Bryan Caplan: One popular story about the decline in family size over the last two centuries goes like this: Back in the old days, having kids paid. Children started working when they were quite young, and provided for their parents in their old age. … Ted Bergstrom summarizes evidence showing that even in pre-modern societies, kids did not pay. Kids did not pay in hunter-gatherer societies. … Kids did not pay in agricultural societies.
#2 and #3 don’t obviously raise the cost of kids relative to income
I'm not convinced. Are you including opportunity costs?
Also, on a farm pre-1800, you got most of your food outside the market and aside from your money income. Food was not accounted for in your money income, but it was a huge chunk of your income in the broad sense - and much of it came from your children's labor.
As I wrote on Caplan's post, it doesn't make any sense for him to ask whether kids were "profitable" financially, or "paid" (he even asks if they are more profitable than other uses of capital). What matters is just whether the value of their labor made them a lot cheaper - not necessarily free. Obviously, I don't have to cut the price of pizza down to $0 a slice or $(-1) a slice to increase demand. We desire pizza and children inherently and so we buy at a price well above zero.
I have also long pondered this odd puzzle of the modern world. Rousseau said that you could judge whether a government was good or bad according to whether the population was increasing or decreasing, and this metric would say weird things about the present world -- or would it?
The comment about K/r is (IMHO) the only one who seems to be on track, but it fails to mention exactly how we should apply it to our case.
My present line of reasoning goes along the lines: in contemporary affluent societies human beings are competing not with environmental factors but with other humans, whereas in more traditional societies the weight of this intra-species competition was less relevant.
In any case, i think the phenomenon underlines how much what we think as "material wealth" is actually not very relevant to survival but exclusively as status signaling.
I should have said, "because women would seek to elevate their status through the one channel available: by acquiring high status mates. And higher status males could subsidize more children."
"But the basic question remains open. While we have some good clues to proximate causes, we just don’t understand how or why natural selection gave us preferences that, in our modern environment, produce such unadaptive behavior."
My theory for the demographic transition is here. In short, humans have a weak innate drive to reproduce, but strong innate drives to have sex and gain social status. In the past reproduction was largely mediated through these drives. Prior to female educational and economic integration, the female status drive was adaptive; it resulted in higher reproductive success -- i.e more surviving offspring -- because women would seek to elevate their status through the one channel available: by acquiring high status mates. In turn this made high reproductive success itself a desirable symbol of social status, since higher status women had more children.
But post-women's liberation, status drive would have the opposite effect. Now status motivated women have to marry well and participate in the workforce to remain competitive with other women in the adult status arena. The time and expenses necessary for raising children are instead invested in education, career-building, and conspicuous consumption. In turn this makes low reproductive success a symbol of social status, since higher status have fewer children.
The link between demographic transitioning and status drive are supported by a number of newer papers in the economics literature.
For example, one recent study from Brazil suggests that status imitation drove their demographic transition. As soon as different regions acquired access to Soap Operas (1960-2000) about small, middle-class Brazilian families, local birth rates would drop dramatically to the levels featured in the TV shows (from 6.3 to 2.3 children), and parents would name their children after the characters in those shows.
A similar effect on fertility followed cable television introduction in India.
In other words, as soon as women see higher class women adopt low fertility behaviors, they rapidly follow suit.
@Wei Dai said"Would you also say that we don’t know how natural selection gave us such an unadaptive immune system?"
It is my never humble opinion that our immune systems have adapted, but not for the better.
An obsession with germ killing (freakin' hand sanitizers and antibacterials EVERYWHERE) leaves us less exposure, thereby weakening the immune response.
It doesn't get enough exercise.
And the germs have incredible adaptive immune systems - witness the ubiquitous "antibiotic resistant" bacteria and ever changing viruses (AIDS, for example).
I thought this was all pretty well known? The Demographic Transition and all that. Death rates fall as a result of increased wealth and stability while the natal-norms that prevailed in a period of high infant mortality continue on for a while before people adjust. Old preferences of having a lot of pregnancies in order to have several surviving children continue into an age where many more infants make it to adulthood than before. Birth rates only adjust after a long and variable lag where people pick up on the drawbacks of large families and adjust their natal-norms to reflect the new environment.
