[HN Gopher] The economics of fertility: a new era (2023) [pdf]
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The economics of fertility: a new era (2023) [pdf]
Author : mooreds
Score : 23 points
Date : 2024-02-03 17:50 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (faculty.wcas.northwestern.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (faculty.wcas.northwestern.edu)
| jpm_sd wrote:
| TL;DR: people in higher income societies have more children if
| they have good access to childcare and education?
| A_D_E_P_T wrote:
| I recently received an invite to work in Cambridge, England,
| for a year. (This is a simplification of a more complex
| situation, but I'll leave it at that.)
|
| I have two very young kids.
|
| It looks like I'll have to decline the invitation, as it turns
| out that nursery childcare in Cambride costs well over $1000
| per child per month. (e.g.,
| https://www.montessoricambridge.co.uk/admissions/fees-and-se...
| --- and these guys, at ~$1600/month/child, are far from the
| most expensive.)
|
| In the developed world, in an upper middle class home, having
| children has become something akin to an extravagance: Very
| expensive, and quite uncommon. I'm the only one in my peer
| group with children, and I have two siblings and six cousins
| who are all childless in their thirties.
| brnt wrote:
| This is a normal rate in the Netherlands too.
| logicchains wrote:
| >In the developed world
|
| You mean the western world. The UAE has one of the highest
| GDPs per capita globally and yet for $1000/month you could
| hire a full-time live-in nanny. The difference is western
| countries generally have much stricter restrictions on
| immigration from poorer countries, and high minimum wages.
| jamiek88 wrote:
| No, just cos you can exploit some poor Sri Lankan woman in
| the Middle East doesn't make that a solution everywhere.
|
| Leaving their own children to raise someone else's while
| being treated like a middle ages servant is absolutely not
| what we should be encouraging.
|
| I work with a non profit that helps those women escape
| those places once their passport is stolen.
|
| Not all 'masters and ma'ams' are abusive but a large
| percentage are.
| Terr_ wrote:
| That reminds me of living in Hong Kong in the '90s, I
| think the number one job title of the entire workforce
| went to "Amahs"--live-in maids/housekeepes--generally
| from the Philippines and remitting money back home.
|
| Not nearly as terrible as what I hear about places like
| Dubai today, but the workers in HK still preferred to be
| employed by visiting westerners since it meant better
| treatment.
| uniqueuid wrote:
| I would say that's not the key takeaway; it's about the
| relationship between income and children _within_ a country.
|
| From the conclusion:
|
| "Past fertility research largely focused on understanding
| fertility decline over time and _the negative cross-country
| relationship between income and fertility_. The most important
| mechanism in explaining these patterns was the quantity-quality
| tradeoff. However, much has changed over the last few decades.
| In particular, fertility is no longer negatively related to
| income across high-income countries. Instead, family policy,
| cooperative fathers, favorable social norms, and flexible labor
| markets have become key determinants of fertility choice. Thus,
| a new era of fertility research has begun. "
| apwell23 wrote:
| This is very counter to reality . In high income societies ppl
| who have kids are often the ones the without good access to
| childcare and education. People have less kids as you move up
| the income spectrum.
|
| Prerequisite to having kids is removing choice and meaning in
| life.
| VirusNewbie wrote:
| Why does Isreal have such a high birthrate?
| logicchains wrote:
| "Good access to education" means more time spent in formal
| schooling, and later marriage. This alone accounts for most
| of the decrease in fertility; even if the probability of
| having children per year between two groups is constant, if
| one group marries at 25 on average and the other at 35, the
| first group will be 3x more likely to have children (since it
| has 15 years until 40, the rough end of fertility, while the
| other has just 5 years until 40).
| hiAndrewQuinn wrote:
| A childcare worker has a cap on the number of kids they can
| competently handle at a single time, both legally and due to very
| human limits. It's interesting that we haven't seen that much
| embrace of new technologies that might raise this limit,
| increasing the aggregate supply of childcare and hence lowering
| prices across society, when childcare is so expensive in so many
| places.
| uniqueuid wrote:
| How exactly would you use technology to raise that limit?
|
| From my experience, direct 1:1 attention is the single most
| important thing for children. I would (and am) actively paying
| for childcare not to use technology to increase that attention.
| Terr_ wrote:
| One way to look at it is that socializing the children
| requires a particular amount of raw time from the humans
| being their interactive role-models. This means prices will
| tend to rise alongside the wages of those parental figures.
|
| I say "socializing" because I want to distinguish it from
| either imparting academic knowledge or providing for material
| needs/safety. I think those three categories are very
| different in terms of how easily--or wisely--they might be
| handled by automation.
|
| For example, a robot that changes diapers and stops your
| child from falling over cliffs: Awesome. An endlessly patient
| software tutor for teaching algebra: Cool. An AI that serves
| as virtual aunt/uncle/best-friend? _Uh oh._
| codr7 wrote:
| Replacing teachers with software doesn't sound like a
| recipe for success to me.
|
| Simply adding distractions like tablets and laptops is
| already doing plenty of damage.
| Terr_ wrote:
| I agree, but that's because (good) teaching is also being
| a interactive model for those hungry little brains, and
| are needed when something occurs outside the
| specialization of the software.
|
| The "distractions" are harmful because suddenly kids are
| getting their world views and expectations from too-
| ficticious characters or "influencers" with perverse
| incentives.
| hiAndrewQuinn wrote:
| If I knew that, I'd be making a lot of money by now.
|
| It's good that you have the option and disposable income to
| pay a premium for a private nanny or however else you're
| maximizing that direct 1:1 attention, instead of an ordinary
| daycare. For the rest of us, we mostly need someone to watch
| the kids while we're at work, and paying that much would
| probably make it cheaper overall to just watch them
| ourselves.
| netsharc wrote:
| Random brainstorm from a childless man: cameras, cameras
| everywhere, and some sort of AR tool for the carer, so the
| kids get tamagochi-esque meters. Beep, camera 4 spotted kid 7
| needing interaction. Beep kid 5 is acting cranky, last drink
| 26 minutes ago, while you're at it refill kid 13's water
| bottle.
|
| Yeah, very dystopian... Bonus if the AR overlay allows eye
| contact, we don't want the kids staring into the soulless
| face of an Apple Vision Pro ;)
| antonkar wrote:
| Good and safe fully fenced playgrounds away from cars are
| important - both open-air and closed for the rainy/snowy days. So
| a bunch of families can leave there children and even a single
| parent can look after them for an hour or two. Children like
| playing with each other, just make it available, so the parents
| can read a newspaper/work on their Macbook without being scared
| to look away from their child for a minute.
|
| Same thing with kids rooms in cafes/restaurants/public places -
| they should be mandated by state for big establishments
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| (2022)
|
| Or is this something different:
| https://www.crctr224.de/en/research-output/discussion-papers...
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