15 ms·
Basement Fertility
- hunglee2 4y agoI believe OP is making the general case that our commitment to nuclear family living raises the cost of raising a family as there are no economies of scale compared to multi-generational living. A moments thought about it, and he's clearly correct
- divbzero 4y agoI think OP is focusing on a different core thesis — that moving in with parents is not conducive to having babies. But what you describe definitely rings true. Many of my friends grew up with two working parents in a nuclear family and didn’t realize how incredibly tough that is until they started having kids themselves.
- hunglee2 4y agoyes you might be right, I may have rushed to a conclusion. Multi-generational is clearly our natural state, our evolved state. Only last hundred years since we atomised the family, begins to make sense why we are dying out
- lotsofpulp 4y agoWhat is an evolved state? I assume almost all people live in multi generational households because they cannot afford not to. My ideal is grandparents a few houses down, within a couple minutes walking distance.
- hunglee2 4y agoEvolved as in the true meaning of the term - Darwinian evolution. Homo Sapiens have live and grow and die in extended kinship groups, this has been the case for 99.9% of the time we have been around - and if we go further back to pre-human times, we likely lived in those kinship groups too. We only collapsed this structure since industrialisation / urbanisation - last hundred, maybe two hundred years
- cs137 4y agoCities have always been population reducers: below replacement fertility, with migrants from the countryside increasing the population. This was true 2000 years ago and it's true now. It's hard to say for sure why this is, but I'd imagine it's that urban people have more awareness of economic inequality. Rural people suffer from it, but they don't see it on a daily basis, so they aren't constantly reminded of the disadvantages that 99% of them will inherit in the way urban people are. These days, not only is the world population more urban, but people are also more consistently aware of the inequality problem. People are realizing they have no hope of providing the best opportunities for their children, and are deciding not to have them. I don't see that as a bad thing. Voluntary population decline might be the best outcome for humanity at this point, at least until we get our political, economic, and ecological shit together. We don't need 10 billion humans to be on the planet; we need to get through this era of war and capitalism without making ourselves extinct.
- mattgreenrocks 4y agoI'll go further and say the nuclear family as a default is harmful. A few years into raising my kid (who has no health issues) convinced me of this. It can be quite isolating and lonely. I cannot imagine what it is like for parents of children who have more significant needs to both work and try to run a nuclear family.
- corrral 4y agoThere's a lot of tension between an economic environment that rewards high levels of mobility, and desire to live near/in a strong local web of friends and relatives who can help support you.
- lotsofpulp 4y agoI think a big component of rising opportunity cost for raising families is simply the fact that women now have opportunities. A lot of societies are about to find out the burden women were implicitly carrying simply because they had no choice, either due to lack of financial independence, birth control, or civil rights.
- hunglee2 4y agoyes, this is absolutely true. Hans Rosling did one his most well know presentations on the the impact of female education to the eradication of poverty via two mechanism - female entry into the market economy + reduction in the number of births. That said though, all developed economies are now so far down this road that we are below the replacement rate and will die out in a few generations without a course correction
- yoyohello13 4y agoWhat is that course correction going to be? Unfortunately, it seems like the US is choosing to reduce opportunities for women, rather that reducing the economic burden of raising a family.
- hunglee2 4y agono idea, there have been no examples of any country successfully reversing declining fertility rate. In fact, it seems only massive unplanned societal disruption - famine, war, invasion - increases the rate. Iraq for instance has had a population boom since the two US led invasions, 50% of its population are now under the age of 15.
- ayngg 4y agoI'm not sure if it is the case that there is a commitment to nuclear family structure as it seems things are trending even further towards the atomized scale with more single parent households and many people delaying marriage and a family or even going child free. I can't speak for elsewhere, but American society seems to incentivize against the factors that allow for high fertility. I think it is also apparent in Asia with the Sampo/ Satori generation phenomenon in Korea and Japan respectively.
