Brilliant breakdown of the mutlivariate Baby Boom causality. The housing component you identify really deserves more attention in contemporary fertility debates. Most policy makers throw money at parental leave or childcare subsidies, but if young couples cant afford or find a place large enough to accomodate children, those other interventions are just moving around deckchairs. The data on buildingpermits correlating with marriage rates three years later is particularly striking because it suggests fertility policy needs to be spatial policy first.
Yes, it also suggests that we don't need to spend a lot of money addressing the fertility problem. In fact, loosening housing restrictions would be a negative expense.
I have spent almost no time or effort delving into this area in regard to exploring solutions, so I am glad you are pursing this on our behalf.
One claim that I might still question: when you say: PISA (Programme of the International School Assessment) survey research, for example, suggests that quality early childcare programs are positively correlated with better school performance at age 15." this seems to be countered by not so recent reports on the Head Start program [something that seems so logical]. The initial prototype results were very promising but the longer term, wider implementation of the program has not yielded any net benefit for the participants and their families after they reach around age 8. I suspect that the parents and staffers involved in the prototyping were very dedicated to advancing their children and the program; whereas once it was expanded to cover the fuller group of possible children, perhaps the parents were not so invested in attaining success, their own personal resources and ability to provide support might have been lower, and the quality of the larger group of staffers/ employees involved in a larger bureaucracy were not as dedicated or capable either.
A second area that does not seem to quite ring true: "The literature was almost unanimous: the long-term effects of cash transfers are overwhelmingly positive. .... They estimated that a permanent $1000/year expansion of the child tax credit in the US, similar to the one passed in the American Rescue Plan, would cost $97 billion per year but yield $982 billion in net social benefits annually." First, this 10:1 return seems just too good to be true. But also several smaller efforts (non federal?) at UBI subsidies [not necessarily involving children or nuclear families] in the last few years now seem to report not such a great benefit or return. A lot of variables could account for this disconnect and I am no expert, but I wanted to raise this for your consideration.
As a species we don't seem to be at risk of totally disappearing. Economically it is not essential that the economy grows, as long as the per capita resources are generally constant or improving slightly. There is a national security vs. enemies [CCP; Islam] aspect of population size and resource creation/management, but that is kind of separate from your query right now [I think].
Please keep up this good work - and happy holidays to you and yours.
It's funny, I actually made a mental note of both of those paragraphs as something worthy of triple-checking. One caveat with PISA scores is that, over time, the advantage declines. So it's technically true but maybe not as groundbreaking as I portray here, so I think I will take your advice and revise.
I would say the key isn’t to incentivize having a kid, it is more to incentivize getting married and having lots of kids early. I would suggest something like no income tax for any married couple having two or more children prior to age 30. They don’t pay taxes until their last child gets to school age. The long term effects would be that it would too expensive not to have multiple kids. Add free college for any family with multiple kids.
Another idea is to design a program to import hundreds of thousands of Au Pairs from around the world for subsidized care of these families. This makes it easier to support larger families, and also introduces a lot of potential future child bearing women into society.
and I suppose we can call that Progress ... of a sort!
Unfortunately the Head Start results suggest uncomfortable issues of genetic diversity as to capabilities for scholastic accomplishment, etc., coupled with the nurture element as well. But we are better off exploring whatever that means as reality rather than trying to hand wave away that evidence ... if that evidence is truly valid. [See for example Charles Murray's two recent books on race vs. skills and crime]. But we ought to be aiming for at least a core competency in reading, writing, and arithmetic and (perhaps) geometry. From there we can hope to develop citizens with enough verbal and math ability to think through core political issues such as economic and defense policies, etc. I.e., that history "rhymes" and TANTAAFL. We will not continue as a democratic constitutional republic of sovereign citizens consenting to our governance if too few people can handle that responsibility.
Thinking about this a little more, it seems we have a social divide based on some form of mass psychosis, wherein we now all live and learn about the political and economic situation only within our respective political bubble (myself included ... although at least I know there is another bubble even if I don't believe their content.) How this developed is probably related to the capture of the educational colleges by the "wrong think" people, who in turn have created miseducated teachers at the K-12 and on through to the professoriates at universities. As I saw this happening, I was hopeful that at least the STEM departments would resist, but even there distortions have occurred.
I do have a vague memory that up until the 1950's teachers were respected and relatively well paid, but from there their real incomes began declining as the populace did not want to be taxed to pay for quality, so the more qualified students went into fields other than education. By the 60's it was a common joke that the education schools had the least scholastically qualified cohorts.
Brilliant breakdown of the mutlivariate Baby Boom causality. The housing component you identify really deserves more attention in contemporary fertility debates. Most policy makers throw money at parental leave or childcare subsidies, but if young couples cant afford or find a place large enough to accomodate children, those other interventions are just moving around deckchairs. The data on buildingpermits correlating with marriage rates three years later is particularly striking because it suggests fertility policy needs to be spatial policy first.
