's, but I couldn't shake the visceral "ugh...trailer park!" reaction that I had. In fact, I still felt mildly embarrassed announcing my first pregnancy to my hometown friends - even though I was 31 and had been married for seven years. When I would visit my hometown, I would get some side-eye for being "so young" and having 3 children who were clearly not multiple births. It seemed that the "typical" mom was 45+ and had twins or triplets as a result of IVF or other fertility interventions.
3. Along with #2 is the widespread stigma of having more than 2 children. I live in a small town with a lot of large families (it is a pleasant, safe little town where kids were still sent outdoors to play without grownup supervision well into the 2000s); so I knew several families on my street with more than 4 children. However, when I announced my third pregnancy to my friends who lived in other towns, I got remarks like "haven't you two figured out what causes that yet?" "is this a religious thing?" or "sheesh, you're gonna have your hands full!" We even had some friends who were Asian who jokingly referred to us as their "white trash friends" because we had "so many kids" (ironically, the couple in question went on to have four children themselves).
4. Part of the reason that people have fewer children than they would really like to is that modern parenting for middle-class and upper-middle-class people involves a LOT of parental involvement. As I mentioned in #3, my town was a bit of an anomaly in that it was still considered totally OK to send your kids outdoors to play unsupervised; and because it is a small, walkable town kids were expected to transport themselves to and from school, dance class, sports practice, and part-time jobs by walking or riding their bikes. However, my friends in other surrounding areas were horrified by this - it seemed borderline neglectful to them. For the most part, people in my town also resisted the urge to enroll kids in dozens of extracurricular activities (probably because most of us had 3-4 kids and were conscious of expense, not to mention the unpleasantness of having to amuse tired, overstimulated younger children while their older sibling had their tuba lesson or whatever); but in many of the other nearby "nice" suburbs it was expected that your child would not only play year-round sports and study a musical instrument but would also do dance, Japanese lessons, SAT prep, and perhaps even have an "internship" before they even had a driver's license. That places a tremendous burden on parents, especially working parents who must spend all their non-work hours chauffeuring children to activities, or else spend considerable amounts of money to employ a nanny with a driver's license. All of this endless activity is usually justified as "looking good on college applications," and unfortunately I see this attitude growing in my little town these days as well.
Now, my children are young adults, and their friends are all rather anti-natalist, citing the expense and work involved in having children. To them, it seems like a family is some sort of status symbol that only rich people can have and that paradoxically doesn't seem like much fun, so you need to pay a nanny to deal with all the driving to and fro.
Also, Gen Z is notoriously pessimistic about things like being able to afford a home someday; somehow, they all got the idea that Boomers and Gen X were able to afford 2500SF homes without needing college degrees. I keep trying to point out that *my* parents were not able to buy a home until they were in their mid-30s, and that the home they did purchase was 800SF, they had one car, we ate out perhaps twice a year, our clothes were hand-me-downs and thrift-store items, and we never took a vacation other than visiting relatives - it was a very different standard for middle-class living in those days!
I was a young and (very young-looking in my early twenties) mother compared to the mothers of my acquaintance (via church, mother’s morning out). I was once mistaken for a nanny and not a fellow mother at a birthday party attended by moms and children. I did in fact sometimes babysit for that set, and my own child accompanying me was the big draw in that arrangement. One family had two sets of twins born 16 months apart to a 40-ish mother.
A local cafeteria we went to a few times, employed an exclusively illegal workforce (eventually they were busted for this). I remember we were eating there once, and a trio of Mexican girls, came over to shyly ask how old I was! Bizarre as this may sound, they were surprised to see an Anglo teen mom (which was how I appeared).
My child’s grandmother, on the other hand, was delighted to be taken for the mother, wheeling the tot through the grocery store.
My own parents lied and said I was off at grad school.
The staff of my college department registered mild sadness when I came in a couple times with baby, trying to get out with 3 not-very-loaded years and a degree of some sort. They helped me to do this, with a lax attitude toward what counted for what.
I remember there was one other (openly, the abortion clinic near campus did a brisk and efficient business, easier than going to the dentist) pregnant girl. I didn’t know her but she wrote an article for the school paper describing the experience of giving her child up to a “wonderful family”. I believe she stressed she was not pro-life, a stance confined to one or two policy school editorial writers looking to their GOP future.
I went to the hospital when it came time to give birth. Barely looking pregnant, in no great distress, they sent me and my little overnight bag home. I returned in a couple of hours and my young body prompted none of the screams you see on TV - so that I feel in watching such scenes, that I never went through childbirth.*
*In fact, Hollywood execs might want to tone those down!
Overall babies were deeply passe, almost forgotten.
Not much to say except about the last sentence... "Hess predicts that prices in China will fall dramatically as population falls."
That's not a particularly hard prediction. There's already 60-80 million built but unoccupied housing units (stats vary depending on which gov't department is providing the numbers). The tower blocks in 3rd and 4th tier cities do not sell. 1st and 2nd tier, you can get things sold but it's a long hard slog...maybe years.
I own a couple, one of them being a project where the developer built about a third of the planned units and then absconded with all the money, and left his wife and kid to take the heat. We're sitting on an unfinished empty concrete box. Oh well....
Real estate in China is its own ridiculously weird situation, with hukou status restricting movement and relocation. The gov't. dictates what cities where one can live. Big Daddy is building out Xiong'an, his new mega city where he's putting his stamp on what he believes urban development should be (it's OK when he does it, I guess.) Vast swarms of gov't. workers are relocating...we're talking millions of workers....which doesn't help developers trying to unload vast excess units in other cities.
