Child-safety laws may reduce the birth rate

https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2020/11/28/child-safety-laws-may-reduce-the-birth-rate

by lxm • 6 years ago

158 385 6 years ago

economist.com

tsjq• 6 years ago

https://archive.is/12q3d

IBCNU2• 6 years ago

"number of people who drowned by falling into a pool correlates with films nocolas cage appeard in"

handmodel• 6 years ago

While I don't quite see how the safety seat alone could cause that much of a difference, I don't think it is unreasonable to see a causal relationship here. Raising a child has gotten more expensive in the US for many reasons (laws about child seats, more money needed for education, no longer socially acceptable to leave kids alone for awhile) and that certainly has an impact.

chrisco255• 6 years ago

I'll throw one out there: the birth rate has been falling everywhere across the globe at the same time, even in countries that don't have the same laws about child safety restraints. So the hypothesis is bogus, or it's a tiny fraction of what holistic analysis would suggest are the causes.

IBCNU2• 6 years ago

It's unreasonable to see causal relationships without rigor, always.

pingpongchef• 6 years ago

Skepticism is good, but not outright dismissal

el_nahual• 6 years ago

The conclusions here are fairly robust because there's a few natural experiments due to different states enacting stricter child safety laws at different times.

ortusdux2• 6 years ago

I once read a convincing argument that, in some cases, American's resistance to helmets caused helmet laws to have a net negative effect on health. The author claimed that the laws caused enough of a reduction in ridership that the lost exercise outweighed the reduction in injury. I've attempted to find the paper again, but I can't seem to track it down.

mb7733• 6 years ago

I believe you're thinking of Australia. There are very few (if any?) places in the US with helmet laws for adults.

blang• 6 years ago

King county Washington[1].

[1] https://www.kingcounty.gov/depts/health/violence-injury-prev...!

leetcrew• 6 years ago

could be on the books but not enforced. in my city helmets are required when riding those electric scooters. you're also exposed to the same DUI laws that apply to actual cars. doesn't stop a bunch of drunk college kids from riding them around with no helmet every night.

josephcsible• 6 years ago

De Jong, Piet, The Health Impact of Mandatory Bicycle Helmet Laws (February 24, 2010). Risk Analysis, 2012, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1368064 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1368064

ortusdux2• 6 years ago

That's the one! From the conclusions: "A (positive) net health benefit emerges only in dangerous bicycling environments under optimistic assumptions as to the efficacy of helmets and a minor behavioral response."

kfarr2• 6 years ago

Yes and it's mind-blowing that municipalities are still trying to enact that crap. Most recently:

Nearly half of Seattle’s helmet citations go to homeless people https://crosscut.com/news/2020/12/nearly-half-seattles-helme...

watwut4• 6 years ago

I think that what it does is that it reduces casual "biking to go shopping, work, school" trips. The safest ones and the ones that do good for health.

It does not reduces sport "I am going to get workout now" trips - the most dangerous ones. (But still pretty safe!)

svachalek• 6 years ago

This reads like a textbook example of "correlation is not causation". You think there'd be ...some? people talking about how they decided not to have a child because she/he wouldn't fit in the car if it's going to have a measurable effect on birth rates but at least personally I have never, ever heard this one.

fosap• 6 years ago

Please RFA.

"The reduction they saw was confined to households that did actually have access to a car"

"They discovered that tightening these laws had no detectable effects on the rate of first and second children".

Also, if i understand it correctly, you have about 50 quasi experiments, one for each state.

Nacraile• 6 years ago

Please RFA more ;)

"the third-child deterrent appears stronger among wealthier families"

So this has both the most and least effect on families that have little reason to care about needing a bigger car (because they can easily afford it, or they can't afford any car at all, respectively). When you go fishing for a correlation, form a post-hoc hypothesis for its mechanism, and then other data fits that hypothesis poorly, it's a strong sign you've found yourself a red herring. Which is the usual result of failing to properly understand the distinction between correlation and causation.

munificent2• 6 years ago

I have elementary school age kids, so I know lots of parents. Anecdotally, there is a big jump between having two kids and having more than two. I've had a lot of conversations with friends on their third pregnancy about having to upgrade to a bigger car because with the size of car seats, you can't fit three of them in one row of a typical sedan. And I've likewise had conversations with parents who decided (like my wife and I did) to stop at two, and many of the reasons are fundamentally about logistics and resources. Transportation is a real component of that.

If you take a step back, it does make sense. The difference between zero kids and one is a major qualititative lifestyle change. It's the transition from parent to non-parent. It means not easily going out at night, schooling, etc. Everything changes.

The transition from one to two kids is a qualitative change for the kid because it means going from no siblings to siblings. That transitively makes it somewhat of a qualitative change for parents. It means the kids always have a playmate and someone their age on vacations. But for parents, it's mostly a change in degree. More work, more cost, more time parenting, but the overall lifestyle is basically unchanged.

