I think my main point of difference with your first post is that I don't think you can call having kids "asocial"—to me it's kind of fundamentally pro-social. That doesn't make not having kids asocial either ofc!
But I think we all benefit qua society from children even if we would not benefit as individuals from having them—it's just that you can't really use the first fact to make judgments about what individual people "ought" to do (I don't think there's even an ought here, aside from being good to children should you have them).… Like if somebody ran some sort of divine equation that showed the key to universal social prosperity was that everybody get married at age 36 to somebody they met at precisely age 34, even if those marriages were not good, that would be basically useless information for individuals, even if it was provably true.
ETA: I guess you are having arguments on several fronts so I take your primary opponent to be something like the statement "people don't have children because they are hedonists who don't believe in the future / love espresso martinis"—we both agree that's a stupid claim, tbc, and like you say, probably empirically wrong.
Other people’s kids, that they spent a lot of time and money raising, will ultimately be taxed to pay for your retirement. The systems are pay as you go so you will have contributed nothing towards them by the time you retire.
The cost of raising a kid, not counting college or unpaid parental labor, is around $330k according to the usda (2023 dollars) That’s after “free” k-12 education, which parents also pay for through taxes.
So having replacement fertility (2.1ish) costs parents at least $700k, and likely more.
I can see how someone would view $700k in additional disposable consumption (plus freedom, time, etc) of essentially free riding in middle age and then dumping the cost in other people’s kids would be a good move in a selfish sense.
Back of the envelope, childless people should probably contribute another $10k or so in taxes each year to support child bearers, if they wanted to do their fair share to contribute to their own retirement. Obviously it would take on the usually progressive shape (higher for higher income).
And of course the form the support comes in matters. Cash is best. “In kind services” tend to benefit the service provider more then the parent, k-12 is already a good example.
While it’s “not just the money”, I find the childless also don’t want to pay up the money. It’s almost like paying up the money, in addition to literally not being fun, would be a kind of admission of what they are doing.
Btw I think we could concoct a reasonable enough family support system just by eliminating three tax breaks for rich childless people (Salt, mortgage interest, and SS income cap), but you would not only need to sell that you would need to convince people not to just turn around and spend that revenue on other shit, which is what always happens.
When I was on my way to having children, I read Christine Overall’s book and decided that I was well within reason to either have or not have children for the reasons I was contemplating having or not having them, and I never thought about it again. Seems obvious that ppl can simply decide to embark on other meaningful life projects… Also was never much of a population ethics type…if we die out, good riddance really… [side note: why the hell can’t you edit comments on this app; wtf…]
One person who seems to have done very careful and thorough sociological data-delving on this is Lyman Stone, and I can recommend reading his many articles and tweets on the subject. He has very socially conservative personal convictions, which I often find irritating and you may as well, but nonetheless seems to be an honest scientist who follows the data where they lead.
As I understand him-- forgive me if I'm misinterpreting!-- there are three key points that come out of his analyses:
1. Most of the decline in total fertility is not due to a decline in how many children women say they sincerely want, but rather due to a widening gap between how many they want and how many they actually end up having.
2. Much if not most of that gap, in turn, is due to declining rates of stable partnership and marriage.
3. In spite of all of this, US fertility was at or above replacement rate as recently as 2007.
(1) and (2) suggest that there's a liberal, humanist, non-moral-panic case to be made for trying to figure out how we can better help people achieve their partnership and family dreams (and as you mention in the previous post, the experience of European countries tells us that the answer is probably not, or not just, more subsidies and social support programs for parents). Regardless of the fertility-rate impact, it has a pretty large life-happiness impact whether people can achieve these dreams, so people becoming less able to do so over time is worrying in itself.
(3) suggests that whatever is changing must be something where, at least in the US, the change has accelerated since 2007. Does increased female agency in determining life projects fits that timeline? It might, but it's not obvious. The US in 2007 was already a much more gender-equal society than it had been before the sexual revolution, which is the bete noire of your typical right-wing fertility alarmists.
Hispanic fertility used to really pull up us numbers, but as they assimilate their fertility falls. You have a similar problem trying to calculate fertility in Europe (Muslims pull it up, but also theirs falls as they assimilate).
Non-Hispanic white fertility rates have been sub replacement in the USA for a long time and declining. Among whites only some areas in the Midwest have somewhat robust fertility, but even people like the Mormons are falling as they assimilate.
If you look at say New England, which is very white liberal, you see a TFR of 1.35-1.45, and that is with non-whites pulling up those numbers. Those numbers have fallen dramatically for many years despite immigration that should have pulled them up.
In other words, if the entire country became as liberal of Massachusetts and had an all democrats legislature it probably wouldn’t help fertility.