"The challenge is to find cultural solutions that make women’s empowerment compatible with large families."
You're trying to thread an extremely fine needle, at least in the US, given that "women's empowerment" is almost exclusively defined as economic independence. You never get back the time taken out of the workplace.
People like to talk about 'safety seat contraception', the fact that it's nearly impossible to fit three small kids and two adults in a mid-size sedan if all three kids have to be in protective seating appliances. I suspect something very similar happens in urbanized areas where it is much harder to find multi-bedroom living space, as well as safe and supervised play environments.
Two kinds of incentives, sticks and carrots. Sticks are much cheaper— so usually work better at the same price. But carrots, positive support, usually works better over time and a mix usually works the best.
No Nation is yet providing Generous support for married couples having kids, like a median wage or more govt cash to any family having a third child. (Very generous is the 60% level).
A) the govt & society don’t want to encourage poor folk to have more kids, they want the middle & above, 33%, or 40%.
B) Many want the support only for married, hetero couples, like me, most feminists want unmarried mothers to live in as much financial comfort as married mothers.
B2) child support that supports married folk is called racist because so many Black sexual couples have the freedom to not get married, and choose freedom from marriage responsibilities. This lifestyle choice is far more financially supported by govt cash than is getting married, since married couples have less Need.
C) Govt support for folk making good decisions means those already doing better, because of their good lifestyles, increase their advantage over those doing poorly. Reality & the Market do this, some, without govt cash. Christian society is uncomfortable doing it with govt cash.
My complex wonkish proposal would include big tax credits & child support, where the 3% tax credits are more valuable to the rich than the middle. Also there should be known the median income of residents categorized by govt school districts, and further by borders of high school districts. With more support to married folk in districts that have fewer married parents, according to the marital status of the students.
Finally, unmarried childless workers should have all their paid income subject to SS taxes, no upper cap. Other high taxes on unmarried childless executives could be done, using tax sticks against the rich not doing enough raising of kids for the next generation.
“The Baby Boom was a social phenomenon. The contemporary Baby Bust is also a social phenomenon. My point about the “gene pool” is not that the survivors will inherit genes that lead them to want more kids, but that you will get a generation that includes fewer child-phobes and at some point the social cues will be to have larger families.”
Even if it is likely that this is correct, a) the social phenomenon you describe here was not alone in causing the TFR problem/crisis, and b) the implication that TFR will revert to above 2.1 when that “at some point social cues will be to have larger families” kicks in is highly questionable.
More fundamental societal and technological changes - birth control pill, legalizing abortion, removal of soft taboo against abortion, the old-age welfare state converting children from producer goods to consumer goods, women’s equality (as you *do* note) - have played an enormous role in the change.
IMO the role of those changes is far greater than the cyclical social phenomenon you posit as probable, or the lesser factors like the higher ed credentialing system or the Malthusian “climate change / humans are destroying Mother Gaia so you should not have children” ideologizing by our total education system, etc. which are also cultural and which I acknowledge could indeed be cyclical as you suggest, and certainly more plausibly can be corrected.
Given the longer term trend and the likelihood that people simply delayed during the depression and especially the war, I don't see much room for social contagion as a factor.
I suggest adopting the British model of medical school being a 4-year undergraduate program (dentists, too, I suppose), then restricting admission to grad school until age 35.
Who needas, at age 22, to seek a grad degree in, say, Gender studies? Restrict college loans to 5 years to complete a BA/BS. Then dump new grads into the job market. They can't apply for grad school untilthey've paid off their student loan debt AND they're 35.
New MDs are all GPs for 10 years, then they can apply for speciality training.
I'm a bit surprised that none of your links seem to mention the welfare state. Until the 1960s or so, most people depended on family for support in old age or ill health. The post-WWII welfare state in industrialized countries has obliterated that dependency and replaced it with a dependency on taxpayers - that is, other people's children.
If some other influence doesn't reverse fertility trends, a taxpayer revolt may result, where taxpayers say something along the lines of "I'll live in my parents' or grandparents' fine old home and take care of them, but I won't see an unsustainable amount of my income going to support other people's parents, or old people who never bothered to have children.
"In particular, highly subsidized student loans encourage more people to enroll and remain in higher education longer than they would if they fully bore the cost of their schooling."
Besides some people simply not otherwise having the resources to get the education they want or need, human nature is to overweight the short term, getting less education than optimal. How do we know the right balance?
"human nature is to overweight the short term, getting less education than optimal."
Stipulating your premise (overweighting the short term), why do you assume this leads to getting less education than optimal? For students who don't enjoy schooling, I expect cheap loans don't induce them to years of college and postgraduate study. For students who enjoy schooling, cheap loans likely induce more years of schooling, but not necessarily in any way that has good long-term prospects.
"why do you assume this leads to getting less education than optimal? "
I'm perplexed what other assumption would make sense.
I am speaking of the marginal student. If the cost, their dislike of school, whatever else, AND their short-term outlook is just enough to dissuade them from more education, they are likely to get less than optimal.
I think there are lots of (plausible) explanations.
1. Educational loans allow students who can't otherwise pay for a bachelor's degree to get the degree, increasing their earning potential. This is no doubt true for some students, and seems to be your working assumption.
2. Educational loans encourage marginal students to stay in a bachelor's program even if they don't enjoy it and end up withdrawing without a degree. These students probably get negative value from their loans, since they don't get the credential but still have to pay back the loan.