The loss of the intuitive capacity to raise children, would in my mind lead to the drop in the birth rate. If you have not experienced a family why would you want one. This birth rate decline has a trajectory of its own and will continue until .....? In Canada, the government gives us up to $475.00 a month if we have a child, based on income. Scarcity of money is an impediment to having children. The implementation of the surreal is a factor as well. A surrealism is a license to decide who, what, where, when, and why gets. Layer upon layer of licenses have been put in place and to navigate your way through them requires a lot of effort. Who in their right mind would want to have children. Some even consider having children to be a PSYCHOTIC event.
Yes I agree there was some growth; I was trying to make the point that it was slow, that 4-(surviving)-children families were never the norm. It didn't go much above 2 to replace people after the black death, I don't think. I point this out because I grew up thinking everyone had 5, 6 kid families before the 20th C, but that would lead to population doubling every decade or two, and this was unheard of. (I have England in mind.)
Certainly as you say the rich had larger families, the very rich much larger. If this was simply about wealth (in isolation) then indeed there is a puzzle, of why later common people, though just as wealthy, did not have such large families.
What I would like to argue is that perhaps partly it wasn't simply that their wealth let them have large families. Perhaps it was in part a response to those around them? (The rich spent a lot on signals like white gloves, too, which are now no longer a symbol.) I don''t think this can be the whole answer, but it might be part of it.
Perhaps the question to be answered is what went wrong in the 19th C, with the 18th and 20th (or certainly 17th and 21st) on the norm of close to 2 children.
I think this is going to become THE interesting question of economic history. I just listened to the EconTalk podcast interview with John Nye and basically the same question was central: the question is not, "why did fear of markets suddenly arise in the early 20th century?", but rather, "why was the 19th century so market-friendly?"
Most of these comments don't reflect the correct historical scale. In the 18th century, Hume and Franklin predicted the demographic transition by observing its beginnings in upper classes. I believe that their claim is that parents max out investment in the human capital of their children, or at least invest enough to expect their children not to fall in status. I don't know if they gave a deeper reason for this proximate psychology.
Similar theories (without the 18th century pedigree) were mentioned more often in the comments on Caplan's post. It might match Vladimir's #4, though he seems to be looking too recently. Perhaps it matches Zukov's comment on K-selection, but I think Hume and Franklin would say not that the memetic environment has changed, but that larger investments in human capital are possible; or larger investments are necessary to keep up.
FuzzyThinker, women having higher standards and refusing to settle could possibly explain a lower marriage rate. I don’t see how it explains a lower fertility rate for married women.
Is this controlling for age of marriage? If women have higher standards and are refusing to settle and get married until they're older, all else equal fertility should drop.
improbable, there was population growth until the Malthusian limits were reached. There were periodic negative shocks to population such as wars, famines and epidemics. After the Black Death England's population greatly declined, income per worker increased, and subsequently the population growth rate was significantly positive until again reaching carrying capacity.
jonathan, it used to be the case that a higher income meant more children, as I was just saying to improbable. In the pre-industrial era, (at least in unequal societies like England) the poor did not have enough surviving children the reproduce themselves. They were replaced by the surplus children of the wealthier, who would experience downward mobility.
FuzzyThinker, women having higher standards and refusing to settle could possibly explain a lower marriage rate. I don't see how it explains a lower fertility rate for married women.
Bergstrom undercut #1, and fertility fell lots before contraception tech, saying #5 is minor. #2 and #3 don’t obviously raise the cost of kids relative to income, or to kids’ value to parents. That leaves #4, some unexplained feature of how kids give moms status.
Even if we accept the conclusions cited by Caplan (of which I'm highly skeptical), this list is far from exhaustive. Off the top of my head, here are a few reasons that aren't covered by it, but seem highly relevant to me:
(1) The opportunity cost of having children has increased immensely, and continues to increase. There's more and more stuff you can do that's much more fun for (most) young people than raising kids, and the oldest age at which hedonistic single life is still acceptable keeps increasing. ("30 is the new 20" -- though the exact direction of causality here is moot.)
