Busting the baby bust

In a Slate Explainer, Michelle Tsai asks what can governments do to make fertility rates go up? and answers:

Throw cash at new parents, and make it easy for them to balance their careers and families. Government benefits—in the form of tax credits, for example, or state-run day care—can make raising children more manageable. Last year, Vladimir Putin proposed a number of benefits designed to encourage large families, like long maternity leaves and $8,900 cash subsidies for stay-at-home mothers who have a second child. Some governments go one step further, doling out dating advice along with financial incentives for babies.

In France and the Scandinavian countries, which have some of the highest fertility rates in Europe, parents get lots of government help. A French maman has at least 16 weeks of mandatory, paid maternity leave, as well as guaranteed job security and—if she has a third child—a monthly stipend of up to 1,000 euros for a year. In Norway, women are entitled to 10 months at their full salary or a year at 80 percent. Because these policies have been in place for decades, the countries' fertility rates are approaching 2.1, roughly the point where a population can sustain itself without immigration. Other nations are emulating this approach: Spain now offers a 2,500 euro bonus for every baby born. South Korea, which has one of the world's lowest fertility rates, shells out $3,000 per couple for in-vitro fertilization. And in Germany, where women have an average of 1.3 babies, Angela Merkel proposed up to 1,800 euros a month for stay-at-home parents, and more day-care centers to improve the public image of working moms—who have long been dubbed Rabenmütter, or "raven mothers." (Countries plan these financial incentives carefully to avoid drawing in too many poor parents—and creating a bigger lower class.)

But these are not very good examples. Almost all European countries have a lot of amenities for new mothers; some of those countries have high birth rates, and some of them low. America, which has many fewer amenities, has higher birth rates than Canada, which has a lot more government support for child-rearing. There's no very good evidence that a government can do much of anything to increase its birth rate. The main culprit seems to be opportunity cost: women have more fun things to do, these days, than spend time with toddlers. And even parenting with lots of free day care involves spending a lot of time with toddlers.

One interesting suggestion from a friend who is a recent new suburban parent is that America's car culture may be giving childbearing a big boost. Dragging a child around a city, even a family-friendly Canadian or northern European city, is a major hassle, especially since after you get home, all worn out and cranky from the expedition, chances are your urban apartment forces you to be in closer proximity to your child than is ideal for maintaining an even temper.

Comments

I strongly suspect that encouraging women not to work works at least as well as making it easier for them to work if your goal is to increase fertility.

Posted by SamChevre | September 14, 2007 11:42 AM

National variations in birth rates are hard to explain. Iran would seem like the sort of place where birth rates would be sky-high, it's not as if women have anything better to do except breed, yet its birth rate has absolutely plummeted in the past couple decades. Other quirks? Catholicism, with its ban on artificial contraception, seems well-suited for raising birth rates. Yet largely Catholic Spain and Italy have among the lowest rates in the world; in contrast, largely Catholic Ireland has a considerably higher rate. It's really hard to make any sense of the situation.

Posted by Peter | September 14, 2007 11:46 AM

Looking at fertility rates - the number of children a woman will have throughout her child-bearing years - the national average remained constant between 2003 and 2004 at 1.53 children per woman. Visible minorities had higher than average fertility rates at 1.7 children per woman, although that rate represented a significant drop from a previous rate of 1.94 in 1996.

But of course, America is a more homogeneous population.

Even if it weren't you wouldn't be able to talk about it openly at the Atlantic Monthly.

So even your code words are mum.

Posted by Mark | September 14, 2007 12:21 PM

Gary Becker at least seems to agree with Megan about fertility and incentives:

However, even generous subsidies to parents appear to have only modest effects on fertility. Two French economists have studied the elaborate French system of allowances to mothers who have more than one child. Their conclusion: Even this thoroughgoing system of allowances raised the total fertility rate by no more than 0.1, from 1.7 to 1.8.

My reading of the evidence is that fertility in countries like Japan with birth rates that are far below the replacement level of 2.1 children per women will not rise to anywhere near that level in the next few decades, even with generous financial and other child-care support. If I am right, the only solution for countries that continue to be concerned about a future with declining and aging populations is to open their gates to immigration. Yet in most countries large-scale immigration creates political, economic and social problems. Immigration is an especially unwelcome alternative for Japan, given the history of Japanese reluctance to have many foreigners settling in their country. As a result, Japan, Russia and many other countries face a worrisome demographic and economic future. WSJ, 9/3/06

I'm a little surprised by that, actually. I would have expected a much greater elasticity.

Posted by Isocrates | September 14, 2007 12:24 PM

Scandanavian countries (Norway, Sweden, Denmark) still have TFRs below replacement level. They also have high tax rates. In order to pay these taxes, you need to work a lot. Working a lot, and with less to show for it, makes it hard to raise multiple kids.

Is it difficult to get 3 or 4 bedroom homes in these countries (I don't know)? Space is nice to have.

Posted by Half Canadian | September 14, 2007 12:34 PM

"There's no very good evidence that a government can do much of anything to increase its birth rate."

Really? I think if we just went to the "Women As Property" model, we'd see a startling increase. The women wouldn't have a choice, the men wouldn't have a big downside (feeding kids doesn't take THAT many resources as long as the women do all the care-taking).

Hopefully, they'll still let you write a bit, though. Unless I actually managed a winning bid, I'd miss you an awful lot.

Posted by Jens Fiederer | September 14, 2007 1:05 PM

I think the high cost of housing per sq. foot in Europe, Japan and the ROK is at least partly to blame for the lower birth rates. Unlike the increasingly spacious housing in the US, parents can't as easily afford to house more than two kids.

I know one couple who wanted six children until they moved from L.A. to Belgium. Now they're sticking to two. Of course I think the other factor is they underestimated how much work two children can be, let alone six.

Question to you European readers: do European governments give large income tax exemptions for each child, in addition to these cash bonuses?

Posted by Christina | September 14, 2007 1:06 PM

Iran would seem like the sort of place where birth rates would be sky-high, it's not as if women have anything better to do except breed, yet its birth rate has absolutely plummeted in the past couple decades.

Actually, Iran has a very stimulating and cultured urban environment, and the number of girls enrolled in school skyrocketed after the Revolution. That is the usual explanation for the drop in fertility there.