The transition from two to three is really just quantitative. 33% more space in the house for sleeping, 33% more food costs, 33% more car space for transportation, etc. So the decision about when to stop is mostly just "how much of this experience do you want?" The transportation overhead here in the US where you do a lot of driving is a pretty big piece of that.

ashtonkem11• 6 years ago

I absolutely buy the step-wise argument, especially for housing, but I do not buy it for cars. Americans buy way more large SUVs and trucks than the rest of the world, even those with fewer than three kids (or no kids). The idea that car size is a meaningful barrier to the number of children one has, especially compared to housing and education costs, simply does not pass the sniff test to me.

From a pure financial standpoint, I'd look more to the cost of education, healthcare, and housing. All of which have been growing much more rapidly than the cost of cars or gasoline.

drfuchs• 6 years ago

"Going from two kids to three, you have to switch from one-on-one to zone defense."

arwhatever• 6 years ago

The transition from one to two kids is a qualitative change for the kid because it means going from no siblings to siblings. That transitively makes it somewhat of a qualitative change for parents. It means the kids always have a playmate and someone their age on vacations.

... Or fightmates, as my mother herself warned me. :-)

lucretian• 6 years ago

The transition from two to three is really just quantitative.

not from the perspective of the women who bear the health risk.

ashtonkem11• 6 years ago

Just to reinforce your point: the idea that Americans are deciding not to have children because they can't fit modern child seats in their cars is outright laughable. Americans drive massive cars compared to the rest of the world; if there is any society where car size would not prove to be a hindrance to having children it would be America.

kube-system11• 6 years ago

It is not easy to fit three car seats in the back of seat of the average vehicle in the US.

I bet this is not a hinderance in the rest of the world because many of those other places have either:

1. a lack of child seat laws

2. effective public transportation.

It's not like Europe is full of A-segment cars with 3 car seats in the back.

rm445• 6 years ago

I've heard it, and said it, pertaining to not having a fourth child. Semi tongue-in-cheek but having to buy a van would be one extra inconvenience.

milesvp• 6 years ago

I wasn't going to have more than 2 kids, partly for reasons around travel logistics, and car seats play a surprisingly large role in that. Car seats needs to be rear facing until children are big enough, but most cars expect everyone to be leaning back and so rear facing car seats can be tricky for tall drivers. Part of our planning involved spacing children so we'd only have 1 rear facing car seat at a time. I'm tall enough that I can't have a rear facing car seat behind me in most cars (even SUVs). If I hadn't had twins the second go round my calculus would have stuck. Instead we had to get a minivan.

Now I'm not saying this is a strong effect nationally, the effect wasn't particularly strong for me since other costs were a bigger deterrent than a new car payment, but there is an effect and I'm sure I'm not the only one who did that math.

imron3• 6 years ago

You think there'd be ...some? people talking about how they decided not to have a child because she/he wouldn't fit in the car if it's going to have a measurable effect on birth rates but at least personally I have never, ever heard this one.

We have 3 kids. When talking to friends with only 2 kids, this comes up all the time and is a non-trivial concern in having a third child.

You need a bigger car, a bigger house and bigger everything, and many things are not geared towards families of 5 - family passes at museums/zoos are often 2 adults + 2 children etc.

When we had our third we upgraded our car (from 5 seats to 8 seats) and our house. If we had a fourth we'd need to upgrade the house in a few years again. It's definitely a concern and is definitely talked about by people who are affected by it.

megablast• 6 years ago

This is good news then. We should be thinking hard about having more kids. 2 is more than enough. The damage each extra child does, especially in the west is insane.

watwut4• 6 years ago

personally I have never, ever heard this one

I did and find it completely normal? "What everything we would have to buy" is completely normal consideration. So is "if we dont fit in a car we need to stop doing all these things" is another completely normal consideration.

minikites2• 6 years ago

The unspoken assertion is that we want a high birth rate. Why do we want a high birth rate?

toomuchtodo3• 6 years ago

Why do we want a high birth rate?

Economic pyramid scheme, such as entitlements and economic growth mandates that rely on it.

A lower birth rate is preferred (less resource contention and impact on the ecosystems we rely on for survival), we should be driving it down with economic incentives (faster than it’s falling naturally). It happens naturally as women are empowered and educated (per Our World In Data [1]).

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate#what-explains-the-...

giantg224• 6 years ago

I pretty much agree.

What would be an example be of an economic policy that would maintain stability while bringing the birth rate down below the replacement rate?

giantg224• 6 years ago

Because our entire capitalist economic system is built on consumption, which is largely reliant on the birth rate being above the replacement rate (2.1). This is especially important for some sectors like durable consumer goods, housing, etc.

giantg224• 6 years ago

Why is this downvoted?

jimbob452• 6 years ago

Because we don’t want to be Japan, which is about to become an expansion state of immigrants since their birth rate can’t support their future population.

Africa has a high birth rate. Should we crack down on that? Or are you just saying it’s a problem when rich, low-crime nations have high birth rates?

gowld5• 6 years ago

What's wrong with Japan?

minikites2• 6 years ago

an expansion state of immigrants

Why is immigration bad?

gnud• 6 years ago

Africa has a high birth rate. Should we crack down on that?

Yes, please. We know from experience that the way to get the birth rate down is to get in place education and work for women, and some form of socialized support for the elderly (like pensions). So let's do that for the countries in Africa that lack it!

