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This is a blog on why we believe and do what we do, why we pretend otherwise, how we might do better, and what our descendants might do, if they don't all die.
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Our falling fertility problem is worse than I thought:
We analyze a staged expansion of subsidized child care in Norway. … There is little, if any, causal effect of subsidized child care on maternal employment, despite a strong correlation. Instead of increasing mothers’ labor supply, the new subsidized child care mostly crowds out informal child care arrangements, suggesting a significant net cost of the child care subsidies. (more)
It is harder than you might think to pay people in cash to have more kids. Alas paying them in status is much harder to arrange.
Priceless Fertility
Yes there is good evidence. Human population was stable or very slowly increasing from prehistoric times until quite recently. Exponential increases in population only occurred after modern disease prevention. Exponential increases in population occurred last in regions where there is misogyny and abuse of women, which also happen to be regions of poverty (except where there are natural resources to sell such as oil).
I presume that misogyny and abuse of women are not recent cultural changes but have existed in those regions since antiquity.
In any case, if women don't want to have children, what ethical principle allows abuse and coercion? Especially when market solutions have not been tried first?
I certainly don't want them to have more kids.There are lots of relatively short-term hazards our society is subjectto, but insufficient fertility isn't one of them. Most of the hazards(particularly environmental limits) get more dangerous as populationrises.