Catholicism, with its ban on artificial contraception, seems well-suited for raising birth rates. Yet largely Catholic Spain and Italy have among the lowest rates in the world

Catholicism's ban on contraception was associated in Spain and especially Italy with highly patriarchal cultures and restrictive visions of women's roles. It is easy to understand that with the massive shift in women's economic autonomy from the 50s through the 80s, women in Spain and Italy rebelled against that traditional vision and declined to have children. Such restrictive visions of women's roles also explain very low birth rates in Japan and South Korea. The more egalitarian and less patriarchal visions of child-rearing and gender roles in northern Europe and the US have been instrumental in maintaining higher birth rates.

America's car culture may be giving childbearing a big boost. Dragging a child around a city, even a family-friendly Canadian or northern European city, is a major hassle

Well, America's backyard culture is a big boost. Being able to turn the kids loose and let them freak out for a while is a huge advantage. On the other hand, being cooped up in some shapeless suburb is pretty mind-deadening, as is the constant ferrying around to soccer practice, ballet, etc. Seems like a wash to me.

Posted by brooksfoe | September 14, 2007 1:06 PM

"being cooped up in some shapeless suburb is pretty mind-deadening"

Just because your mind is dead doesn't necessarily discourage childbearing.

Posted by Dan Miller | September 14, 2007 1:14 PM

According to the CIA World Factbook, France has a fertility rate of 1.98, Norway has a rate of 1.78, the UK is at 1.66, Canada - the country Mark is referring to - is at 1.49, Russia is at 1.39, and the USA has a rate of 2.09.

"women have more fun things to do"
Those hedonistic Russian women - too busy having fun to have kids. . .

Ms. Tsai's assertion that throwing tax dollars at new parents encourages fertility is not backed up by any evidence. She does cite several examples of governments that are attempting just that, but aside from her assertion that 1.78 is nearing 2.1, she not only avoids her own question - "What's the best way?" - she gives us no clue as to what effect most of these 'solutions' might be having.

Posted by David D | September 14, 2007 1:27 PM

Ms. Tsai's assertion that throwing tax dollars at new parents encourages fertility is not backed up by any evidence.-David D

There is a study by Kevin Milligan that finds a significant responsiveness:

Variation in tax policy presents an opportunity to estimate the responsiveness of fertility to prices. This paper exploits the introduction of a pro-natalist transfer policy in the Canadian province of Quebec that paid up to C$8,000 to families having a child. I implement a quasi-experimental strategy by forming treatment and control groups defined by time, jurisdiction, and family type. This permits a triple-difference estimator to be implemented -- both on the program's introduction and cancellation. Furthermore, the incentive was available broadly, rather than to a narrow subset of the population as studied in the literature on AFDC and fertility. This provides a unique opportunity to investigate heterogeneous responses. I find a strong effect of the policy on fertility, and some evidence of a heterogeneous response that may help reconcile these results with the AFDC literature.

Subsidizing the Stork

Posted by Isocrates | September 14, 2007 1:40 PM

"being cooped up in some shapeless suburb is pretty mind-deadening"

And you complain about Megan's lack of suporting evidence.

Another trope. Put it to rest already.

Posted by Tolbert | September 14, 2007 1:46 PM

An economics blog really ought to be more careful and try to make apples to apples comparisons.

You can't just compare Europe to America - one is a highly urbanized, high density culture, and the other is generally suburban, low density. Things like housing costs (and cost of living in general) are lower in America, which makes raising families easier.

As urbanization progresses, though, we need to be figuring out what makes families sustainable in that environment. We can control policy, after all, but can't do much about the amount of space a country has to live on.

So, a more interesting question than "what makes American fertility different from European fertility" would be "given the conditions that exist in Europe, and in similar places in America such as the NY Metro region, how effective are different policies in promoting fertility?"

Posted by Peter Bautista | September 14, 2007 2:02 PM

I agree that government action is unlikely to increase fertility. When countries advance economically and become first-world countries, their fertility rates decline significantly. Beyond that, however, I believe the biggest factor is cultural -- optimism about the future. Those who are optimistic reproduce; those who aren't don't. Which is why Red America has a higher fertility rate than Blue America.

Posted by Tim K | September 14, 2007 2:18 PM

The Red Counties have housing costs that are lower relative to income than the Blue Counties, and also have more children.
Income includes welfare, income tax deductions on children, housing subsidies, or mortgage deductions on your income tax. All make it easier to have children.
The serial welfare/marriage strategy (which is where you don't get married until after the mother has raised the children on welfare to the point where she doesn't need childcare any more and can work full time) is at present the major subsidy for having children in the West.

Posted by wkwillis | September 14, 2007 2:36 PM

People are making very good points up above on housing space, the importance of the backyard, helpful daddies (Italy vs. Scandinavia), and car culture.

We moved from DC to Texas with our two kids a couple months ago and are transitioning into being a car-owning family. I certainly miss all the restaurants, shops, public parks of walkable (if grubby) Georgetown. With a 2 year, 8 month gap between the kids, I got around the neighborhood pretty well with a double jogging stroller. However, it was a 30 minute walk to the metro, and from the time my youngest was born until we left two years later, I don't think I ever left Georgetown with both kids by myself. I had been much more mobile when my first was an only child, and continued to range all over the DC area when out with only one child. The move from a three bedroom apartment (one bedroom being a combined nursery/office) and no washer/dryer to a three bedroom house with large kitchen, lots of built-ins, washer/dryer, separate office space, garage, patio, large driveway for bike and trike riding and a yard has been revolutionary. Even though the house proper is only two hundred square feet larger than our old apartment, the space is much more suitable to our needs as a family. Sure, the yard needs to be mowed, but in other respects, life is much more streamlined. And even though it's not a pedestrian friendly area, my husband has a five minute walk to work and it's about nine blocks to the grocery store. Unsurprisingly, while in DC it seemed that there was a city ordinance that you should have exactly 2.0 kids spaced exactly 3 years apart, average family size in our new town in Texas seems to be larger.

Posted by Amy P | September 14, 2007 2:42 PM

This comment has been deleted due to rampant disagreeing with Megan

Posted by Sadly, No! Investor Services | September 14, 2007 2:45 PM

Here is the question that occurs to me: what fraction of your annual income does it cost to raise a child?

If it turns out to be lower in countries with higher fertility, we have very likely found our answer.

In the Good Old Days children in the West were sent out to work at the age of six or so, and so tended to be self-financing. As the working age has risen, their relative cost has increased, and fertility rates have fallen.