- bombcar 4y agoA huge difference is even a few generations ago, the "growing family" would be the one owning the house, and grandparents (their parents) would move in with them - now it's inverted; only the grandparents have a house or can afford one, and so the "growing" or potentially growing family is living with them. It doesn't seem as much a difference but it is a really big one.
- lotsofpulp 4y agoIf I were a woman, there is no way I would entertain the idea of having kids without my name on the title or lease of the house.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- antisthenes 4y agoAnd if I were a man, there's no way I would just let a house become marital property if I owned it outright before the marriage, especially considering how family courts screw men over. That's a surefire way to homelessness, unless you are very (SV engineer or doctor) rich.
- antiverse 4y agoWhy is this comment downvoted? It's literally what goes through the minds of parents of newly weds and weds-to-be. Let's not beat around the bush and be upfront about it.
- helen___keller 4y agoOff topic. GP and the response from female POV are regarding living in the elders’ house, not the husbands house.
- antiverse 4y ago
- rossdavidh 4y agoIt would have been good to see an x-y plot of living with parents vs. fertility. Eyeballing the maps he showed, I don't see a great correlation. Scandinavia has mediocre fertility compared to the rest of Europe, but the lowest percentage living with their parents. Other nations like Greece do satisfy his hypothesis, but a real test would be to plot those two percentages on an x-y plot and see how well they correlate (or calculate an R-squared, or both).
- _armchair 4y agoI took down the data manually and got a correlation coefficient of -0.28. I'm not sure whether it's even reasonable to expect the relationship to be linear but IIRC that level of correlation is about as high as you get in the social sciences.
- sjburt 4y agohttps://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vRhDMqe8boEYMgBp7QhkWK8wXjnxgvKZ5DQNbSj7QtDtyV-y4P4UBLZ6o-7pQJIZAX-Obc7CVqaPdw8/pubhtml https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vRhDMqe8boEY... I don't see any correlation at all.
- pfdietz 4y agoThe data don't lie on a line, but at least they lie on a plane.
- rossdavidh 4y agoThanks! I agree. The R-squared of these numbers is 0.11, which is much closer to 0 (no relation) than to 1 (perfect correlation).
- oneoff786 4y agoThat’s a very misleading framing though. An R-Squared if 0.11 would be pretty damn important if rigorously demonstrated. This is not rigorous though.
- 4y ago
- mikkergp 4y agoIs there a version of economic thought that doesn't necessitate constant population growth? Why is low fertility rate seen as a bad thing? Often engineering is argued in terms of tradeoffs or meeting certain requirements. Rather than follow economic theories that depend on growth, can we develop economic theories that adapt to the trends of the population rather than the other way around(Musks' need for cheap labor not withstanding). Is there a version of the world where we have less people with a collective higher quality of life, particularly as technology improves individual productivity? What about the vintage-futurism economic dream of 10 hour workweeks?
- xnx 4y agoI'd love an economic system that championed efficiency over growth.
- bombcar 4y agoI've seen arguments that almost all of the economic growth over the last 100+ years is directly attributable to population growth and very little else.
- gruez 4y agoSource? That would imply total factor productivity didn't grow at all "over the last 100+ years", which seems doubtful given all the innovations brought about during that time period.
- mellavora 4y agoI don't have a source, nor do I fully believe the original poster, but do consider: 7x population growth, shift from 80% rural to 90% urban. Where "rural" is low economic engagement and "urban" is a job-holder. shift from single-earning families to dual-earner, where again a stay-at-home mom does not increase the size of the economy while a working one does (and please, I know this is unfair and the tremendous value a full time Mom provides). Multiple these three shifts and you get a pretty big increase in the economy, with zero increase in productivity.
- VictorPath 4y agoAfter World War II a lot of public housing projects popped up, which were nice communities for working class families. Nowadays this is almost forgotten as public housing has been starved for decades, and is only thought of in most communities as synonymous with poverty and crime. This is the direction the United States went in but not all countries. Public housing funded as it was in the New Deal era can solve this problem as well.
