"It’s not a coincidence that small societies based on small hunter-gatherer communities are always very technologically primitive. And it’s not that the individual people are stupid or something either. It’s just impossible to sustain a high-innovation dynamic when you have so few people around."
America is already too crowded. The national parks are overrun. Yesterday, the line to get into the Hoh rainforest was over and hour long. There are relatively few places of great beauty and there are already too many people queuing up to see them
I agree 100% that an "economy is made of people," but I disagree strongly with adopting pro-natalist policies -- reducing the human population through voluntary market processes is the only humane way out of a number of our current environmental crises. I'll worry about population decline when total human population starts drifting below one billion.
We need to find the right balance. For most of human history, there were 1 to 2 billion people. Then we suddenly shot up to 7 or 8 billion. This rocket-like increase was a mistake. The Haber-Bosch process was a big part of what made it possible:
"... the Haber-Bosch process is considered by many scientists and historians to be the most transformational technological development of the modern age."
I don't in any way discount the catastrophic damage done to the environment in just the last three generations but I do find it odd how the de-growth left ends up backed into a corner advocating for more world wars.
And the "rocket-like" increase is over. The generations being born now are the same size or smaller than the current young generations (though they are still larger than the oldest generations that are around).
I am a mother of two, having those children in my 20s, and the wife of an immigrant. I also have one more on the way, and my husband and I would like to have a fourth before I'm 35. We live in a rural area, so day care can be difficult to find, but babysitters/nanny's are cheap, relatively. We are both professionals so we can afford it. The schools don't provide the best academics, but the teachers and staff are genuine. Also, my school-age daughter has a great friendship network. I can afford a tutor if I want my kids to grow further.
All that being said, I think the reason my family can grow this way is 1) we are professionals earning good money in a relative LCOL area (HCOL state though), 2) we had our first kid unplanned and just rolled with it (I was on WIC until I couldn't be - wonderful program), 3) while our family could not physically support us, they were able to send us money when things got hairy. (However, many families do take advantage of grandparents/relatives as cheap/free daycare)
This is just my view of the system as a mother and a worker, but as people have discussed, it wasn't necessarily the government programs that allow us to have the kids we want. It helped a lot, no question. But it was that our jobs provided the money to support it, and our family and friend networks supported us too.
I'm not alone up here in my rural area. I know many conservative and liberal families that all have 3 or more kids, but one or both parents have a great job (white collar and tradesman families).
All that being said, I think having more pro-natalism stance in our society is an excellent thing. Let's have more "mom" parking spots at groceries or more family/child programs (like how the YMCA used to be), but not necessarily free day-care for the whole country. When it comes to true pro-natalism, it's raising the wages of our current workers and providing job opportunities that give *living wages* that will actually increase native-born fertility rates.
Because why should mom go to work when it barely pays for the day care? However if less than half the check goes to day care for a few years, then when the kid is in school, they get the whole check, the family will be more likely think they can afford the amount of children they want.
The right has a point that we should just support mothers, not just working mothers. Half of women with kids under 18 would prefer a homemaker role: https://news.gallup.com/poll/267737/record-high-women-prefer-working-homemaking.aspx. Women without a college degree are 50% more likely to have that preference. (Given that skew, it may well be that the majority of moms of kids under 18 who lack a college degree would prefer to stay at home instead of working.)
There is a big focus on professional women, who tend to be the ones participating in these discussions. But we’re a wealthy society and we should also accommodate those non-professional women, many of whom think their efforts would be better spent at home.
You are conspicuously silent on whether or not it's good to encourage people to have children as a couple as opposed to as a single parent. I don't understand the hesitancy for people on the left to admit that, all else being equal, it's probably better to have two parents than one. I know we don't have "definitive causal evidence" that outcomes are better on average when you have two parents. But the correlations sure are strong and consistent. Kids are a lot of work, so it makes sense to me that you'd get better outcomes when you can share the burden. To make it more personal. Think of both your parents. Now imagine what it would be like if one of them simply never existed, or was largely absent. Do you really think things would have been just as good for you?