3. Educational loans encourage students who enjoy school to pursue graduate degrees with little or no economic value. Some examples in this category:
- People who earn a Bachelors degree as a credential, and graduate to a job that uses no college-level skills, even if the job requires a college degree. It might be better for all if fewer people got college degrees and employers were forced to reduce requirements for the credential. It wouldn't be better for the people who run colleges and universities, though.
- Someone who pursues a Masters in Fine Arts with the intention of becoming a museum curator. Upon completion, the only jobs they can find are as unpaid docents.
- People who pursue a Masters Degree as a credential. For instance, the Council on Social Work Education claims that in 2023 35% of MSW graduates had average of $38,500 students loans. I'm not sure how to measure the "optimal" level of social work education.
- People who use student loans to enroll in law school, expecting "median" starting salary of $150,000, only to find that there's a glut of lawyers and nearly half of law school graduates can't get jobs as lawyers at all.
- People who use student loans to earn PhDs, with the ambition of becoming university faculty. They generally get low-paying jobs as adjunct faculty with no prospect of full-time or tenure-track positions.
Several of these scenarios suggest student loans encourage some people to get more education than optimal.
If you assume that students over-weight the short-term, why not assume they take on excessive debt without considering long-term earnings potential and debt repayment?
"If you assume that students over-weight the short-term, why not assume they take on excessive debt without considering long-term earnings potential and debt repayment?"
Read my first comment again. What do you think balance refers to?
Maybe cheap loans don't induce them to develop human capital. Maybe it just induces them to keep on going in the pipeline. "I don't know what to do. Everyone says I should go to college. It's nice being around a lot of young people who I can drink and smoke and talk about pop culture with, and I don't have to confront the terror of responsibility."
(Of course, many--more or less than half?--do develop human capital. Lots of them want to but don't have the smarts or the psychology to complete a degree program (and some degree programs don't really develop much in the way of useful knowledge or skills).)
I think we're mostly talking about different types of students. Students who would benefit from a college education but couldn't afford one without loans likely benefit from availability of loans. Although it's worth pointing out that there was a time when many if not most degrees were earned by students attending "commuter schools", often part time, and pursuing education for specific goals like accounting or teaching certificates. I've also noticed an alarming trend in my state's universities to need five years to complete a bachelor's degree, due to inability to schedule prerequisite courses to maintain the four-year schedule.
Unlimited loans for graduate study allow students who enjoy school to stay in school indefinitely, pursuing subjects they enjoy. These studies may never lead to higher earning (or any job at all), and the students may never need to repay the loans.
How can I increase the size of my family? How can I improve the health and happiness of my family members?
I have three kids, ages 7, 10 and 13. I can raise them with an emphasis on family, having children of their own; sticking close the their siblings and parents; pursuing higher educational goals while simultaneously having children of their own; “innovating” by taking advantage of childcare assistance of their parents; and living in family friendly counties and states (i.e. red, not blue).
What role do economists like Arnold Kling have in this? Certainly to limit government. Certainly to advise in being a better grandparent and parent. Presumably other areas of community and family improvement. I certainly wouldn’t want him, or other intellectuals, or government, tinkering with natalist policies though.
Why are some women giving birth to five or more children and still obtaining college degrees? See Catherine Pakaluck’s book, “Hannah’s Children: The Women Quietly Defying the Birth Dearth.”
I read this one, and the answer was more or less "dad usually makes lots and lots of money; both spouses are religious fanatics with one or two exceptions in the sample set; if mom works she has flexibility."
You might be right, but when I spoke with her about the book, she didn't describe these people as religious fanatics. I'll have to read more of the book myself before I decide. For now, let's assume you're right. This matches my own experience; the Haredim and Mormons:
"By retaining the traditional family-based structure, the Old Order and Haredi communities have also retained the rules and customs that encourage high fertility. It's common for women in these communities to have more than seven children. For decades, their population has grown at between 3 and 4 percent per year. In three and a half generations, a handful of Amish Anabaptist communities, mostly in the American state of Pennsylvania, grew to be a population numbering about a third of a million. Amish now live in at least 31 of the 50 American states. Haredi Jews are even more numerous. It's thought that about half a million live outside Israel and just short of a million live in Israel. Currently, they make up about one in nine Israelis but, in the future, the proportion of Haredim will grow rapidly. Among the Israelis who are under 20, one in five is Haredi. If the Haredi and Old Order Anabaptists can manage to adapt to becoming numerous and still retain the high fertility, they might eventually replace modern populations. ("Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth," Matthew 5.5.)" https://scottgibb.substack.com/p/we-are-cultish-animals
So, we might pursue this with an open-mind, taking the best parts of these religions and incorporating them into our own families.
I didn't mean fanatic as a pejorative. There's a whole section of the book that goes into religious belief and practice in the sample set along with an extended portrayal of the lone exception. I grew up one neighborhood over from Crown Heights so I am a little bit familiar with the Haredi. FWIW the book does not really talk about Amish types because they sampled for the highly educated and more fertile.
There's this other recent fertility-demographics book, "No One Left," that I thought was a lot weaker than Hannah's Children but that focuses a little more on the less modernity-incompatible populations like the Amish and the Israeli Haredim along the lines of your subdiscussion here. Morland's (the author's) perspective is, to paraphrase, "it'd be really bad if the religious replace our nice and good secular liberal society, so we should figure out how to prevent that." I believe that cake is already baked. I don't believe that secular liberals want to continue; they want to die so they will die. The overwhelming message percolating inside of secular lib-istan is that they deserve to be destroyed and that they should destroy themselves as a sort of sacrifice to the world-spirit. So said the prophet Greta Thunberg and so it's been done.
