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Housing is obscenely expensive for young couples in most major metros. Most places don’t pay well enough to afford daycare. Women want careers too. Few countri
by nojvek 3y ago
Housing is obscenely expensive for young couples in most major metros. Most places don’t pay well enough to afford daycare. Women want careers too. Few countries have comprehensive parental leave.
Can’t complain about less kids and have policies which make raising kids a risky financial and life decision.
We gotta do a better job at providing for the kids we already have.
- ekianjo 3y ago> Can’t complain about less kids People had nothing after ww2 yet had a lot more kids. We are way richer now in comparison so the cost of kids is really a bad argument to make.
- nly 3y agoAfter ww2 lots more women didn't work and so could provide childcare. The problem today is a 2 full-time salaried income is required to be able to afford a decent standard of living for a family, whereas even as late as the 80s it was feasibly to raise a family on a single median income.
- Earw0rm 3y ago"decent standard of living" has changed a bit since WW2 also. Granted, it'd be hard on a single median income today, but if you're making two, three times median - in your 20s - it should be doable. And that's everyone on a six figure tech salary, to start off with.
- pmg102 3y agoAre you genuinely arguing that people in 2023 are poorer than they were in 1950? This would be astonishing if true wouldn't it? Hasn't GDP tripled or something since then? I think it's more likely to be expectation inflation. People in 2023 just wouldn't be satisfied to live the life people were satisfied to live in 1950. A thought experiment could be: - There are people that earn 100kpa and people that earn 50kpa - Both kinds of people think they "need two incomes to live these days" - Obviously the 100kpa people could ditch a whole income and live at the level of the two 50kpa people -- but they wouldn't choose to, they'd rather have the lifestyle of a 200kpa household
- jbombadil 3y agoYes. About 4 times poorer. (Scoping to the domain of “buying a house” which is a huge driving factor in having children) > Median home prices increased 121% nationwide since 1960, but median household income only increased 29%.[0] [0] https://listwithclever.com/research/home-price-v-income-historical-study/ https://listwithclever.com/research/home-price-v-income-hist... (That’s from where I quoted, but there’s plenty of sources. More available upon request)
- ekianjo 3y ago> Yes. About 4 times poorer. You don't need to buy a house to be able to live. And no, people are not poorer if you consider all factors. That's a crazy argument to make. No human living in 2023 would want to live with 1950 standards.
- jbombadil 3y ago> You don’t need to buy a house to be able to live. Agree. > No human living in 2023 would want to live by 1950 standards. Also agree. But that neither of those things are relevant for the argument. You don’t need a house to live, but it provides stability, which is a huge part of the decision of having children.
- nradov 3y agoHousing is quite affordable for young couples in most US minor metros. Trying to squeeze into a few major metros is a terrible choice for young people who want a decent life.
- bobthepanda 3y agoThis has not been true for a while. All the people leaving big cities for cheaper metros have now also made those metros expensive as well since it doesn’t take that many people to tighten up supply.
- kbos87 3y agoYup. Anywhere appealing is now expensive. The internet/social media means that few places with any redeeming qualities that are remotely affordable stay under the radar for long.
- wkat4242 3y agoLiving in a big city offers big opportunities too though. In my city I have access to a lot of clubs for the niche interests I have. And there is always something new to discover. I used to live in a small provincial "city" of 150.000, 250km from the country's only big city. People often mocked it was the graveyard of ambition. But to me it really felt like that. I hated living there so much.
- A_non_e-moose 3y ago> Trying to squeeze into a few major metros is a terrible choice for young people who want a decent life. If remote work is a possibility, or big cities decentralize a bit, that makes sense. We've seen during COVID, if people can move from San Francisco and keep their jobs, they will do it.
- gnsdrths 3y agoI think the flaw with this explanation is that lots of children are un/under planned. Talk to a teacher at a metropolitan public school sometime in the US for example and ask them how many students are from low income areas, it's going to be a lot. So it follows that either everyone is overdramatizing how much it costs to raise a child or that concerns about the cost aren't what's stopping people from having them and by extension it's sure not access to daycare.
- whatshisface 3y agoMost of the cost of raising a child is the things you do to make sure they end up living a life like you did: college and neighborhood.
- vinyl7 3y agoPeople who are responsible aren't having kids because its too expensive. People who are irresponsible probably aren't calculating the costs..or they don't care.
