Of course educating women decreases fertility rate.
-They learn about birth control and the nature of fertility in general
-They become empowered
-They seek careers
-The forces of tradition/religion will have less influence over them
Every aspect of this will and does lead to fewer births.
I don’t get how you, post after post, can be so blind about this when you’re the type of writer whose whole thing is that he can see the signals through the noise: every single thing societies have done in pursuit of women’s advancement lowers the fertility rate. Legalizing abortion, de-emphasizing the importance of motherhood, promoting birth control, empowering women, educating girls, etc. These all may be positive things in various ways but they have a downside as well.
By all means, let’s find a way to keep women’s equality and also increase the birth rate at the same time. But at least be intellectually honest about it.
James, I don't ask a lot of my readers; I know that as a writer, it's my job to make myself clear.
But if you're going to call me "blind" and intellectually dishonest, I have to ask that you at least read what I wrote.
What I wrote was:
"So it may be that while giving girls an education reduces fertility rates from the unsustainable, explosive level of 7-8 children per women to maybe 3 or 4, the “last mile” — the drop of fertility below the replacement rate — is due to something else entirely."
Even if every single effect you're talking about is real and important, that doesn't mean the causal relationship between women's education and fertility just keeps going and going forever. At some point, all those effects get saturated. Once you know about birth control and abortion, then you know. Once you have a career, then you have a career. And so on.
It's not that hard a concept to understand that sometimes, effects get maxed out, and you can't just keep doing more of the same thing to keep getting more of the same result. I'm not "blind" or dishonest to suggest that idea, especially not when there's some data to support it.
To add studies have shown that women are actually having less babies than they WANT to have.
IE after all the women's education and feminist stuff, women still want to have more babies than they are currently having.
So the question then becomes why aren't women having the number of babies they want?
There's multiple reasons, but I submit the two big interrelated drivers are cost and running out of time.
The high fertility years are limited. So each delay in getting married and in a good spot to have kids reduces to total number of likely kids.
Going to college less time for kids.
Saving up many years to buy a house and not be willing to have kids in in apartment (which my wife and I refused to do) less time for kids
And of course the longer you wait, the more chances you won't be able to have them. We started in our 30's and had two miscarriages before we got our first kid.
A friend of mine said, “when Cuba finally rejects Communism, it will be horrible for everyone but Cubans.” What she meant, sarcastically, was that we romanticize the time capsule the country has become. Discussing “fertility” (which I am interpreting as an economist’s odd shorthand for “the decision to bear children” as opposed to the ability to do so) is really unseemly. You’ve written about how you don’t want to be misunderstood on the topic. Then skip it. It’s prescriptive, and we have other ways to thrive as a species on this earth.
Oh come on, Noah. Don’t imply I’m some sort of terrible reader. This is the closest you have come to admitting that what we could just call “ women’s lib” for convenience lowers fertility and you still feel the need to say WHILE IT MAY BE and hurriedly explain to readers we can’t be getting all Handmaid’s Tale!
You appear to be blind because, I assume for ideological reasons, you have clear desires to nevet suggest anything about fertility that might come across as anti-feminist or conservative.
This is what we all hated about reading Woke articles from 2015-2022, right? Either write about this topic with intellectual honesty, or if you can’t approach it that way that’s fine. We all have subjects we can’t be objective about. But then pick other topics
I'm puzzled by these comments, James K. The form of Noah's argument is:
- Three studies of data for disparate countries/cultures indicate that a well known correlation holds over the initial segment of a range of data but not over the latter segment of the broader range.
- These studies indicate that if we take the initial part for the whole it seems to identify a single cause for a broad social phenomenon, but that both segments together do not.
- Therefore, we may not want to pursue policies to address the social phenomenon based on the initial segment alone and should look for additional correlations that may reveal multiple causes.
Your comment seems to say that this is evidence of dishonesty caused by Woke bias because its policy cautions are what a Woke person would approve.
Based on both substance and tone I think your comments, which fail to engage with the evidence Noah cites and the provisional form of his conclusion, appear to reflect bias. Not having read the three studies or looked for others that may counter them I can't say anything about their validity one way or another, but I don't see any flaws in Noah's argument or evidence of distortion. Of course we need more studies.
I'd hope that all of us would have a bias in favor of equal opportunity for both genders and that we would prefer not to mandate limits on one gender unless there were truly compelling reasons, and if there were we would want to make sure the limits we imposed effectively addressed those underlying reasons without unnecessarily restricting anyone's opportunities.
In my lifetime the population of the world has more than tripled. It's good that the rise has slowed but the goal is not to reverse the level but to sustain something like an equilibrium. For the disparate regions of the world to join in finding approaches that allow so elusive a goal to be reached I think it will be important to encourage maximal open-mindedness to data and argument regardless of anyone's ideological commitments.
Noah has posted 3-4 times about the problems with plunging fertility in last half year and he never mentions abortion, he never mentions female empowerment, he finally mentioned educating women but -- as I said above -- used so much hand-wringing it's clear he's deeply uncomfortable with the truth of the matter, which is that every thing we have done to increase equality between the sexes has the side effect of decreasing births.
Of course it's not education alone. My initial post goes into all the factors. But education is one of them. And if we're going to figure out how to increase births we have to be at least aware of the issue.
I can't assess your first point: I don't catalog Noah's posts (sorry Noah!). But the form of your argument seems to me: We have done X, Y, Z and fertility has decreased. We know causation exists to some degree for some of XYZ over some of their ranges, therefore it holds for all of XYZ over their full ranges.
My understanding is that the single greatest factor in world fertility decline was China's 35-year one-child policy, which led to sharp drops in birth rates in what was initially by far the largest single sector of world population. This had nothing to do with liberating anyone but altered the force of gender liberalizing policies elsewhere. Similarly, the spread of virtual culture over the past 15 years correlates with a renewed drop in fertility rates and has been associated with increased delays in real-life relations, including romantic/sexual/marital ones. It has nothing to do with "female empowerment." (I've seen no data, but I'd be reluctant to attribute much decline to abortion in the US and Europe; abortion has always been widely practiced worldwide and still is in many populous countries.)
Your factors may all be validly seen as contributors, but if there are macro-effects that far outweigh them, then turning to policies that restrict opportunities by gender may be both ineffective in reaching an equilibrium and ethically undesirable. If the studies Noah cites prove valid and broadly applicable, then better education for women may, in fact, be a positive contribution towards reaching a sustainable equilibrium.
I want to add one element I think is problematic in your list: "The forces of tradition/religion will have less influence over them." (I am bloviating here: I have no data to back this up.) Traditions and religions are not static things; they are vague terms denoting frameworks that often respond flexibly to changing conditions even as they reflect urges to preserve stability. What I think you want to get at concerns forces of social cohesion, and I do think that shrinking forces of social cohesion are a major part of fertility decline, and are also toxically dehumanizing, since what we generally mean by "human" is saturated with our immersion as individuals in social relationships. I don't think education is necessarily biased in terms of promoting or impeding social cohesion, but many factors in modern society are, and their influence is sharply accelerating globally. I hope that over time people are able to discover new routes to social cohesion that adapt old traditions to these changing contexts with minimal or no damage to opportunities for personal fulfillment, not necessarily defined by the contours of past frameworks. I would guess (only a guess) that broad education can become a vehicle for establishing new frameworks, and I think our best ethical option is to act as though they can and try to figure out how, rather than assume that we are powerless to restore social cohesion except by coercively reducing education for girls and women. (I recognize that you are not recommending that we do that, but others do.)
Swiper swiped two of my chickens. I had five chickens, now I have 0. WHILE IT MAY BE that swiper swiped some, I still need a freaking explanation for the other 3, don't I?
Everyone and their mother, from to the UN to mr. Pinion here, acknowledges that women's education and rights and economic empowerment are important in lowering birthrates. And it's fucking great, thank you very much. Now, then on to additional reasons why birthrates decrease. 1) levels of urbanism: no one in their right mind stepping into a crowded and sweltering hot metro, or standing in a traffic jam with a million others, every single day, will say to themselves 'you know what we really need? More people to add to this misery'.
Another one: a culture of single family homes, where parents do not want their kids to have a baby before they've finished university, found a job and left the house. This is especially important in places where a house is increasingly unaffordable: while in the recent past a starter salary would have been enough to get a mortgage and buy a house, that is now virtually impossible, so you have to wait at least a few years to save up so you make a down payment, and then your mortgage, or rent, is such a significant percentage of your income that there's nothing left to feed a baby with. So yeah, that brings us to house prices, and costs of living, all additional causes. My parents could afford the loss of my mothers income because mortgage providers weren't even taking into account the income of the second partner. Once that happened house prices shot up and 1 mortgage wasn't enough anymore.
Oh, and religion, yes, of course. Most people of around my age (31) whom I know to have more than 2 kids are upper class (French) catholics, with both partners being well educated and often both working. The only difference between them and me is that they've been indoctrinated to breed.
The economic reasons are something we could target, other than that I'd pick emancipation of women and loss of religious indoctrination over increased birthrates every single time.
I think the focus of this discussion is not targeted where it should be. The reference point seems to be Western society, but although fertility is down in those countries the solution is not out of reach: it's in-migration from poorer to wealthier countries. Recent political trends in both the US and Europe have blacked that process, but the current xenophobic fashion is likely to wear itself out when the cycle moves on.
The actual crisis concerns the projected spread of rapidly falling birthrates in poorer countries, such as India and African states, which turns in- and out-migration into a zero-sum situation, with the sum continually falling globally. This has to do with the preservation of the species, not maintaining GDP rates in wealthy countries (some of which could be addressed politically by coupling high productivity gains through new technologies with increased distributive programs that lead to reduced work weeks and stable income floors and medians).
