Americans Aren’t Making Babies, and That’s Bad for the Economy

https://www.bloombergquint.com/businessweek/coronavirus-pandemic-americans-aren-t-making-babies-in-crisis

by elsewhen • 6 years ago

57 198 6 years ago

bloombergquint.com

chishaku• 6 years ago

We need to rethink the economy.

apta5• 6 years ago

A good start is banning interest and other parasitic practices that underly the banking system.

December_Stars• 6 years ago

If our economy damns us if we do have a baby but damns us if we don't maybe the economy is the issue, not us.

eanzenberg• 6 years ago

More to do with the media telling you you’re damned if you do and damned if you dont.

toomuchtodo3• 6 years ago

Ignore the media, make time for your own research and critical thinking.

mediaguilt• 6 years ago

More hate towards the media and always saying the media is guilty of everything is not going to solve anything. FYI biggest media companies are now tech companies, So what are we doing to improve things?

cwhiz3• 6 years ago

I don't need the media to tell me either of those things. I can do arithmetic. Our economy relies on consumerism expanding infinitely. If people are having fewer babies that means fewer consumers. The easiest solution is to increase immigration but that's not such a popular topic in some political circles. It is easy to connect the dots here and see that there are problems on the horizon.

On having children, the math is even more clear and obvious. Where I live it is estimated to cost $350,000 to raise a child to age 18 and this number does not include any type of college investment. Let's assume I want two kids and on the second one I miraculously get a discount on everything of 50%. And let's also assume I invest in a 529 so I can give my kids $120,000 each to go to college. We're talking 2020 dollars.

I'll need to spend ~$3,000/month to raise the two kids. Not too bad when you put it that way. However... what is the opportunity cost of that? If I am conservative it's about $1.1 million. If the market works out well for me it's $2.2 million or more.

And that's the real cost to me to raise two children. Somewhere between $1 million and $2 million. And people wonder why American adults are having fewer and fewer children? Humans are great at adjusting to their environments and rationalizing their decisions so when people tell me about how much they love being a parent I take it with a huge grain of salt. You can learn to love just about anything, even captivity.

DetroitThrow• 6 years ago

I see what you're saying, but our choices really do result in either negative outcomes for us as individuals by having to eat increasingly large costs of child rearing at the expense of agency/disposable income/enjoyment, or negative outcomes for us as a collective in which we put a greater societal burden on the individuals of the next generations. We could ignore the latter choice's consequence and go about living blissfully, but I think that's a choice to delay our awareness of that consequence until it's right upon us. For the most part, people weren't previously coerced into having babies - it was a great cultural pride for my parents and their parents.

Nowadays, I hear my friends say "I wish we could have kids sooner, but we can't afford the house in the nice neighborhood/the detriment to our careers/a quality education/healthcare..." in contrast to the stories from a couple generations ago about how a union job could support a whole household or that almost everyone could afford healthcare. It's quite bleak.

fennecfoxen• 6 years ago

It’s housing and education prices that are the real issue. That’s part of the economy, but it’s regulated enough and controlled outside the usual price mechanisms such that it might reasonable to regard the roots of the problem lying outside “the economy”.

We need to reform zoning and build more housing in productive cities near the jobs, and we need to shrink higher education budgets and refocus on what really matters in an education. As a start.

im3w1l• 6 years ago

Because of rules against housing discrimination, a high price is perceived as the only possibility for keeping a neighborhood safe. If a neighborhood could pick and choose that only law abiding people can live there, it could be both safe and cheap. But it's not like that will happen. So here we are.

entropicdrifter• 6 years ago

Maybe this should be rephrased as, "Americans have little hope for the future, and that's bad for the economy", since that seems to be the root issue for more than just this particular expression of American hopelessness

HenryKissinger3• 6 years ago

Lower birth rates are also happening in social-democratic European countries with extensive welfare states, social safety nets, and good upward mobility. It's not a uniquely American problem.

Meanwhile, families in war-torn African countries, people whose best aspirations in life are to own a flock of sheep and live on a farm, are having 6+ kids.

Low birth rates may be exacerbated at the moment by the economy, but people's preference for their careers and the quality and availability of modern entertainment (why raise kids when you can travel, binge watch shows on Netflix, play video games, etc.) are more probable causes.

devalgo3• 6 years ago

Low birth rates may be exacerbated at the moment by the economy, but people's preference for their careers and the quality and availability of modern entertainment (why raise kids when you can travel, binge watch shows on Netflix, play video games, etc.) are more probable causes

Your comment fits your name, it is callous, lacking empathy and painfully out of touch. The idea that Netflix is the reason people aren't having kids in simply absurd...

s1t52• 6 years ago

Also, the economy is bad which means that Americans have little hope for the future.

HenryKissinger3• 6 years ago

The official unemployment rate is only 11.1%. 9/10 Americans who want a job have a job. And new business formation for Q2 2020 is at an all-time high: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/BUSAPPSAUS

mac010215• 6 years ago

Well it depends. People can have lots of hope for the future without wanting children. And even in that case, low fertility can be bad for the economy (at least medium term).

rezmason• 6 years ago

Seconded. I deeply resent the overall tone of this article, framing childbirth and family planning as if every couple kept a damn Excel spreadsheet and talked casually about "biological clocks".

Economists!

The author briefly points out that children born today might live to see the 22nd Century, but clearly hasn't spent much time actually envisioning that century, using humanity's apparent trajectory as a basis.

I will need to know as a concerned, prospective parent, to which post-cataclysmic vassal should my hypothetical child indenture themselves to, if they wish to maximize their chances of living through the Age of Thirst?

What schools in my area can teach my child the skills necessary to deescalate an armed conflict with a band of Sand Slayers laying siege to a former Amazon distribution center?

And in all seriousness, what can I pass down to them that would make up for the fact that I've dragged them into a world set on fire and wasted by unchecked greed?

