It would have been good to see an x-y plot of living with parents vs. fertility. Eyeballing the maps he showed, I don't see a great correlation. Scandinavia has mediocre fertility compared to the rest of Europe, but the lowest percentage living with their parents. Other nations like Greece do satisfy his hypothesis, but a real test would be to plot those two percentages on an x-y plot and see how well they correlate (or calculate an R-squared, or both).
I took down the data manually and got a correlation coefficient of -0.28. I'm not sure whether it's even reasonable to expect the relationship to be linear but IIRC that level of correlation is about as high as you get in the social sciences.
And you can't discount the possibility that it's not housing that's depressing fertility but the economic situation of young couples. Scandinavia is comparatively rich and has great social benefits. Italy, Greece, Spain are all countries that suffered under the last financial crisis and unemployment is high, esp. for younger adults.
So, maybe we just see wealth as a the root cause at play
Over-simplifying things, the more prosperous a society is, the less children are born. Doesn't seem to be too far left field to assume more young people are living with their parents in less-prosperous societies.
For more numerous and granular data points, Eurostat doesn’t seem to measure this below country level, however US Census does. At least, I can easily find maps and papers which use that reference, but not the exact data table quickly. I know I had to grep and visual grep IPUMS dumps with similar projects before.
In the meanwhile, I’m biased to buy the hypothesis and have reasonable trust in the studies Caplan quoted, but a graph would be properly convincing.
Correlation does not imply causation. One of the lowest-fertility/highest living-with-parents countries on the map has people living with parents because of a multigenerational family culture. People have been living with parents for generations, and having kids just fine.
Living with parents doesn't carry the same stigma as in the US or Western Europe.
The reasons for low fertility have nothing to do with living with parents there. They have everything to do with complex and rapid social changes following the fall of communism which are too long and complex to get into.
I actually agree with the overall conclusion *in the US*, and likely in other parts of the world. However, the argument seems flakey.
A huge difference is even a few generations ago, the "growing family" would be the one owning the house, and grandparents (their parents) would move in with them - now it's inverted; only the grandparents have a house or can afford one, and so the "growing" or potentially growing family is living with them.
It doesn't seem as much a difference but it is a really big one.
And if I were a man, there's no way I would just let a house become marital property if I owned it outright before the marriage, especially considering how family courts screw men over.
That's a surefire way to homelessness, unless you are very (SV engineer or doctor) rich.
That is an issue for each couple to work through themselves, but I was more alluding to inhabiting a home belonging to your partner’s parents, not to your partner.
The property acquired before marriage is yours after divorce. The split part are properties acquired during marriage, unless you have prenup that says otherwise for some reason.
That has zero to do with whether it is safe to move into in-laws house when you are entering vulnerable period of pregnancy and being primary caregiver for small kids. Because both severely limit your economic options even in best conditions.
Examples please where property was split because of that. Child support obviously takes real estate property into account, but the actual ownership? Not sure where this happens, but than I'm no family law expert and there are so many different countries that it actually just might happen.
Family courts take stability of the child over all else, so if the child is used to living in the family home who ever the custodial parent is will get possession of the home even if that custodial parent was not the owner of the home before the marriage
You're being downvoted by people who aren't lawyers, but you're absolutely correct.
A house that was sole property before the marriage, remains sole property after the marriage, even if the other spouse is added to the deed. The other spouse only takes a "equitable interest" to the extent that marital resources, or their own separate resources, are invested in the house. This is the case in community property (like CA) and non-CP states (most of the rest).
The primary issue is that in some states the presumption changes when the spouse is added to the deed, so that the house is presumed to be marital property in the event of divorce until the pre-owning spouse shows that it is not. (But in most states, there is no presumption and the other spouse must show that they have an equitable interest in the house, generally by showing that marital resources were spent to pay the mortgage or make improvements.)
This is not the case everywhere; in some jurisdictions, the marital home, even when previously owned free and clear by one of the couple, becomes subject to being split 50:50 at divorce simply because it was the marital home.
Why is this comment downvoted? It's literally what goes through the minds of parents of newly weds and weds-to-be. Let's not beat around the bush and be upfront about it.
> If I were a woman, there is no way I would entertain the idea of having kids without my name on the title or lease of the house.
There's lots of prosperous countries where renting is very common, is well-regulated, and not some great risk (Germany and Switzerland spring to mind).
I, too, live in a country where owning is the norm. That turns the rental market into (mostly) shabby flats for the very lowest income brackets, for students, for migrant workers, or for short-term renting. It doesn't have to be that way.
Sorry, but no. The well regulated rental market in Germany has had the consequence of a housing unit shortage. Try renting anything in well regulated Berlin. It's like trying to find an PS5/ RTX 3080 during the scalpocalipse. Similar in well regulated Stockholm.
Renting is very popular in Germany because buying is out of reach for most due to how expensive it is, therefore those who aren't well off have no other choice but to rent, leading to old age poverty for those who don't own their own property by the time they retire.
That's why Italian pensioners are statistically better off than their German counterparts despite their country being poorer, because they own their own property at retirement, instead of paying market rent and having to search the city trash bins for empty bottles to make ends meet.
Most Germans with financial means or inheritance do own property since it's financially better than renting, especially when your old and living on a measly pension.
Not that I don't support rental regulations, I do, but the real estate market in Germany is broken and therefore is not what I consider a model to be followed by everyone.
Sorry, I definitely did not mean regulated in the sense of "rent control". I meant regulated in the sense of "guaranteeing certain rights for the tenants". I'm aware of the massive housing squeeze in big German cities, and you make a great point — I just wanted to underscore that it's not at heart a rent v buy issue.
Berlin as a yardstick is very problematic. The western part used to be an economic backwater and for a long time after reunification, the city hardly attracted people to live there. It's only in the last 15y that Berlin has been growing like crazy.
In general, capital cities in Europe are extremely expensive, no matter whether we are talking about well-regulated Berlin or less-regulated Rome.
Not exactly all capital cities. Renting (and buying) in Bucharest is very cheap for tech workers, while renting in Berlin and Rome and expensive even for tech workers.
And the issue with Berlin isn't that renting is expensive, it's that you can't find anything decent at all. Properties disappear off websites within minutes due to over demand, and then, once you finally manage find something, you have to do a visit with 200 other people with a folder in hand with a lot of your private information, and pray to your lucky star that you'll be that one in 200 people to get it.
Compare Berlin to Munich. That salaries in Berlin, and Munich for that matter, didn't increase at the same rate as rents is a more serious problem. That and that historically a lot of people in Munich lived in rented apartments. And those long-term residents, especially older people, are now priced out.
Sure, even my GP said people are living way beyond their sell by date, putting huge pressure on the healthcare and social system, but what do you suggest we do? Take pensioners behind the block and pop a cap in their heads like cattle?
Back in the days, we used to have a once in a century virus/pandemic/plague that would "thin the heard", but now we got really good at creating effective vaccines and prioritizing distributing them at those old and vulnerable, to prevent nature from running its course, so we're back to square one.
So what do we do? Provide modern medicine only to able bodied adults and deprive the elderly once they reach their sell by date?
>Take pensioners behind the block and pop a cap in their heads like cattle?
For what it's worth, it'd get the job done.
But that aside, for starters, we should have let covid-19 run its course. Vaccines, if any, should have been given to the people under 50 first. This would have helped balance things out a lot to begin with. Similarly, I think we should be more willing to turn to palliative care earlier in the case of declining health in the elderly.
