4 ms·

My biggest concern with some of such programs, including UBI and child tax credits, which rely on the number of children in a family, is that it incentivizes po

by yumraj 5y ago

My biggest concern with some of such programs, including UBI and child tax credits, which rely on the number of children in a family, is that it incentivizes poorer families to have more kids. It may not be a popular opinion, but I generally see poorer families with more kids, regardless of the race, while more affluent families generally have fewer kids. This puts more economic pressure on poorer families and such kids generally don't end up getting good education or going to college. Unfortunately, I don't have an alternate solution.

baq 5y ago
this is true. OTOH the birth rate is below replacement rate, sometimes much below, in quite a lot of developed countries. increased immigration will lead to social unrest; not increasing the birth rate leads to demography of Japan (now) and China (in 20-30 years). children should be a pressing political issue no matter which way you look at the problem. if you add environmental impact of every child, even more so...
dlp211 5y ago
There is so much to unpack about your biases in that first sentence.
- yumraj 5y ago
  I sincerely apologize if you feel that way, though that was not my intention. It if matters at all, not that I need to defend my comment in such a way, I'm a social liberal. It is an observation and I will accept if there is a different reason, causation vs correlation.
  - zajd 5y ago
    > a social liberal "I hate the problems but love the causes"
  - dlp211 5y ago
    There is no proof that credits incentivize poor people to have kids and plenty of proof that credits help poor. working, middle, and upper-middle class people afford the children that they do have or want. It's the welfare queen mythos repackaged all over again. Additionally, what is the problem with having more children if the family is able to support them at some baseline with these credits? If a credit allows a family to plan for and have a child that they wanted, what is the harm to society and you caused by this?
jonathankoren 5y ago
The welfare queen meme that somehow having kids is a net income gain for poor people simply isn't true, and never was. Kids are incredibly expensive, and there really isn't much economy of scale with them. The reasons why poor people have more kids has been well known among public health and economic researchers for years. It's lack of family planning and economic opportunities.
- koolba 5y ago
  There’s plenty of economy scale to having more children. The bare necessities scale quite rapidly with sleeping space (one more bed costs less than one more room) and large pot cooking (one trip to the store and buying in bulk). Most children’s clothing can be handed down to at least one other child. The child rearing also scales when you have a single earner family unit as even the stay at home parent’s eyeballs can be shared. And after a few years the older children themselves provide some of that as well. What doesn’t scale are things we used to consider luxuries. Plane tickets, paid summer camps, or private school tuition. I think it’s more selfishness on the part of higher income earners than anything else that prevents them from having more children. Both in time commitments and the thought of having to give up or pare down an expensive vacation.
  - jonathankoren 5y ago
    In all seriousness, how many kids do you have, and how close are their ages?
    - sershe 5y ago
      Not the GP, but all of the above is true. There's a warped "coastal 9.9%" perspective on having children where someone in the Bay area working at FAANG on principal level told me they cannot afford a 2nd kid because of how much private school/bigger house/... would cost. There's also the model the rest of the world uses, and probably "normal" people in the USA too, where you share a room with your siblings, wear your older cousin's clothes and then pass them on to your younger sister when possible, etc. ;)
- 5y ago
arrosenberg 5y ago
Is there a reason we wouldn’t limit the incentives to the first 2-3 kids?
- dlp211 5y ago
  Because the credits come no where near close enough to cover the actual expenses of having kids and this constant means testing makes programs harder and more expensive to enforce, and very few people are having kids to get credits and the credits are designed to ensure that those children have some sane baseline of support?
- TheCoelacanth 5y ago
  Because children shouldn't grow up in poverty regardless of how many siblings they have.
jeffbee 5y ago
That's just bias and ignorance. Fertility is positively correlated with wealth and income, not negatively. "We found that the relationship between wealth and fertility was much more likely to be positive than negative." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4822433/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4822433/
- yumraj 5y ago
  How about this? https://www.statista.com/statistics/241530/birth-rate-by-family-income-in-the-us/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/241530/birth-rate-by-fam... It shows a clear downward trend in number of births as income rises.
  - fullstop 5y ago
    People generally earn more after being in the workforce many years. It is no surprise, to me, that older people are having fewer children than young people.
  - jeffbee 5y ago
    Sure but that doesn't control for anything. Control, for example, by race or education, place of residence, etc.
    - marcusverus 5y ago
      Controlling for cost of living would make sense, but why would you control for race or education?
      - jeffbee 5y ago
        Because I think you are trying to answer the question of whether giving a specific person more money would cause them to have more or fewer children. You want the marginal fertility associated with a given marginal change in wealth. If you don't control for other factors then you are just taking cultural influences (e.g. that possibly some national origins or races prefer larger families) and multiplying them by the association between that race and wealth (e.g. that some race within a given country is systematically impoverished). So, that would be an invalid analysis without the control.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
foxyv 5y ago
Children are expensive. Dunno if a UBI will cover even half of the cost. Unless you "Harry Potter" the poor tikes.
fullstop 5y ago
Poor families also have less access to birth control.
twright 5y ago
People don’t have children so they can get a tax break. Your argument is remnant of a moral panic over “welfare queens” in the 70’s which continued through the 90’s [1]. It’s been found tax incentives like these actually reduce family sizes over time [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_queen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_queen [2] http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-welfaremothers.htm http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-welfaremothers.htm
- 3pt14159 5y ago
  But people avoid having a second, third, or fourth child if they know they can't afford it. Bringing in epithets from the 70s isn't helpful. The original commentator was clearly offering an opinion that wasn't rooted in racism.
  - twright 5y ago
    I agree that the opinion was not rooted in racism, another sibling thread makes that clear. However it is still a reactionary stance that should be educated. Every UBI or welfare proposal cannot simply be shut down because because of a leaky argument like this. The cost of having and raising children goes well beyond the meager tax credits or UBI proposals anyway.
  - dlp211 5y ago
    Maybe not racism, just classism.
    - yumraj 5y ago
      So it has to be one of the -isms and can't simply be a person having an opinion, even if incorrect or based on incorrect assumptions. BTW, for the record, I'm not familiar with the concept of welfare queens.
      - dlp211 5y ago
        Kinda, yes. You can have a opinion that is classist/racist without being a classist/racist. This is one of the points of systemic racism/classism. You have this opinion because it's been informed via the zeitgeist of American rhetoric. The question is, given this new information, do you update your priors and your opinion?
specialp 5y ago
That might be an incentive worth having. Otherwise the USA will join other countries with a declining population shortly. It really isn't in the metric of most people having kids to get more benefits. No matter what the benefits are, the costs of kids eats them. I am not accusing you of this, but it is a popular trope in some news circles to point out the welfare mom popping out kids for more benefits, It really doesn't work that way. You can watch people locked up in prison for killing someone over $20 tear up over their kids. If you don't have children you might not know the immense desire parents have to provide the best they can for their kids. As far as poor families having more kids, yes I am one of them. But I have gone to university, and I have paid more in taxes than my entire family ever received in benefits. So that was a good investment.
what_is_orcas 5y ago
So you're telling me that you think that people have kids so that the government gives them money?