And did you notice that this article didn't mention adoption whatsoever? That there are already kids in need of a family, whose parents apparently never drafted the Excel spreadsheet, and are suffering through this grim period along with us, whether we're here for them or not? I guess that information doesn't fit into their dated narrative, worrying over their youngsters' biological clocks, seeing a countdown timer on their own contribution to a gene pool instead of wishing the best for their society.

shostack• 6 years ago

I'll personally be impressed if humanity as a whole makes it to the 22nd century with global warming and current geopolitical tensions.

tomrod6• 6 years ago

Single income household with three relatively recent babies here. That doesn't make me an expert, just someone on the front lines of this.

The article makes me say "no duh". The economic tradeoff of kids versus no kids is crazy in most places in the US. If we hadn't been stuck in a cult earlier in life we probably would have waited to start having kids.

In order to keep up you basically have to have two income streams or a solid business.

Ericson23142• 6 years ago

Amazing answer

uptown• 6 years ago

"If we hadn't been stuck in a cult earlier in life we probably would have waited to start having kids."

Literally or figuratively?

tomrod6• 6 years ago

We were stuck by choice, until we both gained a sense of rationality and started to understand logic. Left soon after.

war10254• 6 years ago

Looking back through his comment history, the "cult" he is referring to is the Mormon church.

toomuchtodo3• 6 years ago

We only had two kids because we’re mostly financial independent in our 30s from choices I made in my 20s.

Had we not been well off, I would’ve gotten snipped before the first kid. $500 versus hundreds of thousands of dollars per kid is a no brainer (sidenote: cryopreserve some tissue before you do this, it’s only $1500-$2000 and gives you options in the future).

America is designed for extraction, not nurturing the future. We’re bouncing to Oceania (AUS and Taz specifically) in the future (universal healthcare).

TLDR Don’t have kids unless you’re rich or you can live somewhere that values you having them, or just values people in general.

tomrod6• 6 years ago

We would love Oceania or Scandinavia/Iceland. How do you get started doing something like this?

kspacewalk2• 6 years ago

The solution is clear - cults.

codysc• 6 years ago

Very true and covid has made this so much worse.

Distance learning is manageable for my kids as they're a little older and I can work from home. But families with younger kids where both parents have to go out to work and can't possibly afford childcare are getting hammered.

As always, the poor get the worse of the effects, and children are really compounding that right now.

andy_adams• 6 years ago

This does not match my experience. I live in an average cost-of-living area and know lots of large families (3+ kids) living off a single income, sometimes in the $12-15/hour range. Life is challenging for them but not impossible.

What does "In order to keep up" mean, exactly?

IanDrake5• 6 years ago

Andy - your experience doesn't matter for several reasons.

1st - It doesn't fit with what the majority here believe.

2nd - It dangerous to spread the idea that people aren't victims and they're just experiencing the effects of their own choice to live in an expensive city.

refurb7• 6 years ago

This is key. It’s not like people can’t afford kids, they can. It’s that they can’t afford kids and live in a high cost urban center and have all the other luxuries of life at the same time.

econcon6• 6 years ago

If you go interview few collage age girls, they'll will tell you:

1. I want to study

2. Get a job

3. Date between the education/career

4. Travel the world (she will not say travel with her boyfriend or partner)

5. Marry and have kid (most will not talk about kid or marriage at all) but a few will.

But realistically it takes a 20 year old girl atleast 15 years to achieve all that she listed. Most of the times it's not even possible for many of them.

That gives you age of 35 when they start thinking about marriage or kids. From there fertility doesn't cooperate with you and sometimes it even gets hard to find a commited partner.

But marriage and kid is the last thing on their list and the things that come before it are not easy, not feasible for everyone to travel world.

mindvirus3• 6 years ago

It's nuts. Living in a big US city, with two young kids, daycare alone for them is $5k/month - so that's about $100k of pre-tax income, not to mention probably $2k/month extra spent on a larger apartment than we'd otherwise need.

We can afford it, but think of what this does to the income gap and GDP. If either of us made less than $100k/year, it'd make sense for one of us to stop working for a while to look after the kids. This means that already well off people have a big advantage of being able to have a double income, while that's denied to everyone else.

It feels like COVID makes this even worse - at least daycare is only a few years before public school takes its place. With that gone, kids need full time care for longer. Does this mean we'll see people dropping out of the workforce in big numbers? What does that mean for recovery?

How do other places and countries manage it?

ilstormcloud4• 6 years ago

Third world resident here. $5k a month income would get you living like a king here (with in house nanny) so to hear you have to spend that on daycare alone is insane. If i may ask, What is it about daycare that makes it this expensive? It seems demand is high and the business is profitable if they can charge that much so why isn't competition driving price to be affordable?

armandososa• 6 years ago

Mexican here: the state provides free/cheap daycare for working mom's children starting at ~12 weeks old.

thorwasdfasdf• 6 years ago

And a lot of regulations make it worse than it needs to be by limiting number of kids per classroom/teacher, it just drives up the expenses even more.

Here in CA Daycare costs 1800$/mo and 3000$/mo in SF. Out in Houston, where the standard of living is much higher, I hear it's only 600$/mo.

spacedcowboy3• 6 years ago

I and my sister both had our first kids within 14 days of each other, she's in the UK, I'm in the US.

She:

- Elected for a home birth, so the NHS put an ambulance on stand-by outside her house once the midwife said things were coming to a head, in case things went south.

- Had regular home-visits by the nurse after the birth until she was happy without them, which focus was both the child and my sister's well-being. no question too foolish to ask, practical advice, that sort of thing, you know ... support.

- Got 6 months paid off work (state + company perks)

- Got free daycare when the kid was young.

- Gets child-support payments from the government every 2 (?) weeks. Not much, but every little counts.