Of course, I recognize that I'm basically just describing some flavor or utilitarianism and that it will never even be in the discussion of how things should be.
I can understand that argument for prioritizing younger people when there's a shortage of vaccines. What I cannot fathom is your reasoning for doing so. Sure, if there's 1 vaccine and 5 people who need it, the sad fact is that some will go without. You seem to view that as a positive thing, though. Terrible attitude towards human life!
I would not be fine with it as a man, also. All the cultures I am aware where younger couples live with one of the in laws, it is always the woman living with the man and his parents in their home, so my default thought process went to that scenario.
Back then they didn't lose houses, they sold them because they didn't need them anymore, and moved in with kids for eldercare, basically.
Houses weren't limited in availability, other things were the limiting factors - and sometimes "move in with" would mean moving in next door or into what were called "mother-in-law" houses.
1. Force to sell due to medicare or other end of life expenses (you can not have any assets if you need full time nursing care paid for by medicare)
2. the "Reverse mortgage" people fall for.
3. Baby Boomers, a Single Asset split 5-8 ways does not go far
4. the houses owned really were not that good. My Grandparents owned their home, bought it right after WWII, the house was a small 2 bed 1 bath they raised 4 kids in... It is still in the family but it is out-dated by modern standards.
>the houses owned really were not that good. My Grandparents owned their home, bought it right after WWII, the house was a small 2 bed 1 bath they raised 4 kids in... It is still in the family but it is out-dated by modern standards.
Young people complain how much more expensive homes are now, and then can't be bothered to accept a starter home..
"I just can't understand why I can't afford this 3,600 sq foot home near downtown Austin at age 25, life is unfair!".
Some of that is local zoning laws that prohibit the kind of small affordable "starter" homes from being built
Things like Minimum Lot size, out right restriction on size of home, and other "building codes" that have nothing to do with the safety or long term viability of a construction project
It is unlikely the development my grandparents home is in would get zoning approval should a developer seek to build a similar neighborhood today. The lots sizes would be too small, the homes would be too small, and various other things would be non-compliant with modern building codes which does not mean it would be unsafe.
Almost anyone can afford a home if they're willing to make the necessary life changes (one of which may be getting less home than they want). But those changes may involve moving to another county/state/country at the extremes.
Often it could be "afforded" by the HN-income crowd just by not buying a new car.
These two maps, taken in conjunction, do not provide a good argument for housing deregulation. Even if we accept that the maps correlate quite well (and ignore whether there is any causal link), there is an assumption that the author is not stating plainly: that housing deregulation leads to young people being able to move out of their parent’s basement.
Look at the Scandinavian, very deep green countries at the top of the map. They all have strictly regulated construction processes, with political involvement in city planning. It takes many long years of project planning before you can put a spade in the ground in Stockholm. What’s more, there is government meddling in rent setting - they are not free markets. Still, they seem to do OK?
I don’t know what the author has against housing regulations but this argument is missing some part.
Using the regulatory environment as a proxy for housing prices is a very noisy signal. Of the Scandinavian countries, three are relatively flat; the other, Norway, has the third highest median income at PPP in the world (after UAE/.ch) thanks to its oil reserves. All have very low population densities by European standards. These factors should improve housing affordability in any regulatory environment.
This might be highly dependent on where you're at. I know many in Dublin who still live with their parents because there's nowhere available (everything's gone to short-term lets) at anything reasonably resembling a decent price.
Renting an apartment in Stockholm requires being on a waiting list for years, or paying private landlords under the table in order to be allowed to rent. I hear it's not as bad in Gothenburg and Malmö, though.
Buying is still possible, but the prices are extremely inflated due to the Swedish habit of simply not paying of their mortages and just pay the interest. Last time I heard, the Stockholm housing bubble is about to burst due to the increasing interest rates, potentially collapsing the Swedish housing market.
The Finnish housing market is cooler, but finding an apartment in the Helsinki or Turku areas is not easy, and they don't come cheap. Just like in the case of Stockholm, people with below-average income are more or less kept out of the city cores.
From what I've been told, it sounds like the situation in Denmark and Norway is similar.
These things are also true. It is very very hard to find a rental flat in Stockholm. Slightly easier in Gothenburg, and easier still, the smaller and less attractive the town you choose.
Some claim this shortage is due to over-regulation of the housing market, others claim that it's due to other causes. Usually, this is split down ideological lines, where the left is for keeping the regulated rents, and the right are for introducing "market based rents".
But this is all irrelevant, because despite this well-documented housing shortage in Stockholm, and despite having a rent-controlled market and a huge presumed housing bubble, for some reason Sweden ranks as having only 4.1% basement dwellers (see OP).
So, explain again how this article on "Basement Fertility" is making a case for housing market deregulation?
The Nordic countries have massive housing projects from the 50's-70's and as you mention, it's relatively easy to get a non-attractive apartment -- or even a house.
It's an urban issue, and assuming ones's ready to move somewhere else then moving out is not a problem. That's what happens in many cases.
A Typical WEIRD (western, educated, industrialised, rich, democratic) finding. For much of human history children have been raised in multi-generational homes. Just being raised by parents is relatively new. I recall reading in a book [0] that proposes this as one of the reasons we have such an issue with mental health etc. with our children. This also seriously hampers learning as wisdom is not passed down.
What is striking in this development is the destruction of our social fabric.
From African village model to the nuclear family is a massive step, made possible by the nation state. Arguably this impoverishes community/extended family life. The most extreme form can regularly be read in the news: somebody found dead in their home, undetected for weeks or months.
But not even that is enough. Even within the scope of the nuclear family are we further individualizing. Each partner in the couple is to be fully economically independent from the other. Note that I'm not suggesting any traditional angle here, I'm purely talking about individualism in general. Even within our very own family, we no longer dare to rely on each other, to be dependent on each other.
If I were to pick a cliche busy urban family, they have very few shared moments. They may not even eat together. They relax on their own individual device, often in separate rooms. And we outsource care for both our young and the old.
Individualism over prosperity is similar to entropy over time. It's the breaking down of social order to its most base component.
Technology has enabled governments to grow massively, and law and order and prosperity removed the natural forces that kept communities together. Why put up with any communal norms you don't agree with when the community doesn't provide any additional safety or stability.
The strongest forces that once stood up to governments and markets are no longer relevant, in the West at least. Religion and tribalism are viewed as relics of the past, while the modern individual is naked and unarmed in the face of behemoth governments larger than the largest empires in human history.
I see it in the overreach of law enforcement because they correctly assume they're dealing with isolated individuals. In tribal societies, the tribe itself can stand up to the law. A person in such a society wouldn't be worried about being beaten by police because his family would beat the police.
While it has its issues, I'm not altogether convinced that the nuclear family is a bad thing.
We seem to function best at tribal scale. Jokes aside, most family units are functional.
Family scales well. Large-enough families invite dysfunction jokes, but they have a shared genetic interest. You can always coerce or compel family to do things like share resources or settle disputes against their own self-interest.
More than a few families together become a community, and this is where the problems start.
We look to colonizing space as the solution to overpopulation and resource depletion. Space is not a forgiving environment.
When water is running low or other critical challenges arise, a colony bound by blood will figure that shit out quicker than the space equivalent of your HOA.
Someone is claiming that coercion and abuse are good aspects of the extended family system rather than bad ones which have led to people choosing to escape it when they have the economic opportunity.