Well, all else equal it's probably also better to have 3 or 4 parents than two but you don't hear "profamily" conservatives saying that either .... except maybe in Utah....
All else being equal, it's better to have two parents than one. But I haven't heard any convincing policies that would increase the two parent number over one parent while holding all else equal - most of them seem like they would be most effective at preventing conflict-riven households from becoming one-parent households, but wouldn't do much to promote happy two parent households.
I don't think there's any doubt that it's generally better to have two parents than one. What's tricky is designing public policy around this. On one hand, you want more kids, at the margins, to be born in two-parent families relative to one-parent families. On the other hand, you don't want to punish the kids who are born into one-parent families, seeing as how they're the ones who'll need the most help, precisely because they were born into one-parent families!
Good to hear he's tweeted about this. Agreed that it is a tough policy issue and we certainly don't want to punish kids or single parents! Not sure if I agree that there isn't any doubt that it's better to have two parents than one. My impression is that among a substantial portion of those on the left, single-parenting is downplayed as a causal factor for worse outcomes. Or rather, an argument I often hear is that poverty leads to single parenting and so we should address that instead. But that never made sense to me, as single-parenting could in turn reinforce poverty, and there's no reason that we couldn't or shouldn't try to address both things simultaneously.
Having read all the comments on this post, I suddenly had the crazy idea that it might be interesting to read what actual women have to say about the subject of having more babies.
There are at least a few women who have written in these comments! If other people here know of good places to read what women are saying about the subject of having more babies, maybe it would be good for them to post links here?
E.g., have them answer the question, here are things government policy might do:
--Child allowance à la Biden’s proposal.
--Paid parental leave.
--Publicly funded summer camp and afterschool programming.
--Preschool for four-year-olds
How many more kids would you want with those in place? What are the biggest impediments to having more kids and how big do they loom compared to the lack of these policies ? (My uninformed guess is that these four policies rank well behind having more supportive businesses as well as more supportive partners and having these policies would be great but of marginal impact on the decision of number of kids to have.)
I think one problem here is that it's impossible to believe that anybody can discuss this in an unbiased way. I find it unfathomable that you would be making the same argument if you did not (or could not) have kids. I also would probably support your argument more if I did have kids. "Kids are great y'all" guy obviously has kids. This makes the whole debate stupid and trite.
It's even more biased than that. Everybody discussing this has at one point in their lives *been* a kid! I mean, how can anybody take seriously former kids spouting opinions about having more kids?
I think it might be worth looking up how long he has supported these policies. I believe his kid is pretty young, and while I don't remember this being as much of a central plank in his policies early on the way that transportation and housing have been, I would not be surprised if it's there even back in his pro-Iraq War days.
So Krugman says that the population balance won't be that problematic based on the Social Security projection which indicates Social Security as a percentage of GDP will go from about 5% to about 6% between now and 2075 (most of that increase occurs between now and 2035 and then it stays roughly flat after).
But this assumes a Total Fertility Rate of roughly 1.9 births/woman during that time. Why would we assume that is the worst case scenario given many other countries have much lower TFRs? Perhaps significant pro-natalist intervention is required to maintain this. Surely Krugman would concede a South Korea-like TFR of .98 would create significant problems for the economy over the next 50 years.
There isn't just encouraging people to have more kids, another option is to encourage people to have kids earlier. All else being equal you get more population growth if families are having children in their 20's instead of their 30's or 40's. That's another factor of slowing population growth besides the number of kids.
And having kids earlier means the opportunity for more kids. Every large family I know of with 4+ kids had their first kid in their 20's or late teens.
But the various economic and social realities of our society mean there is a very strong incentive for most people to delay having children. And that delay is getting longer, not shorter, as the current younger generation struggles with many issues from finding a partner to achieving a sufficient level of economic independence. For example, I have a handful of family members who really want a family and kids but, for whatever reason, can't find a partner. Their ages are 60, 45 and 35. The 60-year old finally partnered with a woman who has kids from an earlier marriage. The other two have pretty much given up.