- Noumenon72 3y agoOr they know the costs will be picked up by the people paying for Medicaid/CHIP and free school lunch. Those people will now be less able to afford their own children.
- legutierr 3y agoDon't we want people in general to have more kids, not just middle-class people and rich people? And don't we want those kids to have healthcare and lunch at school? Are you saying that middle class people are less able to afford children because they pay too much in taxes? Really? Taxes are a primary consideration, not the cost of housing and education?
- tomp 3y agoPoor and less educated people already have more kids than middle class and more educated people. So there seem to be systematic incentives that skew the desire to have kids. We should work towards counteracting those systemic incentives, by making it easier for middle class, educated people to have kids (an example would be % tax breaks for each child, which would be more money for middle class people).
- kbos87 3y agoI wrote off the notion of ever having kids in my early 20s in large part because of how expensive it is (and thus what it would mean for my lifestyle.) The funny thing is that thanks to a somewhat successful career in tech, I could afford them more than the average family in my area can. But that doesn’t matter - I’ve conditioned myself to not want them, and I don’t regret not having them one tiny bit.
- Aurornis 3y agoYour story is probably very common. The social media narrative (Reddit, Twitter, HN, etc) around children is hilariously detached from reality at times. It’s bizarre as a parent to read 20-something childless people speak so confidently about what it’s like to have children. I participated in a mentoring program where I worked with younger people entering tech careers. It was mind blowing to hear them talk about children as being impossibly expensive while we had just discussed negotiation of their six-figure offer letter a few days prior. It’s like the reality of having kids got distorted and twisted and exaggerated so much on sites like Reddit that they all lost touch with reality and instead cemented the idea that kids were impossible for them. If you’ve “conditioned yourself to not want them” then that’s a really weird place to be. That implies that you did maybe want them at some point and overrode that via “conditioning” based on facts that turned out to be untrue (that you couldn’t afford them). If I was in your shoes, I’d be taking a long, hard look at what other life assumptions you’ve been “conditioned” out of from exposure to false narratives and internet exaggerations. Maybe kids are not for you, but I’ve seen enough very happy parents into even their 40s who started out thinking they never wanted kids until they finally re-evaluated how they arrived at that conclusion and realized it was the result of bad inputs. If you know the key inputs were false, maybe re-run that whole decision process again with a clean slate and some accurate facts. You might be surprised.
- pyuser583 3y agoI see this a lot too. There’s a huge misconception on what having kids is like. Lots of tech folks live in low fertility areas where nobody has kids. So strange ideas just persist.
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- hiAndrewQuinn 3y agoFinland is a good place to move to fix most of these, if you're willing to live with the tradeoffs. And yet, it seems like the slowdown is hitting us as hard as anyone... so I don't think it's actually that.
- l33t7332273 3y agoI think a big part of this is a cultural shift to no longer being culturally obligated to marry young and start a family.
- ekianjo 3y agoAnf brainwashing that everyone should have a career while in reality most people end up simply with jobs and not careers. Believing lies has a societal cost.
- hiAndrewQuinn 3y agoHonestly, I think it's simply that people have much more interesting lives these days. Babies and entertainment are substitute goods.
- wesapien 3y agoInteresting? Give me some examples. This problem goes beyond the east vs west. This is about humans failing to learn from the past. Add modernity and progress|regress.
- dottjt 3y agoI was thinking about this recently, and I think the primary issue is capitalism. In particular, how it's completely taken over society and how we view worth and value. Capitalism doesn't care about families. The only thing capitalism cares about is consumption. So it doesn't really matter if you have 10 kids or no kids, as long as you're consuming, the system is happy. This is of course great if you're the kind of person who never wanted kids to begin with. The problem however is that Capitalism is short-sighted. It doesn't care about future consumption, just consumption right now in the moment. So inevitably capitalism face issues sustaining itself when there are less people around in the future to consume, as well as sustain all existing debts.
- Osiris 3y agoCapitalism wants not just consumption but increasing consumption. In that vein, a decreasing or stagnating population is bad for capitalism. Capitalism wants the pie to keep getting bigger. Look at countries where population growth is negative. The economies have stagnated. Children are essential to capitalism.
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- parineum 3y agoEven if granting you are correct in your identification of the problem, you offer no explanation of how an alternative system would work any differently. I guess feudalism would increase fertility given that feudal lords need more serfs to tend their land.