Abuse is a malicious application of it and not what I was advocating.
It's more about bypassing the politics normally associated with these sorts of situational negotiations-- a failsafe against one (or more) persons holding the rest of the colony hostage.
It is a paternalistic foil to malingering and selfishness.
I don't think it's a bad thing either. The African village model is sometimes glorified but it has major downsides too. You depend on the village for everything and it tends to be governed like a tiny dictatorship. You might have very little say in huge aspects of your life.
In fact, Caplan discovered the so-called Hajnal line, and when it was first suggested by Hajnal, being to its south and east was associated with high fertility, not low, like today.
There is a lot of evidence that high rates of living with parents south of Hajnal line is largely about sociocultural practices instead of economic conditions, and it goes back centuries, see eg. Individualism and the Western Liberal Tradition: Evolutionary Origins, History, and Prospects for the Future, by Kevin MacDonald.
Just W. Northwest Europe has primarily been nuclear families for over 1,000 years. Education, industrialization, wealth and possibly democracy made them more like that but West of the Hajnal line has been like that for a very long time.
I believe OP is making the general case that our commitment to nuclear family living raises the cost of raising a family as there are no economies of scale compared to multi-generational living. A moments thought about it, and he's clearly correct
I think a big component of rising opportunity cost for raising families is simply the fact that women now have opportunities.
A lot of societies are about to find out the burden women were implicitly carrying simply because they had no choice, either due to lack of financial independence, birth control, or civil rights.
yes, this is absolutely true. Hans Rosling did one his most well know presentations on the the impact of female education to the eradication of poverty via two mechanism - female entry into the market economy + reduction in the number of births. That said though, all developed economies are now so far down this road that we are below the replacement rate and will die out in a few generations without a course correction
Especially because these sorts of predictions have happened before. Look at this prediction for the world in 2022 from 1922:
>Vive la France?
> No one would be left to appreciate the Eiffel Tower or the Arc de Triomphe.
> French scientists were concerned about the nation’s birth rate 100 year ago. In 1860, there had been 1 million births in the country. In 1922, the number had fallen to 450,000.
> As one observer noted: “At the rate of decline in number of children born in that country, in the year 2022 — 100 years hence — there will be nobody left in France, except as they drift in from other sections of Europe. The figures show, unerringly, that the present rate of decrease, maintained for 100 years, would reduce the birthrate to zero.”
> France and Austria experienced the strongest baby booms in Europe.[19] In contrast to most other countries, the French and Austrian baby booms were driven primarily by an increase in marital fertility.[28] In the French case, pronatalist policies were an important factor in this increase.[29] Weaker baby booms occurred in Germany, Switzerland, Belgium and the Netherlands.[30]
We really have no idea what is going on with fertility and what the end result will be. When population was booming everyone predicted mass starvation that didn't happen. Now when population is declining everyone is confidently predicting disaster, but who's to say it won't self-correct? (alongside appropriate societal efforts)?
> We really have no idea what is going on with fertility and what the end result will be. When population was booming everyone predicted mass starvation that didn't happen. Now when population is declining everyone is confidently predicting disaster, but who's to say it won't self-correct? (alongside appropriate societal efforts)?
The two big changes from previous decades are women’s financial independence and birth control methods that are 100% effective and relatively convenient and cheap, essentially separating the acts of having sex and becoming parents.
What is that course correction going to be? Unfortunately, it seems like the US is choosing to reduce opportunities for women, rather that reducing the economic burden of raising a family.
no idea, there have been no examples of any country successfully reversing declining fertility rate. In fact, it seems only massive unplanned societal disruption - famine, war, invasion - increases the rate. Iraq for instance has had a population boom since the two US led invasions, 50% of its population are now under the age of 15.
I think OP is focusing on a different core thesis — that moving in with parents is not conducive to having babies.
But what you describe definitely rings true. Many of my friends grew up with two working parents in a nuclear family and didn’t realize how incredibly tough that is until they started having kids themselves.
I'll go further and say the nuclear family as a default is harmful. A few years into raising my kid (who has no health issues) convinced me of this. It can be quite isolating and lonely. I cannot imagine what it is like for parents of children who have more significant needs to both work and try to run a nuclear family.
There's a lot of tension between an economic environment that rewards high levels of mobility, and desire to live near/in a strong local web of friends and relatives who can help support you.
yes you might be right, I may have rushed to a conclusion. Multi-generational is clearly our natural state, our evolved state. Only last hundred years since we atomised the family, begins to make sense why we are dying out
Evolved as in the true meaning of the term - Darwinian evolution. Homo Sapiens have live and grow and die in extended kinship groups, this has been the case for 99.9% of the time we have been around - and if we go further back to pre-human times, we likely lived in those kinship groups too. We only collapsed this structure since industrialisation / urbanisation - last hundred, maybe two hundred years
Cities have always been population reducers: below replacement fertility, with migrants from the countryside increasing the population. This was true 2000 years ago and it's true now. It's hard to say for sure why this is, but I'd imagine it's that urban people have more awareness of economic inequality. Rural people suffer from it, but they don't see it on a daily basis, so they aren't constantly reminded of the disadvantages that 99% of them will inherit in the way urban people are.
These days, not only is the world population more urban, but people are also more consistently aware of the inequality problem. People are realizing they have no hope of providing the best opportunities for their children, and are deciding not to have them. I don't see that as a bad thing. Voluntary population decline might be the best outcome for humanity at this point, at least until we get our political, economic, and ecological shit together. We don't need 10 billion humans to be on the planet; we need to get through this era of war and capitalism without making ourselves extinct.
I'm not sure if it is the case that there is a commitment to nuclear family structure as it seems things are trending even further towards the atomized scale with more single parent households and many people delaying marriage and a family or even going child free.
I can't speak for elsewhere, but American society seems to incentivize against the factors that allow for high fertility. I think it is also apparent in Asia with the Sampo/ Satori generation phenomenon in Korea and Japan respectively.
It feels like there's an implicit "More Kids Good" tone that pervades this. What's the "right" value for TFR? Why does it have to be higher? Why is it bad that it is lower in some places?
The ecosystem we exist in / that sustains us surely has a carrying capacity.
"More Kids (than 1st world countries are having is) Good" is generally true.
Social security relies of the young bearing the burden of the old. Don't even get me started on the intangible energy of having little kids around. Not everyone wants kids, but most people like being a cool uncle/aunt.
> What's the "right" value for TFR?
Difficult problems exist in Grays. But even the most fervent believers on either side agree that the 'right number' is likely between and 1.5-2.5. With western TFR plummeting under 1.5, we can safely say the the call for 'more kids' is effectively a call for a slower decline in population; not 'more kids'.
> carrying capacity
Yep, that ecosystem is called the economy and the carry capacity is a lower bound, not an upper bound. Too few young people is the death knell of a civilization.
Also, population explosion is presently led by Africa in rates, and South Asia in sheer numbers. A few dozen more/less westerners (who're we kidding? mostly white people) isn't going to change the numbers by much.
Well it's more that the aging demographics of current civillisation is unprecdented in human history... it's one of those 'experiments' we run on ourselves without much consent or thought. I like to use the example of the invention of the mirror. We take it for granted now, but being able to see and carefully examine your appearance in private multiple times a day has had a huge impact on many facets of human life, probably net negative I would say. How much anguish and folly has arisen from seeing only our surfaces in perfect detail? Narcissus had to look at his reflection in water, but the myth isn't even worth telling these days.