Enginerrrd• 6 years ago

Demographics can explain a lot of ills in a society. A nice pyramid is pretty good and stable. When things get too top heavy (low birth rate compared to previous generations) or too bottom heavy (high birth rate compared to previous generations), serious but predictable problems almost always occur.

giantg224• 6 years ago

I can see this as being correlated, but I don't see this as being causative. And that's from someone who thinks some of the child/society safety laws are a bit absurd.

I think maybe it could go something like this: child safety laws are more prevalent/stringent in advanced society, living in an advanced society carries a higher cost of living, as the cost of living goes up (without matching income raises, like the US for the past 30+yrs) the people who feel they can't afford children rises. I think there are other underlying causes and the overall effect is a combination.

gowld5• 6 years ago

This article teases apart factors: https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2020/11/28/...

Pet_Ant• 6 years ago

See this comment from this very thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25446153

brighton36• 6 years ago

We are Marcuse's one dimensional man.

kube-system11• 6 years ago

They discovered that tightening those laws had no detectable effects on the rates of births of first and second children, but was accompanied by a drop, on average, of 0.73 percentage points in the number of women giving birth to a third while the first two were young enough to need safety seats. That may not sound much, but it is a significant fraction of the 9.36% of women in the sample who did become third-time mothers.
The authors also made two other pertinent observations. The reduction they saw was confined to households that did actually have access to a car. And it was larger in households where a man was living with the mother. The latter point is relevant, they think, because this man would take up space in a vehicle that could otherwise be occupied by a child.

Yikes. The front passenger seat is not an acceptable place to put a car seat anyway.

0942v8653• 6 years ago

Newer cars disable the passenger airbag if the weight of the occupant is less than a certain threshold (65 lbs according to https://owners.honda.com/vehicles/information/2018/Civic%20S...).

kube-system11• 6 years ago

The idea is to protect lighter weight occupants who are wearing seatbelts; they're not particularly reliable in the case that someone has yanked the seat belts tight on a car seat that is sitting on the seat bottom.

Some quotes from your source:

Placing a forward-facing child seat in the front seat can be hazardous, even with advanced front airbags that automatically turn the passenger’s front airbag off.
WARNING Placing a forward-facing child seat in the front seat can result in serious injury or death if the front airbag inflates.
WARNING Placing a rear-facing child seat in the front seat can result in serious injury or death during a crash.

giantg224• 6 years ago

Yet some states have outdated, one-size-fits-all laws against it.

thrower1232• 6 years ago

This is a lot of fun when you have a big dog that likes to ride in the front seat, or even if you just put a bunch of groceries in the passenger seat, since it also makes the seatbelt alarm go off.

toast0• 6 years ago

Yikes. The front passenger seat is not an acceptable place to put a car seat anyway.

That's what my pickup trucks says. But it only has the one row of seats, so it's put the car seat in the front or put it in the bed.

My understanding is it's legal and reasonable to fill up the rear seats with children in child seats, and then put the largest child in the front seat. Bonus points if you can disable the passenger airbag (many cars will do it automatically and indicate it, a very small number have a manual switch).

irateswami• 6 years ago

This is an actual conversation I had to have with my wife, having a third kid definitely requires a larger vehicle as the vast majority of cars today simply don't work for a family of five. Child car seats are too wide and the backseats of most cars are too narrow, and the price jump to a vehicle that would be able to handle three child car seats at once is enormous. Throw in some dogs, a couple pieces of luggage that any nuclear family would have to tote around, plus a stroller and it becomes prohibitively tight.

It took me MONTHS of shopping and playing child-seat-jenga in various car dealership lots before I finally found a sedan that was actually able to hold everything (thank you, Volkswagen, for making an actual family sedan that could fit a family!).

kube-system11• 6 years ago

When I was young, this was what minivans were for: families with three kids.

VBprogrammer3• 6 years ago

Throw in one kids best friend who is always around and maybe a grandparent who lives alone, going up to a 7 seater starts to get appealing pretty quickly.

gowld5• 6 years ago

Minivans seat 7-8, which is 6 kids.

dljsjr• 6 years ago

Sure but when I was young it wasn't mandated for children to be in car seats until the age of 8 like TFA mentions. I was sitting in the back seat but I was definitely not in a car seat once I was around 4-5.

anonAndOn• 6 years ago

Minivans are only un-cool until you are forced to appreciate their practicality. They can transport groups of kids and all their gear, a bunch of dogs, a surprising amount of furniture or even large sheets of lumber or drywall. I would only consider replacing my minivan with an electric minivan.

DonHopkins3• 6 years ago

Whatever happened to station wagons, with all those extra flip-up seats in the back bay?

This is the new Wagon Queen Family Truckster. This is a damn fine automobile.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzXN5sQ5g-U&ab_channel=Foste...

aidenn03• 6 years ago

When I was young you could fit 6 in a sedan and 8 in a station wagon. Bench seats in the front have gone away (I assume due to airbags). We didn't have a big family, but on car-pools, I was the smallest so I always got stuck straddling the stick shift for the cars that had the shifter on the floor.

testfoobar2• 6 years ago

Glad you found a vehicle that worked for you.