- dottjt 3y agoI don't think there is a viable alternate system. If you have a look at past history, societies and ideas and values come and go. They rise and then they collapse. This is just the way it is. With that said if I had to propose an idea, I would provide money to people to have children. Have the state subsidise it. Provide stay at home mums with a decent income. Fundamentally however, that will create all sorts of issues, because it doesn't change the fact that money still controls society. Fundamentally, I think the issue is that society no longer has a set of values to propel it forward. In the past, I think values were an extension of nation (and whatever culture that entailed). Now, that value is money. Which is creating all the distortions we're seeing today.
- BenFranklin100 3y agoHousing is artificially expensive: zoning limits the construction of denser housing thus leading to a supply shortage and high prices. Most of America is under-built and the housing problem would go away if American cities were upzoned to a gentle six-story, mixed-use density. Your points about how we must do better to make having kids less financially risky are excellent however. Better parental leave and tax incentives would help.
- kahnclusions 3y agoHousing is obscenely expensive everywhere, not just America. I didnt think Hong Kong, Taipei, London, etc, suffer from America’s zoning issues?
- dcow 3y agoYes, but. If you’re looking for an excuse to not have a kid, you’ll find one. There’s a cultural element too.
- chrisandchris 3y agoYes, sure. I'm not sure I want to give up my landhouse for a six-story building in which I share a place with hundreds... just because of "having children".
- ekianjo 3y agoHousing is expensive because of stupid regulations that prevent new constructions and NIMBY communities with too much power.
- rs999gti 3y agoPlus people want to live near cities and places they can't afford.
- satvikpendem 3y agoEven in countries that fix such financial issues, people still don't have children. Many people simply don't want to have them, no reason is required.
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- conductr 3y agoMy theory is we've become sufficiently entertained that we could easily envision never becoming truly bored of our lives. There's a constant flow of social media, games, content to stream, etc. If you feel a void in your life, a lack of purpose, you may choose to invest in a child. But, it's a very expensive hobby which requires a ton of time and dedication. Like all long-term investments, there's no reasonable way to know if your ROI will be above your desired threshold when you made the investment. I'm in my 40's and when I was born my parents had newspapers, radio and 3 channels on the TV. The channels stopped airing content after midnight. They'd have been bored to death if they didn't have kids.
- satvikpendem 3y agoIndeed, and back before the modern day, people really only had sex as their main enjoyment, which they now don't really need anymore. Of course more kids were conceived in the past versus now, they were bored out of their minds otherwise. Once we get virtual worlds with fully realistic sensory input, I doubt people will really have kids at all anymore.
- endymi0n 3y agoYou're right, but I see the signs are on the walls for a reversal already. If I see how desperate recruiting efforts get _everywhere_, despite a not-yet-recovered economic situation, that's just a first flavor of what's to come demographically. A new generation can already choose from way too many offers, which will be even more expanding as the larger generation ages out and needs more care. Continuing the trend, junior educated talent will be in such demand that economically, I see no choice than rising prices for their service. Which will in turn triggering inflation and devaluation of existing assets. Additionally, remote work options (held in place by the shortage for talent) will continue to significantly eat into ever increasing city density, and the population plateau — which in developed countries already is a decline — will empty many apartments as well. The only effect left is rising inequality through inheritance. Slap a hard 90% inheritance tax on any "set for life" money above 2 million USD to finance the rest of society and you're fine. Just my 2 cetn.
- alkonaut 3y agoSubsidized daycare/school or long parental leave is literally always one election away if people think that they are important issues. At least in democracies (many of the large metro hubs are not in democracies).
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- pauldenton 3y agoSo is literally everything else https://religiopoliticaltalk.com/thomas-sowell-on-governments-inability-to-create-wealth-by-controlling-costs/ https://religiopoliticaltalk.com/thomas-sowell-on-government... Virtually anything can be made more affordable in isolation, simply by transferring resources to it from elsewhere in the economy, and having most of the costs absorbed by the U. S. Treasury. The federal government could make a Rolls Royce affordable for every American, but we would not be a richer country as a result. We would in fact be a much poorer country, because of all the vast resources transferred from other economic activities to subsidize an extravagant luxury. Of course it might be nice to be sitting at the wheel of a Rolls Royce, but we might be sitting there in rags and tatters, and gaunt with hunger, after having squandered enormous amounts of labor, capital, and costly materials that could have been put to better use elsewhere. That doesn’t happen in a market economy because most of us take one look at the price tag on a Rolls Royce and decide that it is time for another Toyota. The very notion of making things affordable misses the key point of a market economy. An economy exists to make trade-offs, and a market economy makes the terms of those trade-offs plain with price tags representing the relative costs of producing different things. To have politicians arbitrarily change the price tags, so that prices no longer represent the real costs, is to defeat the whole purpose. Reality doesn’t change when the government changes price tags. Talk about “bringing down health care costs” is not aimed at the costly legal environment in which medical science operates, or other sources of needless medical costs. It is aimed at price control, which hides costs rather than reducing them. Hidden costs continue to take their toll— and it is often a higher toll than when these costs are freely transmitted through the marketplace.