- terminalcommand 4y agoPublic housing using new construction technologies, I think this is the answer. Let's build cheap high-rise buildings. We can expand vertically why not use it.
- DFHippie 4y agoIt went this way in the US because the unique racial politics here. I've been listening to a podcast which touches on this: https://www.npr.org/2022/04/29/1095625161/coming-soon-code-switch-presents-school-colors https://www.npr.org/2022/04/29/1095625161/coming-soon-code-s...
- mordae 4y agoAs was said by rossdavidh in the comments, "eyeballing the maps, I don't see a great correlation". I suspect this might have something to do with perception of supportive community rather than actual numbers. When to-be parents feel like they are on their own and neither $jobPeople, $friendlyPeople nor $familyPeople are actually going to help, they might be inclined to postpone. Living with parents in a sane multi-generational arrangement might translate to more support and thus more children. Living with parents out of sheer necessity where parents look down on their offspring for not proving themselves in the world probably would not. But that does not really explain scandinavia either.
- Dracophoenix 4y ago> Living with parents out of sheer necessity where parents look down on their offspring for not proving themselves in the world probably would not. Not that I condone such practices, but how does that not affect birth rate in India?
- terminalcommand 4y agoI want to add a personal anecdote. I recently moved out at 26. Before moving out I couldn't imagine bringing a girl home. You need space and privacy to mate. I certainly want to live closer to my parents but the multi-generational arrangement needs to provide space to live in, I can't share the same flat my parents are living in, come on it's too small. The problem is having a private space, not living with parents. If parents can provide a flat with a seperate entry, even that would work.
- foogazi 4y ago> If parents can provide a flat Woah, why can’t you, or you + 1, chip in here?
- Jolter 4y agoGP states they have no ability to get a +1 while living with parents. I assume that if GP had a well paid job, they would move out to separate flat, rather than move parents into bigger flat. Wouldn’t you?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- foogazi 4y ago> Perusing this map, Richard Hanania remarks Record-scratch: I associate that name with dumb twitter takes
- ismail 4y agoA Typical WEIRD (western, educated, industrialised, rich, democratic) finding. For much of human history children have been raised in multi-generational homes. Just being raised by parents is relatively new. I recall reading in a book [0] that proposes this as one of the reasons we have such an issue with mental health etc. with our children. This also seriously hampers learning as wisdom is not passed down. [0] free to play
- xyzzyz 4y agoIn fact, Caplan discovered the so-called Hajnal line, and when it was first suggested by Hajnal, being to its south and east was associated with high fertility, not low, like today. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hajnal_line https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hajnal_line There is a lot of evidence that high rates of living with parents south of Hajnal line is largely about sociocultural practices instead of economic conditions, and it goes back centuries, see eg. Individualism and the Western Liberal Tradition: Evolutionary Origins, History, and Prospects for the Future, by Kevin MacDonald.
- fleddr 4y agoWhat is striking in this development is the destruction of our social fabric. From African village model to the nuclear family is a massive step, made possible by the nation state. Arguably this impoverishes community/extended family life. The most extreme form can regularly be read in the news: somebody found dead in their home, undetected for weeks or months. But not even that is enough. Even within the scope of the nuclear family are we further individualizing. Each partner in the couple is to be fully economically independent from the other. Note that I'm not suggesting any traditional angle here, I'm purely talking about individualism in general. Even within our very own family, we no longer dare to rely on each other, to be dependent on each other. If I were to pick a cliche busy urban family, they have very few shared moments. They may not even eat together. They relax on their own individual device, often in separate rooms. And we outsource care for both our young and the old. We drifted far from our roots.