I think it's perhaps more likely that the religious populations that will make up a larger proportion of the future generations will bleed out and secularize to some degree, and the larger social-legal context will have greater religious inflection. It will look more like the "ExMos" and "ProgMos," or how university-educated Muslims differ from their less modernity-compatible compatriots. Certainly there are examples of the other direction of secular people reverting or converting (I am one and my wife is another), but with fewer secular people to begin with I don't think any secular project to take in some life hacks or "social technologies" from religion without the rest of the package are likely to work.
Another point to make is that many Indian and Pakistani employees in Silicon Valley and similar professional cultures abide by what by secular standards would be hopelessly retrogressive social values with arranged marriages and such. Some bleed off into secular norms, but many do not. At least for non-westerners, it's not as hard to put on one personality for the professional world and to have a completely unintelligible society with alternative values within the home and community.
My favorite part: “ I don't believe that secular liberals want to continue; they want to die so they will die. The overwhelming message percolating inside of secular lib-istan is that they deserve to be destroyed and that they should destroy themselves as a sort of sacrifice to the world-spirit. So said the prophet Greta Thunberg and so it's been done.” Thanks.
Potential & desire for large families could result from a complicated interaction of genetics or family background & communist and culture.
In a society where a range of family sizes are seen and encouraged, those with a nature or nurture to have larger families will do so.
In a societies and communitiea where having large families limits your ability to succeed (e.g. by restricting where you can live, how much education you can attain, or forcing you to buy a new car when you have a third child), people who would otherwise have larger families, don't.
The American Elites are often models for other countries.
Mass media constantly broadcasts American culture throughout the world.
So once America has fewer children, families &: individuals in other countries throughout the world has fewer children.
(This was brought home to me after seeing world-wide protests in the wake of the George Floyd riots, even in countries that never had chattel slavery or Jim Crow.)
Do people in China store their wealth in houses? Why would it matter if house prices fall? Wouldn't that be pro-natalist? Are the houses in cities or in rural areas? Because the WSJ informed me this week that there is pent-up demand in China to be allowed to move into the city via their registration process.
> Do people in China store their wealth in houses?
They used to do so, because there was no other durable store of value available. Second and third apartments bought as investments, that sort of thing. Many a WSJ article described it. I don't know what they do now that Chinese real estate market is on a downturn.
Claudia Goldin distinguishes two patterns. ("Babies and the Macroeconomy," NBER Working Paper 33311, December 2024.)
One pattern is gradual decline in fertility in countries that developed modern economies over a long period. Her examples are the U.S., the U.K., Germany, France, Sweden, and Denmark. The other pattern is sudden, deeper decline in fertility in countries that developed rapidly since the 1960s. Her examples are Japan, Italy, Spain, Greece, Portugal, and Korea. She makes a case that the latter group has a "lowest low" birth rate due to emergence of a sharper battle of the sexes (conflict of norms between traditional men and modern women) in the context of rapid economic growth and massive migration from rural areas to cities.
Here (below) are excerpts from the gated article:
"Among the most astonishing facts in the history of the decline of fertility has been the plummeting of birth rates in tradition-bound countries in Asia, as well as in Catholic and Orthodox Europe. [... .]
to make sense of the fertility decline, we must also pay attention to the speed with which countries advance economically. Thus, the framework shifts attention to the macroeconomy—the rate of growth in GDP per capita (measured in constant price PPP for comparability) and the resultant migration from low-productivity rural areas to high-productivity urban areas. [... .]
Migration is important to the story of fertility change because those who move from rural areas enter the urbanized world having with more firmly-held beliefs and more traditional ways. Among the children of the migrants, the daughters gain more from modernity as they are offered considerably more options than they once had. The sons, however, gain from maintaining parts of the past. How much they gain is evident from the division of labor in the home. Men in developed countries that modernized very rapidly do considerably less housework and care for others in their homes, relative to women, than do men in countries that had more continuous growth experiences. [.... .]
Nations that had rapid and sudden economic growth and large movements of population from rural to urban areas experienced sharp drops in fertility. The declines far exceed those for nations that had more continuous growth and did not have substantial internal migration. These facts are consistent with the notions of the model that rapid change leads to disagreements between young men and women in part because of generational clashes for which sons agree more with their parents than do daughters. The model is also consistent with data on the fertility preferences of couples and their disagreement. [... .]
women spend more time with their children often by sacrificing their careers or by having lower incomes and thus becoming economically vulnerable. If they are divorced or separated, they and their children may suffer. They know this in advance and, in consequence, will resist having more children. But if fathers and husbands can credibly commit to providing the time and the resources, the difference in the fertility desires between the genders would disappear. [...] One method of commitment is to live in a country or state in which social opprobrium dictates that men provide the finances, time, and mental resources to the family. ... .]
The U.S. baby boom is one of the few examples of a country with TFR less than two that greatly increased. The baby boom was partly accomplished by glorifying marriage, motherhood, the “good wife,” and the home. Can a turnaround today be accomplished by glorifying parenthood, especially fatherhood, and changing workplace rules so fathers are not penalized by taking time off and requesting fllexible work arrangements? One thing is clear: unless the negative relationship between income and fertility is reversed, the birth rate will probably not increase."
"women spend more time with their children often by sacrificing their careers or by having lower incomes and thus becoming economically vulnerable. If they are divorced or separated, they and their children may suffer. They know this in advance and, in consequence, will resist having more children."