by yumraj 5y ago

baq 5y ago

this is true. OTOH the birth rate is below replacement rate, sometimes much below, in quite a lot of developed countries. increased immigration will lead to social unrest; not increasing the birth rate leads to demography of Japan (now) and China (in 20-30 years). children should be a pressing political issue no matter which way you look at the problem. if you add environmental impact of every child, even more so...

dlp211 5y ago

There is so much to unpack about your biases in that first sentence.

yumraj 5y ago
I sincerely apologize if you feel that way, though that was not my intention. It if matters at all, not that I need to defend my comment in such a way, I'm a social liberal. It is an observation and I will accept if there is a different reason, causation vs correlation.
- zajd 5y ago
  > a social liberal "I hate the problems but love the causes"
- dlp211 5y ago
  There is no proof that credits incentivize poor people to have kids and plenty of proof that credits help poor. working, middle, and upper-middle class people afford the children that they do have or want. It's the welfare queen mythos repackaged all over again. Additionally, what is the problem with having more children if the family is able to support them at some baseline with these credits? If a credit allows a family to plan for and have a child that they wanted, what is the harm to society and you caused by this?

jonathankoren 5y ago

The welfare queen meme that somehow having kids is a net income gain for poor people simply isn't true, and never was. Kids are incredibly expensive, and there really isn't much economy of scale with them. The reasons why poor people have more kids has been well known among public health and economic researchers for years. It's lack of family planning and economic opportunities.