I think my main point of difference with your first post is that I don't think you can call having kids "asocial"—to me it's kind of fundamentally pro-social. That doesn't make not having kids asocial either ofc!
But I think we all benefit qua society from children even if we would not benefit as individuals from having them—it's just that you can't really use the first fact to make judgments about what individual people "ought" to do (I don't think there's even an ought here, aside from being good to children should you have them).… Like if somebody ran some sort of divine equation that showed the key to universal social prosperity was that everybody get married at age 36 to somebody they met at precisely age 34, even if those marriages were not good, that would be basically useless information for individuals, even if it was provably true.
ETA: I guess you are having arguments on several fronts so I take your primary opponent to be something like the statement "people don't have children because they are hedonists who don't believe in the future / love espresso martinis"—we both agree that's a stupid claim, tbc, and like you say, probably empirically wrong.
Other people’s kids, that they spent a lot of time and money raising, will ultimately be taxed to pay for your retirement. The systems are pay as you go so you will have contributed nothing towards them by the time you retire.
The cost of raising a kid, not counting college or unpaid parental labor, is around $330k according to the usda (2023 dollars) That’s after “free” k-12 education, which parents also pay for through taxes.
So having replacement fertility (2.1ish) costs parents at least $700k, and likely more.
I can see how someone would view $700k in additional disposable consumption (plus freedom, time, etc) of essentially free riding in middle age and then dumping the cost in other people’s kids would be a good move in a selfish sense.
Back of the envelope, childless people should probably contribute another $10k or so in taxes each year to support child bearers, if they wanted to do their fair share to contribute to their own retirement. Obviously it would take on the usually progressive shape (higher for higher income).
And of course the form the support comes in matters. Cash is best. “In kind services” tend to benefit the service provider more then the parent, k-12 is already a good example.
While it’s “not just the money”, I find the childless also don’t want to pay up the money. It’s almost like paying up the money, in addition to literally not being fun, would be a kind of admission of what they are doing.
Btw I think we could concoct a reasonable enough family support system just by eliminating three tax breaks for rich childless people (Salt, mortgage interest, and SS income cap), but you would not only need to sell that you would need to convince people not to just turn around and spend that revenue on other shit, which is what always happens.
When I was on my way to having children, I read Christine Overall’s book and decided that I was well within reason to either have or not have children for the reasons I was contemplating having or not having them, and I never thought about it again. Seems obvious that ppl can simply decide to embark on other meaningful life projects… Also was never much of a population ethics type…if we die out, good riddance really… [side note: why the hell can’t you edit comments on this app; wtf…]
One person who seems to have done very careful and thorough sociological data-delving on this is Lyman Stone, and I can recommend reading his many articles and tweets on the subject. He has very socially conservative personal convictions, which I often find irritating and you may as well, but nonetheless seems to be an honest scientist who follows the data where they lead.
As I understand him-- forgive me if I'm misinterpreting!-- there are three key points that come out of his analyses:
1. Most of the decline in total fertility is not due to a decline in how many children women say they sincerely want, but rather due to a widening gap between how many they want and how many they actually end up having.
2. Much if not most of that gap, in turn, is due to declining rates of stable partnership and marriage.
3. In spite of all of this, US fertility was at or above replacement rate as recently as 2007.
(1) and (2) suggest that there's a liberal, humanist, non-moral-panic case to be made for trying to figure out how we can better help people achieve their partnership and family dreams (and as you mention in the previous post, the experience of European countries tells us that the answer is probably not, or not just, more subsidies and social support programs for parents). Regardless of the fertility-rate impact, it has a pretty large life-happiness impact whether people can achieve these dreams, so people becoming less able to do so over time is worrying in itself.
(3) suggests that whatever is changing must be something where, at least in the US, the change has accelerated since 2007. Does increased female agency in determining life projects fits that timeline? It might, but it's not obvious. The US in 2007 was already a much more gender-equal society than it had been before the sexual revolution, which is the bete noire of your typical right-wing fertility alarmists.
Hispanic fertility used to really pull up us numbers, but as they assimilate their fertility falls. You have a similar problem trying to calculate fertility in Europe (Muslims pull it up, but also theirs falls as they assimilate).
Non-Hispanic white fertility rates have been sub replacement in the USA for a long time and declining. Among whites only some areas in the Midwest have somewhat robust fertility, but even people like the Mormons are falling as they assimilate.
If you look at say New England, which is very white liberal, you see a TFR of 1.35-1.45, and that is with non-whites pulling up those numbers. Those numbers have fallen dramatically for many years despite immigration that should have pulled them up.
In other words, if the entire country became as liberal of Massachusetts and had an all democrats legislature it probably wouldn’t help fertility.