The social, cultural and economic implications of an older population are very likely to be profound. A rapid demographic 'crunch' is not a good idea. One example is that nobody is quite sure how to keep funding socialised healthcare and support aged care in the face of a transition to an increasingly elderly and infirm population who don't earn income. We will see it playing it out initially between countries with older demographics (Italy, Japan) and younger demographics (India, African nations, even the USA is relatively young).
China will depopulate >50% by 2100 (conservatively) and we’re still worrying about mid 20th century concepts like carrying capacities as if we aren’t a highly advanced (and depopulating) tool making species entirely capable of creating ecosystems wholesale and affecting said capacities.
Okay, and it's bad that china will depopulate? Won't every nation, eventually? Are you making like a "suffering / loss of life is bad" argument? It's hard to disagree with that, if you are. (I certainly don't.)
I think you're deriding my use of "Carrying capacity" as an archaic concept, but your retort is that we're "creating ecosystems."
But, every organism within an ecosystem "creates" it just by existing as part of it, so I'm assuming you mean "heavily modifying it to suit our species' need for insatiable growth."
Taking this from that perspective, the 20th century agricultural explosion (that you link to ) is a prime example of how we've hijacked systems far beyond their natural limits, to largely deleterious effect.
That wikipedia article even enumerates some of these: biodiversity loss, GHG emissions, etc. There are many examples elsewhere [0].
Sure, there's a lot more food, and that's good for population health and well-being. But that "good" assumes that we've decided that large, consistent growth rates are "good."
Yes, having 4 retired grandparents and 2 retired parents supported by 1 working adult with 0 young children, at scale, is generally bad.
Worrying about the ideal balance of births : deaths, today, is like worrying about ballast in a sinking ship. Insatiable growth doesn’t exist anymore and hasn’t for some time, we’re squarely in flattening the curve territory with the fun twist that discharges take 18 years to raise.
If there were any place in the world where one would think that your supposed capability of creating ecosystems wholesale would manifest, it would be California with its nexus of engineers and venture capital. And yet, California is suffering from ever worsening drought conditions and forest fires, with no solutions in sight.
Conversely, depopulation on an otherwise healthy planet is a trivially solvable problem. Our species IS entirely capable of reproducing (even though the secret to doing so may have fallen into obscurity in certain incel segments of society).
If you turn labels off, and Google Earth the CA - MX - AZ border, you can spot the All-American canal diverting the Colorado river across actual Saharaesque fields of sand dunes long before you see the thin grey lines of Interstate 8 right next to it.
It feeds that large patch of green/farms/food entirely surrounded by sand, and drains north into the inland sea created by the first botched attempt at diverting in the 1900s.
That’s arguably the least important part of the state that isn’t desert (anymore), and a small scale version of what we’ve done to the Central Valley.
CA has a nexus of software engineers, and dot com capital
Not Civil, Mechanical, or other engineers.
Also venture capital has no interest in fighting 1000's environmental lawsuits and 10,000's of pointless regulations designed to stop any construction or development that would improve CA
> CA has a nexus of software engineers, and dot com capital
> Not Civil, Mechanical, or other engineers.
What on earth makes you think that? All sorts of hardware is designed and developed here. It has the largest aerospace sector of any state. A lot of automotive design is done in the LA basin for the auto majors.
And that’s just off the top of my head. I’m in SV and even up here though we lost most of the defense manufacturing (e.g. tanks and ships) though a lot remains further south, when I need parts machined there are still plenty of local machine shops etc. I’ve brought in welders from the Central Valley when local ones were too busy.
Subsaharan Africa is going to keep human population growth going to at least ten billion persons by 2100[1], even with China[2] and the rest of the world's reduced population growth[3].
Population growth fell much faster than expected in many places such as Singapore and Iran. Today in Africa people have mobile phones and hence much better access to information on things like birth control.
That Nature article shows that the population expected at 2100 has a realistic range from about 9 Bn to 11 Bn. That difference comes from slightly different assumptions about the change in birth rates in Africa and other places.
From the article :
"In 2014, a group at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Vienna produced its own forecast. It said that world population is most likely to peak at 9.4 billion around 2070 and will fall to 9 billion by the end of the century. The group’s numbers rose slightly in a 2018 report3 that projected a peak of about 9.8 billion around 2080; a subsequent update has population cresting at a little under 9.7 billion around 2070."
That isn’t the measure of growth people are worried about, tap Growth Rate on each of [1], [2], and [3].
Subsaharan Africa was completely bypassed by the Green Revolution and largely lacks access to basic infrastructure like eg consistent electricity (outside portable fuel powered generators) on the typical small, family, partly subsistence based farm.
It’s not a solved problem with all the geographical and political issues, but it’s quite literally the world’s last frontier for trade.
How do we create eco systems? We can’t even bring down global temperature by 1.5 degrees and still rely on fossil fuels z we literally convert fossil fuels to calories. How are we NOT past carrying capacity?
If you trace this thread backwards to its root (by essentially responding to every answer with "so what?"), you end up with the question "would it a 'bad thing' if humanity were to become extinct?"
Anecdotally, the vast majority of people I've met - from all walks of life and religious/political leanings - will answer this question with an unthinking "yes, of course that's bad".
I've been curious lately why this is. From the standpoint of Christianity, isn't the end goal rapture followed by total extinction anyway? From the standpoint of agnosticism/atheism, wouldn't an extinction mean the end of human suffering?
Why are we as a species so afraid of not being able to sustain ourselves through a constant churning of new births? Is it just our monkey brain ultimately calling the shots?
You are a monkey brain. It is not the case you should replace your monkey brain value system with some "better" value system.
Or rather, if you choose to replace your monkey brain value system with some better value system, such choice can be made only under your monkey brain value system. Value-system-yet-to-be-adopted is not your value system yet (entire question is about whether it should be your value system) and can't be the basis of your choice. (Yes, humans often make mistakes here, but that's because humans are vulnerable to circular reasoning, not because circular reasoning is valid.)
I would say most children in Western nations are wanted by their parents. They're mostly just a cost economically speaking, so no incentive to have more than you want.
I think most people can achieve happiness in their situation, even under bad conditions, if they have a sound mind. Those elites might have a better shot at accidental happiness, but being upset over that will do nothing good for your own state of mind, so why let it bring you down? You can't change how the world works.
Happiness comes from within, and from meaningful social connections.
Most everyone experiences joy at many points in life. Joy comes from family, friends, accomplishment/mastery, personal growth, learning, and sometimes just from having a great day. It’s not like you need a yacht to find some joy.
Probably somewhere between 1.8 and 2.2. Rapid increases or declines in population create economic disruptions. Even if you favor a less (or more!) populated world, it's better for us to get there slowly.
Less than replacement means we go extinct eventually and while that is happening we don't have enough people to support those that leave the workforce as they age.
Automation is the answer. Food, housing, medical care are the main things for the aged out for the society to take are about. Automation will solve food. Less people less housing needed. And the medical care productivity will be significantly improved by the automation.
Currently growing population seems to still be an economically net-positive thing as we still need people in order to do new and bigger things. I think though that soon it will become net-negative as average person's total lifetime productivity will be losing to automation and you don't need 20+ years to start the robot up and 20+ years to take care about that robot once it got worn out. In that situation we'd better have less people yet more educated, trained etc. in order to be productive beyond what is replaceable by more and more automation.