Having lived in Asia for a number of years one of the things that I think we should consider is that the treatment of women in cultural regimes outside the west has tended to be much more restrictive than what we think of as pre-women's lib America. Deprivation of education is much deeper and "household servitude" much wore worthy of that phrase. "Fixing" low fertility rates doesn't involve condemning suburban women to their one-family homes and child care; it involves life as a "subaltern," and to prescribe that "fix" from the comfort of Western culture is, let's say, problematic. If cultural changes that include women's education cut average family surviving births from 7-8 to 3-4 in those cultures, as Noah's post suggests this still leaves plenty of room for replacement plus out-migration to low-fertility countries that could contribute to a long-term equilibrium.
But if whatever factors have led Western demographics to fall below replacement levels spread globally that's a different story. If the main cause is indeed women's education and social independence then we're in a bind because non-coercive celebration of the traditional role of women is unlikely to work and coercive enforcement unjustifiable ethically for women in many less developed countries. But if it is something like social atomization layered on top of increased education and employment options for women then there may be ethically viable solutions. (One example: Studies I've read about are said to show that easy youth access to pornography tends to delay marriage--if civil libertarians were willing to relax their principled opposition to broader restrictions on pornography perhaps that anti-social pleasure could be traded in for pro-social ones and a contribution to species longevity.)
I agree with you on the position of women. But species longevity is just not a concern. There are 8 billion of us. If anything our declining birthrate is just a Darwinian mechanism that protects us from overpopulation. And if, for whatever reason, population numbers seriously decline then we will see that birthrates will go up again. Considering the ecological crises that we are causing, a population decline might actually solve some of our problems.
The whole 'economists are freaking out about birthrates' is all about maintaining our lifestyle of overconsumption and the growth dependent capitalist mode of living.
Simon, Certainly we have been doing great damage as a species, but that does not need to be the case going forward as we have technologies that will actually permit us to sustain higher populations in environmentally neutral ways if we can muster the social and political means to deploy them. I am much more optimistic that a time will come when that will be politically realistic than I am that when population decline sets in "we will see that birthrates will go up again." (Although if the process is Darwinian rather than Malthusian, who knows what novel mutations and natural selections a few million years will bring?)
The speed and economic pain of declines after mid-century are projected to place so heavy a burden on the laboring age range that adding service to the needs of a top-heavy post-laboring senior cohort the task of nurturing a growing pre-laboring cohort is more than prime age populations who have endured increasing economic pressure are likely to be able to manage without some type of draconian and globally coordinated coercion. So, yes, we may see that birthrates will go up again, but only after an era of Malthusian dystopia--either a global regime that is, indeed, something out of Handmaid's Tale, or a Mad Max/Canticle for Liebowitz-style apocalypse--enforces a reset.
Regarding Fertility, I wish there was more of a discussion on how one of the main reasons fertility is down is that stay at home parenting status is likely at an all time low in society (note I said stay at home parenting. Stay at home fatherhood has always been a low status thing but stay at home motherhood was held in high status three generations ago).
If we can figure out how to elevate the status of stay at home parenting, you might see fertility rise across the world.
The problem with giving more status to stay at home parenting is that, in theory, "anyone" can do it, as long as they're willing to have - or get stuck with - the life of a single mother on the edge of poverty. (Which, when the alternative is living the life of a childless single woman on the edge of poverty, can be a rational decision.)
Anyone remember the "welfare queen" stereotype of the 1980s that motivated the welfare reforms under President Bill Clinton? Unless you think we should valorize the kind of people that end up on MTV reality shows about teenage mothers, I don't know if raising the status of stay-at-home parents is possible.
Having a child will take an enormous chunk of your energy and time for years on end. It is fully equivalent to the energy and time involved in getting a PhD. Before birth control, it just happened...now motherhood is a daunting prospect. If you don't have a strong desire for children, which many men and women do have, parenthood is Likely to decrease precipitously, as it has.
"B. My wife would probably have thought her role was to make a family"
I think this is part of the problem. All the fertility questions revolve around how women think of marriage and children because they are the bottleneck but you can't just ignore the other 50% of the population. From natalist conversations, you'd think feminazi boss babes are doing 4B en masse while the average man wants to heal the fertility rate by having 5+ kids.
It's been observed that the 3 groups in America that have super high fertility rates: Ultra Orthodox Jews, fundamentalist Mormons, and the Amish heavily restrict *men's* freedom too. Men are expected to be ready to form a family as soon as they reach adulthood. I despise fundamentalist Mormons (they are the ultimate welfare queens) but their teenage males are working trades not partying in Cabo for spring break. Amish men are farmers and tradesmen so they're ready to provide for a family as soon as they get a wife. Ultra Orthodox Jewish men are an odd case - they spend their days studying Torah but their freedom is also heavily restricted - no strip clubs and no trips to Vegas for them.
"By all means, let’s find a way to keep women’s equality and also increase the birth rate at the same time. But at least be intellectually honest about it."
The intellectually honest position is that it's not possible.
That's fine, maybe it isn't, but we need to have that conversation then rather than whistling and pretending we don't know what this bizarre thing is that's making all countries have fewer kids as they develop.
Though as I mentioned elsewhere in this thread, Israel's birth rate is significantly higher than other western nations, even among the non-Orthodox/Hasidic
Yep. We should also mention that there's been a huge emphasis on DOING YOUR OWN THING/FOLLOWING YOUR DREAM/MAKING YOURSELF HAPPY and that has gone hand in hand with a decreasing emphasis on family, community, and duty. Whereas the Israelis still have that strong emphasis on family and community
Importance of family doesn't automatically mean having 3+ kids. You can think family is important and still have 1 or 2 kids and that'll be below replacement rate.
Both the number of people having kids and the number of kids per household has gone down.
People have been making all kinds of claims about this but they’re all wrong because it’s not an economic issue, it’s a social issue that cannot be solved using economics. When people know how much effort goes into raising one kid, they may bite the bullet and have another one but most of them are not going to have 3 or 4 unless it’s a mistake or for religious reasons. There is one law of economics that does apply here too - decreasing marginal satisfaction from consumption.
I'm not denying that cultural factors haven't played a factor. My point is that even after those cultural factors women aren't having as many kids as they say they want.
So the question is why.
I submit for many (most?) families it's a combination of cost and running out of time.
delaying getting married and having kids to go to college means you have less time to have kids.
Having to work longer and save more to afford to buy a home means you have less time to have kids.
My own anecdote. My I met my wife when I was 26 she was 24. We married two years later.
We refused to have kids in an apartment. So after living together for a bit and realizing we weren't getting anywhere renting, we actually moved in with my parents for 2 years so we could afford to buy a home.
Finally we buy a home when she's 30 or so. After a couple of years in the home we start trying to have kids, she has one miscarriage then another.
Finally have our first kid when she is 36, and our 2nd kid when she is 38.
Whelp guess we are out of time. If we had been able to get in a home earlier, most likely we would have hard a 3rd kid. Maybe even a 4th.
But we simply ran out of time. This isn't an uncommon scenario.
By far the easiest thing to do to increase fertility rates would be to build a shit ton of housing to make it easier for families to get started. That would also make it easier to families to either have a parent stay home for the first couple of years, or to afford childcare.
Earlier family formation, equals more time to have kids equals more kids.
You say it like this is a economic factor because of your programming. It's not. It's a cultural factor. My wife and I had our kid while living in an apartment. The world doesn't end and your kid doesn't grow up sad and miserable because they were not born in a house.
Your personal experience doesn't change the fact that most people don't want to have 3 or 4 kids anymore, even if they start early.
Again, if you look at polling, families are still having less kids than they want to.
I just gave you a clear example of how that happens. My anecdote is reflected in the polling. An openness of more kids that is not fulfilled because other factors interfere.
Most people don't want and will never want to have kids in apartments. That's why the American dream was house with the white picket fence. A place with a yard where the kids could play.
This is an easy place for policy to meet people where they are.
One of the biggest that you imply but do not mention directly is that if women wait until later to have children, fertility declines with age.
In addition, waiting means fewer total years to be of child bearing age that are actually used in producing children.
So yes, it is easy to see where "rightists" as they are referred to here, are confusing mere correctional info with causation in that women who are busy with school are not using those years having kids and the reverse may also be true that those who have not had children are still able to attend school in some poorer nations.
Women who stay in school longer (or maybe a career) have fewer years that are then devoted to child bearing and then add to this the fact hat fertility declines with age, as well.
Thus it is not "education" causing less fertility it is the biological clock - tick - tick and basic math.
Maybe "rightists" should stay in school longer and learn about correlation vs causation and basic statistics.
Noah, I’d like you to elaborate a bit more on why you think your next financial crisis is Crypto or AI versus our debt.
No, we have no idea when our debt will become a financial crisis, or are you saying that our debt is not a crisis? That we are more like Japan in that sense. we’ll have zombie banks and zombie country.
Thanks. I hate to do this again, since I likely have a limit on my requests, but I’ll ask one more time, and if you respond, that will be it.
Americans have little idea on what will happen in the looming fiscal crisis. The loss of our reserve currency, higher interest rates, the lack of budgetary flexibility to handle emergencies. Once our credit card gets cut up, our resources will dwindle. It puts our consumer-driven economy at grave risk.
No doubt there are huge consequences I have not illustrated. Zombie banks and economies like Japan's may be the best we can hope for and nowhere near the worst. I believe an outline (better than mine) on what America will look like unless we address our debt would be a service. Sent to every politician, newspaper, cable company. You would be doing a tremendous service.