Posted by ad | September 14, 2007 2:48 PM

I'm not qualified to comment on other countries, but I think that housing space is one of the deal breaker for Russian families. I don't know how things are now, but when I lived in a small Far Eastern town in the nineties, all of my friends lived in apartments with their families. An Army major lived in a studio apartment with his wife and four-year-old daughter. A female student shared a room with her brother, her parents slept on a sofabed in the livingroom, and grandma had the other bedroom. Meanwhile, a vice principal from my school shared a small one-bedroom apartment with her daughter and the daughter's two toddlers. You couldn't hear yourself think when they were running around squealing in the tiny space, and it was obviously very hard on both my colleague and her daughter. And this was the sticks--it wasn't like this was Moscow or some other big city.

Posted by Amy P | September 14, 2007 2:57 PM

My gut tells me that the subsidy would have to be massive to have a real effect. When I lived in Europe we collected monthly stipends from two countries, thanks to the fact that we lived in one country and my wife worked in another. While the extra money was nice to have, it in no way affected our decision to have a child. Our one bedroom apartment, however, would have prevented us from having another child had we not moved to more spacious digs in the US.

Posted by Jaime Roberto | September 14, 2007 3:28 PM

My gut tells me that the subsidy would have to be massive to have a real effect.

Ok, so I suppose the economic question then is, how large does the subsidy need to be to offset the higher costs of living in a urban/high density area?

Posted by Peter Bautista | September 14, 2007 3:34 PM

It seems to me that we are making an assumption here, and ignoring a vitally important variable.

Most comments seem to take it for granted that everyone wants the maximum possible number of children, and the demand for children is constrained only by costs. How can one safely assume this?

What if some people value having children greatly, whereas others place little value on having them, or even a negative value?

You'd have to pay someone a fair amount of money to take a ton of dog poop off your hands. Nobody wants a ton of dog poop. Surely, someone who is dreadfully poor will be willing to dispose of your dog poop for a lower price than someone who has plenty of money, but nobody I can think of would actually PAY for it.

On the other hand, megayachts are expensive, and it seems that those who have the money are often willing to pay a lot for a megayacht. Many additional people also enjoy boating and would probably would like to have a huge luxury yacht, but cannot afford to buy and maintain one.

When one considers that different individuals and different groups of individuals place a different VALUE on having children, it goes a long way to explain the results seen above. Regardless of costs, people tend to do what they WANT to do, within the constraints of those costs. Tax breaks and government "assistance" may tweak the numbers a tiny bit, but they won't cause middle-class or wealthy people who place a low or negative value on children to suddenly start reproducing in large numbers. Also, it explains that while some of the extremely poor might have children they don't really value, in order to secure a larger welfare check, the vast majority of people in socioeconomic groups from lower middle class on up tend to have children because they value children, not for the tax break.

Extreme contrast for illustration... If a couple thinks of children like they think of dog poop, you can't pay most of them enough to reproduce. If they think of children as a highly-desirable luxury item, then they will be willing to incur a significant cost for reproducing, and do it anyway.

Posted by Barry | September 14, 2007 3:44 PM

Some thoughts:
Has Michelle Tsai ever wondered why people had children before the government was there to pay for it? I think it is more than just the lack of availability of contraception.

My opinion, not backed up by any hard data, is that the more people are crammed together, the less interested they are in propagating. Many of the low birthrate countries listed above are highly urbanized and densely populated.

I grew up in some of the "mind deadening" suburbs in Oklahoma and Wyoming the 50s and 60s. I would go off and play with my friends all day long, coming home for supper. If I didn't come home for lunch, then my mother assumed I was eating at my friends house. Could I have done that in NYC, SF, or DC? Likely not. My mother would have never let me out of her sight, and pounded "stranger danger" into my skull at every opportunity.

Posted by sam | September 14, 2007 4:18 PM

Michelle Tsai makes a pretty careless claim about the fertility rates in Scandinavia, when 5 seconds of Googling shows the rates run from about 1.6 to 1.8, not 2.1. Further, I'm guessing any recent slight increase might be mostly owing to Muslim immigrants.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

What I'm really curious to see is what happens to fertility rates when declining-population death-spiral effects REALLY kick in. Could be a total implosion. Eyes on Japan and Korea for that.

Posted by Kevin | September 14, 2007 4:23 PM

Sam: err the entire point that we're making is that the more children cost, the less they have.

There have been a number of anecdotal stories in WSJ, NY Mag, and the NY Observer about large families amongst the well off in Manhattan and Connecticut. Having 2 kids in prep school or the Ivies is a status symbol - having four or more really demonstrates your wealth, especially in Manhattan. There is a "trend" of people making 5000 sq ft + apartments out of numerous smaller units (generally in condos, since co-ops are such a pain to deal with) to accomodate very large families.

Euro statistics show that recent immigrants who are strictly observant of their religion have very large families supported by generous benefits, while non-immigrants have much lower fertility rates than national figures. Demographic data is unavailable for France as it is illegal to collect, but anecdotal evidence and the similarities in neighboring countries are indicative. Read Mark Steyn for extended explorations of the figures.

The good news is that in the US, liberals aren't breeding while conservatives are. The bad news is that hardly anyone in Europe is breeding, except for those who find Al-Jazeera to be a corrupt tool of the infidels and Jews and who prefer Al-Manar.

Posted by Hey | September 14, 2007 4:46 PM

The world as a whole is becoming increasingly more urban. People move to the cities, and, within a generation or so, fertility rates drop.

Urbanization is simply a fact, and I'm not sure what the point of calling city dwellers "liberals" is supposed to accomplish, other than make suburban conservatives feel superior.

The real, and far more interesting question is, given the fact of urbanization, how do we make our cities more livable (including making it affordable to have children, for those who want them).

Magically making urbanites "conservatives" isn't going to make it any more feasible to raise a family in a city.

Posted by Peter Bautista | September 14, 2007 5:00 PM

I don't think urbanity or lack of of optimism can be the biggest drivers of childbearing, as people crammed together in London tenements had little space and not much hope for their future, but still popped out a lot of babies. Once women can control their fertility, childbearing becomes a combination of cultural pressure and cost-benefit analysis.

I think in some traditionalist cultures (such as that of "Red America"), being an adult and especially a woman is strongly tied to being a mother. Because other adults' lives are oriented around their children, there's a sort of tilt effect; if I move to a suburb with few childless adults, I also will feel socially pressured to join the community of parents, particularly if social life is organized around the children. (Can't make contacts at the PTA meeting unless one is either a parent or teacher.)

Big cities and some college towns tend to have a social life for adults that's fairly disconnected from children. The things adults are expected to do -- go to bars, clubs, restaurants, shops, concerts, theater, art galleries, etc. -- don't go well with having children along. The places where I see children a lot in NYC are parks and sporting grounds. People who work in the city and have kids, particularly if one parent can stay at home, tend to move the family to a suburb.