Just like "more than replacement" doesn't necessarily lead to Malthusian apocalypse, "less than replacement" doesn't necessarily lead to extinction. We have a largish number of generations to change the birthrate before either happens.
Replacement rate and “right” are not necessarily congruous.
If you have the opinion that there are insufficient resources in the world to live the lifestyle you want for yourself or those you care about, you may think a lower fertility rate is more “right”. And if you think your tribe is in a competition for resources with all the other tribes, then you may want a higher fertility rate for your tribe and a lower one for the others.
Any less than 2.1 and you have to have an uncomfortable conversation about which nation is going to be the sacrifice. Any more and you have to worry about overpopulation.
That said, I'm of the opinion that we'll never really need to have any tough conversations about birth rates because they've fallen so drastically across the board. It seems that it will be enough to universally encourage higher birth rates in every nation for the foreseeable future (with the expected outcome being that most will still struggle to hit 2.1).
> Any less than 2.1 and you have to have an uncomfortable conversation about which nation is going to be the sacrifice.
Only if you're the sort of person who cares about such things. I don't see any moral imperative to make sure any particular ethnicity or culture continues.
Before someone calls me the usual assortment of bad things, please take a moment to consider (1) the difference between treating existing people well and making new people, and (2) that I mean this literally and not in the "all the cultures besides the US should go away" sense, and would still take this position even in the blatantly racist "but that means you'd be a minority" situation you're about to try to catch me with.
Why is it racist to care if you're a minority? Current minorities care about it a quite a lot. Not only that -- they see a moral imperative that their particular ethnicities and culture exist. Are some groups "allowed" this, and not others?
Of course the term minority/majority is relative to the scope you're talking about, too. The "majority" of Americans are global minorities.
(2) was intended to proactively dismiss one specific attempted "gotcha" that I hear often in response to this view: people think I'm saying that it's okay for minority cultures specifically to die out, and that I would feel differently if it was American culture being overtaken as a result of high birth rates in some other country and low birth rates in the US. This is not what I am saying. I don't think American culture is special.
> Are some groups "allowed" this, and not others?
So no, my position is that no groups are "allowed" this.
Another way I can express this, that may be more clear, is that a culture isn't a thing on its own. It's a description of the way its members live. Those members may be very attached to that way of life, and it is immoral to take it from them (see (1) above), but the question of whether new people start living in that way is morally neutral.
I think there will be some interesting conversations, namely around women’s civil rights.
Incentivizing a woman to have a baby is extremely expensive, and I do not think any country has come up with an offer so attractive such that it causes birth rates to go up.
Which brings up 2 questions: how much does a society have to offer women, and would that society continue to be competitive on a global playing field relative to other countries that might go a different way, such as restricting women’s rights and getting birth rates up by removing women’s agency.
Who’s to say that the current world population is “best”? Maybe we’d be happier in aggregate if it shrank to a stable 5 billion people. Or maybe if it grew to 9 billion.
The global optimum matters (IMO) more than an assumption of “whatever we have is just right”
So many things wrong with this. First, making all your policy decisions around maximizing reproduction seems really myopic. Many places are overpopulated and straining global infrastructure. And regulations keep people safe—what does it matter if I have four kids if two of them die from lead poisoning?
Is there a version of economic thought that doesn't necessitate constant population growth? Why is low fertility rate seen as a bad thing? Often engineering is argued in terms of tradeoffs or meeting certain requirements. Rather than follow economic theories that depend on growth, can we develop economic theories that adapt to the trends of the population rather than the other way around(Musks' need for cheap labor not withstanding). Is there a version of the world where we have less people with a collective higher quality of life, particularly as technology improves individual productivity? What about the vintage-futurism economic dream of 10 hour workweeks?
Problem is that our whole economic system is basically a Ponzi scheme. You get your payoff when you are selling stocks on your retirement to "next fool in chain" so 20-30 year olds.
Land, houses will not go up in value if there would be not enough people to buy them. While yes people migrate to the cities or to areas like Randstad and while yes there is housing shortage in such areas but if immigration from rural areas drops a lot there is going to be drop in housing prices.
More people have more diverse needs which creates demand - more people more demand - easier to have higher quality of life if it is easier to find 100 customers to come to your shop than 10 customers.
People are not starting new grocery shops in rural areas because it is good investment - mostly it is that they already live there and have possibility to make additional income on property they own.
People are starting new grocery shops in big cities even if they have to lease property to do so, because they still can profit on top of that.
It's not just a Ponzi scheme due to population growth pressure and the old cashing out. It's also a Ponzi scheme because younger folks are literally paying for the older folks through taxation. Low interest rates also disincentivize saving while subsidizing the accumulation of debt, and spurring more investment into asset classes (land and stocks mostly). This creates a Ponzi like effect where in as long as people keep responding to the incentives, number goes up.
A population drop implodes all of it. Of course, presently, it may already be collapsing. When it does, I don't think that the Fed is going to respond by tightening and letting things correct to a healthier slow growth sustainable economy funded through real savings and value production. They will most likely immediately attempt to reinflate the bubbles with negative rates (0.00% FOMC, < 10% reserve requirement, and purchase operations on the open market).
Older generations also created a debt level in the USA (public and private) that the young will be burdened with. They created corrupt governments that waged horrifying wars around the globe. They built nuclear weapons that threaten the globe. They did a lot of good too, but I wouldn’t call it symbiosis.
>Low interest rates also disincentivize saving while subsidizing the accumulation of debt, and spurring more investment into asset classes (land and stocks mostly).
You're talking about how low interest rates are a Ponzi scheme yet it doesn't occur to you that maintaining positive interest forever is an even bigger Ponzi scheme.
To complete comment I have to add one more thought.
Infinite growth is also required for high quality of life unfortunately.
Once there is no promise of future earnings by spending now - we start going into zero sum game. Living in a society where every day you have to worry about not loosing piece of pie is really a bad life to live.
Less people means lower pressure to find new ways of getting resources - if there is enough people on earth we might have enough money to get resources from astro-mining if needed.
People can still (on average) have career growth by taking an ever larger piece of the pie. And then they retire/die, leaving more pie for the young ones.
Also, we have the tech to make this pie comfortably big.
There is this dude that is constantly pulling money out of the economy, leaving less for everyone else. Stop him (the rent seeking) and he won't bother you anymore.
It's mostly seen as a bad thing in the lens of ethnic nationalist ideology that low fertility rates will change the demographics of a country (see Great Replacement [0]).
After all, if Musk (and other capitalists) needed, they can get labor from other countries south of America's borders, but there is a push to not make these workers Americans! This isn't an issue only in America either.
The "Great Replacement" theory originated in the 2010s and is specifically about white people being replaced (in case anyone was in any doubt, it's racist bullshit).
It's a (bullshit paranoid) predictive theory about the modern day that has nothing to do with the historical genocide of Native Americans by white people.
There's nothing really inherently racist about it, or bullshit. Mass immigration is a serious subject matter, one that deserves scrutiny and ruthless questioning. Avoiding the questions by calling it racist doesn't make it go away.
It's been around for a lot longer than 2010. It has been a popular subject matter in Europe for decades [1]. I guess someone just decided to finally put a more official, catchy title to it and publish books. Does this particular author have a racist tone? Perhaps they do. But ask an average European citizen back in late 80s, 90s and they'd tell you what's up without skipping a beat. It's something you can see from a mile away. Pleading ignorance won't help.