(2) The disappearance of the patriarchal role of elders. One of the main benefits of having a family was the expectation that in old age, one would become a patriarchal figure commanding vast respect and authority. (This was true for both men and women in traditional Western societies.) Nowadays, however, old people are commonly estranged from their offspring and viewed as an unpleasant burden. Partly this is because of purely cultural changes, and partly because the world is changing so rapidly that old people are viewed as being hopelessly behind the times, rather than as sources of valuable wisdom.
(3) Even not counting the diminished esteem shown towards parents and grandparents, there's the fact of increased workforce mobility. There's a high probability that your kids will move far away, possibly as soon as they reach university age, and that they (and their kids) will remain faraway strangers that you see only once in a year or two. This of course greatly diminishes the expected enjoyment that your adult children and their offspring should bring.
(4) The increasingly competitive nature of the class system and the increasingly brutal status hierarchy, where lower-status people are being treated with ever increasing contempt. This situation is whipping many parents into a mentality where having kids is almost criminally irresponsible if they can't ensure them optimal conditions at great cost. Again, partly this is because of objective factors -- the breakdown of civilized norms of living among the lower classes means that ensuring a civilized environment for one's kids is becoming increasingly costly. To a large degree, however, this is also because of the unrealistic "Yale or jail" mentality.
This are just a few passing observations, without any pretense at a comprehensive explanation of these trends.
I can recall being a child during elementary school and listening to my older sister who was in middle/high school expressing quite anti-natalist attitudes that were inculcated in school and by the wider culture.
Those memes are definitely still with her today as she enters her 30s. At this point, the only thing I believe could potentially challenge or counteract those memes is the personal experience of actually bearing and raising a child. It's conceivable that she finds it to be a positive, fulfilling experience and strongly desires to have more children. But of course at that point she would be near the close of her fertility window. This experience isn't too uncommon among women these days, especially well educated, professional types.
#2 and #3 don’t obviously raise the cost of kids relative to income
I'm not convinced. Are you including opportunity costs?
Also, on a farm pre-1800, you got most of your food outside the market and aside from your money income. Food was not accounted for in your money income, but it was a huge chunk of your income in the broad sense - and much of it came from your children's labor.
As I wrote on Caplan's post, it doesn't make any sense for him to ask whether kids were "profitable" financially, or "paid" (he even asks if they are more profitable than other uses of capital). What matters is just whether the value of their labor made them a lot cheaper - not necessarily free. Obviously, I don't have to cut the price of pizza down to $0 a slice or $(-1) a slice to increase demand. We desire pizza and children inherently and so we buy at a price well above zero.
I have also long pondered this odd puzzle of the modern world. Rousseau said that you could judge whether a government was good or bad according to whether the population was increasing or decreasing, and this metric would say weird things about the present world -- or would it?
The comment about K/r is (IMHO) the only one who seems to be on track, but it fails to mention exactly how we should apply it to our case.
My present line of reasoning goes along the lines: in contemporary affluent societies human beings are competing not with environmental factors but with other humans, whereas in more traditional societies the weight of this intra-species competition was less relevant.
In any case, i think the phenomenon underlines how much what we think as "material wealth" is actually not very relevant to survival but exclusively as status signaling.
Those are very relevant and interesting articles.
I should have said, "because women would seek to elevate their status through the one channel available: by acquiring high status mates. And higher status males could subsidize more children."
"But the basic question remains open. While we have some good clues to proximate causes, we just don’t understand how or why natural selection gave us preferences that, in our modern environment, produce such unadaptive behavior."
My theory for the demographic transition is here. In short, humans have a weak innate drive to reproduce, but strong innate drives to have sex and gain social status. In the past reproduction was largely mediated through these drives. Prior to female educational and economic integration, the female status drive was adaptive; it resulted in higher reproductive success -- i.e more surviving offspring -- because women would seek to elevate their status through the one channel available: by acquiring high status mates. In turn this made high reproductive success itself a desirable symbol of social status, since higher status women had more children.