I'm seeing more and more people who are single into their 40's and beyond. But I don't think government policy can really change that.
More generally, I'm skeptical that the family-friendly policies that Matt supports will provide enough incentive to actually increase the number of kids people have. Again, at least in my circle, no one I know proactively decides to have a kid or not based on government child policies and benefits. Where I think these policies would have the most effect is reducing the number of abortions from unplanned pregnancies, which is another potential sell point to skeptical right-wingers.
One question I have on this is: Are people having kids later because of economics, or are people having kids later because they are, for non-economic reasons, deciding to form committed relationships later than they used to? The answer is obviously "both" but I do think the latter factor is a really big deal. And I would go so far as to say that isn't really a great social trend, i.e. a lot of people would be happier if they committed earlier. But I don't really see how government can influence people to do that (and even if it succeeded, it would probably end up playing out in the stupidest way possible).
1) one way to do this is to reduce the economic cost of staying in one place. Right now the standard model is: go to your local high school, then go somewhere completely different geographically for college, then go get a job in a major (or minor) city wherever you can for about 5 years (or go to graduate school in yet another completely different geographic location). By definition this means that you're either fumbling through a long-distance relationship for a decade+, or you're first capable of dating with the intent of marrying when you're 22. The opportunity cost of limiting yourself to a single geography is just astronomical. Remote work might wind up making a big difference here; remote higher education would make an ever bigger one (though I don't expect that to happen any time soon.)
2) These factors are themselves interrelated - I've heard (and felt) discomfort with the prospect of getting married until my career was on solid footing. It's not crazy either!
I think dating-to-marry in college can work out fine too, it's in part just a cultural thing. BYU and Notre Dame seem to produce tons of happy young marriages, but you and your partner have to both be up for early commitment, moving if necessary for the other's education, etc.
Yeah, I also think that's a big issue. I'm Gen-X (52) and didn't get married or have kids until my 30's. That was primarily because I didn't find a partner. I was an introvert without a good social network and internet dating wasn't yet a thing. Flesh-and-blood social networks are even less prevalent today, but internet dating as a tool for finding a life partner doesn't seem to be that great of an option. So it appears to me that finding a partner is even harder for younger generations, especially women, who still are much less likely to "marry down" than men are.
And I agree that government policy isn't very good at changing any of this except maybe at the margins.
Interesting point about women being better/pickier and this making it harder to settle down earlier (women are finishing college now more than men, not on opioids as much, etc).
Aren’t there books on how men are currently doing poorly in terms of life outcomes?
The graduate school population is tiny and won't make much of a difference in the grand scheme of things, but sure, making graduate school more family-friendly is overall a good thing. I do agree to an extent when it comes to early careers, but the median age of marriage continues to rise - most people are single in their early careers.
I don't think anyone needs to proactively decide based on government policies to have an effect here. All you need is 5% of families who are hemming and hawing about another kid but struggling with daycare costs to not be struggling with daycare costs and go ahead and do it, to increase fertility from 1.81 to 1.86 or whatever.
I'm skeptical there will be an increase in fertility. Japan has a year of paid parental leave for fathers and mothers. Most of Europe as well has generous family policies, yet those policies don't seem to be substantially increasing birth rates there and current birth rates are lower than in the US.
Japan has an INCREDIBLY fucked up work culture where you're basically an indentured servant for life if you're white collar. I believe that that's changing but in that environment, sure, handing people cash is not going to make the difference. The US, thankfully, is not like that.
There's a bunch of research that's been done on the subject and while pro-natalist policies like these don't always work, they often do.
Sure, Japan is exceptional in that regard, but Europe is not. Europeans generally have a lot more government support for families than the US, yet still have lower birth rates. In the developed world, birth rates plummeted in the 1970's and have been relatively flat since then despite various changes in government policy.
That's not to say that we shouldn't have pro-natalist or pro-family policies. But I think we ought to be skeptical that those policies will result in a meaningful increase in birth rates.