[1] Your media won't tell you this, so don't be surprised. Talk to a handful of locals to get a sample for how people really feel about things. It's a much better barometer than getting your news from something like Voice of America.
> There's nothing really inherently racist about it, or bullshit.
It's the same argument wielded to discriminate against immigrants. It was used against the Irish, Italians, and Polish in NY City to name a few. Each group was "ruining America". It takes 3 generations to assimilate, but everyone anti-immigration wants them to "speak American" in one generation.
The "Great Replacement" specifically talks about this as being a deliberate plan by "wealthy elites", and again, is racist paranoid bullshit.
If you're going to talk about a specific thing, you can't just generalise it to every concern around immigration.
And while there are genuine concerns around immigration, like housing capacity, how to help migrants settle in, etc., most "people on the street" are just complaining about lazy immigrants who are simultaneously "stealing our jobs" and going on benefit.
It’s not bullshit. The UN itself is where the term originated and it’s clear that whites are being replaced. The questions are whether that’s an undesirable thing and what the best course of mitigation is.
Typically, once people admit that, they start trying to justify why whites should be replaced. However, any argument justifying white replacement can be used equally effectively for any other group (e.g. Israelis, Muslims, Chinese, blacks, etc). IMHO best not to attempt to replace anyone so that we don’t devolve into Hitlers.
There are certainly theories where falling population is not a problem. (There's a theory for everything.) The question is whether those theories are right. One issue for economic growth is that many modern theories claim that growth is driven by ideas and innovations. Fewer people might lead to fewer ideas and innovations. If so, then we will be poorer as a result.
Update: here's a paper by Charles Jones. This might be better because (1) Charles Jones is rather famous growth economist and (2) it focuses specifically on population decline rather than population ageing.
Because you'll live way past your productive years and the things you will consume (services, goods, medical, etc.) still need to be produced/done by someone.
The automation aspect in economy has been way overestimated - truck drivers were supposed to be automated 5 years ago, meanwhile we are facing real world issues because of truck driver shortages.
Even jobs that were considered trivial to automate like cashers are still performed by humans - after decades of self checkout tech.
Unless your retirement plan is a shotgun barrell - you need the next generation to both live their lives comfortably and provide for you.
> meanwhile we are facing real world issues because of truck driver shortages.
Not really. It feels like every few months we get another piece decrying the lack of truck drivers, only for it to gloss over issues of pay. There is no shortage of truck drivers; there's a shortage of places that don't try to exploit them.
> The automation aspect in economy has been way overestimated - truck drivers were supposed to be automated 5 years ago, meanwhile we are facing real world issues because of truck driver shortages.
I wonder how much of that shortage is due to over-hyped predictions about future automation? The predictions don't pan out but succeed at discouraging people from joining the profession.
> Even jobs that were considered trivial to automate like cashers are still performed by humans - after decades of self checkout tech.
Self-checkout is not actually automation. It's just outsourcing the job of cashier to a customer who then works for free.
> Ok, but you realize this requires indefinite exponential growth, right?
No, it probably just means population declines need be very slow and graceful (e.g. very close to steady-state) in order to not create big labor shortages simultaneous with large retiree populations.
Why ? You're not living forever - and nobody is arguing for high fertility rates. Having 2-3 kids per generation sounds perfectly sustainable. 0 or 1 does not.
So, imagine x couples, each of whom has 3 kids in their lifetimes. In 80 years, there are now 3x/2 couples. In 160, there are 9x/4. There are now 11 billion people. Every 150 or so years, having 3 kids roughly doubles the population. (A better model would be a birth/death process with a #kids distribution with a mean 3 and death age with a mean 80, but not necessary to make my point, I think.)
Not everyone survives or has children - which is why I said 2-3 - it has to be above 2 for replacement, it's not a new concept - lookup replacement fertility rate
As another poster pointed out, self-scan checkout isn't automation, it just changes who does the work from paid employees to unpaid customers. The amount of human labor required remains similar to traditional cashier-staffed checkout.
The rate of checkout is increased. You can take out 20 cashier lanes that need 20 cashiers, replace them with 40 self checkout terminals staffed by 5 or 6 store employees, and people will probably be getting out quicker because the bandwidth is greater.
Or at least all the people buying 20 items or less will, or whatever the figures may be. In previous example, take the 20 checkout lanes, leave 10 staffed by a few employees, and install 20 self check out terminals staffed by a few employees. Direct everyone with full carts to the employees, and people with few items to the self checkout.
Yes, of course it lets stores increase the rate of checkout, because their workforce is every customer so they're only limited by the number of machines they have, instead of being employee-limited. That's still not automation. The same labor is being done, the store's just not paying for it now.
Yes, scanning still needs to be done manually, but the use of hand scanners does make the shopping process more efficient. Customers can bag the products directly while shopping, instead of having to take them all out of the cart to have them scanned and bagged at the cashier.
Less people isn't a bad thing as long as the demographic distribution within the smaller population is healthy- meaning it is shaped like a pyramid, a wide base of young and working age people and smaller numbers of old people non-working people on the top.
The problem for many first world countries today is that their populations are shaped like upside down pyramids- many old people and people nearing retirement age and much fewer young and working age people. Why is this a problem? The working age population represents the tax and production base that supports the non-working and non-tax contributing older population, the non-working young people represent the replacement for the working age people that will eventually retire.
The wide base of young people in the healthy pyramid will eventually grow old. Since it was wide, it means to keep the pyramid healthy, multiples of young people would need to be added. Whom will also grow old, needing even more young people.
Part of my question would be how to deal with the pyramid. The pyramid should get less pronounced as time goes on as birth rates normalize. Basic human needs industries like clothing, food and shelter should't need that many people to support the retired. Health care may need some intervention.
I guess part of the problem is maybe some of this is too much like socialism and/or being able to give non-working persons actual dollars.
One of the major issues faced by the Nordic countries is that healthcare workers are quitting ing large numbers and starting to take direct action like strikes in order to improve working conditions.
In Denmark and Finland there was direct government intervention when nurses went on strike (or threatened in Finland's case); a highly unconventional move considering the fact that both countries grant workers the right to use strikes as a tool in collective bargaining. Both the Danish and the Finnish governments are lead by Social Democrats, the political movement traditionally directly connected with the labour unions.
That taken into account, the health care sector doesn't just need some intervention. It requires large-scale restructuring in order to make it a more attractive sector to work in.
I've seen arguments that almost all of the economic growth over the last 100+ years is directly attributable to population growth and very little else.
Source? That would imply total factor productivity didn't grow at all "over the last 100+ years", which seems doubtful given all the innovations brought about during that time period.
I don't have a source, nor do I fully believe the original poster, but do consider:
7x population growth,
shift from 80% rural to 90% urban. Where "rural" is low economic engagement and "urban" is a job-holder.
shift from single-earning families to dual-earner, where again a stay-at-home mom does not increase the size of the economy while a working one does (and please, I know this is unfair and the tremendous value a full time Mom provides).
Multiple these three shifts and you get a pretty big increase in the economy, with zero increase in productivity.
That's the basic argument, which I don't have at hand, but there have been some very specific "improvement in output" moments in history but those are in the long past and most of what we have now over time is basically the same as growth of population in the US.
Capitalism doesn't require for constant population growth. But public pension schemes do. And there are geopolitical advantages to being bigger than your foes.
Look at Japan. Japan's population has been on the decline for about 1.5 generations. They still get as much food, shelter, and entertainment as any other developed economy. They have hobbies, travel, discretionary income... The worries there aren't about capitalism failing.