Minivans have locked this market segment up for years. Honda Odyssey & Toyota Sienna are the market leaders.

war10253• 6 years ago

We ended up buying Diono Radian carseats [1], which are marketed as "the 3-across car seat"

We can fit our three kids in the back of our Honda Civic perfectly well.

But we've had exactly the same conversation. In order to have a fourth kid, we'd need to swap out our vehicles. House is fine, insurance is fine, income is fine, but we'd need to upgrade vehicles, and that seems to be just enough friction to make the idea unappealing.

[1] https://www.diono.com/us/product/radian-3r-2020/

Someone12342• 6 years ago

The Radian is definitely king of three across. But they're premium priced ($200 each, or $600 for three), and sacrifice comfort particularly for longer trips.

In general people who have never had kids don't seem to grasp that the average (non-Radian) car-seat is BIGGER than an adult side-to-side. The Radian series has a niche because they produced a car-seat the same size as an adult (with no loss of safety), but had to sacrifice comfort to do so.

imaginenore• 6 years ago

Except National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) rated Dino carseats with 2 stars for ease of use. Which means you're more likely to injure a child when using the seat.

dmurray• 6 years ago

Let's say it costs you $200k to raise a kid to adulthood [0]. A Honda Civic costs $25k new [1], an 8-seater Honda Odyssey costs $31k new [2]. A car lasts 10+ years so conservatively that's $12k extra in transportation costs for your fourth child. Maybe you can argue it's $20k with fuel.

That...doesn't seem unreasonable? As a society, we like people to start families and continue the human race, but we know overpopulation is a thing and we don't want everyone to have huge families. 10% extra marginal cost is small, and offset by other economies of scale.

[0] I don't have a better estimate for this than Bill Waterson putting it at $100k. In 1987. https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1987/07/24

[1] https://www.edmunds.com/honda/civic/

[2] https://www.edmunds.com/honda/odyssey/

thatfrenchguy• 6 years ago

I mean in the US you’ll also need to save 6 figures for the kid’s college as well…

jxramos• 6 years ago

There's an individual on YouTube who does a great job reviewing carseat fits into various vehicles. The example below he fits 3 car seats in the back of a Ford Focus, which most people wouldn't consider to be a large car.

Alex on Autos https://youtu.be/RTh06yWql_s?t=223

It can be done. There's also a great product called the MultiMac sold in the UK and I think the EU. Fits 4 in the back seat, worth checking out if available in your locale. It won't ship to the US for regulatory reasons. https://youtu.be/zybM8cltCxU?t=179

cameldrv• 6 years ago

You can do it in almost any car. You just need narrower car seats. Cosco has several that are narrower.

Someone12342• 6 years ago

I own a Cosco from Walmart (for travel), and while they're the smallest and lightest legal seats on the market the build and safety is inferior.

There's a reason we own it, and don't use it day-to-day. It is a fine occasional "grandparent seat" or for travel, but if it is your daily driver and need three across, the Radian is a safer & much better built alternative.

grillvogel• 6 years ago

just get a minivan

mikepurvis• 6 years ago

When my partner and I had our third, the Mazda 5 was our compromise vehicle— still has sliding doors and the overall aesthetics of a minivan, but drives like a car, gets decent gas mileage, and has a footprint comparable to a CUV for the purposes of parking and so-on.

We may well go to a full size van at some point, but once the kids are no longer babies, they actually travel somewhat lighter— no stroller, playpen, diaper bag, etc being shlepped everywhere.

spankalee• 6 years ago

The Ford Transit Connect is an awesome, just slightly larger version of that if you want to be a bit smaller than a full-sized van or a Metris.

aidenn03• 6 years ago

I would have bought a Mazda 5 if they still sold them. However, I don't live in a great place for buying used.

mhh__• 6 years ago

Isn't the XC90 basically the textbook school run car?

brewdad• 6 years ago

For people in a certain economic class, yes. For those where it's out of reach financially, there's the Odyssey and the Sienna.

vondur• 6 years ago

I guess that's why Minivans are popular here in the US. I have a Mazda 5, which is like a mini-minivan and it's probably big enough for 3 car seats. I really like this car, too bad Mazda gave up on them here in the US.

1-63• 6 years ago

Let's not forget the expiration dates on Car Safety Seats. C'mon, really? Seats with Styrofoam may deteriorate eventually but I haven't heard of a casualties due to expired car seats.

paulryanrogers• 6 years ago

This is part of the plan to force people to buy new. They make it illegal to sell any kids stuff older than a year or two.

flubert• 6 years ago

All the car seats for my kids were chiefly composed of plastics. I'm sure there is quite a high factor of safety for car seat design, but there are quite a few time and temperature related failure modes for plastics (i.e. getting brittle over time as the plasticizers outgas, UV exposure, etc.).

https://www.sintef.no/globalassets/project/ffs/dokumenter/se...

https://www.amazon.com/Plastics-Failure-Guide-2E-Prevention/...

bigmattystyles2• 6 years ago

To be fair, how do you test this - as a system - effectively. The consequences of failure on a child seat are not like, say, a stand mixer. That being said, I suspect it has more to do with the manufacturer attempting to limit their liability window. It's wasteful right, but in a litigious world, I get it.