I'd be curious to see if adult culture in the various countries was more suburban (child-centered) or urban (grownup-centered). I find Indian people, for example, to be extremely child-centered. This can be really obnoxious when they're comparing standardized scores, but it does mean that there is a huge pressure to have children in order to integrate into the social group. If one's children are less important to social identity, however, then having children is less imperative and comes down to more individualized preference.

Posted by PG | September 14, 2007 5:04 PM

I wonder if urbanization is a fact in the US. I remember one of the arguments against a new high speed DC-Baltimore train was that it doesn't match the commuting patterns, which are increasingly suburb-to-suburb (although there is certainly a lot of suburb-to-downtown traffic, too).

Posted by Amy P | September 14, 2007 5:07 PM

Just a note on American car culture.

The mandatory seatbelt, child seat, and airbag laws have dramatically changed the size of car _necessary_ to transport kids.

As a child, I've been in pickups, station wagons, sports cars with no 'second row' but plenty of space for a couple 5-year olds. At this time, this was all perfectly natural.

Now this is all entirely anathema. We have a Subaru Forester - classified as an SUV - and we still don't have a large enough vehicle to _legally_ transport three children.

Posted by Al | September 14, 2007 5:24 PM

The trouble with subsidies in this case is that they have two ends. Raising children is a burden, a "cost" in economics-speak. When the perceived cost of kids plus the perceived cost of the rest of life is within reason, children become a reasonable expenditure (not just of money but of time, etc.)

I have an acquaintance who runs a business in the Netherlands. He has two "employees" who are raising babies, and by Netherlands law they don't have to show up at the office. Who pays the subsidy? --he does, or rather his company does. He pays out a regular salary, and gets no work in return. Fine, you say, rich business owner and all that.

But the work still has to be done, and the remaining employees work harder, longer hours, in order to finish it because they don't have the help of the absentees. They thus have less free time, and more important, their perceived burden in order to get along in life rises, making it less likely that they will be willing to add to that burden by raising children. Push and pull.

If the subsidy were paid by Government the problem wouldn't go away. Individuals see less impact in some instances, but the total overall burden is the same, it simply gets diffused over all taxpayers because the subsidy has to be collected as taxes. I'd be willing to bet that analyzing it that way would explain why "baby bonuses" don't do much to increase birth rates.

Regards,
Ric

Posted by Ric Locke | September 14, 2007 5:27 PM

I don't think urbanization is as true in the US. From what I understand, most growth, even in urban areas, is still occurring at the peripheries.

But as a worldwide trend, urbanization holds true. And in Europe, there's not a whole lot of extra land like there is in the US.

Even in the US, though, I think urbanization needs to be taken into account. Our land area, while large, isn't infinite -- and when gas prices dramatically rise, as they must, that's going to throw the brakes on suburban sprawl.

I'd rather be coming up with solutions to making high-density life livable now, rather than wait until we're in a crisis a few decades hence.

Posted by Peter Bautista | September 14, 2007 5:38 PM

There are two abortions for every live birth in Russia, in the U.S. it's ~1 abortion for every 5 live births. That's a notable disparity.

I think we're back to some societies value children more than others.

Posted by Heather | September 14, 2007 5:46 PM

"being cooped up in some shapeless suburb is pretty mind-deadening"

If you have a car in the suburbs, you're not "cooped up." The great thing about American car culture and suburbia is that the marginal cost of living in the suburbs and visiting the city for its cultural ammenities is very low. The only significant extra cost of visiting the city vs. moving around in the suburbs is paying for parking. If one avoids rush hour traffic, occasionally paying for parking at the museum, etc. is more than offset by lower costs for things like housing, good schools for the kids, and insurance.

Posted by George B | September 14, 2007 6:12 PM

When we graduated from a Subaru Outback, that only has room for 2 kids and their car seats, and moved to a minivan this made the idea of transporting more kids feasible and before long we had four, where before it seemed unfathomable. The same calculus applies to the number of bedrooms.

These amenities are far more available and affordable in the US than in Europe, so for couples that want kids in the first place, conditions are much more amenable to having more in the US and is the main reason why the US birth rate is higher, I think. Conversely, it is very hard to pay someone enough to have more than a couple of kids when it is hard to afford the vehicle, the gas and the space to house and transport them all.

Posted by Graham R | September 14, 2007 6:51 PM

"what can governments do to make fertility rates go up"

Whatever happened to "keep you hands off my uterus"?

Posted by Mycin | September 14, 2007 7:11 PM

One interesting suggestion from a friend who is a recent new suburban parent is that America's car culture may be giving childbearing a big boost.

Is she called Anne Ecdote? (Though the less said about the speculative implications of 'dragging', the better.)

Like brooksfoe suggests, it's probably a wash: recreational diversity and availability of family-friendly services -- by which I don't mean the expedition to Chuck E Cheese -- offsets living space. (I think George B neglects to factor in both the expeditionary qualities of loading and unloading children into the car, and the influence of 'out of sight, out of mind' on suburban living.)

On the other side of the pond, if you're looking for large families in European cities -- oh noes! the immigrants! -- you'll often find them in apartment blocks and town-centre terraces, the latter being the kind of small houses that have hosted large families over many successive generations.

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | September 14, 2007 7:18 PM

Seriously though, I don't think declining birth rates are due primarily to financial reasons. It's cultural, more than anything. To the extent that a society is ordered around family and small communities, you'll see more children.

If a government wants to encourage more children, they may want to discourage the tendency of many people to turn to the government first for all their needs, but instead to depend more on their family and friends when their own efforts are not enough. Why have kids to care for you in your old age when the welfare state has promised to do that? Why not get a new T.V. instead?

I'm sure there's not an exact correlation between the degree of statism and declining birth rates, and there are doubtless other variables at play as well, but I think it's a factor.

Posted by Mycin | September 14, 2007 7:33 PM

Mycin,

In Western, non immigrant, culture most people have developed an expectation of a certain standard of living that is related in part to living space and travel. If having x number of kids drops them below that level they'll have less than x unless they are particularly motivated. So, I think financials are a huge factor for those with middle class or better aspirations, which are the majority of the population in the West.

Posted by Graham R | September 14, 2007 8:06 PM

There are a million kids a year aborted in the USA, and about a hundred thousand aborted every year in Canada. As Heather pointed out above, the ratio of abortions to births is even higher in Russia, and it is no coincidence that the Russian birth rate is much lower. Abortion is the gorilla in the corner of the room here. What are the abortion rates in Japan, Korea, etc?

