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The ratio of housing cost vs real income almost tripled over the last 20 years in Sweden. Add a looming climate crisis and a self-fulfillment-oriented culture a
by brtkdotse 3y ago
The ratio of housing cost vs real income almost tripled over the last 20 years in Sweden. Add a looming climate crisis and a self-fulfillment-oriented culture and you get very few new babies.
- pjc50 3y ago> The ratio of housing cost vs real income almost tripled over the last 20 years in Sweden I think this is all that needs to be said on these articles. (There's a lot more that _could_ be said, such as how few actual birthing HN readers there are, but I think the economics is really simple at the root of it.) Besides, even the countries with really the worst outlook and conditions aren't falling all that fast. Russia since the high point of the 1990s: https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/russia-population/ https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/russia-popula...
- stonemetal12 3y agoBut what is driving the housing prices up in the Nordics? Population decline would suggest weakening demand. The EU is famous for long lasting housing so lack of new inventory shouldn't hit supply side that hard.
- toomuchtodo 3y agoPopulation decline lags affordable property shortages (see Japan [1], where property price declines are following after rural population declines). The results of fertility decisions take years, or even decades, to see (although total fertility rate and annual births is a lower lag indicator). For example, declining school enrollment in the US is from fertility decisions made half a decade ago [2], because that's about the time when those kids born would've enrolled. If there is insufficient supply, housing prices go up. [1] https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2023/7/14/japans-abandoned-homes-become-refuge-for-stressed-city-dwellers https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2023/7/14/japans-abandoned... [2] https://www.ey.com/en_us/strategy/declining-enrollment-in-public-k-12-schools https://www.ey.com/en_us/strategy/declining-enrollment-in-pu...
- fifteen1506 3y agoI thought the house-as-an-asset mentality was the most to blame. Are you sure most houses in the Nordics are occupied by the same family most of the time?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- whizzter 3y agoNot really, the privately owned stock is divided into privatized rentals (often in condo like associations) and houses. Afaik Houses are free to own (but outside of Germans wanting vacation homes there hasn't been much of an outside influx), most condos on the other hand requires you to have your official residence there (an association might grant temporary rentals but most associations frowns upon too long term rentals and the exceptions are often granted on a yearly basis). There's other issues though (see my sibling post to GP)
- seanmcdirmid 3y agoWe are thinking about a second kid now, and realized...we kind of screwed up. Women are really most fertile from their 20s to very early 30s (and also have the best chance of a healthy baby, etc...), it is a time when most people aren't even thinking about getting married yet these days, let alone having kids! When you finally figure out you are ready...well...it is much harder to have a kid. So we really needed to think of this a few years ago. It might still be possible, but now it is an uphill battle and will be a much higher risk pregnancy to boot.
- thijson 3y agoIf the woman is 35 and over it is called a geriatric pregnancy. Need to do a bunch of additional tests to make sure the kid doesn't have genetic defects.
- toomuchtodo 3y agoFun (?) fact: Birth defect risk for an over 40 pregnancy is the same as with a first cousin.
- pjc50 3y agoThe Swedish population is not declining. https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/sweden-population/ https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/sweden-popula...
- jahnu 3y agoRight! In fact only Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia of the Northern Europe countries are showing a long term decline.
- Someone 3y agoI didn’t check, but it’s a safe bet the average number of people in a household decreased significantly. That could increase demand even if the population decreased slightly (which it didn’t, according to another reply)
- magicalhippo 3y agoHere in Norway it's primarily centralization. We used to have many living in small towns and cities along the coast and such, but young folks are moving to the larger cities[1]. This is driving up the demand a lot in central areas. The houses left behind are not desirable for the same reason so many opt to keep them as summer homes, leading to shortages in the districs as well. A lot of this has to do with jobs. We've lost a lot of jobs in the districs due to various reasons, and at some point these towns collapse. You need a certain minimum number of folks to have a decent school, a hospital etc. Once population drops too low the hospital gets shut down say and it's downhill from there. [1]: https://www.nrk.no/vestland/byene-vokser-_-distriktene-blor-1.15126075 https://www.nrk.no/vestland/byene-vokser-_-distriktene-blor-...