kube-system11• 6 years ago

Some tests have found that brand new seats break when loaded near their stated limits. I think it is reasonable to say that plastic weakened due to the relatively harsh thermal and UV conditions in a car would fare worse.

https://www.consumerreports.org/toddler-booster-seats/child-...

hansvm• 6 years ago

Not quite the same thing (adult seats vs car seats, and it's possible they were just faulty from the factory rather than expired), but the last time I was rear-ended the seats snapped behind me. Quite the experience really -- to stop you from going forward you have seat belts, air bags, and all kinds of fancy engineering. Inertia is a cruel mistress when the car moves forward out from under you though, and the only things ensuring your forward motion are a couple of broken seats (thankfully there weren't any passengers or children in car seats for me to smash into) and the 2-ton metal projectile poking through the ass end of your car.

ldiracdelta• 6 years ago

Regulatory Capture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture

It isn't the exception; it is the rule. Bodies that govern an industry are _inevitably_ captured by the industry they govern, because that industry has the absolute highest incentive to write the rules it has to follow.

PopeDotNinja2• 6 years ago

the vast majority of cars today simply don't work for a family of five

I recently visited Pakistan for the first time, and was amazed to see a family of five riding around on a small Honda motorbike. The father was driving, a small child sat in front of the father, the was mother hanging on behind the father, and the oldest daughter sitting on the far back with both legs hanging off to the left while holding an infant. None of them were wearing helmets. It was both terrifying & impressive.

eCa• 6 years ago

I was in Ukraine in the mid-00s. Saw a five person motorcycle. No helmets, but they had an open side-car so a bit more space. Youngest kid was in a bucket held by big sister.

safetyengineer• 6 years ago

Helmets work but after working in automotive safety, motorcycles are death traps.

I can't emphasize this enough.

They are no automobile, and are not comparable.

erichocean• 6 years ago

I saw the same thing in India.

sdenton4• 6 years ago

I once saw a motorbike with two people and a cow in western Kenya. It wasn't a /big/ cow, but still.

BurningFrog• 6 years ago

Saw much of that in Hyderabad 2008.

It's one way the lethality of poverty is visible.

fatnoah• 6 years ago

> the vast majority of cars today simply don't work for a family of five

My wife and I had the minivan discussion. They are amazingly practical when you need to carry vast amounts of crap. Neither of us was particularly interested in driving around in one though, so we optimized by carrying less crap around.

I'd say about 99% of our usage of our 4 door sedan or small SUV requires no additional cargo capacity for our family. For the other 1% of the time, we're able to optimize by carrying less stuff. I think there has been 1 or 2 times in 13 years where cargo capacity was insufficient. For us, it was a tradeoff worth making.

We totally respect those who make different choices, though. Everyone has their own preferences and needs.

christophilus• 6 years ago

I agree, but I also have friends who fit three car seats into a Honda. It’s super tight, but it can be done.

prawn• 6 years ago

Even if you find a seat configuration that fits, the next hassle that drove me nuts was getting access to seatbelts easily. Taking the kids anywhere is that much more annoying when you can't rely on the oldest at least sorting out their own buckles. (Only just occurred to me that a seatbelt extender would probably help bring the receiving part of the latch up from the depths between the seats -- too late now, bought a different car.)

Almost worth staggering births so that after three years the eldest is able to handle buckling themselves and then siblings. Worth finding every advantage like this when you're outnumbered by children.

jo6gwb• 6 years ago

Your comment leads me to wonder if car safety laws also contribute to this. Back in the day cars were large and you could fit four kids in the back of a station wagon. In sedans, there was a platform behind the seats in the rear that kids could stretch out on (no seatbelt of course).

marcandre• 6 years ago

The cost of raising a child is roughly 10-15k a year. How much is the car upgrade (on a per year basis)?

lsllc2• 6 years ago

Alright, don't leave me hanging -- which Volkswagen?

cialowicz• 6 years ago

My guess would be the Passat.

m_eiman• 6 years ago

The Sharan fits seven persons (possibly seven adults, but the two back seats could be a bit tight for some), and is wide enough in the middle row for three kids in kids' seats.

It still looks and handles like a normal car rather than a bus.

sfa_aok• 6 years ago

This is an even bigger problem to solve when you factor in that:

- Different countries have different standards, so car seats vary accordingly

- Models change over the years

So finding out if you can get three car seats into a car is a massive headache.

lxmorj• 6 years ago

Seems like a good opp. Make a bench seat attachment that fits into most cars, with interchangeable carseats for different aged kids. Could have a 3-wide and a 4-wide model for different sized cars.

agensaequivocum• 6 years ago

I've been thinking about whether, when we have our fourth, to get a minivan, or just jump straight to a 15 passenger van. I know I'll need one eventually.

mensetmanusman3• 6 years ago

We got the 7 seater transit after we were pregnant with our fourth, then exchanged it for the sub 7ft height 15 seater after we had 5.

jgalt2122• 6 years ago

the vast majority of cars today simply don't work for a family of five

Yes, but only if you count by unique line items. If you count by market share, the large family market is well served.