- alkonaut 3y ago
- bushbaba 3y agoHousing is a function of what buyers can afford. The move from single to dual earning households now necessitates a dual income family. We’d actually be in a better position (childcare wise) if we stuck to only one parent working.
- d3vmax 3y agoYou will soon see smaller advanced economies (<40MM) in population decline give $100K++ incentives to raise kids but it will be too late by then.
- rs999gti 3y agoOr start taxing the childless a surcharge to live in that society.
- failbuffer 3y agoYes, let's fix the problem by compelling people to have kids they don't want instead of creating a world worth bringing kids into. /s
- mensetmanusman 3y agoI’m grabbing the popcorn when China starts flexing the social credit system to force people to have kids.
- ralferoo 3y ago> Housing is obscenely expensive for young couples in most major metros This will probably be an unpopular comment, but I think this is true for every generation, and is a simple byproduct of having young people earning comparatively low salaries compared to people who have been working for a decade or two already. I'm in my 40s now, and while I'd have loved to buy a house in my 20s, I couldn't afford it until my 30s. At the time, I thought it was very unfair that all the housing I wanted was priced just out of reach of the maximum mortgage I could get, but a decade of pay rises later, and I could just afford to get on the property ladder but I had no spare money left over each month, and another decade later my mortgage costs were a relatively small fraction of my income and I have a comfortable lifestyle now. I think the only difference with the current generation of youngsters is that they are far more vocal about it, whereas my generation just accepted it as part of life and quietly put up with it. It's pretty much the same that every generation of teenagers believes their parents couldn't possibly understand how unfair life is, until a decade or so later, when they've grown up a bit more and realise that they've become the same as their parents after all.
- xen0 3y agoMedian annual salary in the UK in 1999 was £19k. Average house price was £75k; a bit over treble. Median salary 2022 was £33k. Median house price was £265k; over 8 times the median salary. Not controlled for interest rates or changes in the tax codes, nor the increases in student loan debts.
- ralferoo 3y agoThere was a massive boom in property prices just after 1999 though, which I'd argue was far more significant to the difference you cite. Looking at: https://www.propertyinvestmentproject.co.uk/property-statistics/nationwide-average-house-price/ https://www.propertyinvestmentproject.co.uk/property-statist... The average price in Q4 1999 was £75k, the average price in Q3 2007 was £184k, the average price in Q3 2022 was £273k (the last two are the peaks), the average price in 2023 has already started to dip. So, in 8 years prices went up 145%, and in the following 15 years prices went up 48%. I bought in the latter half of that first spike I mentioned, and anecdotally, while I was looking but still unable to afford anything (ultimately, it was only possible when my bank changed their rules and afford 4x salary rather than 3x), prices in the area I was looking rose 50% in the 6 months prior to buying my house. In the years since then, its value has only increased by a little over 50%. Looking further back, the previous peak was in 1989 at £62k. 10 years earlier in 1979 the average price was £19k, a rise of 226%. So, this isn't a recent phenomena, what's recent is that people are more vocal in complaining that they can't afford to get on the property ladder. My point is that it's always been tough, but if people who can't afford now keep saving then in a few years they'll find their savings and wage increases will let them catch up with the house price plateau. I think the only difference we've seen so far is that the last plateau wasn't very flat, and after an initial drop, prices have continued to increase but slower than inflation.