But post-women's liberation, status drive would have the opposite effect. Now status motivated women have to marry well and participate in the workforce to remain competitive with other women in the adult status arena. The time and expenses necessary for raising children are instead invested in education, career-building, and conspicuous consumption. In turn this makes low reproductive success a symbol of social status, since higher status have fewer children.
The link between demographic transitioning and status drive are supported by a number of newer papers in the economics literature.
For example, one recent study from Brazil suggests that status imitation drove their demographic transition. As soon as different regions acquired access to Soap Operas (1960-2000) about small, middle-class Brazilian families, local birth rates would drop dramatically to the levels featured in the TV shows (from 6.3 to 2.3 children), and parents would name their children after the characters in those shows.
A similar effect on fertility followed cable television introduction in India.
In other words, as soon as women see higher class women adopt low fertility behaviors, they rapidly follow suit.
@Wei Dai said"Would you also say that we don’t know how natural selection gave us such an unadaptive immune system?"
It is my never humble opinion that our immune systems have adapted, but not for the better.
An obsession with germ killing (freakin' hand sanitizers and antibacterials EVERYWHERE) leaves us less exposure, thereby weakening the immune response.
It doesn't get enough exercise.
And the germs have incredible adaptive immune systems - witness the ubiquitous "antibiotic resistant" bacteria and ever changing viruses (AIDS, for example).
You've come very close here.
I thought this was all pretty well known? The Demographic Transition and all that. Death rates fall as a result of increased wealth and stability while the natal-norms that prevailed in a period of high infant mortality continue on for a while before people adjust. Old preferences of having a lot of pregnancies in order to have several surviving children continue into an age where many more infants make it to adulthood than before. Birth rates only adjust after a long and variable lag where people pick up on the drawbacks of large families and adjust their natal-norms to reflect the new environment.
The loss of the intuitive capacity to raise children, would in my mind lead to the drop in the birth rate. If you have not experienced a family why would you want one. This birth rate decline has a trajectory of its own and will continue until .....? In Canada, the government gives us up to $475.00 a month if we have a child, based on income. Scarcity of money is an impediment to having children. The implementation of the surreal is a factor as well. A surrealism is a license to decide who, what, where, when, and why gets. Layer upon layer of licenses have been put in place and to navigate your way through them requires a lot of effort. Who in their right mind would want to have children. Some even consider having children to be a PSYCHOTIC event.
TGGP,
Yes I agree there was some growth; I was trying to make the point that it was slow, that 4-(surviving)-children families were never the norm. It didn't go much above 2 to replace people after the black death, I don't think. I point this out because I grew up thinking everyone had 5, 6 kid families before the 20th C, but that would lead to population doubling every decade or two, and this was unheard of. (I have England in mind.)
Certainly as you say the rich had larger families, the very rich much larger. If this was simply about wealth (in isolation) then indeed there is a puzzle, of why later common people, though just as wealthy, did not have such large families.
What I would like to argue is that perhaps partly it wasn't simply that their wealth let them have large families. Perhaps it was in part a response to those around them? (The rich spent a lot on signals like white gloves, too, which are now no longer a symbol.) I don''t think this can be the whole answer, but it might be part of it.
Perhaps the question to be answered is what went wrong in the 19th C, with the 18th and 20th (or certainly 17th and 21st) on the norm of close to 2 children.
I think this is going to become THE interesting question of economic history. I just listened to the EconTalk podcast interview with John Nye and basically the same question was central: the question is not, "why did fear of markets suddenly arise in the early 20th century?", but rather, "why was the 19th century so market-friendly?"
"we just don’t understand how or why natural selection gave us preferences that, in our modern environment, produce such unadaptive behavior"
What is "unadaptive" about it?
Most of these comments don't reflect the correct historical scale. In the 18th century, Hume and Franklin predicted the demographic transition by observing its beginnings in upper classes. I believe that their claim is that parents max out investment in the human capital of their children, or at least invest enough to expect their children not to fall in status. I don't know if they gave a deeper reason for this proximate psychology.
