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1) Healthcare and college tuition are a much bigger problem in the USA than e.g. in Europe, and yet birth rates have fallen more in Europe. 2) Citation needed
by sershe 4y ago
1) Healthcare and college tuition are a much bigger problem in the USA than e.g. in Europe, and yet birth rates have fallen more in Europe.
2) Citation needed for housing vs wages for the "last few decades". Price-to-income ratios have increased only a little bit before 2020 compared to either 1950 or 2000, as far as I remember.
3) If you take a given region (e.g. Europe, or East Asia) birth rates have fallen more in more affluent countries.
Note how the GP says "worldwide", not "in Palo Alto" ;)
- acdha 4y ago> Healthcare and college tuition are a much bigger problem in the USA than e.g. in Europe, and yet birth rates have fallen more in Europe. Immigration is a huge confound here: for many years the U.S. had a younger population for that reason but since the rise of nativism that’s been changing. Europe is also far from a monolith. I’d have to search for an article I read a few months back but they found that while healthcare is important the main differentiating factors were basically support for families with very young children and helping mothers go back to work. IIRC, France was doing pretty well because they had things like gap childcare so it’s not a question of, say, someone having to only consider jobs which allow them to be available to pick a 5 year old up every day at 3:30. That goes back to the rational actor explanation: if women are marginally employed, as was often the case historically when many jobs excluded them outright, the tradeoff for having another child was lower. If women can have full careers, the desire to have more children is forced into conflict with the professional and financial rewards for alternatives (especially if it’s hard to later re-enter the workforce).