Like the evidence is yes you will get an increase in fertility but not much. You need 2.2 to break even of people. Going full France raises the birth rate from 1.4 to 1.45.
Conservatives say “omg you raised the quality of life of poor people and only got a .05 increase!!”
Liberals say we helped families and got a .05 birth rate uptick as bonus!
Just to clarify, I'm not against the family-friendly policies that MY listed in his post, I generally support them. I'm just skeptical they will do much to increase birth rates and have yet to see compelling evidence to the contrary.
The range countries with under-replacement fertility is really wide and interesting. Look it up on wikipedia if you're interested. It includes not just all the developed European and Asian countries that you'd expect to see, but also many less- developed countries: Brazil, Iran, Bangladesh (by some estimates), Myanmar and Thailand. Maybe half of Latina and America and the Caribbean. Cuba and Puerto Rico are especially low. Especially PR.
In Bangladesh, at least, it was a direct result of major western family planning efforts. (My dad spent much of his career on this.)
In many ways it’s a good thing. Obviously educating and empowering women reduces birth rates. It improves outcomes for everyone. In the long run I’m a little concerned the west exported an anti-natal ideology—let’s face it, from a paternalistic WASP point of view—that will cause these societies to peak and then decline.
It’s really become part of the culture. Even after we immigrated to the US, and my brother and I are now solidly in the top 1%, my parents were kind of horrified when my wife and I we decided to have three kids.
The debate over natalist policies seems to confuse the “more” and the “better.” It’s obvious to me that making life better for kids and families is a good thing, regardless of the complexion, national loyalties or belief systems of the kids and families involved.
Some may be worry about the better by looking at its down-the-road effects for nations or ethnicities. Why should we want “them” to be more numerous than “us”? But that’s an argument that ignores the broader principles that I would hope we are seeking in this debate. Besides, the characteristics of the “us” and the “them” have a way of changing over time and confounding those who see them as static.
Which leads to the more. Apart from a “winners and losers” perspective for those inclined to think in terms of “us” and “them,” I struggle with the assertion that societies as a whole can only do better if they continue to produce more offspring. Under current conditions and policies, maybe, but conditions change and policies can be made to change. Matt makes what seems to me to be a very narrow case based on monetary and fiscal effects and a broader case based on the production and aggregation of talent in a population. The former seems to suffer from an availability bias, assuming that current monetary and fiscal policies continue, when I would ask, aren’t there other ways to respond to these effects? (Both Matt and Krugman acknowledge some of these).
But the broader case about talent is a more interesting one: More people, more talent, more benefits for all of us. There’s an optimism in that line of thinking that I share, but one that should be tempered with some worry about what we as a species can to do to each other and to the planet we share. Still, siding with optimism, I think the macro view ignores a micro reality – that we are producing more geniuses in the world today than we can nurture and educate and that, in effect, there is a great untapped resource in our poorer populations that we have yet to make the most of.
So there’s a different way to view “us” and “them,” with the latter being future generations, who need not be more numerous but do need to be better cared for.
Pro-natalism and pro-immigration for the win! Great agenda, in my opinion.
"Waiving broadly in the direction of Paul Romer’s work...."
Waving.
"It’s not a coincidence that small societies based on small hunter-gatherer communities are always very technologically primitive. And it’s not that the individual people are stupid or something either. It’s just impossible to sustain a high-innovation dynamic when you have so few people around."
I wonder if this was inspired by: https://www.cold-takes.com/the-duplicator/
How does bigger families mesh with the progressive goal of people trading their suburbs and Suburbans for a transit pass and a tiny apartment?
America is already too crowded. The national parks are overrun. Yesterday, the line to get into the Hoh rainforest was over and hour long. There are relatively few places of great beauty and there are already too many people queuing up to see them
I agree 100% that an "economy is made of people," but I disagree strongly with adopting pro-natalist policies -- reducing the human population through voluntary market processes is the only humane way out of a number of our current environmental crises. I'll worry about population decline when total human population starts drifting below one billion.