“S.U.V.s made up 47.4 percent of U.S. sales in 2019 with sedans at 22.1 percent,” said Tom Libby, automotive analyst at IHS Markit. “By 2025, we see the light-truck segment that includes S.U.V.s, vans and pickups to make up 78 percent of sales compared to 72 percent now.”[1]

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/21/business/suv-sales-best-s...

aidenn03• 6 years ago

There are plenty of SUVs that won't fit 3 car seats in back any better than a Civic.

ynniv3• 6 years ago

I replaced my 3-series BMW with a Honda Odyssey, and I've spent two years singing its praises. Part of the problem is that we have created a culture that uses cars as a form of self expression, and many early parents aren't ready to "be" a minivan. But the minivan is what you actually want as a parent: room for six people of any size, or four people and at least twice as much cargo as an SUV, with safe, remote control doors that can be operated by kids. It's a living room on wheels, including the TV.

Honda is trying to bridge the identify gap a little with paddle shifting, ventilated seats, and almost 300hp, but really we should try to step back from seeing the car as an expression of who we are, and try to optimize for the functionality that we use every day. As much fun as it was to drive the BMW, finding a way to fit my growing family into it was a stressful mess and I'm happy to have found, perhaps unintentionally, a much better situation.

Some of this insight came to me from Steve Kaufer of TripAdvisor, who at the time I was there was running a $4B company and driving an old minivan, because that's what his family fit in. He never cared for a fancy new car because fancy meant small and he wasn't out to impress anyone on the road anyway.

But I also can't pretend that Honda's naturally aspirated 6-cylinder and perfectly matched 10-speed (domestic!) paddle shifter didn't help seal the deal in my garage.

ImprovedSilence2• 6 years ago

Im all about the minivan, and completely agree with everything you're saying here. Ive been getting my wife prepped for one when the time comes, and i think shes come around to see how much they just make sense. Also doesnt hurt that a few friends actually expressed their regret going suv over the van.

zetazzed• 6 years ago

When my wife and I were discussing whether to have a third kid, the "we can justify a minivan now" argument was a big push in favor!

If you think it's uncool, just remember -- if you buy a sports car, there is always someone out there with a cooler sports car. But you can buy THE BEST minivan in the world for ~$40k. Minivans also tend to go heavy on tech and comfort features relative to their price point. Yes, they suck to parallel park in the city, but 360 cameras and ultrasonics have made that much easier than it used to be. Really recommended!

irrational5• 6 years ago

Twice as much cargo as an SUV? We have both a minivan (Toyota sienna) and an SUV (Chevy Suburban) and the SUV easily has quadruple the cargo space as the minivan.

chett• 6 years ago

I recommend an aftermarket trailer hitch as well for the minivan. Our last vacation we fit 2, adults, 2 kids, our dog in his full sized crate, all of our luggage, and 4 bicycles on a hitch rack. Pretty sweet!

tomcam6• 6 years ago

I own a Porsche 911, a Mercedes GL 550, and a Toyota Sienna XLE. I like cars. However, one of my best friends never told me he was going to the annual car show, despite the fact that we often have lunch together. When I asked why he said it was because I had mentioned that I think the minivan is a peak of automotive greatness. He comes from the Detroit area, and literally assumed I didn’t care about cars simply because I like minivans!

Also, I may be a bit on the spectrum because I simply do not think about cars as a means of self expression. I don’t spend $120,000 on a car because I think it would impress somebody. I am a lousy mind reader and have no idea what people would think about what I drive, nor do I judge people on what they drive. That is bizarre to me.

asiachick• 6 years ago

I find it interesting just how much cars are part of certain cultures. Living in Tokyo of my hundreds of acquaintances I think I know 3 that own a car. Family or no. I know that's not possible in many places though I kind of wish it was more common.

Ntrails• 6 years ago

It's a living room on wheels, including the TV.

I remain bemused at the idea a tv is a necessity for family car journeys. I would not want one in anything I was driving.

lagerstedt• 6 years ago

Why on earth would you buy a sedan if you need to haul stuff/dogs around?

dzdt• 6 years ago

I think there is a plausible mechanism for causation here. It adds to the expensiveness of children -- many smaller vehicles are not even compatible with the big car seats required, or with having more than two car seats in use. There is kind of a calculation: if we would have even one kid we need a "family" car; getting to 3 or more kids basically requires a minivan.

gowld5• 6 years ago

A Full-size sedan fits 3 child-seats, if you choose an appropriate thin design of seat.

dragonwriter5• 6 years ago

A Full-size sedan fits 3 child-seats, if you choose an appropriate thin design of seat.

If all three are of such a design, which only exist meeting the requirements for child safety seats for older children. If any one is an infant seat, that doesn't work.

If you have N children of ages requiring safety seats, you will for some period of that require at least 1 infant seat and N-1 other seats to transport them all legally.

arcticbull3• 6 years ago

In general there's a strong negative correlation between development of a society and birth rate. Also income. It's extremely powerful, and applies literally all over the world. I suspect that in America over the last few decades, development continued. Child-safety laws came along for the ride. [1, 2]

Income is a less compelling argument in America as wages have remained totally constant on an inflation adjusted basis for ages.

[1] https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Total-fertility-rate-TFR...