Demographic collapse just has a lot of nasty social consequences in general. An inverted pyramid spells pain for future generations.
Public pensions are pretty much gone these days, for better or worse.
I don't think an inverted pyramid is as bad as it sounds. It's a check against ageism and falling wages (there's no longer a horde of hungry young people who want the jobs) and, given how little of the work people do is actually necessary--white-collar jobs are 85% sending passive-aggressive emails--I think society can afford it. It might be the only thing that provides enough value of labor to keep conditions relatively humane.
> Public pensions are pretty much gone these days, for better or worse.
Taxpayer funded (which is what “public” generally means) pensions are basically the only defined benefit pensions left in the US. I do not know of a single city, county, state, or federal government that has gotten rid of them, especially not for cops.
“public pensions” usually refers to schemes like social security in the US.
“public employee pensions” are a different thing.
(But neither is gone, in general or in the US, though more and more government employee positions in the US are relying more on defined contribution retirement plans and less on defined benefit pensions.)
If the inverted pyramid is in an "old-fashioned" economy and society, where the great majority of adults generally work hard until the last few years of their lives, and families mostly do their own service work, then the inverted pyramid might not be a serious problem.
But if you're hoping for something closer to the modern, Western ideal - education until age ~25, work until age ~60, retirement until age ~90 - then the inverted pyramid is going to need at least one of:
(1) Armies of imported service workers - to staff all the nursing homes, retirement homes, cruise ships, restaurants, etc. that the huge "top" of that pyramid need / want.
(2) Armies of robots so advanced that they can fill the great majority of those jobs. WithOUT requiring an extra army of humans to build, pay for, maintain, run, etc. those service worker robots.
(3) Huge changes in medical technology and social expectations, so that most of those service workers are never needed.
Defined benefit pension schemes only require constant population growth because the decision makers want to use the assumption that there will be constant economic growth, in order to make the obligations seem like they cost less.
They could easily assume 0% expected return on investment, but that would make it so the cash expenses today would explode, to the same level that they would if they simply paid employees the cash. Which is why politicians like to run on campaigns promising lower taxes, and in order to achieve that, they assume future economic growth so that instead of paying someone $10 today, the government can pay $1, and rely on economic growth to provide the other $9 (assuming purchasing power of the currency remains the same, which it will not).
Defined benefit would work fine if the benefit defined was "comfortable living space, slop kitchen, basic healthcare, and a golf course" - as those can be provided at some fraction of the requirements for a defined money benefit pension.
If you look at falling fertility rate within the demographic transition model, an economy will first enjoy a time where the number of dependent to the working age population will decrease (demographic transition), meaning that people will enjoy higher standard of living, economy will have excess capital for growth, and everyone is happy. Decades later, the number of dependent to the working age population will increase again (demographic aging), in which the unfortunate reverse will occur, and people will start sounding the alarm, and it's 2 decades too late to anything about it.
The vintage-futurism economic dream of 10 hour workweeks will be tough to achieve if we need many in the working age population taking care of the elderly.
They mayor Unterguggenberger implemented a demurrage currency during the great depression in Wörgl and it solved the unemployment and budget deficit problem without inflation.
The US, and similarly many other western countries, hasn't been at the replacement fertility rate since ~1970 [1]. Relative to the years previous, its been pretty stable, but still not at the replacement rate: around 1.8, versus 2.1-2.2.
That's 50 years; a decent chunk of time.
By the way; its important to note that the replacement fertility rate changes over time. Today, in the US, infant mortality rates are half that in 1970 and prior, in basically every category. Ideally, obviously, the replacement rate will approach 2.0.
Is there a version of economic thought that doesn't necessitate constant population growth? How about the one we're living? You can make the argument that the world is falling apart, or the economy, or we're at the end of a totally normal 80-100 year economic cycle, or maybe everything is fine, that's all supposition. What's real is; we're still going.
The short answer to your question is: historically: No. Empires fall when population growth stalls. When empires fall, a LOT of people die, and a lot more suffer. The dream of "isolated sustainable communes" doesn't work at scale. If your argument is some variation of: the human population shouldn't be at scale; then feel free to remove yourself from the equation as a start down that path, but realistically, we're all here, we have the system we have.
However, I tend to believe that the better argument is: we found that version of economic thought which can work in the face of stagnating population growth. Its the one we have; it does work, not perfectly, in fact quite poorly, but we'll never know how bad the alternate realities are. In effect, MMT.
Its extremely and critically important to recognize that technology has jumped more in the last thirty years than in the thousands of years prior. Our relationship to it, as individuals and as a society, is still evolving, and that evolution is happening in the face of declining western populations. Technology amplifies individual productivity; so why are we all still working 40 hour weeks? Momentum primarily, but more specifically: our population only recently started plateauing. We needed technology to keep up; its the only way. But as population plateaus, technology will naturally take over more. Its not just "fewer people can do more"; it goes from "fewer people can do more for more people" to "fewer people can do more for fewer people", which naturally means they have to do less.
MMT plays into that because: technology is expensive. If we're entering a world where our options are: build a $50B water barrier around Miami or let the city drown, we can't afford to worry about the status of our gold reserves, or whether the blockchain is up today. We wouldn't have the money; we'd chose not to build it; billions of dollars in infrastructure, land, and people would be destroyed; and the economy would be worse off, not better, than if we had just said "blank check do it" and then dealt with the ramifications of that decision tomorrow.
That doesn't mean there won't be ramifications. There always are in complex systems. But people get so focused on the reality we're living, to say "if only we'd have stuck to the way we used to do it", without recognizing that its just as possible you, and all your friends, and all your friends' friends, would not be alive if we had stuck to that old system.
Here's the biggest kink though; generally, well-implemented MMT (which much like well-implemented communism, hasn't been done, but has been written about to great lengths) requires close coordination between monetary and legislative policy; something our government is engineered to not do. We're seeing the impacts of this miscoordination now; there's a strong argument that the biggest source of inflation today has less to with money printing or interest rates, and more to do with core productivity in the sectors experiencing that inflation (energy: oil processing, housing: home building, public transit construction, etc). Core productivity (more factories, more construction, automation, etc) can oftentimes be solved with cheap, targeted money; but the Fed is currently engaged in a show of raising interest rates. Its the one lever they have; every problem is a screw, they have their directive: a hammer. I don't feel this is doom and gloom, today; a lot of the issues we're experiencing are, truly, just the delayed echoes of COVID which will die out, raising interest rates will legitimately help some sources of inflation, and the legislature has demonstrated interest in providing cheap money for productivity improvements (build back better). But, its still how the Fed operates; they have their doctrine and their lever, and its easy to imagine a future where more coordination is necessary to push through massive spending in response to major issues like the climate crisis, declining water supplies, etc, without either succumbing to the crisis, or creating a new economic crisis.
As was said by rossdavidh in the comments, "eyeballing the maps, I don't see a great correlation".
I suspect this might have something to do with perception of supportive community rather than actual numbers. When to-be parents feel like they are on their own and neither $jobPeople, $friendlyPeople nor $familyPeople are actually going to help, they might be inclined to postpone.
Living with parents in a sane multi-generational arrangement might translate to more support and thus more children. Living with parents out of sheer necessity where parents look down on their offspring for not proving themselves in the world probably would not.
But that does not really explain scandinavia either.