US government debt to GDP rates are now quite high, and the time has come to seriously consider this as a potential cause for future problems. The only thing that's needed though, is to just elect some politicians who would take it seriously, and it could be under control in 5-10 years. The US could hire and train a 1000 additional tax officers and every single one of them would be able to find millions per year in evaded taxes. US also has much lower tax rates compared to any nation with comparable levels of debt. Government debt is also easier to fix than a private debt problem spread over a 300 million Americans and millions of companies, because there's just one vocal point and only so many levers you can pull. The difficult thing, though, is to elect those much needed serious politicians....
Also, no one in the world wants the US to have actual financial problems. Any guess on outcomes is highly uncertain, but it would likely have serious consequences for the dollar and thus for global trade.
The complaints I hear continually from Millennials and Get Zers focus on the cost of housing and higher education and, from Gen Xers, health care. As an old guy, I can't help thinking that, even adjusting for factors such as the size of houses or the amenities that are now part of the college experience, they have a valid complaint. When it comes to health care, though, I doubt most people, at least those middle age and older, would trade away today's care at today's prices for the care and costs common a generation ago.
Regarding housing: One simple comparison I often make to explain what it was like in the olden days of the late 60s and early 70s is the number of hours or days of work it took me to pay my rent living on the Lower East Side of NYC. I could pay my rent working two 6-8 hour shifts per month driving a cab, although I was living in a fourth floor walkup and contending with roaches in my apartment and crime on the streets below.
Higher ed: No loans, thanks to a boost from LBJ's expansion of Social Security benefits to the dependents of deceased parents. Even without that, I could have covered most of my tuition and room and board working full-time in the summer and part-time during the school year in minimum wage jobs, as many of my contemporaries did.
Health care: I didn't care. I was young and healthy.
There are a lot of other factors that should be taken into account in making these inter-generational comparisons. I can think of two more:
--The effect of minimum wage increases (and upward pressure on wages at the next levels) in a growing number of states over the past two decades -- which could be showing up in the numbers for those in their 20s and 30s;
--The ongoing transfer of wealth (including housing) from Baby Boomers to Gen Xers and Millennials as the Boomers die and past their inheritances on to fewer children -- which is likely to accelerate in the next decade.
When I think of the future for my daughter and grandkids, financial help now and inheritances later from me and my ex will probably make the difference for them in their ability to afford a house and, for my grandkids, college. I enjoyed some of those same benefits myself -- from parents and taxpayers. Wealth transfer is a major part of sustaining the middle class for those who start out there -- although getting to that point is another question. And cutbacks in government support for higher ed points to another challenge.
The story those generational charts show is still being written.
Yes, Noah points to the PCE index, saying it's an indication of what people actually spend their money on to say that pay is up. But the PCE doesn't include the cost of buying a house.
Here's what google's AI had to say about it...
"Home prices have grown much faster than income: One report states that home values have soared 162% since 2000, while income has increased only 78%. Another source indicates house prices rose about 65 percent between 2000 and 2024, while median household income barely rose over the same period.
The house-price-to-income ratio has increased: This ratio compares the median home price to the median household income. In 2000, it reached 4 for the first time, and by 2023, it had climbed to 5.3. Experts suggest that a healthy ratio should be around 2.6."
Now if only the drop in crime could be accompanied by an equivalent drop in TV crime shows. (please note my comment is aurally complemented by the "Ba-Bahm!" of Law & Order, SVU)
I want to add my two cents' worth to the question of fertility rates. Over the years, I have seen women become more equal to men in many areas, but there is still a long way to go. Deciding to have a child or children is a lifetime commitment. The burden of this decision still rests unfairly on women. Their ability to earn money is impacted more than a man's; child caring and housework fall more heavily on women, and their health is put at a greater risk than a man's. If our society truly wants to increase fertility, it will need to provide affordable child care, a more balanced home life, and more equal pay rates. Currently, women are not regarded as equal partners to men.
Additionally, under this present administration, misogynists have been given an even bigger voice than ever before. Women's health care has been unfavorably impacted by men, making childbirth even more dangerous. Infant mortality is higher in America than in many other developed countries. All of this is a consequence of men wanting to control women and keep them as second-class citizens.
Obviously, I cannot speak for all women, but I feel that until these issues are corrected, we will not see an answer to the fertility problem.
Even Scandinavian countries with the most supportive policies in place for mothers in the world haven’t been able to meaningfully increase the fertility rate. In fact I’ve heard that in the US for example the decline in fertility rate is almost entirely due to less educated people having less children (and stuff like teen pregnancy dropping off a cliff in the past few decades). This suggests that all the efforts to make it easier for educated, middle class women have children may not work simply because they have already made up their minds about it. The only thing I’ve heard about that actually has increased the fertility rate in any practical way is having mandatory military service, but allowing people to get out of it by having children.
There is a great deal of merit to your post, but I wonder if the denigration of women starts at an early age and subtly influences a woman's desires and goals for herself? Daughters watch how their mothers and other older females are treated, and this has had an adverse impact on their thoughts concerning having a family. I'm sure many factors contribute to a lower fertility rate, but since this seems to be happening across the developed world, it leads me to look for causes that transcend national boundaries.
Another possibility that I haven't seen addressed is the fact that we need fewer people. As we transitioned from a hunter-gatherer to an agricultural to a service-based economy, our need for people has decreased. Additionally, early deaths from childbirth and disease have declined, which has decreased the need for additional people. Perhaps we are also looking at nature's way of protecting us from overpopulation.
Regardless of the cause, the declining birthrate only reinforces our need for immigration. Yes, large rates of immigration will change our society, but evolution shows us that change is constant and sometimes beneficial.
"it will need to provide affordable child care, a more balanced home life, and more equal pay rates."
If that was so, then European countries that provide all of that would have higher fertility rates than the US, but the reverse is true.
Moreover, I would submit that putting families in a position where the women could stay home for the first couple of years with the kids would drive up fertility a lot more than paying someone else to do so.
Polling shows that actually the position that most families prefer but can't afford.
Since the development of the pill for birth control, women have discovered new freedoms, new ways of enriching their lives, and new freedom from men. Your suggestion about having women stay home for the first couple of years ignores the negative impact on the lives of these women
In a fast paced world, leaving the workforce for any period of time will allow others to advance past you and your lack of knowledge about the changes effecting your occupation will leave you even further behind.
Additionally, I noticed you didn’t say anything about men staying home for the first couple of years. Why does the burden of child rearing always or mostly fall upon the shoulders of women?
I feel that women are tired of receiving the short end of the stick. Women are always expected to give up their career ambitions in favor of the man, women are always expected to carry the burden of child caring, and are always expected to do most of the house work.
Perhaps, if men expect higher birth rates, they should expect to carry a higher burden of child rearing.
My suggestion is that women should have the ability to chose. Many (most?) women report that their preference is to stay home the first couple of years.
Is it somehow more progressive to force them to leave their kids and go to work?
Yes you are right that staying home for a couple of years will effect your career. Choices have consequences, and life is filled with tradeoffs.
For example, I have no taken jobs that involve a lot of travel or me being away from my family a lot. Or ones that require a lot of overtime. My preference for myself and my family is more time home, less time at work, that almost certainly has meant less money and less career advancement.
It's literally impossible to have it all, time is limited. If you do more of X you get less of Y.
Different families have to decide what's right for them. I don't have a problem with a stay at home husband, but that's always going to be a very small minority because that's not going to be what most families would want.
Note I say this in a family with very flexible gender roles. At times, my wife earned more than me, and I was fine with it. She also does most of the construction around the house and fixes the car, I'm fine with that too.
I also do plenty of the child rearing. I put the kids to bed, I did most of the teaching them to read, and I also am no stranger to cleaning.
And when SHE decided she wanted to stay home I was fine with that as well. Note she never would have been fine with me staying home.
I am happy to see prison population going down (at least pre-Pam Bondi), but I can't help wondering if the reduction in juvenile arrests is because nobody seems to get arrested for much of anything any more. There's no point in even reporting property crimes, street take-overs, shoplifting, even car theft, because the cops are too busy doing something else.
Well, check out the National Crime Victimization Survey. When you go around and ask people "Have you been a victim of a crime recently?", a lot fewer are saying "Yes". That's data I trust.
One thing I've heard that might be relevant: when you live in a dense city, the chances of being a victim of a crime isn't much higher than if you lived somewhere else, but your chances of being a *witness* to a crime goes way up.
In that female education versus fertility chart, does anyone have a version with the countries labeled? The negative correlation is strong, by it looks like there are some positive outliers worth studying -- in particular, a few countries come in around 12 years of education and still have a TFR of 3 or slightly higher. One other country is at 10 years education and >4 TFR. What are those countries? Can we learn some things from them?
I believe that the high birth rate in Israel is pretty much confined to the Hasidic community, which does not practice birth control and holds “be fruitful and multiply, " as a divine commandment. I think secular Israelis have a birth rate similar to the rest of the modern world. Consequently, the percentage of Israeli citizens who are Hasidic Jews is rising.
The ratio of incomes to home prices has plunged from what it was 50 years ago, brother. I don't give a hoot what else you put in your consumer price index basket; if health insurance and tuition and mortgage payments are doubled, relative to income, versus what they were 50 years ago, then no amount of your stupid tap dancing matters at all Noah. You keep writing like a smug jerk who doesn't remember that other people don't own a home and yet want to.
Yeah, the CPI numbers are bullshit. They pretend that technology advancing means that prices have really fallen.
Home prices were 2.2x in 1950, now they are 6x.
You fix that you get much faster family formation. You also allow a lot more women to stay home (if they want) in the first couple of years after birth. You combine that you get a lot more kids
The education vs. fertility conclusion seems logical; women without any access to education don't have a 'career path' outside of being a mother, and as education levels increase they have more opportunities so the number of children they have goes down.
I wonder how much the plummeting youth crime rates are the flip side of "kids don't go outside anymore, they're just glued to their phones all day!"