Posted by EdMinchau | September 14, 2007 8:23 PM

This comment has been deleted for talking with its mouth full.

Posted by bluemeanie | September 14, 2007 8:40 PM

I've been following the demography/birthrate discussion for a couple of years now, and there's a basic factor that's almost universally overlooked. That is simply this: every population of every organism follows a generally cyclic trajectory. Rabbits reproduce like mad until there are significantly more rabbits around than the local environment can support. Then they die off, until there are significantly fewer rabbits around than the environment can support. Then they reproduce again, etc., etc.

There's no fundamental reason to think that humans are exempt from this cyclic population pattern. Indeed, most everyone on this thread is talking about the cost of housing, fuel, etc. in Europe leading to dropping birthrates. But what does it mean to say that "Europe doesn't have enough land", except that "Europe has too many people?" Having fewer children is a perfectly rational response to living in an environment where there are too many people. It seems to me that the current fall in birth rates in Europe represents a self-organized, market-like population control plan. If so, even successful government attempts to "fix" the birth rate are almost certain to have unintended (and likely undesireable) consequences.

Posted by Brian | September 14, 2007 9:52 PM

What a big unquestioned assumption.

Who says more people are better?

When birthrates go down, labor gains value.

Wages and salaries rise.

What's wrong with that?

Posted by Emphyrio | September 14, 2007 11:23 PM

Megan tossed in a completely vague and anecdotal idea -- "one of my friends suggests" -- so I felt it was a good idea to toss in the opposite vague and completely anecdotal idea, for balance. Do US suburbs encourage childbearing more than European urban modes of living? Who knows? Much of the US's greater fertility rate results from high rates of immigration from high-fertility countries like India and Mexico; those countries' high fertility presumably does not stem from high rates of ownership of 4-bedroom houses and minivans.

I mean, anecdotal ideas are a dime a dozen. In Holland, kids learn to ride their bikes at 5, and outside of Rotterdam or Amsterdam they're able to bike to school or the playground on their own from a bit older than that. In the US, I've heard parents in very expensive suburbs who are afraid to let their 7-year-olds walk the 3 blocks to school. Paranoia, I think, but should such paranoia have an effect? Meanwhile, the number of children under 5 in Manhattan increased by a staggering 59 percent from 2000 to 2005. Why? In my experience, spending a month or so in Manhattan with my 2 young kids every year visiting family, I might connect this to fantastic new city playgrounds springing up all over the place (the riverfront parks in particular) and to improvements in foldable stroller technology. But who knows?

Posted by brooksfoe | September 14, 2007 11:42 PM

Oh wait -- the 59 percent increase in kids under 5 was lower Manhattan. The figure for the whole borough from 2000-2004 was 26 percent. Still pretty huge.

Posted by brooksfoe | September 14, 2007 11:45 PM

The problem with saying equating "Europe doesn't have enough land" with "Europe has too many people?" is that it is not true - there is plenty of semi-developed land being used for farming in France, Belgium, and the Netherlands. If you drive between the Hague and Amsterdam - what is supposedly one big urban area - you drive through beautiful fields filled with waterfowl, like a gorgeous Louisiana or Florida swamp. This is a choice the Dutch have made - higher rents for the sake of preserving beautiful nature very close to their cities - that we have chosen not to make. In that we choose to design our environment around our values and preferences, we differ significantly from rabbits.

Everything said here is accurate and insightful - I think the conclusion is clear that Michelle Tsai's recommendations would not work because the marginal economic effects of most baby-boosting programs are more than offset by both cultural values and the absolutely enormous impact children have in our lives. Clearly, though, the other point made several times in these comments is also true - the state could easily encourage more births by taking more severe measures, from more significant financial incentives - imagine the reproduction if they offered $100,000 per child - to limiting access to contraceptives and abortions.

Posted by Paul | September 14, 2007 11:55 PM

Keep women barefoot and pregnant, and that'll ease the lack of babies...and it'll start changing the economy back towards a series of 'fixes' that working women have helped cause. It would be nice that a family unit can live on one income only...an income that is reasonable. Don't have a man need to get married so that a second income can help make life easier...let's keep men working hard so they can be productive, but get paid the way they should, also.

As far as carbon footprints go...don't worry your little head about htat, because it doesn't really matter in the larger, planetary scheme of things. It's pretty much ballyhoo and not based on good science anyway. Those who want to fight global warming by reducing carbon footprints exhibits pretty radical left sentiments...definitely not good for the US.

Posted by beneficial | September 15, 2007 2:15 AM

One person can hold two hands.

Is it more complicated than that? Staying married means four hands. By the time you need more than four hands the older ones stop trying to kill themselves by running into traffic.

One person can transport three or more children by car by loading and unloading them in shifts. Strap the baby in the car seat. Go retrieve the toddlers. Strap the toddlers into car seats. Drive. Get two grocery carts. Put the baby in the carrier in one cart. Put the two toddlers in the other cart. Pull one, push the other. Put the groceries on the bottom.

I can't even imagine how to work that on public transportation. Even if I could get my kids all there and home again, who'd carry the diaper bag?

Groceries? We need to eat?

The absolute best thing EVER was when my brother moved in. With three adults in the house it was almost always possible to wait for errands until another adult was home to watch kids for an hour. And he did housework.

If it's not cars, maybe it's not having extended families or other adults around... and a free government day care center isn't going to help.

Posted by Synova | September 15, 2007 4:25 AM

I think the daughter-in-law (Synova) is right.

Extended families (de jure or de facto) have more kids than nuclear families do.

Kids are a lot of work, but when there's lots of adults around who can spell the parents (or each other) or do other work while one is child-minding, the less work there is for any one adult.

Urbanization tends to lead to the breakdown of extended families (and indirectly to lowered birthrates).

Find a population with a high birth rate and I bet you'll find the parents (especially the mother) has lots of helping hands around who can and do help deal with the children and/or other work around the home.

Posted by Michael Farris | September 15, 2007 5:32 AM

While I'm here, one of the critical helping hand issues related to extended families (real or fictive) is trust. People tend to trust relatives (or people who they've known for years or even decades) to mind their children more than they trust paid child-minders.

Posted by Michael Farris | September 15, 2007 5:41 AM

For an economics-oriented site, I am suprised more attention isn't paid to the free-rider issue of (not) having children. For those that choose to have children, 18 years of extra expenses, then college costs await. For those that don't have children, its 18 years of expensive cars, houses, and vacations. And both will eventually retire and get "social security" and medicare. Seems like a clear benefit to being childless. But if nobody has children, there won't be anyone working to pay taxes to support ss & medicare.