But no one can ever be sure that the husband will not leave. Isn't popular culture full of break-ups? Thus, the feminist columnist Ellen Goodman used to argue that women should never become full-time wives and mothers.
I am coming to believe that above-replacement fertility is only possible in societies that are 1) poor, and 2) sexually unequal. That characterized almost all of human history. It is less and less true today.
Something I wonder about, is equal rights for both sexes only compatible with a particular faith that cannot be publicly questioned: men and women are pretty much the same. They should pretty much live the same lives, pretty much do the same things.
The idea that a woman could live a decent life as a full-time wife and mother then becomes, without anyone having to say a word, a thoughtcrime. As is the idea that she could get more out of parenthood than the father, and that the father therefore needn't share the burdens equally.
The other end of this idea can be seen in a 2021 episode of Conversations with Tyler [Cowen] featuring a British-Indian female philosopher(?) Amia Srinivasan. Cowen grilled Srinivasan on this subject and cornered her into telling him outright that "You [Cowen] might want to just hold out and say, “It’s only under conditions of intense coercion and desperation that women are willing to have children.” If that turns out to be right, I [Srinivasan] ’ll bite the bullet and just say, fine."
(edited to clarify who said what)
"intense coercion and desperation"
I wouldn't go nearly that far. But in modern affluent conditions, having more than one seems to require a real commitment to the outcome that most people just don't have.
(I wasn't sure who was saying what--or meaning what--in the quote(s?).)
Edited to clarify who said what.
Thanks.
She sounds a little bit like commenter Handle, who has said that tax breaks and bonuses will not get births above replacement. What would be required are substantial penalties for being childless.
The basis of a sexual "grand bargain"? Only men are drafted into the armed forces and only women are "drafted" into pregnancy.
As an older Gen-Xer, my highly unscientific and anecdotal observations:
1. I think peer behavior is probably the #1 cause. I remember when people my age started having children, the answer I heard the most when I asked "how did you know you were ready?" was "well, our other friends were starting families." And in my own experience, that was exactly what made me want a baby - two other couples we were friends with were having babies, and it made me think "hey - I could do that!" Not only does it reinforce the idea of "we're actually grown up enough to have a child," but there's also the incentive of "our kids can play together!" "we can go on family camping trips together!" "we can swap babysitting with each other!"
2. Corollary to #1 is that if childbearing is considered a bit declasse by one's social set, one is more inclined to be extremely vigilant about avoiding pregnancy. I grew up in a wealthy NYC suburb, and there really was a strong undercurrent of "having a baby in your 20s is low-class behavior; People Like Us have children at 35+ because we are educated and have careers." I moved away when I was in my early 20's to a part of the country where it was totally normal middle-class behavior to have children in your 20's, but I couldn't shake the visceral "ugh...trailer park!" reaction that I had. In fact, I still felt mildly embarrassed announcing my first pregnancy to my hometown friends - even though I was 31 and had been married for seven years. When I would visit my hometown, I would get some side-eye for being "so young" and having 3 children who were clearly not multiple births. It seemed that the "typical" mom was 45+ and had twins or triplets as a result of IVF or other fertility interventions.
3. Along with #2 is the widespread stigma of having more than 2 children. I live in a small town with a lot of large families (it is a pleasant, safe little town where kids were still sent outdoors to play without grownup supervision well into the 2000s); so I knew several families on my street with more than 4 children. However, when I announced my third pregnancy to my friends who lived in other towns, I got remarks like "haven't you two figured out what causes that yet?" "is this a religious thing?" or "sheesh, you're gonna have your hands full!" We even had some friends who were Asian who jokingly referred to us as their "white trash friends" because we had "so many kids" (ironically, the couple in question went on to have four children themselves).
4. Part of the reason that people have fewer children than they would really like to is that modern parenting for middle-class and upper-middle-class people involves a LOT of parental involvement. As I mentioned in #3, my town was a bit of an anomaly in that it was still considered totally OK to send your kids outdoors to play unsupervised; and because it is a small, walkable town kids were expected to transport themselves to and from school, dance class, sports practice, and part-time jobs by walking or riding their bikes. However, my friends in other surrounding areas were horrified by this - it seemed borderline neglectful to them. For the most part, people in my town also resisted the urge to enroll kids in dozens of extracurricular activities (probably because most of us had 3-4 kids and were conscious of expense, not to mention the unpleasantness of having to amuse tired, overstimulated younger children while their older sibling had their tuba lesson or whatever); but in many of the other nearby "nice" suburbs it was expected that your child would not only play year-round sports and study a musical instrument but would also do dance, Japanese lessons, SAT prep, and perhaps even have an "internship" before they even had a driver's license. That places a tremendous burden on parents, especially working parents who must spend all their non-work hours chauffeuring children to activities, or else spend considerable amounts of money to employ a nanny with a driver's license. All of this endless activity is usually justified as "looking good on college applications," and unfortunately I see this attitude growing in my little town these days as well.
Now, my children are young adults, and their friends are all rather anti-natalist, citing the expense and work involved in having children. To them, it seems like a family is some sort of status symbol that only rich people can have and that paradoxically doesn't seem like much fun, so you need to pay a nanny to deal with all the driving to and fro.