We know sex and alcohol use is down among teenagers. Those are the sorts of edgy-but-not-illegal activities that you'd expect to be correlated with petty criminality.
The timing also matches, with the sharp drop beginning in the late aughts, around the time the iPhone was released.
My pet theory is that crime is down because all the young men who used to roam the streets committing petty crimes have become Internet trolls instead.
Bummer that all of us are affected by a financial crisis, even if you don't speculate yourself. So welcome to the Bitcoin Roller Coaster ... taking us to an uncharted future!
Can someone please explain to me, very simply, why a declining population globally is a bad thing?
I understand that our current capitalist economic system requires constant population growth to work. But if that growth stops then we’ll develop a new system. Oh well.
Also, and as Noah says, there is no such thing as stasis. So if the human population dropped to 1 billion in 100 years, does anyone think that it wouldn’t begin to rise again at some point?
Aging population will strain a lot of economic and political systems, and "developing a new system" to replace capitalism is a tall order (previous attempts have usually not gone well). Of course, AI may introduce some radical new opportunities for new systems, for better or worse.
But more fundamentally, beyond the economic issues, I think that human life is good. I rejoice to see my children exploring the world and creating things, and want them to have a lot of friends doing so alongside them.
Thanks for responding. As a parent of two children, I like having kids and sometimes wish that we had had one more.
That said, I have an upper-middle class lifestyle that has afforded my children the opportunity to explore their worlds, both large and small. Most people are not so fortunate. The deck is largely stacked against the bottom 50% of people. So I can see why they would make the choice to not have children.
Also, if we halved the population, then our per capita wealth would double. Everyone left would have a richer material life. There would be no homeless, no poverty, no “want” for necessities. I think that is a good thing.
Please tell me you are joking about the "halving population = richer life". Like, there is no way you think that is real, right?
How about we reduce the population to 1,000 people, they'd be 100x richer, right? They wouldn't "want" for anything but would still have iPhones, right? Right?
Halving may be too dramatic. I contrast it with doubling though, which would be the opposite extreme. Is the world a better place with 15 to 16 billion people?
When we had “only” 4 billion people on the planet, the world was a pretty great place. If we reach that number again (through natural deaths, to be clear) it will still be a great place.
No organism is meant to grow indefinitely. That includes us. (Of course, my perspective would change if we started colonizing other planets.)
Literally no country or community or town or city that is shrinking has figured out how to give a consistently better standard of living. What you are asking for is a dramatically lower standard of living and an eventual extinction of humans because "CaPiTalIsm iS BaD".
Here is a thought experiment… how would things change if capital and land were plentiful and humans were scarce. We might actually value humans more. (Currently, we say we value humans, but what we really value is money. Our current form of capitalism basically treats humans as either expendable inputs (i.e. labor) or as consumers.)
We have plenty of land. Please go drive through Nebraska and tell me we don't have space.
What you are really saying is you want a lower standard of living, because the computer you are writing your comment with wouldn't exist in your world with no consumers. Is that what you want?
And I think capitalism is a very good system, provided it is restrained by serious democratic oversight and regulation. In the U.S. we do not have that currently.
We have more automation now than we have ever had and access to more abundant energy than ever before.
Why is it that you think our standard of living would go down? Why does standard of living depend on a growing population? There are plenty of examples of countries with high birth rates that have terrible standards of living.
And there are also plenty of examples of countries with low birth rates that have high standards of living. I am not so sure living standards and population growth are correlated.
My major concern is forcing people (women) to have children. If our solutions are more incentive-driven instead of punishment-driven, then I could support it. But if we have to resort to forcing women to have children, then count me out.
Because with a declining population that means a smaller and smaller workforce has to take care of a larger retired population. You can see the problems we currently have with SS and Medicare, and the math just gets worse the smaller the working population is.
I'm not saying we can grow population indefinitely. But shrinking population causes a host of problems too.
Or, people would have to start work a little sooner, retire a little later, drop a little in excess consumption (meaning stuff like holiday villas, yaughts, cruises, and other luxury stuff), and suddenly a swath of labor opens up.
In any case, if there are not enough people to care for the old, they will die, thereby naturally reducing the problem of elderly care.
Sure, there are problems to reducing populations, and they can be solved by making smart deicisions on what is, and what is not, necessary economic activity and by redistributing more than we do now.
That might be, and I agree, but if we don't act out by limiting excess luxury consumption of the upper, and upper-middle class, to redirect resources and labor towards useful stuff, which was the biggest part of my reply, this what will happen. Actually it already is happening, by the way: in for-profit care homes morbidity rates are higher and life expectancy lower because less resources are directed at care (because, instead, the available money is redirected towards shareholders).
"but if we don't act out by limiting excess luxury consumption of the upper, and upper-middle class, to redirect resources and labor towards useful stuff,"
yeah, I'm not going to support that either. Who gets to define useful. Some government bureaucrat?
You've got it backwards. The people who want to change the status quo -- you -- have the burden of proof that "develop a new system. Oh well" doesn't actually entail millions of deaths, wars, and societal upheaval.
Because developing new systems usually goes sooooooo well..... You can't handwave it away. The burden of proof is on you, not on the people who want to maintain the known.
I would actually like to “maintain the known.” What I am worried about is the imposition of some Handmaid’s Tale type of pro-natal regime because of low fertility.
For me, maintaining the known would allow fertility to drop without heavy handed state intervention, which might include the major subjugation of women.
When I hear folks say that we need to do something to intervene, that makes me nervous. So if you are okay with the downward trajectory of fertility as “maintaining the known,” then you and I are on the same page.
I think it is much more likely that low fertility means the end of the modern safety net, national healthcare, and liberal democracy. Vastly increased economic inequality leading to frequent riots. More wars. None of that strikes me as status quo.
There have been many societies that have seen demographic collapse and virtually none of them saw a peaceful gradual transition. So there is literally no precedent for a "so we find something else, oh well". On the contrary we have lots of precedent of it leading to decades or centuries of violent warfare and societal unrest until a new equilibrium is finally reached.
To combine your two themes—the decline in fertility rates among African Americans and the decrease in teen sexual activity, as well as the reduction in crime—it's important to recognize that they are related, but not in the way you might think. New technologies, such as internet entertainment and affordable travel, have improved real income and overall quality of life, even though relative inequality has increased.
This shift places a significant value on leisure time. As a result, potential inner-city criminals are more likely to spend their time on Instagram, playing video games, and traveling, rather than going out to commit crimes. The enjoyment and value of these entertainment options create an incentive for them not to engage in criminal activity, as they risk losing their leisure time if they go to jail.
Similarly, this change impacts fertility rates. People are less inclined to have children because they prioritize their leisure time, which is increasingly valuable due to new technologies. Ironically, the best policy to encourage higher birth rates might involve taxing luxury consumption, specifically in entertainment and travel, but this could unintentionally increase crime rates.
Years ago, a co-worker suggested that grandparents should do most of child rearing. It is less burdensome on the parents who can more easily pursue careers, easier to have kids at a young age, when the grandparents are more likely capable of doing the work. I have no idea how that idea could become wide spread but it suggests higher fertility but with women still educated.
This is the only way to increase fertility rates. It’s alien to most Americans because moving away from your parents is considered a rite of passage to adulthood. All those who keep mentioning free childcare have no clue that you still have to take care of your kid after work hours.
Many societies in developing world still do this, and as soon as the first glimpse of modernity comes, with independent lifestyle even in these countries, fertility starts to shrink!
I've suggested this in a kind of sci-fi speculation way - give birth in your 20s when you're the most fertile and hand the baby off to its grandparents, and then take care of your own grandchildren once you're settled in your own career.
The biggest problem with this is that, for obvious reasons, most mothers aren't exactly thrilled at the idea of giving their newborn babies away, even if it's to their own parents.
I wonder if the causation of both phenomena is the decline in extended families and the corresponding rise in nuclear families. We don't remember a time when extended families were the norm, but in other parts of the world, the prevalence of extended families correlates (I believe, and with no data to support this claim) with fertility and (again, I guess) with _more_ academic achievement by girls.
Hoping that someone has some data to illuminate this hypothesis.
Of course educating women decreases fertility rate.
-They learn about birth control and the nature of fertility in general
-They become empowered
-They seek careers
-The forces of tradition/religion will have less influence over them
Every aspect of this will and does lead to fewer births.
I don’t get how you, post after post, can be so blind about this when you’re the type of writer whose whole thing is that he can see the signals through the noise: every single thing societies have done in pursuit of women’s advancement lowers the fertility rate. Legalizing abortion, de-emphasizing the importance of motherhood, promoting birth control, empowering women, educating girls, etc. These all may be positive things in various ways but they have a downside as well.
By all means, let’s find a way to keep women’s equality and also increase the birth rate at the same time. But at least be intellectually honest about it.
James, I don't ask a lot of my readers; I know that as a writer, it's my job to make myself clear.
But if you're going to call me "blind" and intellectually dishonest, I have to ask that you at least read what I wrote.
What I wrote was:
"So it may be that while giving girls an education reduces fertility rates from the unsustainable, explosive level of 7-8 children per women to maybe 3 or 4, the “last mile” — the drop of fertility below the replacement rate — is due to something else entirely."
Even if every single effect you're talking about is real and important, that doesn't mean the causal relationship between women's education and fertility just keeps going and going forever. At some point, all those effects get saturated. Once you know about birth control and abortion, then you know. Once you have a career, then you have a career. And so on.
It's not that hard a concept to understand that sometimes, effects get maxed out, and you can't just keep doing more of the same thing to keep getting more of the same result. I'm not "blind" or dishonest to suggest that idea, especially not when there's some data to support it.
To add studies have shown that women are actually having less babies than they WANT to have.
