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Because for most rich countries this graph applies: https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/e1jrvw/oc_salaries_vs_house_prices_in_uk/ https://www.red

by Havoc 1y ago

Because for most rich countries this graph applies: https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/e1jrvw/oc_salaries_vs_house_prices_in_uk/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/e1jrvw/oc_...

lmpdev 1y ago
Sadly I think you’re on the money here, especially for Australia and Canada
- squishington 1y ago
  The threat of being evicted every 12 months in Melbourne has reduced me to not being able to plan much at all. Rental market is cooked. It's exhausting.
Ontonator 1y ago
While I don’t disagree that houses have become less affordable, that graph is rather misleading. A graph of the ratio, as posted in one of the comments [0], would be more informative. [0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/e1jrvw/comment/f8q4rkp https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/e1jrvw/com...
- dogma1138 1y ago
  Israel has arguably the worst income to house price ratio in the OECD at 160 monthly wages (~13 annual salaries) which is more than twice the US at 68 but they have also the highest TFR in the developed world even when you exclude the Orthodox Jews… So it’s not as simple as housing is not affordable… it does feel like it’s very much cultural/social I can more than afford to have children but I’m at almost 40 and I don’t. And speaking from the pool of a rented villa in Greece I got on whim for 2 weeks because I got annoyed at work I can’t even begin to think about having them…
roenxi 1y ago
When looking at that sort of graph you do need to hold in mind that we had a substantial period of our evolutionary history where owning a house wasn't an option because houses didn't exist. It isn't the lack of a house that is causing the drop in fertility - if it was, all animal species would die out with rare exceptions. Humans are perfectly capable, as a race, of population growth without any houses at all. Indeed, you might even find that the houses most of your ancestors lived in are illegal to build in many parts of the world by virtue of being too basic. That suggests it is still a priorities question - people would much prefer to embrace the luxury and comforts of the modern world and work to maximise them rather than starting a family.
- amluto 1y ago
  > we had a substantial period of our evolutionary history where owning a house wasn't an option because houses didn't exist. The population density at the time was much, much, much lower than it is now.
  - pjc50 1y ago
    Exactly. We have a historical fertility rate that's much higher to go with our historical early fatality rare, which was much higher. Population grew gradually from the development of agriculture to the Industrial Revolution, being basically starvation-limited or disease-limited along the way, and then exploded.
- Havoc 1y ago
  Yes we're still the same evolutionary humans, but you can't set up a subsistence farm with your 8 children as free labour and go hunting in lower Manhattan. Unless you're proposing mass de-urbanization and rolling back 100+ years of societal evolution it's practically just not all that relevant that this worked fine in an earlier era and humans could hypothetically just go back to slumming it medieval style. > It isn't the lack of a house that is causing the drop in fertility Find some 20 somethings in a major 1st world metro and ask them.
  - 1y ago
AndrewDucker 1y ago
Importantly, the housing market now assumes that two people will be contributing to a mortgage, which makes having one of you take significant time off to look after a child (or spending a very significant percentage of your income on childcare) tricky, to say the least. One kid was doable for us. Two kids really stretched things and basically destroyed our savings (2 kids both costing £1k a month in nursery fees was not sustainable). A third kid would have meant either moving to a much cheaper house or some other significant financial compromise.
socalgal2 1y ago
The point of the paper is that that graph is irrelevant They looked at economic influence and found it does not account for the drop in child birth
- AstralStorm 1y ago
  Did they even attempt to scale it against housing prices?
  - praxulus 1y ago
    Yes, part III section C is all about the effect of house prices on fertility. There's certainly an effect, but previous studies have shown that housing costs can only account for a small share of the drop in fertility.
amluto 1y ago
I would add some more factors along those lines: - Many urban areas have even worse shortages of family housing. Availability of 2+ bedroom apartments is even worse than studios and 1-bedrooms. Many new multi family buildings have plenty of low-income units but no family units. - Car seat laws are well intentioned but make it very annoying to transport children in car-dependent areas unless parents use their own car for everything. - Childcare and education prices are very high. Of course, part of this cost is the cost of living of educators. - Many industries are geared toward people with few or no children. Hotel rooms with capacity for more than two children are unusual, and most travel sites barely understand the idea of searching for such rooms. Even rooms with comfortable capacity for two children are a bit unusual — the common two-queen-bed configuration requires that kids share a bed.
thefz 1y ago
Ah, the subreddit where all data is made up and the discussion is irrelevant
YuukiRey 1y ago
I suggest taking a closer look at section 5 ("V. Shifting Priorities and Social Influences"), which starts on page 24 for alternative explanations. The preceding section does mention studies that show a cause and effect relationship between e.g., income and fertility, but the effect is surprisingly small. The authors conclude the section with: > “Pro-natal incentives do work: more money does yield more babies… But it takes a lot of money. Truth be told, trying to boost birth rates to replacement rate purely through cash incentives is prohibitively costly.”
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

by Havoc 1y ago

lmpdev 1y ago

Sadly I think you’re on the money here, especially for Australia and Canada

squishington 1y ago
The threat of being evicted every 12 months in Melbourne has reduced me to not being able to plan much at all. Rental market is cooked. It's exhausting.