- Gets free-at-the-point-of-need healthcare, of course.

- Gets excellent free schooling, all the schools are rated above average where she lives, in a Northern city not known for its largesse.

- was kicked out of hospital in 3 days because that's what the insurance would pay for

- had the nurses give me stuff to handle the first few days (bottles, nappies, etc.) under the table because they weren't actually allowed to.

- Got no support after we left the building

- Got 2 weeks paid leave.

- Almost had a nervous breakdown because of what we didn't know, had parents fly out to help and finally got some sleep after 2 weeks (he's an "active child"...)

- Had to bump up the insurance costs significantly from X+Spouse to X+family, because there's no X+Spouse+1, so we're indirectly paying for those with X+spouse+4

- Paid a fortune for daycare in the valley when it became time.

- Realised that our designated local school was bloody awful (3/10) despite being in a "good school district". Didn't win the lottery. So we pay for private school, currently about $15k/year

I can afford it, but the difference between the "people before profits" approach the UK takes, with its much more diverse social safety net, and the "profits über alles" approach the US takes is stark. The only reason I'm still in this country is because my partner wants to stay, if I had my way, I'd be living on the beach in the UK, probably retired...

Oh, and she's an air-hostess for BA, her partner works for telecoms companies doing their wiring at the top of poles. THey're not particularly well off (I have a lot more disposable income as a FANNG s/w engineer) but their actual life is a lot easier.

dgut• 6 years ago

Is that the case everywhere in the US?

In Spain, a good private nursery ("guarderia") cost tops €250-350 per month anywhere outside of Madrid and Barcelona. Children of low income households have free public daycare. From the age of 3y, children go to "school" and it's 100% free from that point on. You have the choice between public (secular education), consertado (semi-private with more emphasis on Christianity, science is not discriminated), or private (usually bi- or trilingual). The last option isn't free and can cost €400-1000 monthly. Books aren't free unless, again, low-income. Giving birth, check-ups and the like is free.

In hindsight, it's quite perfect -- but the economy is currently in a terrible state.

JamesBarney• 6 years ago

Why is day care so expensive?

If you had an adult who watched just 6 kids they'd make 180k a year which seems like an insane amount of money to make sure a kid doesn't stick his/her finger in a socket.

If instead they made closer to the median salary then childcare would be closer to $500/month per kid which seems much more reasonable.

RestlessMind6• 6 years ago

A big city in the US is going to have a lot of reasonable-sounding regulations like: minimum wage of $15/hr, requirement of max 4 kids per teacher until the age of 2, insurances, square footage etc. (An example of 26-page regulations in California[1]).

Say you need 9 hr care every day from 9-6. That adds up to 45hrs/week. Even pooling 4 kids together, you are looking at ~700$/week cost per teacher at minimum wage. Have 1.5-2x factor for more experienced or more skilled teachers. Add another 2-3x for rent, insurance, utilities, admin expenses, backup teacher expenses etc. And you are looking at 2K-4K per teacher (or 500-1K per kid) expense per week, or 2-4K per month per kid. Completely aligns with my experience in SV, across childcare centers of various qualities.

[1] https://www.cdss.ca.gov/Portals/9/Regs/1cccman.pdf?ver=2019-...

war10254• 6 years ago

Single income household with three relatively recent babies here as well (4, 2, 2).

To me, the thing that strangles young families financially is child care. We've been able to sidestep that by having my wife stay home. The current response to single income households is "think how oppressed the homemaker is!", so they aren't really in vogue right now.

Yea, my wife doesn't have a career. The truth is she wasn't on track to have one anyway. She was managing a coffee shop before we had our first. That's not a "climb the corporate ladder" situation.

mac010215• 6 years ago

The thing is, depending on the power dynamics in your family, she might or might not lose a lot by not having a job.

If she's a homemaker, you have the ability, if not the desire, to hold all of the purse strings and possibly, in effect, monopolize all of the power to make decisions for the family - where to live, what to buy, where and when to travel....

If she works, even only earning $12k, her position in the family (when you're a controlling husband) is greatly strengthened.

To be clear, I'm sure YOUR actual relationship with your specific wife is much more egalitarian, so being a homemaker probably works well for her.

Press2forEN2• 6 years ago

"think how oppressed the homemaker is!"

Associating homemaking and raising children with oppression is probably part of the reason why modern society is not reproducing.

You may receive a comment soon regarding the opportunity cost of your wife staying home. As if she is an object of economic activity who is unfashionably compelled to pause her value generation in order to raise kids.

apta5• 6 years ago

The current response to single income households is "think how oppressed the homemaker is!", so they aren't really in vogue right now.

Not to mention that it's much better to have the mom take care of the children instead of a stranger.

econcon6• 6 years ago

I was discussing it with a friend who is pretty wealthy and entirely self made and I learned that...

The reason my friend is not having kid has nothing to do with economics of having kid.

He has plenty of money to support 10 or even 15kids based on the numbers some people posted on this thread.

Reasons why he does not want to have kids:

1. He dated like 5 different women, most of them confessed their love to him. But they were always busy at education/career, he lost interest in them and decided to shift focus to his career. After years, he found himself to be alone but successful.

2. After having achieved success, he didn't want to take deals where he could lose half of my income like alimony. It took a decade to build this much wealth, why risk losing it with marriage.

3. He needed love/support/care the most when he was younger. Now that he is much older, what's the purpose of all of that even if it comes to him now?

4. He told me that all the women who rejected him when he was young are now confessing that they always were interested in him. He told me that what people are attracted to do doesn't change, later in life they start supressing what they are truly attracted to for things that they logically want from others.

Not sure how many people can relate to it.

apta5• 6 years ago

It took a decade to build this much wealth, why risk losing it with marriage.