IE after all the women's education and feminist stuff, women still want to have more babies than they are currently having.
So the question then becomes why aren't women having the number of babies they want?
There's multiple reasons, but I submit the two big interrelated drivers are cost and running out of time.
The high fertility years are limited. So each delay in getting married and in a good spot to have kids reduces to total number of likely kids.
Going to college less time for kids.
Saving up many years to buy a house and not be willing to have kids in in apartment (which my wife and I refused to do) less time for kids
And of course the longer you wait, the more chances you won't be able to have them. We started in our 30's and had two miscarriages before we got our first kid.
A friend of mine said, “when Cuba finally rejects Communism, it will be horrible for everyone but Cubans.” What she meant, sarcastically, was that we romanticize the time capsule the country has become. Discussing “fertility” (which I am interpreting as an economist’s odd shorthand for “the decision to bear children” as opposed to the ability to do so) is really unseemly. You’ve written about how you don’t want to be misunderstood on the topic. Then skip it. It’s prescriptive, and we have other ways to thrive as a species on this earth.
Oh come on, Noah. Don’t imply I’m some sort of terrible reader. This is the closest you have come to admitting that what we could just call “ women’s lib” for convenience lowers fertility and you still feel the need to say WHILE IT MAY BE and hurriedly explain to readers we can’t be getting all Handmaid’s Tale!
You appear to be blind because, I assume for ideological reasons, you have clear desires to nevet suggest anything about fertility that might come across as anti-feminist or conservative.
This is what we all hated about reading Woke articles from 2015-2022, right? Either write about this topic with intellectual honesty, or if you can’t approach it that way that’s fine. We all have subjects we can’t be objective about. But then pick other topics
I'm puzzled by these comments, James K. The form of Noah's argument is:
- Three studies of data for disparate countries/cultures indicate that a well known correlation holds over the initial segment of a range of data but not over the latter segment of the broader range.
- These studies indicate that if we take the initial part for the whole it seems to identify a single cause for a broad social phenomenon, but that both segments together do not.
- Therefore, we may not want to pursue policies to address the social phenomenon based on the initial segment alone and should look for additional correlations that may reveal multiple causes.
Your comment seems to say that this is evidence of dishonesty caused by Woke bias because its policy cautions are what a Woke person would approve.
Based on both substance and tone I think your comments, which fail to engage with the evidence Noah cites and the provisional form of his conclusion, appear to reflect bias. Not having read the three studies or looked for others that may counter them I can't say anything about their validity one way or another, but I don't see any flaws in Noah's argument or evidence of distortion. Of course we need more studies.
I'd hope that all of us would have a bias in favor of equal opportunity for both genders and that we would prefer not to mandate limits on one gender unless there were truly compelling reasons, and if there were we would want to make sure the limits we imposed effectively addressed those underlying reasons without unnecessarily restricting anyone's opportunities.
In my lifetime the population of the world has more than tripled. It's good that the rise has slowed but the goal is not to reverse the level but to sustain something like an equilibrium. For the disparate regions of the world to join in finding approaches that allow so elusive a goal to be reached I think it will be important to encourage maximal open-mindedness to data and argument regardless of anyone's ideological commitments.
Noah has posted 3-4 times about the problems with plunging fertility in last half year and he never mentions abortion, he never mentions female empowerment, he finally mentioned educating women but -- as I said above -- used so much hand-wringing it's clear he's deeply uncomfortable with the truth of the matter, which is that every thing we have done to increase equality between the sexes has the side effect of decreasing births.
Of course it's not education alone. My initial post goes into all the factors. But education is one of them. And if we're going to figure out how to increase births we have to be at least aware of the issue.
I can't assess your first point: I don't catalog Noah's posts (sorry Noah!). But the form of your argument seems to me: We have done X, Y, Z and fertility has decreased. We know causation exists to some degree for some of XYZ over some of their ranges, therefore it holds for all of XYZ over their full ranges.
My understanding is that the single greatest factor in world fertility decline was China's 35-year one-child policy, which led to sharp drops in birth rates in what was initially by far the largest single sector of world population. This had nothing to do with liberating anyone but altered the force of gender liberalizing policies elsewhere. Similarly, the spread of virtual culture over the past 15 years correlates with a renewed drop in fertility rates and has been associated with increased delays in real-life relations, including romantic/sexual/marital ones. It has nothing to do with "female empowerment." (I've seen no data, but I'd be reluctant to attribute much decline to abortion in the US and Europe; abortion has always been widely practiced worldwide and still is in many populous countries.)
Your factors may all be validly seen as contributors, but if there are macro-effects that far outweigh them, then turning to policies that restrict opportunities by gender may be both ineffective in reaching an equilibrium and ethically undesirable. If the studies Noah cites prove valid and broadly applicable, then better education for women may, in fact, be a positive contribution towards reaching a sustainable equilibrium.
I want to add one element I think is problematic in your list: "The forces of tradition/religion will have less influence over them." (I am bloviating here: I have no data to back this up.) Traditions and religions are not static things; they are vague terms denoting frameworks that often respond flexibly to changing conditions even as they reflect urges to preserve stability. What I think you want to get at concerns forces of social cohesion, and I do think that shrinking forces of social cohesion are a major part of fertility decline, and are also toxically dehumanizing, since what we generally mean by "human" is saturated with our immersion as individuals in social relationships. I don't think education is necessarily biased in terms of promoting or impeding social cohesion, but many factors in modern society are, and their influence is sharply accelerating globally. I hope that over time people are able to discover new routes to social cohesion that adapt old traditions to these changing contexts with minimal or no damage to opportunities for personal fulfillment, not necessarily defined by the contours of past frameworks. I would guess (only a guess) that broad education can become a vehicle for establishing new frameworks, and I think our best ethical option is to act as though they can and try to figure out how, rather than assume that we are powerless to restore social cohesion except by coercively reducing education for girls and women. (I recognize that you are not recommending that we do that, but others do.)
Swiper swiped two of my chickens. I had five chickens, now I have 0. WHILE IT MAY BE that swiper swiped some, I still need a freaking explanation for the other 3, don't I?
Everyone and their mother, from to the UN to mr. Pinion here, acknowledges that women's education and rights and economic empowerment are important in lowering birthrates. And it's fucking great, thank you very much. Now, then on to additional reasons why birthrates decrease. 1) levels of urbanism: no one in their right mind stepping into a crowded and sweltering hot metro, or standing in a traffic jam with a million others, every single day, will say to themselves 'you know what we really need? More people to add to this misery'.
Another one: a culture of single family homes, where parents do not want their kids to have a baby before they've finished university, found a job and left the house. This is especially important in places where a house is increasingly unaffordable: while in the recent past a starter salary would have been enough to get a mortgage and buy a house, that is now virtually impossible, so you have to wait at least a few years to save up so you make a down payment, and then your mortgage, or rent, is such a significant percentage of your income that there's nothing left to feed a baby with. So yeah, that brings us to house prices, and costs of living, all additional causes. My parents could afford the loss of my mothers income because mortgage providers weren't even taking into account the income of the second partner. Once that happened house prices shot up and 1 mortgage wasn't enough anymore.
Oh, and religion, yes, of course. Most people of around my age (31) whom I know to have more than 2 kids are upper class (French) catholics, with both partners being well educated and often both working. The only difference between them and me is that they've been indoctrinated to breed.
The economic reasons are something we could target, other than that I'd pick emancipation of women and loss of religious indoctrination over increased birthrates every single time.
I think the focus of this discussion is not targeted where it should be. The reference point seems to be Western society, but although fertility is down in those countries the solution is not out of reach: it's in-migration from poorer to wealthier countries. Recent political trends in both the US and Europe have blacked that process, but the current xenophobic fashion is likely to wear itself out when the cycle moves on.
The actual crisis concerns the projected spread of rapidly falling birthrates in poorer countries, such as India and African states, which turns in- and out-migration into a zero-sum situation, with the sum continually falling globally. This has to do with the preservation of the species, not maintaining GDP rates in wealthy countries (some of which could be addressed politically by coupling high productivity gains through new technologies with increased distributive programs that lead to reduced work weeks and stable income floors and medians).
Having lived in Asia for a number of years one of the things that I think we should consider is that the treatment of women in cultural regimes outside the west has tended to be much more restrictive than what we think of as pre-women's lib America. Deprivation of education is much deeper and "household servitude" much wore worthy of that phrase. "Fixing" low fertility rates doesn't involve condemning suburban women to their one-family homes and child care; it involves life as a "subaltern," and to prescribe that "fix" from the comfort of Western culture is, let's say, problematic. If cultural changes that include women's education cut average family surviving births from 7-8 to 3-4 in those cultures, as Noah's post suggests this still leaves plenty of room for replacement plus out-migration to low-fertility countries that could contribute to a long-term equilibrium.
But if whatever factors have led Western demographics to fall below replacement levels spread globally that's a different story. If the main cause is indeed women's education and social independence then we're in a bind because non-coercive celebration of the traditional role of women is unlikely to work and coercive enforcement unjustifiable ethically for women in many less developed countries. But if it is something like social atomization layered on top of increased education and employment options for women then there may be ethically viable solutions. (One example: Studies I've read about are said to show that easy youth access to pornography tends to delay marriage--if civil libertarians were willing to relax their principled opposition to broader restrictions on pornography perhaps that anti-social pleasure could be traded in for pro-social ones and a contribution to species longevity.)
I agree with you on the position of women. But species longevity is just not a concern. There are 8 billion of us. If anything our declining birthrate is just a Darwinian mechanism that protects us from overpopulation. And if, for whatever reason, population numbers seriously decline then we will see that birthrates will go up again. Considering the ecological crises that we are causing, a population decline might actually solve some of our problems.