- whizzter 3y agoRising lifespans and immigration has made our population grow despite relatively low fertility. Another huge problem right now is that the high prices has made it tricky for _older_ people to move, a large rent controlled apartment for an retired person is far cheaper than even the smallest new apartments if the lease is changed, so you have tons of retired people with kids that moved out (or should have moved out) living in 4-5 bedroom flats whilst families are crammed into smaller ones. The only way out is to buy an apartment/house instead of renting, but here profit-taxation comes into play making elder people hesitant about selling because the huge price increases (often 90%) makes the 30% profit tax almost 30% of their selling price so they actually can't even afford to buy something reasonable since it'd anything relatively smaller would be too expensive for them. One way out of this would be to lower the profit-tax of a dwelling by 0.5-1% for each year lived in it, that'd make retired people able to sell their dwellings w/o hardly any taxes and should enable a more dynamic market.
- rickydroll 3y agoAnother factor keeping older people in place is that they've put a lot of energy into the yard or their house to make it the way they want it to be. For example, if my mom, a still sharp and active 90-year-old, couldn't live independently, and spend time in her garden, she would probably pass in 2 - 3 months. Expiration after loss of independence and access to the outdoors is a common way to die in my family.
- cortesoft 3y agoA baby born today isn't going to add demand for housing for almost 2 decades.
- SAI_Peregrinus 3y agoA couple with a house not large enough to support a child the way they want does add to the housing demand, or they skip the kid.
- fulafel 3y agoHousing policy, interest rates & urbanization are the usual factors everywhere, seems a safe null hypothesis here as well. Eg in sweden, deregulation: https://www.thelocal.se/20230627/explained-swedens-plans-to-free-up-private-rental-market https://www.thelocal.se/20230627/explained-swedens-plans-to-...
- ipaddr 3y agoMass immigration seems to be the global reason.
- api 3y agoOnly makes sense if you also restrict housing supply, otherwise we just build more housing. If we had high birth rates without building housing that would also drive up housing prices.
- irrational 3y agoWait, how do you know there are few actual birthing HN readers? How many children have I had?
- moribvndvs 3y ago69420
- irrational 3y agoIf you put in a decimal and rounded up, you would be correct.
- CRConrad 3y agoNo idea about you personally, but I'm fairly sure the overwhelming majority of HN readers are men.
- seanmcdirmid 3y agoAlso the rising inaccessibility of child care. All other industries get some productivity boost, but in child care it is the opposite (productivity is going down per worker over time).
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- somenameforme 3y agoRussia's not a great example to look at. They're one of the only 'Western' countries that's historically actually maintained a healthy fertility rate. The big catch in their numbers is that in the 90s the country turned into a near anarchic hellhole. But they managed to pull out of that and have had a growing fertility rate since 1998, which has been met with an ever widening array of pro-natal incentives, and a generally very pro-family culture as well. [1] More relevant is something like Japan. [2] They are currently losing 1 in every 200 people, every year. And that rate of decline is still accelerating. And they have a similar fertility rate to Finland 1.37 vs 1.42. The only difference is that Japan has had its low fertility rate for longer, and so it's closer to the equilibrium rate of loss that such a fertility rate implies, while Finland is closer to their older higher fertility rates. [1] - https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/RUS/russia/fertility-rate https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/RUS/russia/fertility-r... [2] - https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/JPN/japan/population https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/JPN/japan/population
- anovikov 3y agoMacrotrends is a spam site which is full of completely erroneous data on almost every topic. Just look up their China demographic data - it's just laughable. Russia has lower fertility rate than EU average, at 1.50 vs 1.53. And a higher and faster growing share of Muslim population than Europe. Overall, death rate is about 1.37x more than birth rate in Russia (999.14 vs 728.02 per 100K in first 10 months of 2023 - link to official stats https://statprivat.ru/demo2020?r=3 https://statprivat.ru/demo2020?r=3). In EU it's 10.7 vs 9.5 per 1000 (in a full year), so only 1.12x the difference. Births are 8% lower per 1000 and deaths, 12% higher. Plus, Russia has a higher proportion of Muslim population than any EU country and it grows faster too, so for white population situation is beyond dire: in ethnic Russian majority regions apart from Moscow and St. Petersburg, death rate at 2.5-3x the birth rate is the norm. If you've been under impression that Russia somehow has some sound demographic policy and/or family culture and is doing better in this respect than any European country, you're just a victim of Putin's propaganda. Compared to EU states, Russia is only better than Bulgaria in this respect.
