The root cause behind this is childlessness. Families were bigger in the 60s so things had to be cheaper for families to afford it. Now, there is sufficient demand for these 'family' activities amongst childless adults, who have more income per individual, and a higher willingness to spend on these entertainment activities (whereas families with kids often spend income on kid's education and activities). This has the effect of making things even worse for children.
> Consider that perhaps your causality is reversed. Families are smaller now because existing is more expensive relative to wages.
Perhaps we're both right, and it's a cycle. Smaller families cause these kinds of expenses to grow relative to wages, which cause smaller families. These sorts of things are not unheard of.
It's very very rare that decreasing demand increases the cost of something, unless it's been entirely replaced by something else (e.g. horse carriages vs. cars), which -- when it does happen -- is mostly due to supply side reconfiguration that leads to higher marginal costs.
So no, I don't think your causal direction is plausible without strong corroborating evidence.
That is the current narrative being pushed by conservatives. All our problems are due to selfish individuals not having children. I suppose we can blame inflation too on all those child less dual income families as well? I mean if they had less money they wouldn't be able to buy up all the things and prices would be lower for everyone right?
I'm actually not making any value judgement. It's an observation. One of the effects of fewer children is that companies that previously marketed towards children, now market mostly towards adults that are still able to live out their childhood fantasies.
onestly, when it comes to families, I actually think this is a good thing, because Disney, MLB, etc, are terrible organizations that don't deserve much support. Disney happily kowtows to China's every whim, and its new content is ultimately not that great (save for a select few films). Professional sports has ruined our education system in this country (school-to-pro-sports pipeline), that disproportionately affects minority males, who are encouraged to spend more time attempting to achieve a dream that they are unlikely to (making a sports team) and little time doing those things that will almost certainly help them in life.
> One of the effects of fewer children is that companies that previously marketed towards children, now market mostly towards adults that are still able to live out their childhood fantasies.
Companies aren't shifting focus away from Children so much as they're expanding their focus beyond them.
While the birth rate in the US has been in decline since the early 70s, the population and the number of children has largely grown. It's really only in the last 5-10 years that we've seen a decline in the number of children.
The reason you see companies like Disney expanding into China and abroad is because they're chasing growth, not due to decline. The market always demands growth.