The whole 'economists are freaking out about birthrates' is all about maintaining our lifestyle of overconsumption and the growth dependent capitalist mode of living.
Simon, Certainly we have been doing great damage as a species, but that does not need to be the case going forward as we have technologies that will actually permit us to sustain higher populations in environmentally neutral ways if we can muster the social and political means to deploy them. I am much more optimistic that a time will come when that will be politically realistic than I am that when population decline sets in "we will see that birthrates will go up again." (Although if the process is Darwinian rather than Malthusian, who knows what novel mutations and natural selections a few million years will bring?)
The speed and economic pain of declines after mid-century are projected to place so heavy a burden on the laboring age range that adding service to the needs of a top-heavy post-laboring senior cohort the task of nurturing a growing pre-laboring cohort is more than prime age populations who have endured increasing economic pressure are likely to be able to manage without some type of draconian and globally coordinated coercion. So, yes, we may see that birthrates will go up again, but only after an era of Malthusian dystopia--either a global regime that is, indeed, something out of Handmaid's Tale, or a Mad Max/Canticle for Liebowitz-style apocalypse--enforces a reset.
Regarding Fertility, I wish there was more of a discussion on how one of the main reasons fertility is down is that stay at home parenting status is likely at an all time low in society (note I said stay at home parenting. Stay at home fatherhood has always been a low status thing but stay at home motherhood was held in high status three generations ago).
If we can figure out how to elevate the status of stay at home parenting, you might see fertility rise across the world.
The problem with giving more status to stay at home parenting is that, in theory, "anyone" can do it, as long as they're willing to have - or get stuck with - the life of a single mother on the edge of poverty. (Which, when the alternative is living the life of a childless single woman on the edge of poverty, can be a rational decision.)
Anyone remember the "welfare queen" stereotype of the 1980s that motivated the welfare reforms under President Bill Clinton? Unless you think we should valorize the kind of people that end up on MTV reality shows about teenage mothers, I don't know if raising the status of stay-at-home parents is possible.
See also:
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/03/kathryn-edin-poverty-research-fatherhood/
Having a child will take an enormous chunk of your energy and time for years on end. It is fully equivalent to the energy and time involved in getting a PhD. Before birth control, it just happened...now motherhood is a daunting prospect. If you don't have a strong desire for children, which many men and women do have, parenthood is Likely to decrease precipitously, as it has.
Yep. My wife and I waited ten years while focusing on our careers and single lives. Before birth control,
A. That would have been much harder without having an accident
B. My wife would probably have thought her role was to make a family
"B. My wife would probably have thought her role was to make a family"
I think this is part of the problem. All the fertility questions revolve around how women think of marriage and children because they are the bottleneck but you can't just ignore the other 50% of the population. From natalist conversations, you'd think feminazi boss babes are doing 4B en masse while the average man wants to heal the fertility rate by having 5+ kids.
It's been observed that the 3 groups in America that have super high fertility rates: Ultra Orthodox Jews, fundamentalist Mormons, and the Amish heavily restrict *men's* freedom too. Men are expected to be ready to form a family as soon as they reach adulthood. I despise fundamentalist Mormons (they are the ultimate welfare queens) but their teenage males are working trades not partying in Cabo for spring break. Amish men are farmers and tradesmen so they're ready to provide for a family as soon as they get a wife. Ultra Orthodox Jewish men are an odd case - they spend their days studying Torah but their freedom is also heavily restricted - no strip clubs and no trips to Vegas for them.
"By all means, let’s find a way to keep women’s equality and also increase the birth rate at the same time. But at least be intellectually honest about it."
The intellectually honest position is that it's not possible.
That's fine, maybe it isn't, but we need to have that conversation then rather than whistling and pretending we don't know what this bizarre thing is that's making all countries have fewer kids as they develop.
Though as I mentioned elsewhere in this thread, Israel's birth rate is significantly higher than other western nations, even among the non-Orthodox/Hasidic
The cultural/religion aspect? (Even among secular Jews importance of family is central part of the culture)
Yep. We should also mention that there's been a huge emphasis on DOING YOUR OWN THING/FOLLOWING YOUR DREAM/MAKING YOURSELF HAPPY and that has gone hand in hand with a decreasing emphasis on family, community, and duty. Whereas the Israelis still have that strong emphasis on family and community
Importance of family doesn't automatically mean having 3+ kids. You can think family is important and still have 1 or 2 kids and that'll be below replacement rate.
Sure. I have 2 kids and I'm done there.
But if everyone had at least 1-2 we wouldn't be in this pickle. South Korea has a 0.78 TFR!!!
Really? Given that families are having less kids than they want, I don't think desire of having kids is the limiting factor here
Moreover, this strongly suggests that it is possible to increase the fertility rate
https://www.cremieux.xyz/p/storks-take-orders-from-the-state?utm_campaign=posts-open-in-app&utm_medium=email&hide_intro_popup=true
Both the number of people having kids and the number of kids per household has gone down.
People have been making all kinds of claims about this but they’re all wrong because it’s not an economic issue, it’s a social issue that cannot be solved using economics. When people know how much effort goes into raising one kid, they may bite the bullet and have another one but most of them are not going to have 3 or 4 unless it’s a mistake or for religious reasons. There is one law of economics that does apply here too - decreasing marginal satisfaction from consumption.
I'm not denying that cultural factors haven't played a factor. My point is that even after those cultural factors women aren't having as many kids as they say they want.
So the question is why.
I submit for many (most?) families it's a combination of cost and running out of time.
delaying getting married and having kids to go to college means you have less time to have kids.
Having to work longer and save more to afford to buy a home means you have less time to have kids.
My own anecdote. My I met my wife when I was 26 she was 24. We married two years later.
We refused to have kids in an apartment. So after living together for a bit and realizing we weren't getting anywhere renting, we actually moved in with my parents for 2 years so we could afford to buy a home.
Finally we buy a home when she's 30 or so. After a couple of years in the home we start trying to have kids, she has one miscarriage then another.
Finally have our first kid when she is 36, and our 2nd kid when she is 38.
Whelp guess we are out of time. If we had been able to get in a home earlier, most likely we would have hard a 3rd kid. Maybe even a 4th.
But we simply ran out of time. This isn't an uncommon scenario.
By far the easiest thing to do to increase fertility rates would be to build a shit ton of housing to make it easier for families to get started. That would also make it easier to families to either have a parent stay home for the first couple of years, or to afford childcare.
Earlier family formation, equals more time to have kids equals more kids.
"We refused to have kids in an apartment."
You say it like this is a economic factor because of your programming. It's not. It's a cultural factor. My wife and I had our kid while living in an apartment. The world doesn't end and your kid doesn't grow up sad and miserable because they were not born in a house.
Your personal experience doesn't change the fact that most people don't want to have 3 or 4 kids anymore, even if they start early.
Again, if you look at polling, families are still having less kids than they want to.
I just gave you a clear example of how that happens. My anecdote is reflected in the polling. An openness of more kids that is not fulfilled because other factors interfere.
Most people don't want and will never want to have kids in apartments. That's why the American dream was house with the white picket fence. A place with a yard where the kids could play.
This is an easy place for policy to meet people where they are.
One of the biggest that you imply but do not mention directly is that if women wait until later to have children, fertility declines with age.
In addition, waiting means fewer total years to be of child bearing age that are actually used in producing children.
So yes, it is easy to see where "rightists" as they are referred to here, are confusing mere correctional info with causation in that women who are busy with school are not using those years having kids and the reverse may also be true that those who have not had children are still able to attend school in some poorer nations.
Women who stay in school longer (or maybe a career) have fewer years that are then devoted to child bearing and then add to this the fact hat fertility declines with age, as well.
Thus it is not "education" causing less fertility it is the biological clock - tick - tick and basic math.
Maybe "rightists" should stay in school longer and learn about correlation vs causation and basic statistics.
you nailed it.
Also, the high cost to buy a house is another huge driver. Many families won't have kids until they buy their own home.
So if you want more kids, you need to massively drive down the cost of housing, IE build a ton more homes.
Well all the factors about education I mentioned are real factors, but yours is valid and important too so I am glad to add it to the list.
Yes, I only meant to imply that this was in addition to your other valid points.
Everything you said also applies to men though. My grandpa has 6 kids, as did 2 of his siblings. The other one had 4. I want no more than 2.
Is the "problem" women being educated or education in general?
Strong agree, Noah is putting his blinders on for this topic.
Noah, I’d like you to elaborate a bit more on why you think your next financial crisis is Crypto or AI versus our debt.
No, we have no idea when our debt will become a financial crisis, or are you saying that our debt is not a crisis? That we are more like Japan in that sense. we’ll have zombie banks and zombie country.
Yep I'll write a lot more about this.
Thanks. I hate to do this again, since I likely have a limit on my requests, but I’ll ask one more time, and if you respond, that will be it.
Americans have little idea on what will happen in the looming fiscal crisis. The loss of our reserve currency, higher interest rates, the lack of budgetary flexibility to handle emergencies. Once our credit card gets cut up, our resources will dwindle. It puts our consumer-driven economy at grave risk.
No doubt there are huge consequences I have not illustrated. Zombie banks and economies like Japan's may be the best we can hope for and nowhere near the worst. I believe an outline (better than mine) on what America will look like unless we address our debt would be a service. Sent to every politician, newspaper, cable company. You would be doing a tremendous service.
US government debt to GDP rates are now quite high, and the time has come to seriously consider this as a potential cause for future problems. The only thing that's needed though, is to just elect some politicians who would take it seriously, and it could be under control in 5-10 years. The US could hire and train a 1000 additional tax officers and every single one of them would be able to find millions per year in evaded taxes. US also has much lower tax rates compared to any nation with comparable levels of debt. Government debt is also easier to fix than a private debt problem spread over a 300 million Americans and millions of companies, because there's just one vocal point and only so many levers you can pull. The difficult thing, though, is to elect those much needed serious politicians....