- somenameforme 3y ago
- api 3y agohttps://worksinprogress.co/issue/the-housing-theory-of-everything/ https://worksinprogress.co/issue/the-housing-theory-of-every... I'm very much a believer that housing costs are at the root of a whole lot of what's wrong with... everything. It's long past debate and long past time for neighborhoods to come up with a "vision." We need state and national level mandates for zoning reform and density increase, and if you're against it too bad. NIMBYs had 50 years to come up with something other than obstructionism.
- pjc50 3y agoWhat people actually seem to want is the ability to use the planning system to veto their neighbours having children. People vehemently do not want density increases around them or "changes to the character of the neighbourhood", and if driving the birth rate down helps with that goal then they're fine with it.
- api 3y agoYep, and this is what has to be crushed.
- thriftwy 3y agoRussia has reasonably affordable real estate as well as quite peculiar job market. A lot of real estate is being built and most of it is "low cost" economy class, which in the end lets a lot of people who want that, own an apartment and have children. Home ownership statistics are also great. The pay is meager but at least jobs are there, meaning that if you own an apartment or a house (often inherited from your ancestors in some form) and is employed, and can fall back to Babushkas' safety nest, you can have children and that will not ruin you. Also, actual child care benefits are fine. Long parental leave et all. Russia also actually saw a lot of economic growth since both 1999 and 1991. Perhaps the most of all ex-USSR countries, save for Baltic states, but in case of Baltics there's a serious job crunch as far as I know. The pay is nice but securing it becomes a headache. In the end it's easier to move westwards. I'm not sure why you would assume Russian outlook is particularly bad, especially if we're talking before the 2022. After 2022, too early to say.
- coffeebeqn 3y agoYeah you might get a value of a few hundred $ per month from the pro-natalist benefits but buying a dwelling for say 4 kids will cost you 200 years of wages
- kredd 3y agoUpper-middle and upper class aren't having children either though, so my bet is on the latter side of your argument. Huge opportunity costs for having kids before your mid 30s, and afterwards, it's a bit late to have more than a couple kids to have sustainable population numbers. Definitely a bit hypocritical of me, since I'm also a part of the problem who doesn't want to have kids. But, at least for me, it's not worth it right at this time.
- beaeglebeached 3y ago>Upper-middle and upper class aren't having children either though Interesting. In USA fertility is tub / U shaped [0]. Filthy rich just hire nannies and bang away and dirt poor have none to negative opportunity cost [0] https://twitter.com/theHauer/status/1222514313723875332/photo/1 https://twitter.com/theHauer/status/1222514313723875332/phot...
- kredd 3y agoCan you elaborate on that? Every statistic I've seen so far looked like even "the filthy rich" don't have enough kids. Obviously you'll get some exceptions that are talked again and again on the media, but that's not the norm. Even by just looking at my surroundings, I have some friends who make decent money, and they're still on "no kids" train, even though hiring 24/7 help would just cost them pennies.
- beaeglebeached 3y agoMost the statistics cut off at ~200-300+k income catch all bucket which drowns out the rich averages. See my source above capturing higher income buckets which pronounce the U. Near equal (higher) fertility at both extremes might be, but not proof of, the hypothesis the dirt poor and filthy rich are the fertility rate you get when opportunity cost looks near 0. A bucket you often see stopping at 300+k imo far too low as the lower band of that is usually high stress highly educated long hours professional and small biz owners who have insane opportunity cost to have children.
