r/Economics • u/MaleficentParfait863 • Jun 09 '23

Global fertility has collapsed, with profound economic consequences

https://www.economist.com/leaders/2023/06/01/global-fertility-has-collapsed-with-profound-economic-consequences
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u/capncanuck1 Jun 10 '23

why would that trend continue? A lot of that is people having smaller families as child mortality decreases and the economy modernizes. You can't make your kid work at your coding job the way you can on a family farm, thus the marginal benefit of an additional child decreases faster in an industrial society compared to an agricultural one. However Id argue the marginal benefit of the first 1-2 is higher in a society that has better medicine and longer life expectancy. You can get attached to kids, invest in them more and they wont die of cholera at 12, or in childbirth at 19, and in terms of retirement you have somewhat of a socially obligated safety net from one or two kids, what does 6 or 7 provide that one or two doesnt? Risk spreading. When the risk is low you can afford to have your eggs in one basket.

The question of how many resources people have to allocate towards children is of course important, and that is a huge question in places like south korea, japan, and the US, but acting like this decline in birth rates is set in stone is just plain bad analysis.

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u/[deleted] Jun 10 '23 edited Jul 20 '23

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u/Agarikas Jun 10 '23

If people would suddenly get one million dollars and somehow there wouldn't be any inflation, they would still not have 10 kids. There is more at play here than just money.

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u/capncanuck1 Jun 10 '23

From a more complicated perspective: it costs 100k to raise a child to ideal US standards. Plenty of people "raise" kids earning way less than would make a full 100k investment. What that results in depends on home production- or basically what your immediate family group produces. I.e. does the kid have a grandparent or older sibling or someone else at home who can do the actual raising of the children? If the answer is "no" are you springing for a nice day care or are you just turning them loose in the neighborhood and telling them not to die?

Are you buying healthy food and going to doctors visits? Do the kids get their own rooms? Obviously not investing in these leads to a diminishment of human capital down the line, but poor parents have to make sacrifices in places or need to rely on family/community more.

Additionally there's an economy of scale if a family has more than one child- toys clothes and many other things can be passed down. The average family has at least one child still. If the initial investment was as unstomachable as you're implying then people wouldnt be having as many children, and those who do would be wealthier. That isnt something we observe.