"An economy is made of people"
The environment is destroyed by people.
There is no economy without the environment.
We need to find the right balance. For most of human history, there were 1 to 2 billion people. Then we suddenly shot up to 7 or 8 billion. This rocket-like increase was a mistake. The Haber-Bosch process was a big part of what made it possible:
"... the Haber-Bosch process is considered by many scientists and historians to be the most transformational technological development of the modern age."
https://slate.com/technology/2013/03/nitrogen-fixation-anniversary-modern-agriculture-needs-to-use-fertilizer-more-efficiently.html
I don't in any way discount the catastrophic damage done to the environment in just the last three generations but I do find it odd how the de-growth left ends up backed into a corner advocating for more world wars.
https://www.slowboring.com/p/climate-left
Nah, for most of human history population was well below 1 billion.
But then, human history is pretty inconsequential in the lifetime of the Earth.
But so what? Trilobites almost certainly weren't sentient. What good is having a perfect environment with no-one there to appreciate it?
And the "rocket-like" increase is over. The generations being born now are the same size or smaller than the current young generations (though they are still larger than the oldest generations that are around).
> For most of human history, there were 1 to 2 billion people
The population was really only inside this range in the 1800s and early 1900s.
I am a mother of two, having those children in my 20s, and the wife of an immigrant. I also have one more on the way, and my husband and I would like to have a fourth before I'm 35. We live in a rural area, so day care can be difficult to find, but babysitters/nanny's are cheap, relatively. We are both professionals so we can afford it. The schools don't provide the best academics, but the teachers and staff are genuine. Also, my school-age daughter has a great friendship network. I can afford a tutor if I want my kids to grow further.
All that being said, I think the reason my family can grow this way is 1) we are professionals earning good money in a relative LCOL area (HCOL state though), 2) we had our first kid unplanned and just rolled with it (I was on WIC until I couldn't be - wonderful program), 3) while our family could not physically support us, they were able to send us money when things got hairy. (However, many families do take advantage of grandparents/relatives as cheap/free daycare)
This is just my view of the system as a mother and a worker, but as people have discussed, it wasn't necessarily the government programs that allow us to have the kids we want. It helped a lot, no question. But it was that our jobs provided the money to support it, and our family and friend networks supported us too.
I'm not alone up here in my rural area. I know many conservative and liberal families that all have 3 or more kids, but one or both parents have a great job (white collar and tradesman families).
All that being said, I think having more pro-natalism stance in our society is an excellent thing. Let's have more "mom" parking spots at groceries or more family/child programs (like how the YMCA used to be), but not necessarily free day-care for the whole country. When it comes to true pro-natalism, it's raising the wages of our current workers and providing job opportunities that give *living wages* that will actually increase native-born fertility rates.
Because why should mom go to work when it barely pays for the day care? However if less than half the check goes to day care for a few years, then when the kid is in school, they get the whole check, the family will be more likely think they can afford the amount of children they want.
The right has a point that we should just support mothers, not just working mothers. Half of women with kids under 18 would prefer a homemaker role: https://news.gallup.com/poll/267737/record-high-women-prefer-working-homemaking.aspx. Women without a college degree are 50% more likely to have that preference. (Given that skew, it may well be that the majority of moms of kids under 18 who lack a college degree would prefer to stay at home instead of working.)
There is a big focus on professional women, who tend to be the ones participating in these discussions. But we’re a wealthy society and we should also accommodate those non-professional women, many of whom think their efforts would be better spent at home.
You are conspicuously silent on whether or not it's good to encourage people to have children as a couple as opposed to as a single parent. I don't understand the hesitancy for people on the left to admit that, all else being equal, it's probably better to have two parents than one. I know we don't have "definitive causal evidence" that outcomes are better on average when you have two parents. But the correlations sure are strong and consistent. Kids are a lot of work, so it makes sense to me that you'd get better outcomes when you can share the burden. To make it more personal. Think of both your parents. Now imagine what it would be like if one of them simply never existed, or was largely absent. Do you really think things would have been just as good for you?
