We should do a lot of stuff the pro-natalists want in terms of expanding the social safety net for parents and children, no doubt. But very very unlikely that will raise the birth rate much. see a really good recent Max Fischer pod on this (transcript included)
yeah I've seen that research, but I agree with Steve Waldman that if you actually wanted to move the needle with benefits they would likely have to be many times larger that even what the Nordics give out drafts.interfluidity.com/2024/02/06/d...
And that’s not going to happen here, we’re nowhere close to Nordic welfare levels and never have been
tbc we should increase those benefits regardless of the implications for natality. but the point the pod makes is that it doesn't appear increasing benefits has helped *anywhere*.
I think that's overstated, see this paper. I'd guess that if we did a year of paid leave, big child allowance, free daycare, and universal Medicare it would have a pretty large effect given the atrocious status quo www.unfpa.org/sites/defaul...
I am sure it would have a positive effect. But the point of the numbers above is to show that if you rule out teen pregnancies, you need enormous effects to get to a replacement rate, and there's zero evidence any policy can do that.
A marginal but real effect could come from vehicle design. Families are purposely capping at 2 kids so they don't need to get a bigger boat or otherwise solve the car seating problem. As much as teen pregnancy is down, so too are bigger families.
My argument isn't that we shouldn't support families. My argument is that targeting a TFR of 2.1 or so is a complete waste of time and not a useful end in and of itself.
My hot take is that the most effective lever for increasing fertility would be a massive social program to get men to be better domestic partners. A lot easier to have 3 kids if both parents pull their weight.
I think it’s very possible for fertility rates to pop up again (a bit!) but it seems to have more to do with big social movement trends rather than yeah, subsidies
Russia e.g. has awful predictors for all this stuff but had a baby boom in the 2000s if you believe their vital statistics
Yup! Also unclear what the structure is in that (Moscow Oblast or ah Bashkortostan)
But I am fairly confident we will see these little echo boomlets in ultra low fertility countries going forward
sure
Do the pronatalists actually want that? I sure haven't seen Musk or that fascist dorky couple advocating for it
some claim to, some don't