Also, no one in the world wants the US to have actual financial problems. Any guess on outcomes is highly uncertain, but it would likely have serious consequences for the dollar and thus for global trade.
Find me one principled politician other than Massey from Kentucky when it comes to our debt.
Government debt is my #1 financial concern, especially if something major happens (e.g. conflict with China).
I’d also peg underwater mortgages as a potential driver of a future financial crisis if YIMBY can ever get real traction.
The complaints I hear continually from Millennials and Get Zers focus on the cost of housing and higher education and, from Gen Xers, health care. As an old guy, I can't help thinking that, even adjusting for factors such as the size of houses or the amenities that are now part of the college experience, they have a valid complaint. When it comes to health care, though, I doubt most people, at least those middle age and older, would trade away today's care at today's prices for the care and costs common a generation ago.
Regarding housing: One simple comparison I often make to explain what it was like in the olden days of the late 60s and early 70s is the number of hours or days of work it took me to pay my rent living on the Lower East Side of NYC. I could pay my rent working two 6-8 hour shifts per month driving a cab, although I was living in a fourth floor walkup and contending with roaches in my apartment and crime on the streets below.
Higher ed: No loans, thanks to a boost from LBJ's expansion of Social Security benefits to the dependents of deceased parents. Even without that, I could have covered most of my tuition and room and board working full-time in the summer and part-time during the school year in minimum wage jobs, as many of my contemporaries did.
Health care: I didn't care. I was young and healthy.
There are a lot of other factors that should be taken into account in making these inter-generational comparisons. I can think of two more:
--The effect of minimum wage increases (and upward pressure on wages at the next levels) in a growing number of states over the past two decades -- which could be showing up in the numbers for those in their 20s and 30s;
--The ongoing transfer of wealth (including housing) from Baby Boomers to Gen Xers and Millennials as the Boomers die and past their inheritances on to fewer children -- which is likely to accelerate in the next decade.
When I think of the future for my daughter and grandkids, financial help now and inheritances later from me and my ex will probably make the difference for them in their ability to afford a house and, for my grandkids, college. I enjoyed some of those same benefits myself -- from parents and taxpayers. Wealth transfer is a major part of sustaining the middle class for those who start out there -- although getting to that point is another question. And cutbacks in government support for higher ed points to another challenge.
The story those generational charts show is still being written.
Yes, Noah points to the PCE index, saying it's an indication of what people actually spend their money on to say that pay is up. But the PCE doesn't include the cost of buying a house.
Here's what google's AI had to say about it...
"Home prices have grown much faster than income: One report states that home values have soared 162% since 2000, while income has increased only 78%. Another source indicates house prices rose about 65 percent between 2000 and 2024, while median household income barely rose over the same period.
The house-price-to-income ratio has increased: This ratio compares the median home price to the median household income. In 2000, it reached 4 for the first time, and by 2023, it had climbed to 5.3. Experts suggest that a healthy ratio should be around 2.6."
Now if only the drop in crime could be accompanied by an equivalent drop in TV crime shows. (please note my comment is aurally complemented by the "Ba-Bahm!" of Law & Order, SVU)
I want to add my two cents' worth to the question of fertility rates. Over the years, I have seen women become more equal to men in many areas, but there is still a long way to go. Deciding to have a child or children is a lifetime commitment. The burden of this decision still rests unfairly on women. Their ability to earn money is impacted more than a man's; child caring and housework fall more heavily on women, and their health is put at a greater risk than a man's. If our society truly wants to increase fertility, it will need to provide affordable child care, a more balanced home life, and more equal pay rates. Currently, women are not regarded as equal partners to men.
Additionally, under this present administration, misogynists have been given an even bigger voice than ever before. Women's health care has been unfavorably impacted by men, making childbirth even more dangerous. Infant mortality is higher in America than in many other developed countries. All of this is a consequence of men wanting to control women and keep them as second-class citizens.
Obviously, I cannot speak for all women, but I feel that until these issues are corrected, we will not see an answer to the fertility problem.
Even Scandinavian countries with the most supportive policies in place for mothers in the world haven’t been able to meaningfully increase the fertility rate. In fact I’ve heard that in the US for example the decline in fertility rate is almost entirely due to less educated people having less children (and stuff like teen pregnancy dropping off a cliff in the past few decades). This suggests that all the efforts to make it easier for educated, middle class women have children may not work simply because they have already made up their minds about it. The only thing I’ve heard about that actually has increased the fertility rate in any practical way is having mandatory military service, but allowing people to get out of it by having children.
There is a great deal of merit to your post, but I wonder if the denigration of women starts at an early age and subtly influences a woman's desires and goals for herself? Daughters watch how their mothers and other older females are treated, and this has had an adverse impact on their thoughts concerning having a family. I'm sure many factors contribute to a lower fertility rate, but since this seems to be happening across the developed world, it leads me to look for causes that transcend national boundaries.
Another possibility that I haven't seen addressed is the fact that we need fewer people. As we transitioned from a hunter-gatherer to an agricultural to a service-based economy, our need for people has decreased. Additionally, early deaths from childbirth and disease have declined, which has decreased the need for additional people. Perhaps we are also looking at nature's way of protecting us from overpopulation.
Regardless of the cause, the declining birthrate only reinforces our need for immigration. Yes, large rates of immigration will change our society, but evolution shows us that change is constant and sometimes beneficial.
"it will need to provide affordable child care, a more balanced home life, and more equal pay rates."
If that was so, then European countries that provide all of that would have higher fertility rates than the US, but the reverse is true.
Moreover, I would submit that putting families in a position where the women could stay home for the first couple of years with the kids would drive up fertility a lot more than paying someone else to do so.
Polling shows that actually the position that most families prefer but can't afford.
Since the development of the pill for birth control, women have discovered new freedoms, new ways of enriching their lives, and new freedom from men. Your suggestion about having women stay home for the first couple of years ignores the negative impact on the lives of these women
In a fast paced world, leaving the workforce for any period of time will allow others to advance past you and your lack of knowledge about the changes effecting your occupation will leave you even further behind.
Additionally, I noticed you didn’t say anything about men staying home for the first couple of years. Why does the burden of child rearing always or mostly fall upon the shoulders of women?
I feel that women are tired of receiving the short end of the stick. Women are always expected to give up their career ambitions in favor of the man, women are always expected to carry the burden of child caring, and are always expected to do most of the house work.
Perhaps, if men expect higher birth rates, they should expect to carry a higher burden of child rearing.
My suggestion is that women should have the ability to chose. Many (most?) women report that their preference is to stay home the first couple of years.
Is it somehow more progressive to force them to leave their kids and go to work?
Yes you are right that staying home for a couple of years will effect your career. Choices have consequences, and life is filled with tradeoffs.
For example, I have no taken jobs that involve a lot of travel or me being away from my family a lot. Or ones that require a lot of overtime. My preference for myself and my family is more time home, less time at work, that almost certainly has meant less money and less career advancement.
It's literally impossible to have it all, time is limited. If you do more of X you get less of Y.
Different families have to decide what's right for them. I don't have a problem with a stay at home husband, but that's always going to be a very small minority because that's not going to be what most families would want.
Note I say this in a family with very flexible gender roles. At times, my wife earned more than me, and I was fine with it. She also does most of the construction around the house and fixes the car, I'm fine with that too.
I also do plenty of the child rearing. I put the kids to bed, I did most of the teaching them to read, and I also am no stranger to cleaning.
And when SHE decided she wanted to stay home I was fine with that as well. Note she never would have been fine with me staying home.
I am happy to see prison population going down (at least pre-Pam Bondi), but I can't help wondering if the reduction in juvenile arrests is because nobody seems to get arrested for much of anything any more. There's no point in even reporting property crimes, street take-overs, shoplifting, even car theft, because the cops are too busy doing something else.
Well, check out the National Crime Victimization Survey. When you go around and ask people "Have you been a victim of a crime recently?", a lot fewer are saying "Yes". That's data I trust.
One thing I've heard that might be relevant: when you live in a dense city, the chances of being a victim of a crime isn't much higher than if you lived somewhere else, but your chances of being a *witness* to a crime goes way up.
In that female education versus fertility chart, does anyone have a version with the countries labeled? The negative correlation is strong, by it looks like there are some positive outliers worth studying -- in particular, a few countries come in around 12 years of education and still have a TFR of 3 or slightly higher. One other country is at 10 years education and >4 TFR. What are those countries? Can we learn some things from them?
Israeli has the highest fertility rate among developed nations. They have a stronger focus on family and community and higher religiosity on par
I believe that the high birth rate in Israel is pretty much confined to the Hasidic community, which does not practice birth control and holds “be fruitful and multiply, " as a divine commandment. I think secular Israelis have a birth rate similar to the rest of the modern world. Consequently, the percentage of Israeli citizens who are Hasidic Jews is rising.
Hasidic birthrates are high, but even excluding them, secular Israelis still have notably higher fertility than e.g. Europeans. https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2024/09/95824/
I think part of that comes from living in a nation that's surrounded by enemies that outnumber them.
The ratio of incomes to home prices has plunged from what it was 50 years ago, brother. I don't give a hoot what else you put in your consumer price index basket; if health insurance and tuition and mortgage payments are doubled, relative to income, versus what they were 50 years ago, then no amount of your stupid tap dancing matters at all Noah. You keep writing like a smug jerk who doesn't remember that other people don't own a home and yet want to.
Yeah, the CPI numbers are bullshit. They pretend that technology advancing means that prices have really fallen.
Home prices were 2.2x in 1950, now they are 6x.