Well, all else equal it's probably also better to have 3 or 4 parents than two but you don't hear "profamily" conservatives saying that either .... except maybe in Utah....
All else being equal, it's better to have two parents than one. But I haven't heard any convincing policies that would increase the two parent number over one parent while holding all else equal - most of them seem like they would be most effective at preventing conflict-riven households from becoming one-parent households, but wouldn't do much to promote happy two parent households.
I think that's a good point. But at the very least we could remove the tax penalty on married couples: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marriage_penalty.
Wait. Looks like that was done somewhat in the last round of tax cuts.
I think he's tweeted about this in the past.
I don't think there's any doubt that it's generally better to have two parents than one. What's tricky is designing public policy around this. On one hand, you want more kids, at the margins, to be born in two-parent families relative to one-parent families. On the other hand, you don't want to punish the kids who are born into one-parent families, seeing as how they're the ones who'll need the most help, precisely because they were born into one-parent families!
Good to hear he's tweeted about this. Agreed that it is a tough policy issue and we certainly don't want to punish kids or single parents! Not sure if I agree that there isn't any doubt that it's better to have two parents than one. My impression is that among a substantial portion of those on the left, single-parenting is downplayed as a causal factor for worse outcomes. Or rather, an argument I often hear is that poverty leads to single parenting and so we should address that instead. But that never made sense to me, as single-parenting could in turn reinforce poverty, and there's no reason that we couldn't or shouldn't try to address both things simultaneously.
Having read all the comments on this post, I suddenly had the crazy idea that it might be interesting to read what actual women have to say about the subject of having more babies.
There are at least a few women who have written in these comments! If other people here know of good places to read what women are saying about the subject of having more babies, maybe it would be good for them to post links here?
They consistently say they want more than they have? Honestly not sure where you're going with this.
E.g., have them answer the question, here are things government policy might do:
--Child allowance à la Biden’s proposal.
--Paid parental leave.
--Publicly funded summer camp and afterschool programming.
--Preschool for four-year-olds
How many more kids would you want with those in place? What are the biggest impediments to having more kids and how big do they loom compared to the lack of these policies ? (My uninformed guess is that these four policies rank well behind having more supportive businesses as well as more supportive partners and having these policies would be great but of marginal impact on the decision of number of kids to have.)
I think one problem here is that it's impossible to believe that anybody can discuss this in an unbiased way. I find it unfathomable that you would be making the same argument if you did not (or could not) have kids. I also would probably support your argument more if I did have kids. "Kids are great y'all" guy obviously has kids. This makes the whole debate stupid and trite.
It's even more biased than that. Everybody discussing this has at one point in their lives *been* a kid! I mean, how can anybody take seriously former kids spouting opinions about having more kids?
"They shoulda killed me as a baby!"
- Tupac
I think it might be worth looking up how long he has supported these policies. I believe his kid is pretty young, and while I don't remember this being as much of a central plank in his policies early on the way that transportation and housing have been, I would not be surprised if it's there even back in his pro-Iraq War days.
So Krugman says that the population balance won't be that problematic based on the Social Security projection which indicates Social Security as a percentage of GDP will go from about 5% to about 6% between now and 2075 (most of that increase occurs between now and 2035 and then it stays roughly flat after).
But this assumes a Total Fertility Rate of roughly 1.9 births/woman during that time. Why would we assume that is the worst case scenario given many other countries have much lower TFRs? Perhaps significant pro-natalist intervention is required to maintain this. Surely Krugman would concede a South Korea-like TFR of .98 would create significant problems for the economy over the next 50 years.
There isn't just encouraging people to have more kids, another option is to encourage people to have kids earlier. All else being equal you get more population growth if families are having children in their 20's instead of their 30's or 40's. That's another factor of slowing population growth besides the number of kids.
And having kids earlier means the opportunity for more kids. Every large family I know of with 4+ kids had their first kid in their 20's or late teens.