Similar theories (without the 18th century pedigree) were mentioned more often in the comments on Caplan's post. It might match Vladimir's #4, though he seems to be looking too recently. Perhaps it matches Zukov's comment on K-selection, but I think Hume and Franklin would say not that the memetic environment has changed, but that larger investments in human capital are possible; or larger investments are necessary to keep up.
FuzzyThinker, women having higher standards and refusing to settle could possibly explain a lower marriage rate. I don’t see how it explains a lower fertility rate for married women.
Is this controlling for age of marriage? If women have higher standards and are refusing to settle and get married until they're older, all else equal fertility should drop.
improbable, there was population growth until the Malthusian limits were reached. There were periodic negative shocks to population such as wars, famines and epidemics. After the Black Death England's population greatly declined, income per worker increased, and subsequently the population growth rate was significantly positive until again reaching carrying capacity.
jonathan, it used to be the case that a higher income meant more children, as I was just saying to improbable. In the pre-industrial era, (at least in unequal societies like England) the poor did not have enough surviving children the reproduce themselves. They were replaced by the surplus children of the wealthier, who would experience downward mobility.
FuzzyThinker, women having higher standards and refusing to settle could possibly explain a lower marriage rate. I don't see how it explains a lower fertility rate for married women.
Robin Hanson:
Bergstrom undercut #1, and fertility fell lots before contraception tech, saying #5 is minor. #2 and #3 don’t obviously raise the cost of kids relative to income, or to kids’ value to parents. That leaves #4, some unexplained feature of how kids give moms status.
Even if we accept the conclusions cited by Caplan (of which I'm highly skeptical), this list is far from exhaustive. Off the top of my head, here are a few reasons that aren't covered by it, but seem highly relevant to me:
(1) The opportunity cost of having children has increased immensely, and continues to increase. There's more and more stuff you can do that's much more fun for (most) young people than raising kids, and the oldest age at which hedonistic single life is still acceptable keeps increasing. ("30 is the new 20" -- though the exact direction of causality here is moot.)
(2) The disappearance of the patriarchal role of elders. One of the main benefits of having a family was the expectation that in old age, one would become a patriarchal figure commanding vast respect and authority. (This was true for both men and women in traditional Western societies.) Nowadays, however, old people are commonly estranged from their offspring and viewed as an unpleasant burden. Partly this is because of purely cultural changes, and partly because the world is changing so rapidly that old people are viewed as being hopelessly behind the times, rather than as sources of valuable wisdom.
(3) Even not counting the diminished esteem shown towards parents and grandparents, there's the fact of increased workforce mobility. There's a high probability that your kids will move far away, possibly as soon as they reach university age, and that they (and their kids) will remain faraway strangers that you see only once in a year or two. This of course greatly diminishes the expected enjoyment that your adult children and their offspring should bring.
(4) The increasingly competitive nature of the class system and the increasingly brutal status hierarchy, where lower-status people are being treated with ever increasing contempt. This situation is whipping many parents into a mentality where having kids is almost criminally irresponsible if they can't ensure them optimal conditions at great cost. Again, partly this is because of objective factors -- the breakdown of civilized norms of living among the lower classes means that ensuring a civilized environment for one's kids is becoming increasingly costly. To a large degree, however, this is also because of the unrealistic "Yale or jail" mentality.
This are just a few passing observations, without any pretense at a comprehensive explanation of these trends.
I can recall being a child during elementary school and listening to my older sister who was in middle/high school expressing quite anti-natalist attitudes that were inculcated in school and by the wider culture.
Those memes are definitely still with her today as she enters her 30s. At this point, the only thing I believe could potentially challenge or counteract those memes is the personal experience of actually bearing and raising a child. It's conceivable that she finds it to be a positive, fulfilling experience and strongly desires to have more children. But of course at that point she would be near the close of her fertility window. This experience isn't too uncommon among women these days, especially well educated, professional types.