Yes, it also suggests that we don't need to spend a lot of money addressing the fertility problem. In fact, loosening housing restrictions would be a negative expense.
I appreciate that you approached demographic decline in terms of solutions rather than with despair. This problem is solvable!
It's also a nice overview of the literature, now I can just link this post instead of writing my own!
Thank you! My goal is to gradually expand these essays so they become fairly comprehensive on their own.
I have spent almost no time or effort delving into this area in regard to exploring solutions, so I am glad you are pursing this on our behalf.
One claim that I might still question: when you say: PISA (Programme of the International School Assessment) survey research, for example, suggests that quality early childcare programs are positively correlated with better school performance at age 15." this seems to be countered by not so recent reports on the Head Start program [something that seems so logical]. The initial prototype results were very promising but the longer term, wider implementation of the program has not yielded any net benefit for the participants and their families after they reach around age 8. I suspect that the parents and staffers involved in the prototyping were very dedicated to advancing their children and the program; whereas once it was expanded to cover the fuller group of possible children, perhaps the parents were not so invested in attaining success, their own personal resources and ability to provide support might have been lower, and the quality of the larger group of staffers/ employees involved in a larger bureaucracy were not as dedicated or capable either.
A second area that does not seem to quite ring true: "The literature was almost unanimous: the long-term effects of cash transfers are overwhelmingly positive. .... They estimated that a permanent $1000/year expansion of the child tax credit in the US, similar to the one passed in the American Rescue Plan, would cost $97 billion per year but yield $982 billion in net social benefits annually." First, this 10:1 return seems just too good to be true. But also several smaller efforts (non federal?) at UBI subsidies [not necessarily involving children or nuclear families] in the last few years now seem to report not such a great benefit or return. A lot of variables could account for this disconnect and I am no expert, but I wanted to raise this for your consideration.
As a species we don't seem to be at risk of totally disappearing. Economically it is not essential that the economy grows, as long as the per capita resources are generally constant or improving slightly. There is a national security vs. enemies [CCP; Islam] aspect of population size and resource creation/management, but that is kind of separate from your query right now [I think].
Please keep up this good work - and happy holidays to you and yours.
It's funny, I actually made a mental note of both of those paragraphs as something worthy of triple-checking. One caveat with PISA scores is that, over time, the advantage declines. So it's technically true but maybe not as groundbreaking as I portray here, so I think I will take your advice and revise.
I would say the key isn’t to incentivize having a kid, it is more to incentivize getting married and having lots of kids early. I would suggest something like no income tax for any married couple having two or more children prior to age 30. They don’t pay taxes until their last child gets to school age. The long term effects would be that it would too expensive not to have multiple kids. Add free college for any family with multiple kids.
Another idea is to design a program to import hundreds of thousands of Au Pairs from around the world for subsidized care of these families. This makes it easier to support larger families, and also introduces a lot of potential future child bearing women into society.
Yes, the earlier, the better, up to a point. That gives more time for more children and they will likely have fewer health ailments.
I think you asserted that starting later doesn’t affect total fertility. That doesn’t make sense to me.
A couple who begin in their 20s have more _time_ to have children before their fertility ends.
Glad to be of help. :-)
and I suppose we can call that Progress ... of a sort!
Unfortunately the Head Start results suggest uncomfortable issues of genetic diversity as to capabilities for scholastic accomplishment, etc., coupled with the nurture element as well. But we are better off exploring whatever that means as reality rather than trying to hand wave away that evidence ... if that evidence is truly valid. [See for example Charles Murray's two recent books on race vs. skills and crime]. But we ought to be aiming for at least a core competency in reading, writing, and arithmetic and (perhaps) geometry. From there we can hope to develop citizens with enough verbal and math ability to think through core political issues such as economic and defense policies, etc. I.e., that history "rhymes" and TANTAAFL. We will not continue as a democratic constitutional republic of sovereign citizens consenting to our governance if too few people can handle that responsibility.
Thinking about this a little more, it seems we have a social divide based on some form of mass psychosis, wherein we now all live and learn about the political and economic situation only within our respective political bubble (myself included ... although at least I know there is another bubble even if I don't believe their content.) How this developed is probably related to the capture of the educational colleges by the "wrong think" people, who in turn have created miseducated teachers at the K-12 and on through to the professoriates at universities. As I saw this happening, I was hopeful that at least the STEM departments would resist, but even there distortions have occurred.
I do have a vague memory that up until the 1950's teachers were respected and relatively well paid, but from there their real incomes began declining as the populace did not want to be taxed to pay for quality, so the more qualified students went into fields other than education. By the 60's it was a common joke that the education schools had the least scholastically qualified cohorts.
Thanks for the opportunity to discuss this.