But the various economic and social realities of our society mean there is a very strong incentive for most people to delay having children. And that delay is getting longer, not shorter, as the current younger generation struggles with many issues from finding a partner to achieving a sufficient level of economic independence. For example, I have a handful of family members who really want a family and kids but, for whatever reason, can't find a partner. Their ages are 60, 45 and 35. The 60-year old finally partnered with a woman who has kids from an earlier marriage. The other two have pretty much given up.
I'm seeing more and more people who are single into their 40's and beyond. But I don't think government policy can really change that.
More generally, I'm skeptical that the family-friendly policies that Matt supports will provide enough incentive to actually increase the number of kids people have. Again, at least in my circle, no one I know proactively decides to have a kid or not based on government child policies and benefits. Where I think these policies would have the most effect is reducing the number of abortions from unplanned pregnancies, which is another potential sell point to skeptical right-wingers.
Figuring out how to make graduate school and early careers more child-friendly also seems like a good thing for the first point you mention.
One question I have on this is: Are people having kids later because of economics, or are people having kids later because they are, for non-economic reasons, deciding to form committed relationships later than they used to? The answer is obviously "both" but I do think the latter factor is a really big deal. And I would go so far as to say that isn't really a great social trend, i.e. a lot of people would be happier if they committed earlier. But I don't really see how government can influence people to do that (and even if it succeeded, it would probably end up playing out in the stupidest way possible).
1) one way to do this is to reduce the economic cost of staying in one place. Right now the standard model is: go to your local high school, then go somewhere completely different geographically for college, then go get a job in a major (or minor) city wherever you can for about 5 years (or go to graduate school in yet another completely different geographic location). By definition this means that you're either fumbling through a long-distance relationship for a decade+, or you're first capable of dating with the intent of marrying when you're 22. The opportunity cost of limiting yourself to a single geography is just astronomical. Remote work might wind up making a big difference here; remote higher education would make an ever bigger one (though I don't expect that to happen any time soon.)
2) These factors are themselves interrelated - I've heard (and felt) discomfort with the prospect of getting married until my career was on solid footing. It's not crazy either!
I think dating-to-marry in college can work out fine too, it's in part just a cultural thing. BYU and Notre Dame seem to produce tons of happy young marriages, but you and your partner have to both be up for early commitment, moving if necessary for the other's education, etc.
Can? Sure. Is it easier if you're going to the local state school and plan on staying local-ish when you graduate? Hell yeah.
Yeah, I also think that's a big issue. I'm Gen-X (52) and didn't get married or have kids until my 30's. That was primarily because I didn't find a partner. I was an introvert without a good social network and internet dating wasn't yet a thing. Flesh-and-blood social networks are even less prevalent today, but internet dating as a tool for finding a life partner doesn't seem to be that great of an option. So it appears to me that finding a partner is even harder for younger generations, especially women, who still are much less likely to "marry down" than men are.
And I agree that government policy isn't very good at changing any of this except maybe at the margins.
Interesting point about women being better/pickier and this making it harder to settle down earlier (women are finishing college now more than men, not on opioids as much, etc).
Aren’t there books on how men are currently doing poorly in terms of life outcomes?
Internet dating is fantastic, IMO. I'd almost certainly still be single but for internet dating.
Internet dating is a circle of hell.
The graduate school population is tiny and won't make much of a difference in the grand scheme of things, but sure, making graduate school more family-friendly is overall a good thing. I do agree to an extent when it comes to early careers, but the median age of marriage continues to rise - most people are single in their early careers.
I don't think anyone needs to proactively decide based on government policies to have an effect here. All you need is 5% of families who are hemming and hawing about another kid but struggling with daycare costs to not be struggling with daycare costs and go ahead and do it, to increase fertility from 1.81 to 1.86 or whatever.
I'm skeptical there will be an increase in fertility. Japan has a year of paid parental leave for fathers and mothers. Most of Europe as well has generous family policies, yet those policies don't seem to be substantially increasing birth rates there and current birth rates are lower than in the US.