Also, Gen Z is notoriously pessimistic about things like being able to afford a home someday; somehow, they all got the idea that Boomers and Gen X were able to afford 2500SF homes without needing college degrees. I keep trying to point out that *my* parents were not able to buy a home until they were in their mid-30s, and that the home they did purchase was 800SF, they had one car, we ate out perhaps twice a year, our clothes were hand-me-downs and thrift-store items, and we never took a vacation other than visiting relatives - it was a very different standard for middle-class living in those days!
I was a young and (very young-looking in my early twenties) mother compared to the mothers of my acquaintance (via church, mother’s morning out). I was once mistaken for a nanny and not a fellow mother at a birthday party attended by moms and children. I did in fact sometimes babysit for that set, and my own child accompanying me was the big draw in that arrangement. One family had two sets of twins born 16 months apart to a 40-ish mother.
A local cafeteria we went to a few times, employed an exclusively illegal workforce (eventually they were busted for this). I remember we were eating there once, and a trio of Mexican girls, came over to shyly ask how old I was! Bizarre as this may sound, they were surprised to see an Anglo teen mom (which was how I appeared).
My child’s grandmother, on the other hand, was delighted to be taken for the mother, wheeling the tot through the grocery store.
My own parents lied and said I was off at grad school.
The staff of my college department registered mild sadness when I came in a couple times with baby, trying to get out with 3 not-very-loaded years and a degree of some sort. They helped me to do this, with a lax attitude toward what counted for what.
I remember there was one other (openly, the abortion clinic near campus did a brisk and efficient business, easier than going to the dentist) pregnant girl. I didn’t know her but she wrote an article for the school paper describing the experience of giving her child up to a “wonderful family”. I believe she stressed she was not pro-life, a stance confined to one or two policy school editorial writers looking to their GOP future.
I went to the hospital when it came time to give birth. Barely looking pregnant, in no great distress, they sent me and my little overnight bag home. I returned in a couple of hours and my young body prompted none of the screams you see on TV - so that I feel in watching such scenes, that I never went through childbirth.*
*In fact, Hollywood execs might want to tone those down!
Overall babies were deeply passe, almost forgotten.
Not much to say except about the last sentence... "Hess predicts that prices in China will fall dramatically as population falls."
That's not a particularly hard prediction. There's already 60-80 million built but unoccupied housing units (stats vary depending on which gov't department is providing the numbers). The tower blocks in 3rd and 4th tier cities do not sell. 1st and 2nd tier, you can get things sold but it's a long hard slog...maybe years.
I own a couple, one of them being a project where the developer built about a third of the planned units and then absconded with all the money, and left his wife and kid to take the heat. We're sitting on an unfinished empty concrete box. Oh well....
Real estate in China is its own ridiculously weird situation, with hukou status restricting movement and relocation. The gov't. dictates what cities where one can live. Big Daddy is building out Xiong'an, his new mega city where he's putting his stamp on what he believes urban development should be (it's OK when he does it, I guess.) Vast swarms of gov't. workers are relocating...we're talking millions of workers....which doesn't help developers trying to unload vast excess units in other cities.
"The challenge is to find cultural solutions that make women’s empowerment compatible with large families."
You're trying to thread an extremely fine needle, at least in the US, given that "women's empowerment" is almost exclusively defined as economic independence. You never get back the time taken out of the workplace.
People like to talk about 'safety seat contraception', the fact that it's nearly impossible to fit three small kids and two adults in a mid-size sedan if all three kids have to be in protective seating appliances. I suspect something very similar happens in urbanized areas where it is much harder to find multi-bedroom living space, as well as safe and supervised play environments.
Two kinds of incentives, sticks and carrots. Sticks are much cheaper— so usually work better at the same price. But carrots, positive support, usually works better over time and a mix usually works the best.
No Nation is yet providing Generous support for married couples having kids, like a median wage or more govt cash to any family having a third child. (Very generous is the 60% level).
A) the govt & society don’t want to encourage poor folk to have more kids, they want the middle & above, 33%, or 40%.
B) Many want the support only for married, hetero couples, like me, most feminists want unmarried mothers to live in as much financial comfort as married mothers.
B2) child support that supports married folk is called racist because so many Black sexual couples have the freedom to not get married, and choose freedom from marriage responsibilities. This lifestyle choice is far more financially supported by govt cash than is getting married, since married couples have less Need.
C) Govt support for folk making good decisions means those already doing better, because of their good lifestyles, increase their advantage over those doing poorly. Reality & the Market do this, some, without govt cash. Christian society is uncomfortable doing it with govt cash.
My complex wonkish proposal would include big tax credits & child support, where the 3% tax credits are more valuable to the rich than the middle. Also there should be known the median income of residents categorized by govt school districts, and further by borders of high school districts. With more support to married folk in districts that have fewer married parents, according to the marital status of the students.
Finally, unmarried childless workers should have all their paid income subject to SS taxes, no upper cap. Other high taxes on unmarried childless executives could be done, using tax sticks against the rich not doing enough raising of kids for the next generation.
“The Baby Boom was a social phenomenon. The contemporary Baby Bust is also a social phenomenon. My point about the “gene pool” is not that the survivors will inherit genes that lead them to want more kids, but that you will get a generation that includes fewer child-phobes and at some point the social cues will be to have larger families.”
Even if it is likely that this is correct, a) the social phenomenon you describe here was not alone in causing the TFR problem/crisis, and b) the implication that TFR will revert to above 2.1 when that “at some point social cues will be to have larger families” kicks in is highly questionable.
More fundamental societal and technological changes - birth control pill, legalizing abortion, removal of soft taboo against abortion, the old-age welfare state converting children from producer goods to consumer goods, women’s equality (as you *do* note) - have played an enormous role in the change.