You fix that you get much faster family formation. You also allow a lot more women to stay home (if they want) in the first couple of years after birth. You combine that you get a lot more kids
The education vs. fertility conclusion seems logical; women without any access to education don't have a 'career path' outside of being a mother, and as education levels increase they have more opportunities so the number of children they have goes down.
I wonder how much the plummeting youth crime rates are the flip side of "kids don't go outside anymore, they're just glued to their phones all day!"
We know sex and alcohol use is down among teenagers. Those are the sorts of edgy-but-not-illegal activities that you'd expect to be correlated with petty criminality.
The timing also matches, with the sharp drop beginning in the late aughts, around the time the iPhone was released.
My pet theory is that crime is down because all the young men who used to roam the streets committing petty crimes have become Internet trolls instead.
Bummer that all of us are affected by a financial crisis, even if you don't speculate yourself. So welcome to the Bitcoin Roller Coaster ... taking us to an uncharted future!
Can someone please explain to me, very simply, why a declining population globally is a bad thing?
I understand that our current capitalist economic system requires constant population growth to work. But if that growth stops then we’ll develop a new system. Oh well.
Also, and as Noah says, there is no such thing as stasis. So if the human population dropped to 1 billion in 100 years, does anyone think that it wouldn’t begin to rise again at some point?
Aging population will strain a lot of economic and political systems, and "developing a new system" to replace capitalism is a tall order (previous attempts have usually not gone well). Of course, AI may introduce some radical new opportunities for new systems, for better or worse.
But more fundamentally, beyond the economic issues, I think that human life is good. I rejoice to see my children exploring the world and creating things, and want them to have a lot of friends doing so alongside them.
What does any of this have to do with capitalism?
Thanks for responding. As a parent of two children, I like having kids and sometimes wish that we had had one more.
That said, I have an upper-middle class lifestyle that has afforded my children the opportunity to explore their worlds, both large and small. Most people are not so fortunate. The deck is largely stacked against the bottom 50% of people. So I can see why they would make the choice to not have children.
Also, if we halved the population, then our per capita wealth would double. Everyone left would have a richer material life. There would be no homeless, no poverty, no “want” for necessities. I think that is a good thing.
Please tell me you are joking about the "halving population = richer life". Like, there is no way you think that is real, right?
How about we reduce the population to 1,000 people, they'd be 100x richer, right? They wouldn't "want" for anything but would still have iPhones, right? Right?
Hello. I specifically said “material life.”
Halving may be too dramatic. I contrast it with doubling though, which would be the opposite extreme. Is the world a better place with 15 to 16 billion people?
When we had “only” 4 billion people on the planet, the world was a pretty great place. If we reach that number again (through natural deaths, to be clear) it will still be a great place.
No organism is meant to grow indefinitely. That includes us. (Of course, my perspective would change if we started colonizing other planets.)
Literally no country or community or town or city that is shrinking has figured out how to give a consistently better standard of living. What you are asking for is a dramatically lower standard of living and an eventual extinction of humans because "CaPiTalIsm iS BaD".
lol.
Here is a thought experiment… how would things change if capital and land were plentiful and humans were scarce. We might actually value humans more. (Currently, we say we value humans, but what we really value is money. Our current form of capitalism basically treats humans as either expendable inputs (i.e. labor) or as consumers.)
We have plenty of land. Please go drive through Nebraska and tell me we don't have space.
What you are really saying is you want a lower standard of living, because the computer you are writing your comment with wouldn't exist in your world with no consumers. Is that what you want?
I didn’t say we don’t have the space.
And I think capitalism is a very good system, provided it is restrained by serious democratic oversight and regulation. In the U.S. we do not have that currently.
We have more automation now than we have ever had and access to more abundant energy than ever before.
Why is it that you think our standard of living would go down? Why does standard of living depend on a growing population? There are plenty of examples of countries with high birth rates that have terrible standards of living.
And there are also plenty of examples of countries with low birth rates that have high standards of living. I am not so sure living standards and population growth are correlated.
My major concern is forcing people (women) to have children. If our solutions are more incentive-driven instead of punishment-driven, then I could support it. But if we have to resort to forcing women to have children, then count me out.
We grew up in a really poor family. I literally lived my first two years of my life in a house without power or running water.
Later we only had a place to live because of the charity of family. And we ate a LOT of bean burritos growing up.
That didn't mean we still didn't have a lot of fun. Being in the bottom 50% doesn't mean your life is hell.
Because with a declining population that means a smaller and smaller workforce has to take care of a larger retired population. You can see the problems we currently have with SS and Medicare, and the math just gets worse the smaller the working population is.
I'm not saying we can grow population indefinitely. But shrinking population causes a host of problems too.
Or, people would have to start work a little sooner, retire a little later, drop a little in excess consumption (meaning stuff like holiday villas, yaughts, cruises, and other luxury stuff), and suddenly a swath of labor opens up.
In any case, if there are not enough people to care for the old, they will die, thereby naturally reducing the problem of elderly care.
Sure, there are problems to reducing populations, and they can be solved by making smart deicisions on what is, and what is not, necessary economic activity and by redistributing more than we do now.
Well said. Thanks.
"In any case, if there are not enough people to care for the old, they will die, thereby naturally reducing the problem of elderly care."
That's not an acceptable answer to me or the vast majority of people.
That might be, and I agree, but if we don't act out by limiting excess luxury consumption of the upper, and upper-middle class, to redirect resources and labor towards useful stuff, which was the biggest part of my reply, this what will happen. Actually it already is happening, by the way: in for-profit care homes morbidity rates are higher and life expectancy lower because less resources are directed at care (because, instead, the available money is redirected towards shareholders).
"but if we don't act out by limiting excess luxury consumption of the upper, and upper-middle class, to redirect resources and labor towards useful stuff,"
yeah, I'm not going to support that either. Who gets to define useful. Some government bureaucrat?
I'll pass.
So you would rather force women to have children then?
You've got it backwards. The people who want to change the status quo -- you -- have the burden of proof that "develop a new system. Oh well" doesn't actually entail millions of deaths, wars, and societal upheaval.
Because developing new systems usually goes sooooooo well..... You can't handwave it away. The burden of proof is on you, not on the people who want to maintain the known.
I would actually like to “maintain the known.” What I am worried about is the imposition of some Handmaid’s Tale type of pro-natal regime because of low fertility.
For me, maintaining the known would allow fertility to drop without heavy handed state intervention, which might include the major subjugation of women.
When I hear folks say that we need to do something to intervene, that makes me nervous. So if you are okay with the downward trajectory of fertility as “maintaining the known,” then you and I are on the same page.
I think it is much more likely that low fertility means the end of the modern safety net, national healthcare, and liberal democracy. Vastly increased economic inequality leading to frequent riots. More wars. None of that strikes me as status quo.
There have been many societies that have seen demographic collapse and virtually none of them saw a peaceful gradual transition. So there is literally no precedent for a "so we find something else, oh well". On the contrary we have lots of precedent of it leading to decades or centuries of violent warfare and societal unrest until a new equilibrium is finally reached.
So given your outlook, would you advocate forced pregnancy on women?
What would your solution look like?
To combine your two themes—the decline in fertility rates among African Americans and the decrease in teen sexual activity, as well as the reduction in crime—it's important to recognize that they are related, but not in the way you might think. New technologies, such as internet entertainment and affordable travel, have improved real income and overall quality of life, even though relative inequality has increased.
This shift places a significant value on leisure time. As a result, potential inner-city criminals are more likely to spend their time on Instagram, playing video games, and traveling, rather than going out to commit crimes. The enjoyment and value of these entertainment options create an incentive for them not to engage in criminal activity, as they risk losing their leisure time if they go to jail.
Similarly, this change impacts fertility rates. People are less inclined to have children because they prioritize their leisure time, which is increasingly valuable due to new technologies. Ironically, the best policy to encourage higher birth rates might involve taxing luxury consumption, specifically in entertainment and travel, but this could unintentionally increase crime rates.
“ Today, the two obvious hot new poorly understood sectors would be crypto and AI.”
My bet is on Private Equity. Trillions in debt financing based on self reported valuation of underlying highly illiquid assets.
https://www.wsj.com/finance/investing/private-equity-caught-in-crosshairs-of-elise-stefaniks-attack-on-harvard-e5088539
Years ago, a co-worker suggested that grandparents should do most of child rearing. It is less burdensome on the parents who can more easily pursue careers, easier to have kids at a young age, when the grandparents are more likely capable of doing the work. I have no idea how that idea could become wide spread but it suggests higher fertility but with women still educated.
This is the only way to increase fertility rates. It’s alien to most Americans because moving away from your parents is considered a rite of passage to adulthood. All those who keep mentioning free childcare have no clue that you still have to take care of your kid after work hours.
Many societies in developing world still do this, and as soon as the first glimpse of modernity comes, with independent lifestyle even in these countries, fertility starts to shrink!
I've suggested this in a kind of sci-fi speculation way - give birth in your 20s when you're the most fertile and hand the baby off to its grandparents, and then take care of your own grandchildren once you're settled in your own career.
The biggest problem with this is that, for obvious reasons, most mothers aren't exactly thrilled at the idea of giving their newborn babies away, even if it's to their own parents.
On the flip side, taking care of young kids takes a lot of energy. And many grandparents don't want to do that full time.
The trick to make this work is having your kids in your 20s. By the time I had someone I wanted to have kids with, my parents were already pushing 70.
On fertility and sexism:
I wonder if the causation of both phenomena is the decline in extended families and the corresponding rise in nuclear families. We don't remember a time when extended families were the norm, but in other parts of the world, the prevalence of extended families correlates (I believe, and with no data to support this claim) with fertility and (again, I guess) with _more_ academic achievement by girls.
Hoping that someone has some data to illuminate this hypothesis.