[2] https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2016/december/link...

gowld5• 6 years ago

There's a great article that investigates this and presents a more refined analysis so separate out factors like child-safety laws:

https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2020/11/28/...

It was recently discussed on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25445643

arcticbull3• 6 years ago

Funny :)

sudo_bang_bang• 6 years ago

Important to note that real income per capita isn’t actually flat, only household income but that’s likely because of household size changes.

See here for disposable real income: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A229RX0

arcticbull3• 6 years ago

Great call-out thank you!

loughnane• 6 years ago

Makes me wonder about the effect of car reliance in general

testfoobar2• 6 years ago

The reality for a lot of families is that having children is frighteningly expensive.

The twin costs of childcare and a reduction in parental work hours (often mom's) and as a result future career and income advancement potential can be substantial drag on a family's income. Each additional child just prolongs this drag.

Multigenerational households where grandparents provide childcare are one solution around this problem that I've seen.

oramit• 6 years ago

A coworker and his wife just had a child. They got on wait-lists before the child was even born because of the huge demand. They also told me that they were lucky to find a place (work subsidized) that was less than $1k.

giantg224• 6 years ago

"Multigenerational households where grandparents provide childcare are one solution around this problem that I've seen."

Except many grandparents are still working, especially to cover healthcare costs.

notsureaboutpg• 6 years ago

In the US, elderly people have Medicare, so why is this happening?

analog313• 6 years ago

A lot of people move away from home to find work, especially if educated, and don't have access to grandparents. Also, as people are waiting longer to have kids, the grandparents are older and not as capable -- or may even be in need of care themselves.

In addition to childcare, there's also health care and education to pay for. Middle class families get virtually no help on either front.

lotsofpulp7• 6 years ago

Also, as people wait longer to have kids, the mother's body is less and less able to bounce back from pregnancy. I know tons of couples who have 2 kids in their 30s, but 2 only so that the first kid can have a sibling. CDC recommends 3 years between births for a woman's body to recover, and I don't know many women eager to continue having kids past 35.

trianglem2• 6 years ago

There is no reason to give a career — a poor abstraction built around the simple concept of doing work for money — higher value than rearing a child, something millions of years of evolution has gender specifically selected for.

lotsofpulp7• 6 years ago

That poor abstraction is what allows most people to provide their children with the quality of life they deem necessary.

globular-toast2• 6 years ago

Yeah, that's mostly due to feminism as some of the already buried comments here point out. You only have to look back a short time and there was no such thing as "child care". The children were cared for by their mothers. Imagine that! A mother having time to raise her own children! Now they are "free" to be drones in the corporate machine instead and can't get out because the family needs that money. The children now get the privilege of being raised in a child care farm instead of by loving family. Oh, and nobody has time to cook or clean any more so it's ready meals and takeaways every night. What progress...

seanicus2• 6 years ago

Pretty sure the economic impact of doubling the workforce as well as decades of frozen wages has had a significant effect on social acceptance of 2-worker households, but blame whatever boogeyman/woman you'd like to.

mensetmanusman3• 6 years ago

Multigenerational does help, and it helps immensely if they had kids (you or partner) when they were younger (20s), or else they are more likely to have health issues and low energy themselves.

jefftk• 6 years ago

Underlying paper: https://privpapers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3665...

In the comments on my post about the paper when it originally came out (https://www.jefftk.com/p/three-car-seats) people pointed out that the methodology cannot determine whether there is a common cause, and a common cause is actually quite plausible. Posit that over time people are becoming more protective of children, for whatever reason. This (a) makes parenting substantially more work/money (closer supervision, more childcare hours), leading to people having fewer kids on the margin, and (b) makes people supportive of legislation to protect children (car seat laws). So while it looks that car seat laws are causing fewer children, they could actually both be caused by changing societal attitudes toward child protection.

sam_lowry_• 6 years ago

None remembers the Superfreakonomics piece of child seats anymore. What a pity! See e.g. here https://freakonomics.com/2009/10/27/what-the-secretary-of-tr...

sleepysysadmin2• 6 years ago

Marriage rates are historic lows. Birth rates are historic lows. Women having careers is certainly the current belief why these are so low. Though as the article says they dont quite explain the situation.

Car seats are ridiculous. Not a thing I considered before having a kid. It kind of makes sense, now that more kids could happen, the probability of filling the back seats with car seats is certainly expensive and annoying. Thus when that third kid comes along, the minivan must happen.

A convincing argument being made by the article but I feel it's similar in that it's just 1 piece of the puzzle.

The other factor no doubt occurring is how imbalanced the system has become. It has become increasingly risky to even have a relationship with a woman let alone going to the extent of having a kid. The nanny government has come in to 'help' in many ways far beyond just car seats.

frongpik• 6 years ago

Well educated kids is obviously an asset to our society, but it puzzles me how the same society not only doesn't reward men for raising kids, it makes kids their biggest liability. It's like planting a tree because our society cries wolf about deforestation, and then years later getting a 500k bill from USFS because they had to do some works related to that tree. Men really need a lot of altruism to start a family these days.

sleepysysadmin2• 6 years ago

As a father there are certainly upsides. The problem is the nanny government is all cases. There is a good intention but in turn adjust a social balance that is in place.