Nothing to do with marriage per se, but more about how it's implemented in the US.

watwut8• 6 years ago

So basically, he wants a woman that does not have career or education, focuses everything on him, but like, he does not want to pay alimony of it fails after years of her not having career.

As young, he also wanted the kind of support he was not and is not willing to provide.

So, like, yeah. Him being single is good outcome. From all the choices, he wants the good selfish stuff and don't want the tradeoff.

Konohamaru• 6 years ago

If we hadn't been stuck in a cult earlier in life we probably would have waited to start having kids.

You weren't stuck in a cult. Consensus figurehead reality (CFR) was vying for your attention and you were looking for an escape. Judging by the fact that it helped you defy CFR on the most important life decision (reproduction), you chose wisely.

Also the ruling class discourages reproduction due to the tactic of Parasitic Castration. Raising kids takes money--money that could have been diverted to the ruling class.

war10254• 6 years ago

I can't make heads or tails of this and am hoping you could elaborate so I can understand what I'm missing.

tomrod6• 6 years ago

Please don't trivialize my experience by making the anecdote support or invalidate pet sociological constructs.

Balgair• 6 years ago

I'll echo this as well and add in that Women's healthcare is just a circus.

It's crazy dependent on the provider, the hyper-specifics of the mother, and the peculiarities of the MD/RN. It's as if they all got together to make it so that no single person could ever be billed the same (to paraphrase Voltaire's quip on Ancien Régime France).

The bills, months and years after, are insane. I would not be surprised if the children had children of their own, and yet still you'd get bills for pre-natal care.

Then you throw in the near pervasive distrust in the medical community of women's pain and knowledge of their own bodies. Like, you're an OB-GYN, you deal with women all day, how are you thicker than concrete about this. GAH!

minikites2• 6 years ago

Immigration would help this issue, but half the nation believes nativist and xenophobic rhetoric, so expanding immigration is a non-starter.

DoofusOfDeath2• 6 years ago

I'm sure it's unintentional, but to reach a 50% number, your comment perhaps lumps together two groups that are worth treating separately:

(a) Persons who oppose large-scale immigration in general. Some of whom (perhaps a majority) oppose it for reasons you abhor: racism, cultural elitism, etc.

(b) Persons who oppose only illegal immigration. Some (most?) of whom do so for reasons entirely unrelated to racism or cultural elitism.

People sometimes refuse to differentiate (a) from (b), perhaps on the assumption that most persons espousing (b) are actually using it as a fig leaf for (a).

Personally, I'm in (b-not-a), and it's very frustrating to discuss the topic with people who refuse to believe that I'm arguing in good faith.

minikites2• 6 years ago

The idea of there even being a "right way" to immigrate is very recent and tied to racism. The "legal" immigration process is so artificially arduous and strict that unless someone who believes (b) is out there arguing and voting for sweeping and comprehensive immigration reform, they essentially believe (a) by default.

throwaway0684• 6 years ago

Immigration is fine, as long as we stop importing cheap products from China and bring factory jobs back.

chadlavi• 6 years ago

this is another one of those "why aren't millennials buying diamonds?!?!" out of touch takes

SpicyLemonZest• 6 years ago

It's Bloomberg, after all. I don't think there's anything wrong with studying the financial implications of a social issue by themselves.

superhuzza• 6 years ago

No it isn't at all, the article is just pointing out the potential consequences down the road. The article is perfectly cognizant that having a child is an economic burden to individual couples:

"Unromantic as it sounds, planning a family is a numbers exercise that factors in the age of the would-be mother, access to affordable child care, college costs, income, and job security. Toss in a national health emergency and an economic crisis that invites comparisons to the Great Depression, and the benefits of parenthood no longer pencil out for many."

hstaab2• 6 years ago

Speak for yourself, I made one this year. For the economy of course.

speedgoose3• 6 years ago

Congratulations!

hstaab2• 6 years ago

Thanks! It’s a first for me. Nothing better.

dandanqu82• 6 years ago

You need to make more than two to break the trend. Everyone person needs to have three or more for our growth metrics! Has it been three months since birth? Why haven’t you started on the next one yet?

bantunes• 6 years ago

Maybe people will start listening to degrowthers like Jason Hickel that advocate for a rethinking of our economical systems' reliance on infinite growth on a finite planet https://www.jasonhickel.org/blog/2018/10/27/degrowth-a-call-...

nerdponx2• 6 years ago

This is basically missing from the Jones paper that is cited in the article here. That model, as far as I can tell from my initial skimming, doesn't allow for something like "human societies adopting different customs and policies as population growth goes to 0 or below."

GoToRO• 6 years ago

People want to spend more time with their children. I propose the 3 days workweek.

kylec• 6 years ago

Once schools closed and my coworkers started working from home due to the pandemic, I observed the opposite. Endless, unbounded time with their children generally made my coworkers less excited about having any more.

bickeringyokel• 6 years ago

Unbound, while working 8 hours a day on your computer? That's not exactly quality family time.

neltnerb3• 6 years ago

It is possible that both things are true.

People want to see their children more.

People don't want to have to see their children more. And I don't think people want to have to coordinate educating their children on top of everything else they need to do.

It's the unavoidable part of it, I think. If it was a vacation with a clear end date it'd be different.

As long as people don't start blaming millenials and zoomers for not having kids when you see quotes like "60% of renters in West Virginia are at risk of eviction". This is happening because of economics, it isn't being done to economics.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/27/how-the-eviction-crisis-will...

Data link:

https://app.powerbi.com/view?r=eyJrIjoiNzRhYjg2NzAtMGE1MC00N...

watwut8• 6 years ago

That is not time with children. That is time working remote with colleges remote while yelling at kids to stop making the noise. While also having second job as teacher.

nerdponx2• 6 years ago

The Charles Jones working paper cited in the article is here: https://web.stanford.edu/~chadj/emptyplanet.pdf. His papers homepage is here: https://web.stanford.edu/~chadj/papers.html

I haven't had the time to read it in full, but keep in mind that the paper lays out a model. It is not the model, it is just one of many many possible ways to model the world. As the aphorism goes, "all models are wrong, but some are useful." It's important to consider how and why a model is "wrong", in order to evaluate how "useful" it is.