I want to add a personal anecdote. I recently moved out at 26. Before moving out I couldn't imagine bringing a girl home. You need space and privacy to mate.
I certainly want to live closer to my parents but the multi-generational arrangement needs to
provide space to live in, I can't share the same flat my parents are living in, come on it's too small.
The problem is having a private space, not living with parents. If parents can provide a flat with a seperate entry, even that would work.
The problem is it is substantially harder to purchase real estate than it was 10-20 years ago. If you are thinking of multi-generational housing, shouldn't the family wealth be stored somewhere.
You can of course chip in pay rent etc. But wouldn't it be nice to know that the flat is owned by your parents/family.
From where I come from, this is a normal arrangement.
There are so many additional factors affecting fertility that it’s not even funny.
How about making a map of countries with free/subsidized childcare and comparing it to that fertility map? I’m pretty sure you’d find nearly the same correlation as with “not living with your parents”.
It's not just housing. Subsidized daycare, cost of actually having the baby and so one also play into it. Effectively: if I were to have kids I know it's more or less a zero cost thing for me. Having the baby delivered, taking 6 months off work, then having the baby in day care from age 2 to 5 cost me almost nothing at all.
I didn't have to consider my employment status before having a child, nor where I was in my career, or whether I could afford medical bills. Financially, it was a smaller "step" than e.g. buying a used car or moving. As it should be. It's a big enough step and responsibility without all the finance nonsense attached.
One issue I see with the current debate: people are comparing e.g. Italy to Sweden. Then if you're Bryan Caplan you call for housing reform, and if you're a more typical academic you call for parenting leave and other Scandi social welfare policies.
Sure, Italy has fertility of 1.27. But Norway has fertility of 1.53! Comparing these is like comparing two ends of the Titanic. One end is sinking underwater. The other is relatively higher. But it will be underwater too a few hours later. 1.27 augurs rapid population collapse. 1.53 augurs slightly slower population collapse.
If you think far-below-replacement fertility is bad, then Scandinavia does not have the solution.
Man, this is a dumb take. Even if there were a correlation (which there apparently isn't, per https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31899793), there's zero way you can say that there's any sort of causational relationship.
Look, I can do this too:
* highly-developed western societies have lots of regulation
* highly-developed western societies have low birth rates
* highly-developed western societies have a high percentage of lawyers per capita
After World War II a lot of public housing projects popped up, which were nice communities for working class families. Nowadays this is almost forgotten as public housing has been starved for decades, and is only thought of in most communities as synonymous with poverty and crime. This is the direction the United States went in but not all countries. Public housing funded as it was in the New Deal era can solve this problem as well.
Public housing using new construction technologies, I think this is the answer. Let's build cheap high-rise buildings. We can expand vertically why not use it.
As people become more educated, the minimum standard and availability of utilities also becomes a factor, like access to the internet. Building anywhere in unlimited numbers wont work if there is no net access. Since the 90's when looking at property, internet access has been a factor in the decision making process, especially so with Covid and the work from home routine.
Now a days, its having a property which exceeds todays low quality building standards, isnt n housing estate slave box on some brown field site that will keep health professionals busy the longer someone lives on the site in a country where the politicians are too stupid to hide their criminal association, which pretty much rules out everywhere except Antartica!
As someone below said, "correlation does not imply causation."
That. X being correlated with Y can mean that Z is causing both. "Fertility" and "living with parents" are each highly dependent variables, dependent on all sorts of things.
Let's remember "natural experiments." Aren't there any?
A country that suddenly deregulated housing? Where there were suddenly major tax incentives for having kids (looking at you, Hungary)? Two countries that are exactly the same except that one has dramatically different housing costs, or fertility?
Without some data like that, I'm not buying any causation arguments.
Fertility will improve when there is familial and community support. You don’t need a big house to increase fertility. families need reliable child care and that’s possible with multi generational families.
Africa, China and Asia have healthy fertility because they have community and multigenerational family units. Not big homes.
"Asia" is pretty broad, but India was at 2.2 in 2020 and dropping pretty rapidly; as of earlier this spring it hit 2.0. Note that the Statista numbers are moving 5-year averages, so the "spot" number for India is lower than the number you see on that graph.
China had a literal one child policy to combat exponential growth in population. India incentivised small families.
Population grows exponentially and it is also a function of time. I don’t think we should look at it in decades but rather as through lenses that capture time in centuries.
The operative word being "had". It hasn't had one in a while.
> Population grows exponentially
It really depends. It does if you assume TFR is a constant, but it tends to not be constant.
> I don’t think we should look at it in decades but rather as through lenses that capture time in centuries.
In the "centuries" timeframe, technological change (much reduced infant mortality, availability of contraception, career opportunities, etc) pretty much dominates the TFR situation.
> best way to make large homes affordable is to allow the construction industry to build freely.
No. Not even close. Once developers get into this, they always seek to achieve the highest price as possible.
> Deregulation leads to low prices which leads to ample living space
This is only true when there is desirable livable space, affordable materials to build the housing, cheap labor, and honest people who are doing the construction.
Regulation front: I do agree that overly strict zoning causes a lot of issues. However, we have an aggressively (some call it exceptional individualism) caustic population of people.
Economics still will fly in the face of the author here: An increase in population and a push for a mass audience.. that's going to create a scaricity in places they want to live. That will increase the total overall cost (cost to government for services, infrastructure, infrastructure pressure [this is more of a case in road based transit], land space/value, etc)
> No. Not even close. Once developers get into this, they always seek to achieve the highest price as possible.
If only competition was possible, to drive down developers’ market power, so their economic profits were driven down. One might do this by allowing many developers to build, and making the factors of production going into making housing plentiful. One might make building tall buildings legal, or building densely, for example.
In my book, the end of the population explosion is good news.
Only the super-rich reaps the benefits of having a very large population.
I am pretty sure we can adapt easily before going extinct.
This is not a problem yet, and we're historically not very good at predicting the future, it won't happen overnight.
By the way, it is my understanding that politicians in Ancient Rome were also worried about the natality issue, for some time as you can see here :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lex_Julia
It is my pet theory that "modern" religions were inspired by those concerns and incorporated them in their own texts.
On Twitter, Elon Musk has been posting a lot about how people should have more children. I'm mentioning it not because of him, instead because it offers insight into a common misconception.
Those threads show thousands and thousands of replies by young people about how they can barely take care of themselves. High cost of living, no access to housing, unaffordable healthcare, etc.
What is not intuitive is that this reasoning, even though it feels so right and just, is entirely wrong. If you were to be wealthier, you'd not have more children. Add even more wealth and you'd have even fewer, not more. The wealthier people are, the less children they have on average.
The other insight you'll get is the gloomy image people have of the future. This really needs work. As humanity we need to have a better story than "it's all downhill from here".
In my annectdotal experience the same people who tout wanting to support and hire from a diverse pool of applicants to not miss the next Einstein, don't extend that logic into the Unborn.
I think the way we are likely to solve our greatest issues like climate change through having more smart, well-educated, well-raised, and loved children. So if you're privileged enough to have the capacity to raise such children it's probably one of the greatest things you can do for the future health of this planet (and if you still feel torn about the overall population rate you can still apply this logic to adoption).
If all the altruistic people depopulate themselves, then only the least altruistic will remain.
I don't buy into this theory. We have plenty of minds currently and are failing to avoid and solve planetary scale issues. My take is that this is an incentive problem, not a lack of cognitive capacity.