Japan has an INCREDIBLY fucked up work culture where you're basically an indentured servant for life if you're white collar. I believe that that's changing but in that environment, sure, handing people cash is not going to make the difference. The US, thankfully, is not like that.
There's a bunch of research that's been done on the subject and while pro-natalist policies like these don't always work, they often do.
Sure, Japan is exceptional in that regard, but Europe is not. Europeans generally have a lot more government support for families than the US, yet still have lower birth rates. In the developed world, birth rates plummeted in the 1970's and have been relatively flat since then despite various changes in government policy.
That's not to say that we shouldn't have pro-natalist or pro-family policies. But I think we ought to be skeptical that those policies will result in a meaningful increase in birth rates.
I wouldn't be surprised if US TFR fell below Europe's TBH.
Like the evidence is yes you will get an increase in fertility but not much. You need 2.2 to break even of people. Going full France raises the birth rate from 1.4 to 1.45.
Conservatives say “omg you raised the quality of life of poor people and only got a .05 increase!!”
Liberals say we helped families and got a .05 birth rate uptick as bonus!
Just to clarify, I'm not against the family-friendly policies that MY listed in his post, I generally support them. I'm just skeptical they will do much to increase birth rates and have yet to see compelling evidence to the contrary.
TFR in France is much higher - 1.88
The range countries with under-replacement fertility is really wide and interesting. Look it up on wikipedia if you're interested. It includes not just all the developed European and Asian countries that you'd expect to see, but also many less- developed countries: Brazil, Iran, Bangladesh (by some estimates), Myanmar and Thailand. Maybe half of Latina and America and the Caribbean. Cuba and Puerto Rico are especially low. Especially PR.
In Bangladesh, at least, it was a direct result of major western family planning efforts. (My dad spent much of his career on this.)
In many ways it’s a good thing. Obviously educating and empowering women reduces birth rates. It improves outcomes for everyone. In the long run I’m a little concerned the west exported an anti-natal ideology—let’s face it, from a paternalistic WASP point of view—that will cause these societies to peak and then decline.
It’s really become part of the culture. Even after we immigrated to the US, and my brother and I are now solidly in the top 1%, my parents were kind of horrified when my wife and I we decided to have three kids.
Maybe but you could have said the same thing for Taiwan or Singapore or etc.
The debate over natalist policies seems to confuse the “more” and the “better.” It’s obvious to me that making life better for kids and families is a good thing, regardless of the complexion, national loyalties or belief systems of the kids and families involved.
Some may be worry about the better by looking at its down-the-road effects for nations or ethnicities. Why should we want “them” to be more numerous than “us”? But that’s an argument that ignores the broader principles that I would hope we are seeking in this debate. Besides, the characteristics of the “us” and the “them” have a way of changing over time and confounding those who see them as static.
Which leads to the more. Apart from a “winners and losers” perspective for those inclined to think in terms of “us” and “them,” I struggle with the assertion that societies as a whole can only do better if they continue to produce more offspring. Under current conditions and policies, maybe, but conditions change and policies can be made to change. Matt makes what seems to me to be a very narrow case based on monetary and fiscal effects and a broader case based on the production and aggregation of talent in a population. The former seems to suffer from an availability bias, assuming that current monetary and fiscal policies continue, when I would ask, aren’t there other ways to respond to these effects? (Both Matt and Krugman acknowledge some of these).
But the broader case about talent is a more interesting one: More people, more talent, more benefits for all of us. There’s an optimism in that line of thinking that I share, but one that should be tempered with some worry about what we as a species can to do to each other and to the planet we share. Still, siding with optimism, I think the macro view ignores a micro reality – that we are producing more geniuses in the world today than we can nurture and educate and that, in effect, there is a great untapped resource in our poorer populations that we have yet to make the most of.
So there’s a different way to view “us” and “them,” with the latter being future generations, who need not be more numerous but do need to be better cared for.
“It’s a big country full of kooks” will be my new mantra to chill myself out when I see nutpicking.