It would also be a *good* thing if tax rates (and govt spending) were reduced, enabling a family to live on one income. Raising taxes to subsidize families is exactly the wrong prescription. Cut taxes and spending and let people choose what to do with their money (it is their money, right?).

I should also try harder not to snicker at the irony of childless-by-choice darwinists. It is certainly not terribly polite of me to point out the irony.

Posted by m | September 15, 2007 8:21 AM

"I should also try harder not to snicker at the irony of childless-by-choice darwinists. It is certainly not terribly polite of me to point out the irony"

What makes you think they're not aware of the irony? They'd have to be utterly stupid not to be.
It is perfectly possible for a person to realize they will not pass on their genetic material for posperity and be okay with that.

Posted by Michael Farris | September 15, 2007 8:37 AM

But if nobody has children, there won't be anyone working to pay taxes to support ss & medicare.

But why worry if your a country like Japan with a very low birth rate and high rate of savings?

You need more doctors as people age. The solution is simple.

1) You hire doctors from the U.S. to work in Japan for 1/2 the year at the same annual salary.

2) You move to the U.S. to take advantage of cheap medical care and housing due to purchasing power disparities between the value of the Yen and Dollar.

As a matter of fact, the Japanese government could offer incentives for elderly Japanese to move to America to help maintain a strong Yen. As well as reduce the supply of patients to doctors in Japan.

This asymmetry with in the dollar hegemony and so called free trade is comming.

Maybe sooner then you think with all those subprime houses out there and all the potential buyers overseas.

But that's not the way Riccardo's theory is supposed to work. Is it?

Posted by mark | September 15, 2007 8:52 AM

I think that cultural factors influence childbearing rates more than subsidies or other governmental policies can - at least in the short term. That is, people raised in traditional cultures will cram a half-dozen children into a 2 room apartment and feed them from minimum wage pay - because according to their values, children are worth more than anything else. However, if they succeed in raising their children to function well in American society so they can get a better job and a big house in the suburb, it's quite likely that their children will also pick up the middle-class American attitude towards children and find more than two just too burdensome! Where second and third generation immigrants remain prolific is where they do not assimilate. That's why European countries that isolate their Muslim immigrants in nearly third-world conditions are eventually going to become Muslim third-world countries - or else have their progressive governments overturned by neo-nazi nativists whose basic platform is getting rid of the Muslims...

On the other hand, government action over a generation or more has sometimes unintentionally managed to accomplish cultural changes that greatly reduce birth rates. Look at how Lenin, Stalin, and their successors managed to turn a nation of child-loving traditional peasants into a nation where women more often kill their unborn babies than give birth to them - but I'm quite sure that was unintentional, since reducing the supply of cannon fodder was the last thing Stalin wanted.

I don't know the recipe for changing the culture so that children are more valued, but the recipe for going in the other direction is clear enough: Make people dependent upon government rather than upon themselves and their families. It probably increases the effect if you add impoverishment, crowding, and a culture of corruption, but none of these elements alone will do it.

One other factor is narcissism. There's at least one way the government can encourage that in the long term - by having the public schools tell children that everyone is "special" and try to raise their self-esteem in every way except challenging them to learn and do things they can really be proud of.

Posted by markm | September 15, 2007 9:38 AM

As others have noted, government subsidies to encourage childbearing will often be counterproductive. Every dollar given to parents, whether by direct subsidies out of tax dollars or by regulations requiring employers to subsidize employees with children is a dollar from someone's income. But it's worse than that. Higher taxes or regulations discourage people from working harder or from founding and expanding businesses, so for every $1 of income transfer, others are poorer by more than $1 - and those others include other parents. In any society that has a chance of surviving into the next generation, a majority of working-age adults must be parents or young people saving up to become parents. There aren't enough working non-parents to carry the full load of subsidies, so the net effect of subsidizing parents is probably to make them poorer.

And of course, it also makes people more dependent upon government - which I think the Soviets have inadvertently proven to be an effective way to induce a cultural change that discourages childbearing.

Posted by markm | September 15, 2007 9:42 AM

If it's not cars, maybe it's not having extended families or other adults around... and a free government day care center isn't going to help.

People in Europe live closer to their extended families than Americans do.

Why you claim a free government day care center "isn't going to help" is unclear to me. France has Europe's best and most comprehensive system of free government day care. It also has Europe's highest birthrate. The Netherlands has followed a different philosophy, offering mothers government stipends so they can stay home with their kids. Their birthrate, and participation of women in the workforce, is significantly lower.

Posted by brooksfoe | September 15, 2007 10:21 AM

I am suprised more attention isn't paid to the free-rider issue of (not) having children. For those that choose to have children, 18 years of extra expenses, then college costs await. For those that don't have children, its 18 years of expensive cars, houses, and vacations.

So you're saying we should tax the childless more and transfer the money to those with children? I somehow think this is not what you are saying.

Or are you saying we should tax those with children less? Oh wait - we do. That's what that "Number of Dependents" box on your 1040 is for.

Posted by brooksfoe | September 15, 2007 10:29 AM

Mycin: Why have kids to care for you in your old age when the welfare state has promised to do that?

Or, conversely: Why have kids whose middle-age is taken up with parenting their parents? Unless (h/t Denis Leary) you like the idea of your son wiping your shitty ass? So many of these things can be treated like an overnight guest at Hotel Procrustes.

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | September 15, 2007 10:33 AM

There is a direct -- if difficult to quantitatively measure -- predictor of birth rates: how woman are viewed by society and how empowered woman are to act outside of that view. Societies that view woman as breeding machines and completely disenfranchise them invariably out-breed those that do not or those in which woman have a considerable degree of education and personal freedom. And generally one follows the other.

Take a look at the counter-examples. Security obviously has nothing to do with it: war-ravaged Palestinians have some of the highest birth rates in the world. Prosperity has only an indirect (and negative) correlation: the more liberated woman tend to live in the more prosperous countries. For counter-examples of wealthy and quickly growing nations look at places like Saudi Arabia a decade ago (per-capita GNP has been plummetting lately due to the population boom) or modern day Qatar, Oman, etc. The economic disinscentive of children in wealthier countries is similarly irrelevant: US Mormans have astronomical birthrates relative to the rest of the population; one needs look no further than their views of woman promulgated by their religion to see why. Population concentrations also clearly have little causation: sparse Russia is committing demographic suicide while India, crammed to capacity, continues to expand. To the extent they're related, it's again indirect, as the more progressive societies are also the more heavily urbanized.