AdmiralAsshat• 6 years ago

It is your patriotic duty to condemn yourself and your progeny to poverty by having babies you can't afford, so that somewhere out there, your retired parents can enjoy the benefits of social security and a slightly-better-performing 401k.

RestlessMind6• 6 years ago

Wrong. You are currently paying social security for your parents and your work is propping up the valuations of their portfolio companies.

Your babies will be paying, not for their grandparents, but for you and your generation.

echelon• 6 years ago

A few ideas:

- Grant tax incentives or write offs for children born. It'd be incredibly unfair and unconstitutional to scale with kids' grades due to socioeconomic backgrounds being a major factor, but perhaps educational expenses can be subsidized. Or maybe we should just put more money into early education.

- Make family leave a mandatory benefit for parents of all children, born or adopted.

- Open up to immigration. Don't shut it down. This seems like the simplest solution.

- Maybe we don't need a bigger population?

dustingetz• 6 years ago

"Sufficiently Powerful Optimization of Any Known Target Destroys All Value" https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2019/12/31/does-big-business-ha...

ck425• 6 years ago

If the economy relies on population growth then the economy needs to change. Doing some back of an envelope calculations:

Current Human Population: 7.80E+09 Current worldwide growth rate: 1.05% Current Land Surface of Earth: 1.49E+14

If we presume the latter figures stay the same (they won't) then in a mere 944 years the human population would be such that there's only one square meter of land per human alive.

Granted we'd probably kill each other well before we reached that point, but the point remains, we need to figure out how to make the economy work with zero population growth.

baq3• 6 years ago

If we presume the latter figures stay the same (they won't) then in a mere 944 years the human population would be such that there's only one square meter of land per human alive.

not a problem - with the current energy consumption growth we'll boil off the oceans in half of that time.

neltnerb3• 6 years ago

Heck, at that biodensity just human body heat would probably boil off the oceans... if the people could feed themselves with nuclear greenhouses underground to avoid the limits of solar insolation.

But the point that economics assumes as a tenet a clearly nonphysical core assumption is a problem. It is weird to me how hard it is to find academic literature on this.

I guess they all figure it's either a problem that's so long term it's presumptuous to try to solve it so early on, that the definition of "growth" will just change to make it always true, or the math is just hard. My guess is the first two to be honest, they're plenty smart when it comes to math... just not always making realistic models.

s1t52• 6 years ago

Global population growth is already slowing down and the global population will likely peak withing the next 100 years and then slowly decline.

orwin• 6 years ago

then slowly decline.

Yeah, hopefully. In all likelihood, it will be "sharply decline" because of overheating (wetbulb temperature for more than 8 straight hour predicted around all tropical zone for 2080), and probably war for natural ressources (well, water and food mostly).

refurb7• 6 years ago

If the economy relies on population growth then the economy needs to change.

How?

If you want a better standard of living, including generous social programs, the money has to come from somewhere. If the economy isn't growing, then your "pot of money" isn't growing either.

w-j-w• 6 years ago

I think part of the issue may be in how we measure the success of our society. Developed nations may be wealthy, but it should be clear by now that "more wealth" isn't the most pressing issue faced by people in developed nations. Instead, maybe we should focus on why we don't have time for children, or why we kill ourselves at 10x the rate we did when we were impoverished farmers.

Press2forEN2• 6 years ago

I would be interested in hearing arguments as to why the social contract doesn't obligate all able men and women to replace themselves for the perpetuation of its other benefits.

watwut8• 6 years ago

Cause practically, that amounts to state sanctioned rape.

Ericson23142• 6 years ago

Because productivity has gone up so much over the past decades, we should have the same standard of living with less working ours / higher ratio of retires. Full stop.

Screw "growth", raise the cost of labor so that we find all the unproductive weakest links and fix them.

standardUser2• 6 years ago

This is nothing that increased immigration can't solve. Immigration has insulated the US from the age curve that has afflicted most Western nations for generations.

coredog64• 6 years ago

Unpopular comment ahead.

We need people to pay taxes and provide services for the young and the elderly. In general, that requires a high trust environment. Wholesale importation of immigrants without a plan to integrate them into the environment is not a high trust environment. One (very probable) outcome is the large community of unintegrated immigrants will detach from the responsibilities being placed on them. At which point we also haven’t solved the demographic problem that immigration is supposed to solve.

standardUser2• 6 years ago

Immigration is the one and only formula the United States has used to grow into the largest economy and among the highest standards of living in the world.

I'm not sure why you imagine this strategy is suddenly problematic.

"At which point we also haven’t solved the demographic problem that immigration is supposed to solve."

I also don't follow the logic of this line at all. Why would new immigrants working and paying taxes and having children not help the demographic situation?

jgwil2• 6 years ago

One (very probable) outcome is the large community of unintegrated immigrants will detach from the responsibilities being placed on them.

What do you mean by that? That they will stop working and paying taxes? Do you have any evidence to support that assertion?

ntsplnkv2• 6 years ago

Increased immigration is another old world idea.

We don't have factories lining the shores of the 3 rivers in Pittsburgh making coke, iron, and steel.

Bringing in hordes of uneducated masses does little for the US anymore, and Trump has turned off the only beneficial sources of immigration (educated) the US has - but this is also a limited resource.