IMO the role of those changes is far greater than the cyclical social phenomenon you posit as probable, or the lesser factors like the higher ed credentialing system or the Malthusian “climate change / humans are destroying Mother Gaia so you should not have children” ideologizing by our total education system, etc. which are also cultural and which I acknowledge could indeed be cyclical as you suggest, and certainly more plausibly can be corrected.
"The Baby Boom was a social phenomenon."
Given the longer term trend and the likelihood that people simply delayed during the depression and especially the war, I don't see much room for social contagion as a factor.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1037156/crude-birth-rate-us-1800-2020/
I suggest adopting the British model of medical school being a 4-year undergraduate program (dentists, too, I suppose), then restricting admission to grad school until age 35.
Who needas, at age 22, to seek a grad degree in, say, Gender studies? Restrict college loans to 5 years to complete a BA/BS. Then dump new grads into the job market. They can't apply for grad school untilthey've paid off their student loan debt AND they're 35.
New MDs are all GPs for 10 years, then they can apply for speciality training.
I'm a bit surprised that none of your links seem to mention the welfare state. Until the 1960s or so, most people depended on family for support in old age or ill health. The post-WWII welfare state in industrialized countries has obliterated that dependency and replaced it with a dependency on taxpayers - that is, other people's children.
If some other influence doesn't reverse fertility trends, a taxpayer revolt may result, where taxpayers say something along the lines of "I'll live in my parents' or grandparents' fine old home and take care of them, but I won't see an unsustainable amount of my income going to support other people's parents, or old people who never bothered to have children.
"In particular, highly subsidized student loans encourage more people to enroll and remain in higher education longer than they would if they fully bore the cost of their schooling."
Besides some people simply not otherwise having the resources to get the education they want or need, human nature is to overweight the short term, getting less education than optimal. How do we know the right balance?
"human nature is to overweight the short term, getting less education than optimal."
Stipulating your premise (overweighting the short term), why do you assume this leads to getting less education than optimal? For students who don't enjoy schooling, I expect cheap loans don't induce them to years of college and postgraduate study. For students who enjoy schooling, cheap loans likely induce more years of schooling, but not necessarily in any way that has good long-term prospects.
"why do you assume this leads to getting less education than optimal? "
I'm perplexed what other assumption would make sense.
I am speaking of the marginal student. If the cost, their dislike of school, whatever else, AND their short-term outlook is just enough to dissuade them from more education, they are likely to get less than optimal.
I think there are lots of (plausible) explanations.
1. Educational loans allow students who can't otherwise pay for a bachelor's degree to get the degree, increasing their earning potential. This is no doubt true for some students, and seems to be your working assumption.
2. Educational loans encourage marginal students to stay in a bachelor's program even if they don't enjoy it and end up withdrawing without a degree. These students probably get negative value from their loans, since they don't get the credential but still have to pay back the loan.
3. Educational loans encourage students who enjoy school to pursue graduate degrees with little or no economic value. Some examples in this category:
- People who earn a Bachelors degree as a credential, and graduate to a job that uses no college-level skills, even if the job requires a college degree. It might be better for all if fewer people got college degrees and employers were forced to reduce requirements for the credential. It wouldn't be better for the people who run colleges and universities, though.
- Someone who pursues a Masters in Fine Arts with the intention of becoming a museum curator. Upon completion, the only jobs they can find are as unpaid docents.
- People who pursue a Masters Degree as a credential. For instance, the Council on Social Work Education claims that in 2023 35% of MSW graduates had average of $38,500 students loans. I'm not sure how to measure the "optimal" level of social work education.
- People who use student loans to enroll in law school, expecting "median" starting salary of $150,000, only to find that there's a glut of lawyers and nearly half of law school graduates can't get jobs as lawyers at all.
- People who use student loans to earn PhDs, with the ambition of becoming university faculty. They generally get low-paying jobs as adjunct faculty with no prospect of full-time or tenure-track positions.
Several of these scenarios suggest student loans encourage some people to get more education than optimal.
If you assume that students over-weight the short-term, why not assume they take on excessive debt without considering long-term earnings potential and debt repayment?
"If you assume that students over-weight the short-term, why not assume they take on excessive debt without considering long-term earnings potential and debt repayment?"
Read my first comment again. What do you think balance refers to?
Maybe cheap loans don't induce them to develop human capital. Maybe it just induces them to keep on going in the pipeline. "I don't know what to do. Everyone says I should go to college. It's nice being around a lot of young people who I can drink and smoke and talk about pop culture with, and I don't have to confront the terror of responsibility."
(Of course, many--more or less than half?--do develop human capital. Lots of them want to but don't have the smarts or the psychology to complete a degree program (and some degree programs don't really develop much in the way of useful knowledge or skills).)
I think we're mostly talking about different types of students. Students who would benefit from a college education but couldn't afford one without loans likely benefit from availability of loans. Although it's worth pointing out that there was a time when many if not most degrees were earned by students attending "commuter schools", often part time, and pursuing education for specific goals like accounting or teaching certificates. I've also noticed an alarming trend in my state's universities to need five years to complete a bachelor's degree, due to inability to schedule prerequisite courses to maintain the four-year schedule.
Unlimited loans for graduate study allow students who enjoy school to stay in school indefinitely, pursuing subjects they enjoy. These studies may never lead to higher earning (or any job at all), and the students may never need to repay the loans.
"Also, think about house prices. Hess predicts that prices in China will fall dramatically as population falls."