Even something like alimony is a liability. So men simply don't get married anymore. The government seeing the failure of the system then that having a woman as your roommate is 'common law' and still counts. So you literally just cant have a woman roommate.

Yes the original reasoning was that the woman might hinder her career by tending kids and shouldn't be punished. However it has evolved well past those goals. The government is practically incentivizing divorce or never having a relationship with women to beginwith.

motohagiography• 6 years ago

Lacking an Economist subscription, is it due to a game theory explanation for how above a certain survival or wealth probability threshold, human societies switch from r-selection to K-selection, or is it just that the overprotected ones genetically select out because they grow up to be unattractive?

defen• 6 years ago

The articles describes a study which purports to show that stricter child safety requirements for cars inhibits families from going from 2 -> 3 children, since it essentially forces them to buy a minivan, which is either too expensive or makes you look like the kind of family that drives a minivan.

satellite2• 6 years ago

published in SSRN, a repository for so-called preprint papers that have yet to undergo formal peer review

https://tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations

Thanks to the Economist for our daily dose of sketchy papers

throwaway0a5e3• 6 years ago

Not a surprise at all.

When you start adding all sorts of "cost of compliance" stuff to having kids the people who can usually afford to comply (upper middle class, so most people here) start taking that into account.

Meanwhile the rich and the poor just keep doing what they've been doing.

lazyjones• 6 years ago

I joked a few times about families in the 70s and early 80s often having a 3rd child as a reserve here in Europe, since we grew up without child seats, airbags and such things and the birth rate dropped by approximately 1 child per mother since these safety measures were introduced. Seems like there was some truth in that...

fallingfrog• 6 years ago

I think this is sort of burying the lede though that if the cost of a bigger car is keeping people from having kids, that implies that the real reasons for the declining birth rate are economic.

Spooky23• 6 years ago

This stuff is overplayed. My sister is super nutty about following every piece of guidance. It takes her 30 minutes to get out of the driveway.

throwaway2245• 6 years ago

This claim is a little sus.

Cars themselves have only been popular for 100 years or so.

A 0.73% drop in third child births is really nothing compared to what else has happened to the birth rate over that time period - the effect size is very small.

bpodgursky• 6 years ago

This is all rings very true, but there's a lemma which might not play well on HN: how much does requiring people to use public transit reduce the birth rate?

Getting 3+ children around town to school, errands, etc in a minivan isn't a trivial job. Dragging around 3 under-six children by bus, or train? That's nearly Herculean.

I would expect the fertility hit to large families from the _lack_ of cars to be far, far greater than the hit from requiring larger cars. This also aligns with the (traditional) higher US fertility rate, where the US has been traditionally (large) car focused, whereas small cars and mass transit dominated in Europe.

sitkack• 6 years ago

Good!

gwbas1c2• 6 years ago

Child #3 is about to be born any day now.

I was shocked to learn that we just can't get three car seats into the back of our Model 3.

Fortunately the other vehicle is a minivan, but the rear row can seat 3 without car seats, or two with car seats. This means we can no longer fit grandparents with all kids.

in_cahoots• 6 years ago

Look into the Radian and the Clek. I’d be surprised if they don’t work.

Robotbeat3• 6 years ago

You might want to double-check that. I was looking at a thread specifically about 3 carseats in the back of a Model 3. There are several options.

You might need new carseats.

But I managed to get our 3 kids in the back of my first generation Nissan Leaf, which I think is slightly smaller.

gwbas1c2• 6 years ago

The 1st generation Leaf was larger inside.

I like the Leaf's interior much more than the Model 3. (But, overall the Model 3 is a much, much better car.)

gok• 6 years ago

(Exciting!)

I do wonder how many techie parents are waiting for the 7 seat Tesla before getting their third or fourth kid.

jeofken• 6 years ago

Congratulations! Driving a van sounds like a good choice when everyone has to go.

conanbatt• 6 years ago

I found out about this from a hacker news comments not long ago. I have a hard time believing the causality of it, but if its true, it would be quite an incredible indictment against child-safety laws.

hyko• 6 years ago

Two blokes wonder why the same highly educated women who want a safer world for their children don’t want to push four babies out of their vagina.

Edited to add: “Dr Nickerson and Dr Solomon found, in fact, that the third-child deterrent appears stronger among wealthier families” - they put this down to them not wanting to buy a larger vehicle to accommodate 3+ kids because it’s too gauche!

I think we’re supposed to conclude that car seats are actually costing lives, which is the wrong conclusion to draw because it ignores all the injury and disability caused by car accidents.

chunsj• 6 years ago

Very economist argument. Removing Child-safety law may increase child mortality.

CryptoPunk• 6 years ago

These are the kind of harmful effects that prohibiting market options, that fall below some arbitrary quality/safety standard, have.

jtbayly• 6 years ago

This paper is fascinating and probably the basis of the article (I can’t tell since it’s paywalled):

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3665046

I think the really sad part is the increased burden of rules supposedly to protect kids that are useless, such as booster seat laws.

Child-safety laws may reduce the birth rate

Related Stories