- christkv 3y agoI found this article fascinating. It's about the uk affordability of housing but with 175 years of data. https://www.schroders.com/en-gb/uk/individual/insights/what-174-years-of-data-tell-us-about-house-price-affordability-in-the-uk/ https://www.schroders.com/en-gb/uk/individual/insights/what-... You can clearly see the impact of ww1 and the influenza pandemic in the 1914-18 period.
- anonporridge 3y agoReal disposable income in Sweden has increased 50% over the last 20 years. https://tradingeconomics.com/sweden/the-real-gross-disposable-income-of-households-per-capita-idx-2008-eurostat-data.html https://tradingeconomics.com/sweden/the-real-gross-disposabl...
- brtkdotse 3y agoGreen is disposable income, orange is cost of apartment housing: https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-tonEuOE0IXE/WfpBpIzy8rI/AAAAAAAAFBk/PvhThXo1MaYG_BtcN9BkBWgR4bmQC_SzgCLcBGAs/s1600/realaBostadspriser1952-2017k3.png https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-tonEuOE0IXE/WfpBpIzy8rI/AAAAAAAAF...
- anonporridge 3y agoSo what? Is not disposable income what's left over after you pay your mandatory expenses, like housing? If real disposable income is rising, then people have more access to non necessary resources than they did before. So, they have more wealth, but are having fewer babies, which is the general trend.
- brtkdotse 3y ago> Is not disposable income what's left over after you pay your mandatory expenses, like housing? No, it’s what’s left after taxes, before any actual spending on things like housing occurs. > Gross disposable household income is the amount of money that individuals in the household sector can spend or save after income distribution measures. https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/regionalaccounts/grossdisposablehouseholdincome https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/regionalaccounts/grossdisposa...
- anonporridge 3y agoI'm wrong. Thanks for the correction.
- 3y ago
- somenameforme 3y agoOne of the big issues in housing is ultra urbanization though, where everybody wants to move into a tiny handful of locations. This just drives housing costs upwards basically without end. This graph of Stockholm's population [1] is just completely bonkers. But beyond this it also creates environments that aren't especially good for raising a family in, at least in general. [1] - https://worldpopulationreview.com/world-cities/stockholm-population https://worldpopulationreview.com/world-cities/stockholm-pop...
- thriftwy 3y agoYou can just build. Perhaps the "never lived lavishly, no reason to begin" attitude would have hepled. [1] https://yandex.ru/images/search?text=мурино https://yandex.ru/images/search?text=мурино [2] https://yandex.ru/images/search?text=кудрово https://yandex.ru/images/search?text=кудрово [3] https://yandex.ru/images/search?text=парнас https://yandex.ru/images/search?text=парнас [4] https://yandex.ru/images/search?text=филатов%20луг https://yandex.ru/images/search?text=филатов%20луг
- somenameforme 3y agoI completely agree with the attitude, but not necessarily the implementation. Would you want to live in any of those places? Let alone raise a family in one? In the second link, I think the difference between the presumably idealized/proposed [1] version of one of these areas, and what it inevitably turns into [2] demonstrates the issue. So it would probably be reasonably affordable, but only because you'd make it less desirable to live there. Then enter the general problem of people's complete disregard for other's property in many places in the Western world and those places would become highly unpleasant, if not unsafe, quite quickly - especially if they were very affordable. There's a reason "the projects", everywhere, end up the way they do. [1] - https://avatars.mds.yandex.net/i?id=e67240f3f995f865b864bee1b48e94ea94e27b99-9227998-images-thumbs&n=13 https://avatars.mds.yandex.net/i?id=e67240f3f995f865b864bee1... [2] - https://avatars.mds.yandex.net/i?id=05678345cd91e9579bd7e719191c8d231c02683c-10160381-images-thumbs&n=13 https://avatars.mds.yandex.net/i?id=05678345cd91e9579bd7e719...