So, if government can’t make people have children they don’t want and can’t simply ship them in, Last asks if they could help people get the children they do want. As children go on to be taxpayers, government could cut social security taxes for those with more children and make people without children pay for what they’re not supporting. (Although you’d want to make sure there was no net burden of those children across their lives, as they’ll be old people one day too. There are limits to how far you could take that Ponzi scheme.)
Keep in mind that lower birth rates are an international phenomenon, so I am reluctant to place much weight on U.S.-specific factors. My sense is that the decline in birth rates is correlated with, if not caused by, increased education of women. If that is the main causal factor, then it probably is not something that is going to be reversed.
Also, I am not convinced that there is such a down side to slower population growth and eventual decline. Yes, it messes up entitlement programs for the elderly, but that is because those programs are ill conceived, particularly in not indexing the age of government dependency to longevity. You should fix the entitlement programs to deal with the demography rather than try to fix demography to deal with entitlement programs.
I’ve wondered about the change in birthrates. Is it fewer women having children, or smaller families? If smaller families, is it many women having two children instead of three, or has society created a stigma against really large families (having 6 kids makes you a hick…)?
For example: for every childless woman, there would have to be another with four kids to keep the birthrate stable. If society discourages large families and that woman only has two, the birthrate has dropped considerably, even though the number of childless women has not changed.
Nota bene, it’s not a Ponzi scheme if the goal is a stable or nearly stable population; it’s only Ponzi if it requires continual increase.
As for women wanting or not wanting children – if you value and reward the specialized male and female contribution to certain activities, then people’s basic needs for appreciation will be met, and people will respond. The value and reward can occur inside or outside the market (although rewards and values are always partially reflected by the market).
Speaking solely of first world whites for a moment.
Fertility among the left half of the bell curve is pretty set, and its not that bad, slightly above 2.0/woman.
Fertility among the right half of the bell curve is divergent by ideology/religiosity. The more conservative and religious someone is, the more children then have. This holds even with IQ and education. If a smart women can get through university without falling prey to leftists ideology from her professors then she will have 2.0+ kids.
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ODroRXl3zNQ/T86JBC7MKsI/AAAAAAAABdc/jm7gl7Ws-zU/s1600/byiq.gif
https://jaymans.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/lib-cons-tfr-30-43-iq.png
This holds across cultures. For instance, people will sometimes hold that Sweden has a higher TFR because they are feminists. When you break out the data you see the same pattern though (traditional conservatives/church goers having more children, liberal women having way below replacement, especially as they get more education). Also, church going, if its too a liberal mainline church, doesn’t appear to help fertility much. It has to be a real church, not leftism plus a cross on top.
There are other factors like urbanization that are important, especially in Asia. However, fertility concerns and dysgenics are mostly linked to the culture of death that is leftism.
A follow up on my last post (assuming you aren’t censoring it):
@RossDouthat says:
So 60-year Trumpista (or Brexiter) w/1.5 kids has fewer supports in old age *and* sees future slipping away from their tribe at faster clip.
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I find this confusing. TFR is correlated with conservatives and anti-immigrant sentiment. It’s the childless liberal yuppie strivers in the big cities that love immigration. His Trump derangement syndrome is getting worse.
I assume is Ross (along with Tyler) has mood affiliation with Brexit and Trump supports here. But his basic point is older Americans and Westerns would be happier if they had larger families to interact with and depend upon. Because of less children and hence grandchildren, they have fewer interactions and leading very isolated lives.
I guess I’ll post it again since it got banned and I can’t make a point without it, though in a shorter form. It’s strange how Arnold doesn’t ban the most inflammatory stuff, but the best evidence he doesn’t like.
[Note: comments with lots of links tend to get put by the system into the queue to be moderated. I don’t check that queue very often, so your earlier comment was not banned, just delayed. When I delete a comment, I explain why.]
Anyway, the low TFR in the west is entirely due to progressivism and irreligiously. Higher IQ women, if they retain their conservative and church going ways, have high fertility. The crisis of fertility is entirely a leftists urban striver thing.
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VaXra2to5rY/T8p8zOqqEzI/AAAAAAAABdQ/_VGVYiSyxKQ/s1600/ajpc.gif
https://jaymans.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/lib-cons-tfr-30-43-iq.png
So no, Trump supporters didn’t have “too few children”.
Aren’t Trump supporters almost all past childbearing age?
Agreed on religious voters and I believe Ross point the general population for the Boomers…However, It is across all Europe and Far East Asian nations outside of Israel. In reality, the enforced small family policy of China has probably allowed them to grow faster the last 35 years. The only rich nations with high birth rates are the religious Middle East nations.
However, how you going to keep the population religious without economic incentives? (I suspect church attendance 100 years ago helped working class men keep their job.) The cultural issues were decided decades ago and with large competitive global markets aren’t local institutions weakening. Consider Democratic leaning states have higher rates of 2 married parents with children than Republican states. (And yes the poorer Red states are dragging down the average.)
Democratic states? That’s the level of your analysis. As you know poor blacks in rural Georgia are Republicans and suburban white people in Bel Air, MD are all Democrats, because they live in a state.