- jstarfish 4y agoWhile it has its issues, I'm not altogether convinced that the nuclear family is a bad thing. We seem to function best at tribal scale. Jokes aside, most family units are functional. Family scales well. Large-enough families invite dysfunction jokes, but they have a shared genetic interest. You can always coerce or compel family to do things like share resources or settle disputes against their own self-interest. More than a few families together become a community, and this is where the problems start. We look to colonizing space as the solution to overpopulation and resource depletion. Space is not a forgiving environment. When water is running low or other critical challenges arise, a colony bound by blood will figure that shit out quicker than the space equivalent of your HOA.
- tony_cannistra 4y agoIt feels like there's an implicit "More Kids Good" tone that pervades this. What's the "right" value for TFR? Why does it have to be higher? Why is it bad that it is lower in some places? The ecosystem we exist in / that sustains us surely has a carrying capacity.
- jimbob45 4y ago2.1 is the right value. That's replacement rate. Anything above is subject to healthy debate.
- lotsofpulp 4y agoReplacement rate and “right” are not necessarily congruous. If you have the opinion that there are insufficient resources in the world to live the lifestyle you want for yourself or those you care about, you may think a lower fertility rate is more “right”. And if you think your tribe is in a competition for resources with all the other tribes, then you may want a higher fertility rate for your tribe and a lower one for the others.
- jimbob45 4y agoAny less than 2.1 and you have to have an uncomfortable conversation about which nation is going to be the sacrifice. Any more and you have to worry about overpopulation. That said, I'm of the opinion that we'll never really need to have any tough conversations about birth rates because they've fallen so drastically across the board. It seems that it will be enough to universally encourage higher birth rates in every nation for the foreseeable future (with the expected outcome being that most will still struggle to hit 2.1).
- lotsofpulp 4y agoI think there will be some interesting conversations, namely around women’s civil rights. Incentivizing a woman to have a baby is extremely expensive, and I do not think any country has come up with an offer so attractive such that it causes birth rates to go up. Which brings up 2 questions: how much does a society have to offer women, and would that society continue to be competitive on a global playing field relative to other countries that might go a different way, such as restricting women’s rights and getting birth rates up by removing women’s agency.
- Jolter 4y agoThese two maps, taken in conjunction, do not provide a good argument for housing deregulation. Even if we accept that the maps correlate quite well (and ignore whether there is any causal link), there is an assumption that the author is not stating plainly: that housing deregulation leads to young people being able to move out of their parent’s basement. Look at the Scandinavian, very deep green countries at the top of the map. They all have strictly regulated construction processes, with political involvement in city planning. It takes many long years of project planning before you can put a spade in the ground in Stockholm. What’s more, there is government meddling in rent setting - they are not free markets. Still, they seem to do OK? I don’t know what the author has against housing regulations but this argument is missing some part.
- dybber 4y agoExactly living with your parents has more to do about culture and local customs.
- dorchadas 4y agoThis might be highly dependent on where you're at. I know many in Dublin who still live with their parents because there's nowhere available (everything's gone to short-term lets) at anything reasonably resembling a decent price.
- barry-cotter 4y agoThe people get what the people want. Those are the joys of democracy. Rising house prices and the young emigrating.
- scythe 4y agoUsing the regulatory environment as a proxy for housing prices is a very noisy signal. Of the Scandinavian countries, three are relatively flat; the other, Norway, has the third highest median income at PPP in the world (after UAE/.ch) thanks to its oil reserves. All have very low population densities by European standards. These factors should improve housing affordability in any regulatory environment.
- w______roy 4y agoSo many things wrong with this. First, making all your policy decisions around maximizing reproduction seems really myopic. Many places are overpopulated and straining global infrastructure. And regulations keep people safe—what does it matter if I have four kids if two of them die from lead poisoning?
- Jolter 4y agoThere are so many additional factors affecting fertility that it’s not even funny. How about making a map of countries with free/subsidized childcare and comparing it to that fertility map? I’m pretty sure you’d find nearly the same correlation as with “not living with your parents”.