koolba 5y ago
There’s plenty of economy scale to having more children. The bare necessities scale quite rapidly with sleeping space (one more bed costs less than one more room) and large pot cooking (one trip to the store and buying in bulk). Most children’s clothing can be handed down to at least one other child. The child rearing also scales when you have a single earner family unit as even the stay at home parent’s eyeballs can be shared. And after a few years the older children themselves provide some of that as well. What doesn’t scale are things we used to consider luxuries. Plane tickets, paid summer camps, or private school tuition. I think it’s more selfishness on the part of higher income earners than anything else that prevents them from having more children. Both in time commitments and the thought of having to give up or pare down an expensive vacation.
- jonathankoren 5y ago
  In all seriousness, how many kids do you have, and how close are their ages?
  - sershe 5y ago
    Not the GP, but all of the above is true. There's a warped "coastal 9.9%" perspective on having children where someone in the Bay area working at FAANG on principal level told me they cannot afford a 2nd kid because of how much private school/bigger house/... would cost. There's also the model the rest of the world uses, and probably "normal" people in the USA too, where you share a room with your siblings, wear your older cousin's clothes and then pass them on to your younger sister when possible, etc. ;)
5y ago

arrosenberg 5y ago

Is there a reason we wouldn’t limit the incentives to the first 2-3 kids?

dlp211 5y ago
Because the credits come no where near close enough to cover the actual expenses of having kids and this constant means testing makes programs harder and more expensive to enforce, and very few people are having kids to get credits and the credits are designed to ensure that those children have some sane baseline of support?
TheCoelacanth 5y ago
Because children shouldn't grow up in poverty regardless of how many siblings they have.

jeffbee 5y ago

That's just bias and ignorance. Fertility is positively correlated with wealth and income, not negatively. "We found that the relationship between wealth and fertility was much more likely to be positive than negative." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4822433/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4822433/

yumraj 5y ago
How about this? https://www.statista.com/statistics/241530/birth-rate-by-family-income-in-the-us/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/241530/birth-rate-by-fam... It shows a clear downward trend in number of births as income rises.
- fullstop 5y ago
  People generally earn more after being in the workforce many years. It is no surprise, to me, that older people are having fewer children than young people.
- jeffbee 5y ago
  Sure but that doesn't control for anything. Control, for example, by race or education, place of residence, etc.
  - marcusverus 5y ago
    Controlling for cost of living would make sense, but why would you control for race or education?
    - jeffbee 5y ago
      Because I think you are trying to answer the question of whether giving a specific person more money would cause them to have more or fewer children. You want the marginal fertility associated with a given marginal change in wealth. If you don't control for other factors then you are just taking cultural influences (e.g. that possibly some national origins or races prefer larger families) and multiplying them by the association between that race and wealth (e.g. that some race within a given country is systematically impoverished). So, that would be an invalid analysis without the control.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

foxyv 5y ago

Children are expensive. Dunno if a UBI will cover even half of the cost. Unless you "Harry Potter" the poor tikes.

fullstop 5y ago

Poor families also have less access to birth control.

twright 5y ago

People don’t have children so they can get a tax break. Your argument is remnant of a moral panic over “welfare queens” in the 70’s which continued through the 90’s [1]. It’s been found tax incentives like these actually reduce family sizes over time [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_queen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_queen [2] http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-welfaremothers.htm http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-welfaremothers.htm

3pt14159 5y ago
But people avoid having a second, third, or fourth child if they know they can't afford it. Bringing in epithets from the 70s isn't helpful. The original commentator was clearly offering an opinion that wasn't rooted in racism.
- twright 5y ago
  I agree that the opinion was not rooted in racism, another sibling thread makes that clear. However it is still a reactionary stance that should be educated. Every UBI or welfare proposal cannot simply be shut down because because of a leaky argument like this. The cost of having and raising children goes well beyond the meager tax credits or UBI proposals anyway.
- dlp211 5y ago
  Maybe not racism, just classism.
  - yumraj 5y ago
    So it has to be one of the -isms and can't simply be a person having an opinion, even if incorrect or based on incorrect assumptions. BTW, for the record, I'm not familiar with the concept of welfare queens.
    - dlp211 5y ago
      Kinda, yes. You can have a opinion that is classist/racist without being a classist/racist. This is one of the points of systemic racism/classism. You have this opinion because it's been informed via the zeitgeist of American rhetoric. The question is, given this new information, do you update your priors and your opinion?

specialp 5y ago

That might be an incentive worth having. Otherwise the USA will join other countries with a declining population shortly. It really isn't in the metric of most people having kids to get more benefits. No matter what the benefits are, the costs of kids eats them. I am not accusing you of this, but it is a popular trope in some news circles to point out the welfare mom popping out kids for more benefits, It really doesn't work that way. You can watch people locked up in prison for killing someone over $20 tear up over their kids. If you don't have children you might not know the immense desire parents have to provide the best they can for their kids. As far as poor families having more kids, yes I am one of them. But I have gone to university, and I have paid more in taxes than my entire family ever received in benefits. So that was a good investment.

what_is_orcas 5y ago

So you're telling me that you think that people have kids so that the government gives them money?