- lqet 3y ago> Most places don’t pay well enough to afford daycare. I wish the problem was money. We have been looking for a kindergarten for our daughter (~5 years old) for 2.5 years now in southwestern Germany. At one point we sued the local district as children are legally entitled to a place in kindergarten. We settled out of court and the district now pays us ~300 EUR/month for a nanny who sometimes watches her together with 5 other kids (very unreliable, and the children are all under 3 years old, so hardly suitable playing partners). Winning the case wouldn't have made any difference, there simply aren't enough kindergarten teachers available. In our suburb, there are around 120 children in kindergarten age, and the waiting list has over 50 children on it. She has been on this waiting list since March 2021. She also has no chance of getting a place in a neighboring city / suburb, because local residents are always preferred. We often joke that it was easier to buy a car in East Germany than to get a kindergarten place here. We have pretty much given up at this point, and my wife had to stop working. Ironically, she is a social education worker, so exactly the profession that is in very short supply.
- lumost 3y agoI’m curious, in the US - k-12 educators are not known to be paid well. In many cases they simply can not afford market rate housing in 2023. Assuredly this contributes to the high cost of childcare in the US. Is the situation similar in Germany? It strikes me that if a teacher can’t afford a reasonable life with their own family, then it’s unlikely the education system is sustainable.
- lqet 3y agoHousing is a substantial part of the problem. We have observed a common pattern: educators apply for a job here, interview goes well, both parties are happy, contract is signed, and after months and months of unsuccessfully searching for an apartment, the educator cancels the contract because the money is not enough to live in a hotel full-time (also, who wants that?). But the problem isn't so much that of affordable apartments our houses, although politicians often frame it that way. There simple aren't enough apartments / houses available, in any price range. We competed with 100s of people for our current apartment. We recently wanted to buy a house and competed with 50 people. Last year, our local government started to actively search, buy or rent apartments which they can rent / sublet exclusively to kindergarten teachers.
- RestlessMind 3y ago> Housing ... daycare ... parental leave.. Looking at this list - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_fertility_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_fer... - none of the top 10 countries seem to have great daycares or comprehensive parental leaves or generous social safety nets. > women want careers too Ding ding ding. This seems to be the dominant factor when looking at countries with the lowest fertility. Diving deeper into the birthrates of "developed" countries, it seems a big chunk of babies are born to immigrants. Germany - 25% [1], USA - 26% of kids under 18 have at least 1 immigrant parent[2] [1] https://www.destatis.de/EN/Themes/Society-Environment/Population/Birth/Tables/live-birth-citizenship.html https://www.destatis.de/EN/Themes/Society-Environment/Popula... [2] https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/frequently-requested-statistics-immigrants-and-immigration-united-states https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/frequently-requested...
- jen20 3y agoWhat characteristic are you assigning to the group of "immigrants to the USA" that makes that statistic important?
- minerva23 3y ago> women want careers too An alternate phrasing, "women work for anti-birth employers and women can't find trustworthy fathers."
- collaborative 3y agoThere are plenty of trustworthy fathers they simply aren't the ones they are angling for
- minerva23 3y agoIf you say so. Statistics, media, real world conversations, and often lived experience all say otherwise.
- dkqmduems 3y agoSmall anecdote, I'm actually saving a bit more with kids because I don't have time to spend the money.
- potatosalad21 3y agoYou must not pay for daycare then.
- iancmceachern 3y agoOr was having quite a lot of fun before kids!
- lumost 3y agoTo add to this, if you do make enough to overcome said hurdles - you are likely in a hyper competitive job. Two great incomes don’t help much if both parties have to regularly put in more than 40 hours/week.
- camgunz 3y agoYeah exactly. Pick any two: - low taxes - a workplace with women in it - a birth rate that exceeds the replacement rate Do you want a workplace with women in it? You have to subsidize workplaces giving huge benefits to them if/when they decide to have kids, to the degree that you essentially fire a money cannon at the gender pay gap. Do you want a birth rate that exceeds the replacement rate? You have to subsidize people trying to get pregnant, people who are pregnant, and people who have kids. Welcome to dropping (more) money bombs on the health care sector and the child care sector. This is the bare minimum. You also generally need regulations to force businesses to give adequate leave and flex policies, health care benefits (many plans don't cover pregnancy/birth, believe it or not), etc. You also have a huge labor problem when it comes to day care and schooling. You also have a huge problem when it comes to affordable housing for families near any kind of job at all.
- wesapien 3y agoNot all women. Some wouldn't worry about a career if they could afford it in order to raise their children and not by someone else. Most careers don't pay enough to only require a single/1.5 income family. Most people are hijacked by keeping up with the Jones's.