Or the low quality housing will be abandoned as income increases. I wouldn't want to guess which will dominate but probably some of both.
How can I increase the size of my family? How can I improve the health and happiness of my family members?
I have three kids, ages 7, 10 and 13. I can raise them with an emphasis on family, having children of their own; sticking close the their siblings and parents; pursuing higher educational goals while simultaneously having children of their own; “innovating” by taking advantage of childcare assistance of their parents; and living in family friendly counties and states (i.e. red, not blue).
What role do economists like Arnold Kling have in this? Certainly to limit government. Certainly to advise in being a better grandparent and parent. Presumably other areas of community and family improvement. I certainly wouldn’t want him, or other intellectuals, or government, tinkering with natalist policies though.
Why are some women giving birth to five or more children and still obtaining college degrees? See Catherine Pakaluck’s book, “Hannah’s Children: The Women Quietly Defying the Birth Dearth.”
I read this one, and the answer was more or less "dad usually makes lots and lots of money; both spouses are religious fanatics with one or two exceptions in the sample set; if mom works she has flexibility."
You might be right, but when I spoke with her about the book, she didn't describe these people as religious fanatics. I'll have to read more of the book myself before I decide. For now, let's assume you're right. This matches my own experience; the Haredim and Mormons:
"By retaining the traditional family-based structure, the Old Order and Haredi communities have also retained the rules and customs that encourage high fertility. It's common for women in these communities to have more than seven children. For decades, their population has grown at between 3 and 4 percent per year. In three and a half generations, a handful of Amish Anabaptist communities, mostly in the American state of Pennsylvania, grew to be a population numbering about a third of a million. Amish now live in at least 31 of the 50 American states. Haredi Jews are even more numerous. It's thought that about half a million live outside Israel and just short of a million live in Israel. Currently, they make up about one in nine Israelis but, in the future, the proportion of Haredim will grow rapidly. Among the Israelis who are under 20, one in five is Haredi. If the Haredi and Old Order Anabaptists can manage to adapt to becoming numerous and still retain the high fertility, they might eventually replace modern populations. ("Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth," Matthew 5.5.)" https://scottgibb.substack.com/p/we-are-cultish-animals
So, we might pursue this with an open-mind, taking the best parts of these religions and incorporating them into our own families.
I didn't mean fanatic as a pejorative. There's a whole section of the book that goes into religious belief and practice in the sample set along with an extended portrayal of the lone exception. I grew up one neighborhood over from Crown Heights so I am a little bit familiar with the Haredi. FWIW the book does not really talk about Amish types because they sampled for the highly educated and more fertile.
There's this other recent fertility-demographics book, "No One Left," that I thought was a lot weaker than Hannah's Children but that focuses a little more on the less modernity-incompatible populations like the Amish and the Israeli Haredim along the lines of your subdiscussion here. Morland's (the author's) perspective is, to paraphrase, "it'd be really bad if the religious replace our nice and good secular liberal society, so we should figure out how to prevent that." I believe that cake is already baked. I don't believe that secular liberals want to continue; they want to die so they will die. The overwhelming message percolating inside of secular lib-istan is that they deserve to be destroyed and that they should destroy themselves as a sort of sacrifice to the world-spirit. So said the prophet Greta Thunberg and so it's been done.
I think it's perhaps more likely that the religious populations that will make up a larger proportion of the future generations will bleed out and secularize to some degree, and the larger social-legal context will have greater religious inflection. It will look more like the "ExMos" and "ProgMos," or how university-educated Muslims differ from their less modernity-compatible compatriots. Certainly there are examples of the other direction of secular people reverting or converting (I am one and my wife is another), but with fewer secular people to begin with I don't think any secular project to take in some life hacks or "social technologies" from religion without the rest of the package are likely to work.
Another point to make is that many Indian and Pakistani employees in Silicon Valley and similar professional cultures abide by what by secular standards would be hopelessly retrogressive social values with arranged marriages and such. Some bleed off into secular norms, but many do not. At least for non-westerners, it's not as hard to put on one personality for the professional world and to have a completely unintelligible society with alternative values within the home and community.
My favorite part: “ I don't believe that secular liberals want to continue; they want to die so they will die. The overwhelming message percolating inside of secular lib-istan is that they deserve to be destroyed and that they should destroy themselves as a sort of sacrifice to the world-spirit. So said the prophet Greta Thunberg and so it's been done.” Thanks.
Potential & desire for large families could result from a complicated interaction of genetics or family background & communist and culture.
In a society where a range of family sizes are seen and encouraged, those with a nature or nurture to have larger families will do so.
In a societies and communitiea where having large families limits your ability to succeed (e.g. by restricting where you can live, how much education you can attain, or forcing you to buy a new car when you have a third child), people who would otherwise have larger families, don't.
The American Elites are often models for other countries.
Mass media constantly broadcasts American culture throughout the world.
So once America has fewer children, families &: individuals in other countries throughout the world has fewer children.
(This was brought home to me after seeing world-wide protests in the wake of the George Floyd riots, even in countries that never had chattel slavery or Jim Crow.)
Do people in China store their wealth in houses? Why would it matter if house prices fall? Wouldn't that be pro-natalist? Are the houses in cities or in rural areas? Because the WSJ informed me this week that there is pent-up demand in China to be allowed to move into the city via their registration process.
> Do people in China store their wealth in houses?
They used to do so, because there was no other durable store of value available. Second and third apartments bought as investments, that sort of thing. Many a WSJ article described it. I don't know what they do now that Chinese real estate market is on a downturn.