Anyway, as I posted statistics for above, smart conservative religious people manage to replace themselves. Striver yuppies are in the city with degenerate leftist values are the reason white TFR is low. Having not had any children of their own, I guess they plan to import a new generation.
Getting smart white people to embrace family and higher virtues then getting drunk and hooking up on Saturday night is an interesting cultural problem, but it is the problem. Your not going to child tax credit all the way to making smart people want to breed (its been tried), you either fix the culture or your civilization fades away.
Personally, I don’t think Democrats won any cultural issues. They imported new voters to make up for the fact that 60% of whites (and almost all white families) are against their values. Remember that Romney would have gotten as many electoral votes as Reagan without demographic change.
I left my very simple analysis and I know there various ways of looking at the issues.
1) Low birth rates is a global reality. Probably the most functional nation is Singapore and they have a bizarrely low birth rate. Garrett Jones wrote a Arnold beloved book on how great and smart Singapore is and they truly don’t have children. Look at Japan (whose low birth rates have been around for two generations) and South Korea. Heck India! is near or even below replacement level fertility in 2016!
2) Living in Southern California, I can tell you illegal aliens are ‘invited’ here one primary reason, they are willing to work low wage at seasonal jobs. Additionally it was Ronald Reagan who signed the last amnesty in 1986.
3) In reality minority teenage pregnancy is dropping like a rock and I bet if you fixed for income levels, the difference between African-Americans and Euro-Americans would not be that different. (say 10 – 20% higher) The unusual aspect of the 2016 is the latest drug crisis, of opiates or heroin, are centered around poor white communities. So in many ways differences of minorities is melting away.
4) Don’t we want more economic strivers? If that means working extra hard at the job and avoiding having children they can’t afford or have time to raise, isn’t that choice? (Additionally, many of these ‘strivers’ might avoid a 2 child because they are working two jobs and don’t have the flexibility for more. This is not just high end workers but I bet most service jobs, the best way to earn more is have a very flexible work schedule.)
My sense is that the decline in birth rates is correlated with, if not caused by, increased education of women.
I suggest it is closer to women are able to equal participate in the workforce and having children lower wages for many families. (Given many working class families have two incomes in service economy, children cut down work flexibility.)
Why do I think low birthrates are having huge consequences in Economic Growth as every developed nation appears to following Japan’s path:
1) It forces the AD downward. (Think Japan 1990s)
2) It long term cuts AS labor supply. If we had more people entering the workforce the last five years, then I think growth would be higher. (Growth rates in the 1970s were higher than today.) According Conor Sen are economy would be growing more but we don’t have enough Blue Collar skilled labor. The problem with AS labor is the main decision makers were potential parents 25 years before.
3) Why are long term rates falling in most of the world? With less population, then we need less investment and more savings. (Again look at the Japanese economy the last 25 years.)
4) And finally, in terms of global happiness, isn’t more people better in the long run?
I’m inclined to believe the falling fertility rate is an economic signal that there’s an over-supply of labor.
The reform conservatives have been advocating for much larger child credits and dependants-based payroll tax breaks for at least a decade. That might make a little difference at the margin, making family formation slightly more affordable, and making intergenerational trust fund schemes slightly more solvent. Lots of immigrants to the first world move in order to be able to have kids, though they are usually underestimating the costs of child-rearing in developed countries. But I’m guessing the demand for children is very price inelastic when expectations are more realistic and accurate.
Now, it’s true that moving people from single and childless to married with kids tends to turn some number from democrats to republicans, and parties in democratic politics are always interested in these electorate reshaping maneuvers.
But there’s little to be gained by acquiescing to the principle at stake and simply resigning oneself to being a slightly more prudential tax collector for the welfare state. The cry will always be for more, always to relax the ‘stingy austerity’.
I would hypothesize that what really discourages middle class younger adults from marrying and/or having kids is the difficulty of affording housing in decent neighborhoods with good schools within a reasonable commuting distance of work. The reform conservative proposals, to which I have no ideological objection, don’t seem substantial enough to make a difference.
If this were true, then women with more education, who tend to have higher household incomes, would better be able to afford those home features, and hence settle down earlier and have more kids. Instead we observe the exact opposite. Over half the highly educated and perfectly marriageable women in my workplace are on their way to being childless old maids, and they live in pricy condos or apartments no less costly than homes in good areas.
I was talking about middle class/working class whites, not cognitive elites. I’m well aware of the childless cosmopolitan female professionals.
I also was not suggesting that economic factors are the sole reason for reduced family formation. Changing sexual and cultural mores are another independent variable.
Differences in birth rates *should* have immigration-planning consequences, but otherwise lower birth rate eventually is a good and luxury-preserving thing (assuming productivity returns on tech ever slow).
You should fix the entitlement programs to deal with the demography rather than try to fix demography to deal with entitlement programs.
This was an excellent line. Beautifully put.
Did Arnold just miss a great opportunity to riff on PSST and the birth dearth?
How will markets respond to the declining birth rate? Is the financial sector capable of modeling it? Who will take care of my parents?
We could mandate one out of every four birth control prescriptions be placebo.
My sense is that the decline in birth rates is correlated with, if not caused by, increased education of women.
How about the change in the nature of work. Work is less physical that it was.