- fleddr 4y agoOn Twitter, Elon Musk has been posting a lot about how people should have more children. I'm mentioning it not because of him, instead because it offers insight into a common misconception. Those threads show thousands and thousands of replies by young people about how they can barely take care of themselves. High cost of living, no access to housing, unaffordable healthcare, etc. What is not intuitive is that this reasoning, even though it feels so right and just, is entirely wrong. If you were to be wealthier, you'd not have more children. Add even more wealth and you'd have even fewer, not more. The wealthier people are, the less children they have on average. The other insight you'll get is the gloomy image people have of the future. This really needs work. As humanity we need to have a better story than "it's all downhill from here".
- mazlix 4y agoIn my annectdotal experience the same people who tout wanting to support and hire from a diverse pool of applicants to not miss the next Einstein, don't extend that logic into the Unborn. I think the way we are likely to solve our greatest issues like climate change through having more smart, well-educated, well-raised, and loved children. So if you're privileged enough to have the capacity to raise such children it's probably one of the greatest things you can do for the future health of this planet (and if you still feel torn about the overall population rate you can still apply this logic to adoption). If all the altruistic people depopulate themselves, then only the least altruistic will remain.
- fleddr 4y agoI don't buy into this theory. We have plenty of minds currently and are failing to avoid and solve planetary scale issues. My take is that this is an incentive problem, not a lack of cognitive capacity.
- dash2 4y agoOne issue I see with the current debate: people are comparing e.g. Italy to Sweden. Then if you're Bryan Caplan you call for housing reform, and if you're a more typical academic you call for parenting leave and other Scandi social welfare policies. Sure, Italy has fertility of 1.27. But Norway has fertility of 1.53! Comparing these is like comparing two ends of the Titanic. One end is sinking underwater. The other is relatively higher. But it will be underwater too a few hours later. 1.27 augurs rapid population collapse. 1.53 augurs slightly slower population collapse. If you think far-below-replacement fertility is bad, then Scandinavia does not have the solution.
- monksy 4y ago> best way to make large homes affordable is to allow the construction industry to build freely. No. Not even close. Once developers get into this, they always seek to achieve the highest price as possible. > Deregulation leads to low prices which leads to ample living space This is only true when there is desirable livable space, affordable materials to build the housing, cheap labor, and honest people who are doing the construction. Regulation front: I do agree that overly strict zoning causes a lot of issues. However, we have an aggressively (some call it exceptional individualism) caustic population of people. Economics still will fly in the face of the author here: An increase in population and a push for a mass audience.. that's going to create a scaricity in places they want to live. That will increase the total overall cost (cost to government for services, infrastructure, infrastructure pressure [this is more of a case in road based transit], land space/value, etc)
- barry-cotter 4y ago> No. Not even close. Once developers get into this, they always seek to achieve the highest price as possible. If only competition was possible, to drive down developers’ market power, so their economic profits were driven down. One might do this by allowing many developers to build, and making the factors of production going into making housing plentiful. One might make building tall buildings legal, or building densely, for example.
- monksy 4y agoThey're not going to build unless they can make a lot of profit on it.
- Metacelsus 4y agoFrom the title I thought this would be about setting up a DIY fertility clinic in your basement!
- stephc_int13 4y agoIn my book, the end of the population explosion is good news. Only the super-rich reaps the benefits of having a very large population. I am pretty sure we can adapt easily before going extinct. This is not a problem yet, and we're historically not very good at predicting the future, it won't happen overnight. By the way, it is my understanding that politicians in Ancient Rome were also worried about the natality issue, for some time as you can see here : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lex_Julia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lex_Julia It is my pet theory that "modern" religions were inspired by those concerns and incorporated them in their own texts.