Given this, it's hardly a surprise pro-natalist programs have little impact on fertility. However, that does not imply anti-natalist policies do not: Iran and China are two examples where government direction brought down birth rates (note that Iran under the more conservative regimes reversed this policy which led to a [temporary] baby boom).

Posted by Jason | September 15, 2007 12:07 PM

Kudos to Ric Locke for being the first!!? by pointing out the most obvious problem with the subsidy method- that the subsidy doesn't just fall off a money tree. The subsidy will mostly eat itself in higher taxes/lower incomes for the prospective parents. This problem gets worse the higher you raise the subsidy.

If cost of raising children is too high, then one should be asking why has the cost been rising more quickly than incomes. Some of you have pointed to some of the reasons such as children taking longer to raise, children being more expensive to educate, higher total taxes on income, and the the increasing cost of living in urban areas. So, how does government solve these issues?

For the record, I think falling fertility in the developed world is largely the result of exactly what Megan outlined- opportunity cost. This also explains why some people who would like to have children continue to live in cities rather than move somewhere with lower living costs in order to have children they could not otherwise afford. If you want to raise the fertility of liberal Manhattanites, the government will have to force them to move to Oklahoma.

Posted by Yancey Ward | September 15, 2007 1:01 PM

Societies that view woman as breeding machines and completely disenfranchise them invariably out-breed those that do not or those in which woman have a considerable degree of education and personal freedom.

What you have written here is, interestingly and fortuitously, exactly the opposite of the truth. When you compare societies at similar levels of income, the ones with the most expansive and egalitarian attitudes and policies towards women have the highest birthrates. You cannot compare birthrates in Norway or the US to those in the Palestinian Territories or Chad: the income differences, child-mortality differences, and differences in education levels swamp anything to do with attitudes towards gender roles. To put it another way, it will be impossible for Palestinians to adopt Norwegian attitudes towards gender roles until they become approximately 10 times wealthier than they are now.

The only outliers on this question are religiously fundamentalist Gulf states, which are wealthy only due to a geological quirk.

Posted by brooksfoe | September 15, 2007 1:10 PM

Yancey:

The subsidy will mostly eat itself in higher taxes/lower incomes for the prospective parents.

Ric Locke's point didn't make any sense at all. The taxes required to finance the child subsidies are paid by everyone, with or without kids. Having paid those taxes, the incentive to have kids and recoup the benefits are even higher. You cannot get your taxes back, in such a system, by not having kids.

If you want to raise the fertility of liberal Manhattanites, the government will have to force them to move to Oklahoma.

Have you been reading? The number of kids under 5 in Manhattan rose 26% from 2000 to 2004. How'd those numbers look in Oklahoma? Maybe we should be forcing Oklahomans to move to Manhattan to raise their fertility rates, if higher fertility is what we desire?

Posted by brooksfoe | September 15, 2007 1:16 PM

So you're saying we should tax the childless more and transfer the money to those with children? I somehow think this is not what you are saying.

Don't we do this already to a certain extent? Less income is subject to taxation in the United States depending on how many kids one is supporting. Childless people are taxed "more". I don't disagree with this, by the way. Given the dependence of the childless on the childed for future prosperity, I would argue the disparity in taxation should be substantially larger.

Posted by Jasper | September 15, 2007 1:18 PM

Cultures differ, and those differences probably have a variety of impacts, but the ability to control one's fertility is essential to individual economic success in all modern economies. (Which is why the Church is fighting a losing battle in terms of birth control, and most likely abortion too.)

Being able to control the timing of parenthood is actually of greater importance than controlling the number of children -- but, for women, timing restrictions ARE restrictions on the number of children they are likely to have overall.

For men, the situation is a little different. Avoidance of too early parenthood is important to a man's economic success, but avoiding parenthood in early youth is less likely to limit a man's overall fertility -- unless he limits himself to one, long-term partner and stakes his potential for progeny on the limits of her fertility.

The higher divorce and remarriage rate in the US may actually be a contributing factor to why we enjoy a higher fertility rate than some other countries we associate with more "traditional" family values.

Italy's greater disapproval of divorce and greater commitment to family stability, ironically, probably contributes to its lesser fertility rate.

Posted by esmense | September 15, 2007 2:31 PM

Let's not go bashing mormons, just because one is in the race for the presidency, especially since he's a Republican, kinda. The mormons I know are just a little strange, perhaps, but they have the right attitude towards family and relationships. The women (when talked to privately) aren't at all eaten up with being debased, abused, disenfranchised, etc., etc.

They're a group of very intelligent, people with great heart and caring, and don't think every culture should be treated the same. As a group, they're better educated than most of the rest, especially the cultural Northeasterner.

Comments about the Palestinian birthrate - right on! Other like examples are any of dozens of cultural groups in Africa, and a few in the more backward Islamic world (those without barrels of oil to sell). Their birthrates are way up there, because they've found (as just one reason) that you may need more hands to keep the family strong, and a large number of them die off pretty quickly.

Posted by beneficial | September 15, 2007 2:49 PM

Not sure I go with all of Emphrio's post but definitely agree that most of the discussion seems to imply that "more is better". Why assume that higher fertility is better. Isn't it a hallmark of an improving society that birthrates decline as the quality of life (esp for women) improves?
Isn't our increased mechanization and productivity making finding a mentally stimulating job for millions of college educated people more difficult?
Tax revenue would lower, but so would the need for schools and daycare. The age of retirement would increase and the amount paid out for the increasingly useless social security would go down, and so what??
Other than for purely tribal reasons, I see nothing in here that addresses the assumption that we *need* more people in the world in order to make it better for all of us.
Yes, I am a parent of one.

Posted by Michael W | September 15, 2007 3:30 PM

"Iran would seem like the sort of place where birth rates would be sky-high, it's not as if women have anything better to do except breed, yet its birth rate has absolutely plummeted in the past couple decades."

Really Peter? I thought Iran had had a big rise in population since the 1980s. I'll have to check the figures, I suppose.

Posted by Mark G. | September 15, 2007 6:09 PM

My apologies, Peter! Looks like you're right - according to one article I found Iran's average family size has plummeted from seven children (sounds extraordinary, doesn't it?) to three since the late 1980s. Three children per couple still means a growing population, of course.

What strikes me though, is that the Iranian data looks like strong support for governments being able to influence family size.

In the 1980s, Iran's religious leaders urged and pressured women to have large families, and they did. In the 1990s Iran's religious leaders urged and pressured women to have smaller families, and they did. Looks like spectacular evidence for at least one government fertility policy working according to plan. When the plans changed the results changed with them.