JoeAltmaier• 6 years ago

Anecdata: I have three. The youngest is at the age I got married, still single. The oldest is older than I was when I had all of them; not planning on any. The middle one is in Silicon Valley and too distracted by all that to even date.

izzydata• 6 years ago

Maybe the current economic system is not good for humanity. An economy based on an infinitely expanding population is a pyramid scheme bound to collapse eventually. Why does everything have to be based on endless growth rather than maintaining a net neutral?

peterangular4• 6 years ago

Truth be told, I have a cushy tech job and I'm still scared s_tless every day of losing everything. Also, economically speaking, I'm probably who should be having a kid right now. Hard no. Not with these risks/anxieties. Get sick, lose it all - I've experienced it first hand.

I feel like I don't have any sort of social safety net. I need so much more than I do right now to responsibly have a child and actually provide for their future (in the US, in 2020).

pjc50• 6 years ago

"Do this incredibly difficult, expensive and slightly risky thing for the Economy, an abstract concept which will not benefit you personally" is just not a convincing sales pitch.

If you want that to change, you have to change one of those factors. Pick one. Or several.

The physical effort of labour or child-rearing is not yet reducible technologially. The cost may be, but since that gets into questions of "welfare" it will be unpopular - people who themselves feel struggling to provide for their children are hardly likely to want to provide for the children of others. The risk is a similar question: America has a surprisingly high maternal mortality rate, and a notoriously difficult healthcare system for those who are not lucky with their employer's insurance.

Wider social purpose? Is there such a thing in America, over and above money?

platz• 6 years ago

if it's true that a couple might be taking more risk than normal by choosing to have a baby during a pandemic, then it may also be true that those pandemic babies will grow up in an environment where they are more scarce and therefore more in demand, and so will enjoy advantages that they would otherwise have to compete against each other for, compared to the norm.

devalgo3• 6 years ago

Between increasing economic uncertainty, student loan debt, no mandated maternity/paternity leave, no sick leave, no vacation time, etc. etc... Is it any wonder Millennials aren't having kids?

tootahe454• 6 years ago

Everyone is always quick to blame their economic hardships as usual when this thread comes up.

The fact is women don't want to reproduce or even be seen with a man <= to them in income, status and education. Women increasingly outdoing men in these three areas is the #1 'problem' here. I've noticed all of the women in my circle who did well in education and are pursuing white collar jobs tend to be permanently single (not that i ask them), they look down on my blue collar peers as stupid even when those men earn more.

peterangular4• 6 years ago

Everyone is always quick to blame their economic hardships as usual when this thread comes up. The fact is women don't want to reproduce or even be seen with a man [...]

So let's blame women? Just making sure I'm reading this right. As a man who's been around the block a few times in corporate America, women are NOT outdoing us in "these three areas" like you seem to posit...

This comment feels like mental gymnastics to justify misogyny.

tootahe454• 6 years ago

I would not blame anyone for their natural instinct.

econcon6• 6 years ago

As a man who's been around the block a few times in corporate America, women are NOT outdoing us in "these three areas" like you seem to posit...

To be fair to OP, women don't have to outdo men to reject 80% men.

For example, usually women opt for men who are better than them financially. [Feel free to refute with data]

In a world where there are lots of jobs making low wages, and very few jobs where you make high income. [Feel free to refute with data]

This leaves us with 80% women earning average wage and 80% men earning average wage.

Now these 80% men are not suitable for them and women select for partners who do well financially. I've seen several papers and surveys on this, feel free to refute this with data

So, now you've 80% women aiming for 20% men who have plenty of choices and they don't want to commit nor settle.

Other than this, education and career has drastically increased the age at which women have kids.

Lots of women I know personally want to have kid - but they suffer from fertility issue mostly because most of them are in late 30s. Is this the right are to have kids? Even if it's, their body is not cooperating with them to achieve this goal.

Other than this, there is one problem that today it's very easy to leave a relationship or marriage, so most don't dream about future when future can change very fast.

speedgoose3• 6 years ago

What do you suggest?

tootahe454• 6 years ago

Not being a bottom 85% male in 2020.

throwaway0684• 6 years ago

What you're saying isn't really far of from the truth (except economic hardship is real). My grandmother's wish for a man she would marry (after my grandfather passed away) was a man who can make a horse dance (we're Cuban), and she eventually did marry again. Today everybody wants everything to be perfect. No wonder, people are bombarded with perfect A, B and C at all times.

jawns• 6 years ago

This doesn't get directly addressed in the article, but the problem goes beyond Americans not making babies. It's also a problem with making families.

In 1968, only 7% of parents with a child in the home were unmarried. In 2017, that had risen to 25%. That rise is partly driven by an increase in couples who are cohabiting but unmarried. In 2017, 35% of unmarried parents were cohabiting.

But cohabiting relationships tend to be less stable than married relationships. Whereas about 20 percent of parents married at the time of their child's birth have split up five years later, that jumps to nearly 50 percent for parents who were cohabiting but unmarried at the time of their child's birth.

There are myriad difficulties associated with the decline of stable marriages among parents. There are economic implications. There are implications for child development and outcomes. There are legal implications, particularly with regard to family courts becoming a party to the relationship.

There are tons of policies that influence these trends, but I would argue that paid parental leave, paid medical leave, flexible work schedules, incentives for attending marriage-prep classes and parenting classes, and other social welfare programs have the potential to move the needle.

It's unfortunate that we live in a society where families with minor children are one of the most common household types (making up about 40% of all households) and yet our laws and our employer's policies are so anti-family.

Sources:

https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2018/04/25/the-changing-prof...

https://ifstudies.org/blog/for-kids-parental-cohabitation-an...

https://www.statista.com/statistics/242074/percentages-of-us...

pyuser583• 6 years ago

Having kids generally doesn’t work out in terms of numbers but that’s not the point. It’s more of a deep existential reason, then economic utility.

throwaway0684• 6 years ago

What about we simply stop importing cheap things from China? Surely all Americans can't just "learn to code", so would it hurt with some factories building things in America? Is a bit of protectionism that bad?

bitxbitxbitcoin• 6 years ago

If we have Americans making cheap things on American soil for minimum wage... that doesn't change the larger issue at all.

burlesona• 6 years ago

There is an obvious short term cause, which is that the US is stuck with pandemic conditions for quite a long time, and pregnancy and delivery is quite a medical thing. The idea of going through that when the local hospital is overwhelmed with coronavirus patients is not appealing. And you don’t know if it will be because you have to forecast 9 to 12 months ahead.