- propter_hoc 4y agoMan, this is a dumb take. Even if there were a correlation (which there apparently isn't, per https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31899793 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31899793), there's zero way you can say that there's any sort of causational relationship. Look, I can do this too: * highly-developed western societies have lots of regulation * highly-developed western societies have low birth rates * highly-developed western societies have a high percentage of lawyers per capita ergo, lawyers decrease the birth rate?
- rexpop 4y ago> Deregulation leads to low prices ...with negative externalities. Low price, high cost living.
- basicplus2 4y agothats a long bow.. More likely low fertility and small houses are caused by the same thing, rather one by the other
- Nick87633 4y agoLost me at "people who want quiet, privacy, and lots of kids". Haha
- jelliclesfarm 4y agoFertility will improve when there is familial and community support. You don’t need a big house to increase fertility. families need reliable child care and that’s possible with multi generational families. Africa, China and Asia have healthy fertility because they have community and multigenerational family units. Not big homes.
- bzbarsky 4y agoCurrent TFR in China is around 1.7 according to https://www.statista.com/statistics/1033738/fertility-rate-china-1930-2020/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1033738/fertility-rate-c... it _has_ been climbing very slowly recently, but I'm not sure I would characterize that as "healthy". "Asia" is pretty broad, but India was at 2.2 in 2020 and dropping pretty rapidly; as of earlier this spring it hit 2.0. Note that the Statista numbers are moving 5-year averages, so the "spot" number for India is lower than the number you see on that graph. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1034075/fertility-rate-world-continents-1950-2020/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1034075/fertility-rate-w... puts "Asia" as a whole at 2.15, which is indeed "healthy", but the slope is very much down. Africa does have higher fertility, but from what I can tell the main reason is lack of access to birth control, not "community" or "big homes"...
- jelliclesfarm 4y agoChina had a literal one child policy to combat exponential growth in population. India incentivised small families. Population grows exponentially and it is also a function of time. I don’t think we should look at it in decades but rather as through lenses that capture time in centuries.
- bzbarsky 4y ago> China had a literal one child policy The operative word being "had". It hasn't had one in a while. > Population grows exponentially It really depends. It does if you assume TFR is a constant, but it tends to not be constant. > I don’t think we should look at it in decades but rather as through lenses that capture time in centuries. In the "centuries" timeframe, technological change (much reduced infant mortality, availability of contraception, career opportunities, etc) pretty much dominates the TFR situation.
- Cupertino95014 4y agoAs someone below said, "correlation does not imply causation." That. X being correlated with Y can mean that Z is causing both. "Fertility" and "living with parents" are each highly dependent variables, dependent on all sorts of things. Let's remember "natural experiments." Aren't there any? A country that suddenly deregulated housing? Where there were suddenly major tax incentives for having kids (looking at you, Hungary)? Two countries that are exactly the same except that one has dramatically different housing costs, or fertility? Without some data like that, I'm not buying any causation arguments.
- alkonaut 4y agoIt's not just housing. Subsidized daycare, cost of actually having the baby and so one also play into it. Effectively: if I were to have kids I know it's more or less a zero cost thing for me. Having the baby delivered, taking 6 months off work, then having the baby in day care from age 2 to 5 cost me almost nothing at all. I didn't have to consider my employment status before having a child, nor where I was in my career, or whether I could afford medical bills. Financially, it was a smaller "step" than e.g. buying a used car or moving. As it should be. It's a big enough step and responsibility without all the finance nonsense attached.
- Terry_Roll 4y agoAs people become more educated, the minimum standard and availability of utilities also becomes a factor, like access to the internet. Building anywhere in unlimited numbers wont work if there is no net access. Since the 90's when looking at property, internet access has been a factor in the decision making process, especially so with Covid and the work from home routine. Now a days, its having a property which exceeds todays low quality building standards, isnt n housing estate slave box on some brown field site that will keep health professionals busy the longer someone lives on the site in a country where the politicians are too stupid to hide their criminal association, which pretty much rules out everywhere except Antartica!