Posted by Mark G. | September 15, 2007 6:18 PM

brooksfoe:

What you have written here is ... exactly the opposite of the truth ... When you compare societies at similar levels of income, the ones with the most expansive and egalitarian attitudes and policies towards women have the highest birthrates. ... The only outliers on this question are religiously fundamentalist Gulf states,

Oh really? I'd like to see some evidence to back that up. There aren't too many data points to consider. The gulf states are the principle cases where per-capita incomes are (or were) high and women are considered reproductive vehicles. I think your comment makes the point actually: "religiously fundamentalist". It is a salient feature of conservative religion to view the duty of a woman as first and foremost to produce a family. Heck, we don't need to step out of the US to see this: "liberal" women [though I will completely fail to define my terms here] are typically out-reproduced by say, evangelical conservatives [again, with a more traditional view of the woman's role], and I bet my mortgage this occurs even when they're living next-door to one another.

beneficial:

... The women (when talked to privately) aren't at all eaten up with being debased, abused, disenfranchised, etc., etc.

Neither do most Muslim woman, amazingly enough. The thing is, people tend to cling their 'default' beliefs [the ones they were reared with]. Inculcate in a woman that her principle function is to have kids at an early enough age, and it can be hard to disabuse her of this notion.

BTW, I do not mean to be a single-cause theorist here. I do believe however that this factor likely overshadows -- or at the very least puts upper-limit growth conditions -- on any others.

Posted by Jason | September 15, 2007 8:08 PM

Modern, technologically sophisticated economies need (and most value) highly educated and skilled workers. Therefore it makes sense that more workers in those economies delay parenthood in order to acquire more education and training. And delayed parenthood obviously must have some impact on overall fertility rates.

Look at countries in the West with low birth rates and you'll see that the age at which the men in those countries first become fathers is getting older and older. Italy, in fact, has the highest average age for first time fathers; 33.

I think it is interesting that everyone wants to look exclusively at the behavior of women in explaining this phenomenon. But modern economies make new demands on men that may be more primary. Those changes -- most of which have occurred over the last 50-60 years -- in how men are required to organize their economic, and therefore their social and reproductive, lives may have had, in fact I think probably have had, more impact on how women have reorganized their lives -- later marriage, latter child bearing, more years in the work force, more years living independently, etc., than vice versa.

Posted by esmense | September 15, 2007 8:28 PM

Jason, you want some evidence that socially limiting women's roles doesn't assist the birthrate?

Okay.

Taking the World Economic Forum's Global Gender Gap Report 2006 as our ranking of women's rights, looking at the top-ranked seven and bottom-ranked seven developed countries on that scale, and giving the per-1000-population birthrate from the CIA World Factbook 2007:

Top 7 Developed Countries in Terms of Women's Rights (Global ranking, name, birth rate):
1. Sweden - 10.2
2. Norway - 11.72
3. Finland - 10.42
4. Iceland - 13.57
5. Germany - 8.2
7. New Zealand - 13.61
8. Denmark - 10.91

Bottom 7 Developed Countries in Terms of Women's Rights (Global ranking, name, birth rate):
57. Luxembourg - 11.84
65. Singapore - 9.17
69. Greece - 9.62
70. France - 12.91
77. Italy - 8.54
80. Japan - 8.1
92. Korea (S) - 9.93

Average birth rate for the top 7 developed countries in women's rights: 11.2 per 1,000

Average birth rate for the bottom 7 developed countries in women's rights: 10.0

(NB: 23. United States - 14.16)

If opportunity for women reduced a country's birthrate, then we would expect to see South Korea, Japan, and Italy as the world's fastest-reproducing developed countries, while Sweden, Norway, and Finland would be facing extinction.

Posted by Warmongering Lunatic | September 16, 2007 12:52 AM

The gulf states are the principle cases where per-capita incomes are (or were) high and women are considered reproductive vehicles. - Jason

I don't think such a situation can endure for long. The only reason their women aren't in the workforce is that they're essentially rentier economies, importing disenfranchised workforces from abroad. That's only possible because of their oil; once the oil runs out, either their women will enter the workforce to make them productive economies, or they will collapse into poverty. Significantly, the Gulf states that don't import their workforces - Iran and Iraq - have seen massive emancipations of women (even though one was under a fundamentalist Islamic regime!) and sharply declining birthrates.

There is a correlation vs. causation problem in comparing birthrates among US evangelical Christians to those among US secular liberals: do those who are liberal want fewer children, or do those who want fewer children become liberal? Women in countries with very broad society-wide restrictive gender norms (e.g. Confucian societies) find it very difficult to "opt" for a different lifestyle choice, as one can in the US. And anyone familiar with Confucian societies knows that it is extremely confusing to try to explain the huge drop in their birthrates in terms of their being less "traditional" or religious than, say, Pakistan or India, or having less restrictive gender roles.

Posted by brooksfoe | September 16, 2007 3:07 AM

When I read this piece, I was reminded of my oped in planetizen.com, published four months ago. I suggested there that "it could imply that the higher fertility rate in the US, compared to other developed countries, is the unintended consequence of government subsidies in the form of freeway and road building, low gas tax and, hence, relatively inexpensive gas, deductibility of home mortgage interests from income taxes, etc. These helped disperse the population from dense population settlements and led to low density suburban settlements -- urban sprawl -- where fertility rates are higher than rates in Western Europe."

the op-ed is at: http://planetizen.com/node/24558

Posted by sriram khe | September 16, 2007 10:27 AM

The real kiss of death for fertility in Western societies appears to be the combination of late first fatherhood, low rate of out of wedlock births and low divorce rates. Italy, for instance, hits the jackpot on all three factors.

In the more racially and ethnically diverse US, white, non hispanics have the lowest fertility rate (1.8). They also have the latest average age of first fatherhood (compared to other demographic groups with higher fertility rates) and are most likely to have their children born within marriage. Over 70% of non hispanic white fathers in the US have had all of their children born within marriage. Only 49% of hispanic fathers on the other hand -- the demographic group with the highest birth rate -- have had all their children born within marriage. Hispanic fathers in the US also have their first children, on average, several years earlier than non-hispanic white fathers.

Looking at figures like this, its tempting to suggest that, at least in the US, a major factor contributing to higher fertility is the willingness of young men to father children before they are financially prepared to support them.

This cultural attitude appears to have a more positive impact on fertility rates (in the sense of increasing those rates) -- at least in the US -- than "conservative" attitudes toward marriage and child-bearing within marriage.

If you want to increase the birth rate -- putting asi