Meanwhile we have a housing crisis where even very high income people are having a difficult time finding family sized housing in the places that they work.

Having lived in San Francisco for years with children, I would very much like to get a three bedroom two bathroom home, but the cheapest places that are reasonably safe are in the $1.3 million range and up. I don’t want to move to a low cost of living area, I like living in the city. And besides, most of the so-called lower cost of living places aren’t actually that much cheaper. One example: living anywhere near downtown Austin, similar houses have a wider range from as low as 600k (most seem around 800k), but with much higher property taxes the payments are comparable to $1M+ properties in SF. And that’s living in car town without the beauty, walkability, or convenience of an older city.

(Once you adjust for the huge pay cut that leaving the Bay Area brings, there aren’t any great options. The “winning” strategy instead is to horde as much savings as you can in the Bay Area then move to a true LCOL location (rural America / rust belt) as a form of early retirement, living mostly off those accumulated savings for the long haul.)

But the problems I’m describing, frustrating as they are, are nothing compared to the struggle that a family living with median income is facing.

If we don’t get serious about fixing housing, then it won’t surprise me at all if we have a permanent dramatic decrease in birth rates as many adults are not willing to try and raise a family without feeling economically secure, and a lot of people do not feel economically secure until they own their own home.

yanks215• 6 years ago

pregnancy and delivery is quite a medical thing.

This was historically not the case. There is a movie "The Business of Being Born" which emphasizes midwives in childbirth. It's important to know about this idea before conceiving, because you cannot change your OB after a certain number of weeks, at which point you are on the hospitalization conveyor belt.

Caveat emptor, I am a man, and my wife preferred hospitalization, and if you have medical problems it makes sense to be in a hospital. But if you are healthy and young, you have options. Given the pandemic, it could possibly be safer, on balance, to deliver at home or in a non-hospital facility. A migration to this less expensive model would also save money for new families and beds for the critically ill, such as in this pandemic.

Having lived in San Francisco for years with children, I would very much like to get a three bedroom two bathroom home, but the cheapest places that are reasonably safe are in the $1.3 million range and up.

I think a lot of people in the upper middle class that read Hacker News are focused on maintaining their status and driving education (and land value increases) from school districts. I myself have made this choice and live in a very high cost suburb with a great school district. But that does not mean these amenities are necessary to have more children. I grew up in a blue collar village and while I graduated college and have some post-graduate coursework, most of my skills have been self-taught. I have often found, albeit anecdotally, that children placed into these districts and affluent situations tend to be less self-reliant and creative than the intelligent peers I grew up with from similar backgrounds. A lot of the worry about educational outcomes is driven by values imparted by strong parenting - my parents did not have much when I was young, but they imparted work ethic and emphasized enrichment outside of the organized classroom. Sometimes I regret moving to my affluent neighborhood because my children will learn less resilience due to less adversity. But I am not moving, so I don't really regret it.

My point is that there can be successful Americans from all walks of life and all levels of income due to the meritocratic nature of our nation and strong values in the home and surrounding community. Needing an expensive location with great schools can be helpful but overall is unnecessary. I have friends in a smaller city, one a developer and one a teacher, who own a $190k 4BR house and have safety and good schools. Their child is smart because they spend time and impart values. It is different because tradeoffs are made in potential income and budget decisions. But it is not necessarily harder.

nxc18• 6 years ago

Massive inflation of health care, education, housing prices isn't helping. I probably won't ever have children due to those factors. (aside: I'm gay and would be adopting anyway, so I guess it doesn't matter, but my straight friends are in the same boat)

For people that went the college route (which 95% of the people at my high school did, for context), there was 4-5 years of study during prime child-making, partner-finding years. Now you're 22-23. Then it takes 10 years to pay off the 80k of debt (assuming a comparatively cheap 20k per year) before you can start saving for a house. Maybe you're very wise and are able to pay off your loans two years early. Now you're 30 - 10 years away from the presumed biological clock running out. Next, you've got to save for a house and find a partner. You could argue that renting is fine and you don't need a house, but it seems like home ownership is desirable to create stable conditions for the family. Housing is extremely expensive; a tiny home near me is going for $400,000. It might take another few years to save up a 10% deposit, assuming you're stuck paying potentially extreme rent.

Once you've got a house, you've got to be very secure in your career before you can risk having a child; insurance is very expensive. Even with an employer contribution, healthcare for a family likely costs upwards of $1,000/month; that's comparable to rent in many places.

On top of all of those structural barriers to parenthood, American society is facing massive uncertainty, deteriorating economic conditions, democracy under serious threat, and ongoing attacks on the environment and institutions that keep people safe and healthy.

And finally there's the culture part of it. For the last 30 years, there's been an emphasis on teens never, ever, ever doing anything sexual, because the horror. Then as soon as they turn 18, parents/society are suddenly asking about grandchildren.

refurb7• 6 years ago

If this was true, lower and middle class people wouldn't be having as many kids as they do. It's obviously possible to have kids without an upper-middle class income. People choose not to have kids because they prioritize other things like education, career, buying a home, living in a HCOL area.

Reimersholme• 6 years ago

Speaking from a European perspective, raising children to be productive members of society used to be peoples retirement security. Socialised pensions where other peoples kids will be working to pay for your stay in the retirement home changes that equation completely.