Ontonator 1y ago

While I don’t disagree that houses have become less affordable, that graph is rather misleading. A graph of the ratio, as posted in one of the comments [0], would be more informative. [0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/e1jrvw/comment/f8q4rkp https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/e1jrvw/com...

dogma1138 1y ago
Israel has arguably the worst income to house price ratio in the OECD at 160 monthly wages (~13 annual salaries) which is more than twice the US at 68 but they have also the highest TFR in the developed world even when you exclude the Orthodox Jews… So it’s not as simple as housing is not affordable… it does feel like it’s very much cultural/social I can more than afford to have children but I’m at almost 40 and I don’t. And speaking from the pool of a rented villa in Greece I got on whim for 2 weeks because I got annoyed at work I can’t even begin to think about having them…

roenxi 1y ago

When looking at that sort of graph you do need to hold in mind that we had a substantial period of our evolutionary history where owning a house wasn't an option because houses didn't exist. It isn't the lack of a house that is causing the drop in fertility - if it was, all animal species would die out with rare exceptions. Humans are perfectly capable, as a race, of population growth without any houses at all. Indeed, you might even find that the houses most of your ancestors lived in are illegal to build in many parts of the world by virtue of being too basic. That suggests it is still a priorities question - people would much prefer to embrace the luxury and comforts of the modern world and work to maximise them rather than starting a family.

amluto 1y ago
> we had a substantial period of our evolutionary history where owning a house wasn't an option because houses didn't exist. The population density at the time was much, much, much lower than it is now.
- pjc50 1y ago
  Exactly. We have a historical fertility rate that's much higher to go with our historical early fatality rare, which was much higher. Population grew gradually from the development of agriculture to the Industrial Revolution, being basically starvation-limited or disease-limited along the way, and then exploded.
Havoc 1y ago
Yes we're still the same evolutionary humans, but you can't set up a subsistence farm with your 8 children as free labour and go hunting in lower Manhattan. Unless you're proposing mass de-urbanization and rolling back 100+ years of societal evolution it's practically just not all that relevant that this worked fine in an earlier era and humans could hypothetically just go back to slumming it medieval style. > It isn't the lack of a house that is causing the drop in fertility Find some 20 somethings in a major 1st world metro and ask them.
- 1y ago

AndrewDucker 1y ago

Importantly, the housing market now assumes that two people will be contributing to a mortgage, which makes having one of you take significant time off to look after a child (or spending a very significant percentage of your income on childcare) tricky, to say the least. One kid was doable for us. Two kids really stretched things and basically destroyed our savings (2 kids both costing £1k a month in nursery fees was not sustainable). A third kid would have meant either moving to a much cheaper house or some other significant financial compromise.

socalgal2 1y ago

The point of the paper is that that graph is irrelevant They looked at economic influence and found it does not account for the drop in child birth

AstralStorm 1y ago
Did they even attempt to scale it against housing prices?
- praxulus 1y ago
  Yes, part III section C is all about the effect of house prices on fertility. There's certainly an effect, but previous studies have shown that housing costs can only account for a small share of the drop in fertility.

amluto 1y ago

I would add some more factors along those lines: - Many urban areas have even worse shortages of family housing. Availability of 2+ bedroom apartments is even worse than studios and 1-bedrooms. Many new multi family buildings have plenty of low-income units but no family units. - Car seat laws are well intentioned but make it very annoying to transport children in car-dependent areas unless parents use their own car for everything. - Childcare and education prices are very high. Of course, part of this cost is the cost of living of educators. - Many industries are geared toward people with few or no children. Hotel rooms with capacity for more than two children are unusual, and most travel sites barely understand the idea of searching for such rooms. Even rooms with comfortable capacity for two children are a bit unusual — the common two-queen-bed configuration requires that kids share a bed.

thefz 1y ago

Ah, the subreddit where all data is made up and the discussion is irrelevant

YuukiRey 1y ago

I suggest taking a closer look at section 5 ("V. Shifting Priorities and Social Influences"), which starts on page 24 for alternative explanations. The preceding section does mention studies that show a cause and effect relationship between e.g., income and fertility, but the effect is surprisingly small. The authors conclude the section with: > “Pro-natal incentives do work: more money does yield more babies… But it takes a lot of money. Truth be told, trying to boost birth rates to replacement rate purely through cash incentives is prohibitively costly.”

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]