IanDrake5• 6 years ago

Women joining the workforce is the real issue here. Society has not adjusted since that event.

To be clear, this is not a criticism of women working or their ability, but a fundamental change in human behavior.

It will take some time for society to figure this out.

throwaway0684• 6 years ago

It's not. Most people want kids. Put a 500% tax on China imports and the economy will become sane again, allowing people of every "class" to breath.

IanDrake5• 6 years ago

I didn't claim women don't want kids, that's on you.

My claim is that we now have an economy and standard of living set up for dual incomes. This is relatively new and is not conducive to raising children.

porkloin5• 6 years ago

One half of a happily childless mid-30s DINK married couple here. We plan to stay that way.

If the government wants me to have kids, they had better incentivize it. And when I say incentivize, I don't mean exclusively financial incentives. Ideological ones as well.

Right now, the primary reasons for having children are:

1. Personal desire to have children/biological drive to reproduce - so much so that you're willing to shoulder an enormous burden just to have children.

2. Social pressure from family, friends, and society at large - so much so that you're willing to shoulder an enormous burden just to feel like you're making them happy.

Sidenote: Folks from camp #2 often seem deeply unhappy.

Free universal pre-K childcare would help a lot toward sweetening the pot, as would substantial investment in public school systems.

Despite what you may think, this isn't about money or about us being greedy with our time.

I don't have a lot of faith in the idea of bringing a human life into the world as it is, but I also want to see evidence from my government that they're building a country worth living in for my future children. Otherwise, why would I bother to subject them to playing a game where the deck is stacked against them?

By all accounts, a child of mine would come into the world with their own enormous privilege and advantage over other children (white, born into a higher income family of college graduates, etc.) - but can I really stomach that while knowing it comes at the expense of some other child's opportunity? I felt this way before the pandemic and social unrest of recent months. Now I feel it even more acutely.

Personally, I'm completely content with not having kids. But if the government wants me and other people like me to have children, they'd better make the lives of parents easier, lower the barrier to entry, and massively increase my confidence level that this shit-hole country will be worth living in 100 years from now :)

dctoedt3• 6 years ago

Personally, I'm completely content with not having kids.

Sincere question: I wonder how you'll feel in 30 or 40 years. I have an extremely smart, distant-relative-by-marriage who's in his late 60s; he dotes on his two middle-aged nephews and their young families — my speculation is that, as he has developed some health problems, he's come to realize that they're all he has for his old age.

porkloin5• 6 years ago

I've spent a lot of time thinking about that particular question, and the simple answer is that yes, my partner and I may find ourselves late in life wishing we had done otherwise. We also very easily could find ourselves wishing we hadn't. I look around and see many people who also have very poor relationships with their elderly parents - I don't discount the fact that given the culture of America at this particular moment that I could have children who bring me great joy for the 18 years they are with me, who only then become all but distant strangers once they enter into their adult life. This seems increasingly common nowadays. Or they could love me sincerely!

Either way, if I had children, I wouldn't think it right or just to burden them with an expectation that they owe me endless years of emotional, physical, or social support.

Additionally, I think our brains are very good at rationalizing and justifying the choices we already have made, and so I'd mostly suspect that I'll continue to convince myself that I made the right choice regardless of any loneliness that may crop up later in life.

It also might seem callous, but there are simple psychological needs (such as feeling that you're caring or providing for another being) that are easily fulfilled without having children. Pets help a lot. Volunteering helps as well. And, of course, just like your older relative, spending time around other children and young people when you can.

My hope is that between all of these things, I'll lead a happy and fulfilling life. Or maybe I won't – but I ultimately don't have any control over that. And my personal opinion is that having children doesn't assure you a fulfilling life either!

cozuya• 6 years ago

Questioning someone's reproductive choices is incredibly rude.

refurb7• 6 years ago

If the government wants me to have kids, they had better incentivize it.

Plenty of countries do those things, Quebec is a great example. Universal healthcare, subsidized daycare, baby bonus payments. They still don't have many kids.

porkloin5• 6 years ago

I think that's where the idea of ideological incentives come in.

If I don't particularly feel the biological urge to have children (aka drive to spread my genes), I might feel differently if I had more faith that my country's society and culture were worth contributing back to.

I don't feel that way about this country (America).

RestlessMind6• 6 years ago

To add more data points to your comment - Scandinavian countries famously have great social safety nets, but their fertility rates are not better compared to the US (1.77) - Finland (1.49), Norway (1.71), Sweden (1.85), Denmark (1.79).

rayiner• 6 years ago

Just as important, people want more kids than they end up having: https://news.gallup.com/poll/164618/desire-children-norm.asp.... Ideal number of children is between 2-3 (average 2.6).

taylodl• 6 years ago

My wife sacrificed her career for our 3 kids. When you factor in all the costs of working - the daycare, the work clothes, eating out more frequently, maintaining a "professional" wardrobe and so on and so forth - she was only making a few dollars/hour for all her work, less than minimum wage. Then when you factor in the stress, spending so much time away from your kids, it just doesn't make any sense. She was happy and the kids were happy.

Having 3 happy and now successful (my youngest starts college this year) kids is worth far more than whatever other crap I would've spent the money on.

sam_lowry_• 6 years ago

That's good for the environment!

ycombonator• 6 years ago

The answer was right in front of our eyes. Just needed to look at all the pets and dog poop left on side walks.

cannabis_sam• 6 years ago

Talk about putting the cart before the horse.. what if Americans are avoiding or postponing having children due to lack of financial prospects?

(I’m not American, and generally have a lot more support where I live, but even I am questioning the rationality of having kids in the world we live in.. For me personally, living in the US would mean an automatic no to having kids)

xellisx• 6 years ago

As someone with a two year old, we were, and are worried about the society in which our little one will grow up in...

Americans Aren’t Making Babies, and That’s Bad for the Economy

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