Often, when we look at disincentives for childbearing, we think of them in terms of opportunity costs for the individual. But if children are cumulatively being considered a societal good, we should also weigh the cumulative opportunity costs to the individuals as a societal tradeoff. It seems to me that Ron Hosh's substack (of "luxury belief" fame) generally lives up to its tagline of "general incoherence," but he raised this point/question in this post. The kids have to come from somewhere; what tradeoff(s) should society make?
Teenage pregnancy? Major tradeoff against developing the human capital of the parents and, thusly, the parents' ability to develop the human capital of the children. (And, if you want to follow the HBD line of inquiry, you might hypothesize dysgenic selection effects.)
College students? Lesser tradeoff than above, but same general issue.
20-something professionals? We're taking human capital out of the economy, just after investing in its development, rather than trying to maximize its compound interest.
Hosh also brings up geography and sexual orientation (same-sex couples using IVF is a thing), though I don't think the tradeoffs here are as clear.
Have any of you thought about this? My answer to "Which couples should be having more children" is "All the couples who don't have as many children as they want" which I don't think cleaves cleanly enough across any demographic to give a more clear tradeoff than the subsidies required to support the children not-conceived out of financial concern. But others here are more open to social engineering than I am.
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Notes -
Shouldn't society attempt to capture women for motherhood in leiu of being captured by top quintile universities?
This cohort seems to respond to incentives, what sort of incentives would be necessary to push them to motherhood instead of PMC / fake email jobs?
Incentives to marry earlier and then 4 or more children before 40.
It seems that the average woman does not actually demand marriage that strongly. She enjoys motherhood immensely but does not know this about herself without direct experience; her sex drive is mediocre and she's simply not attracted to most men.
In a historical society where women live with their parents and face immense pressure to find someone suitable and get hitched from 16, that woman married. In today's society, she muddles along, missing something but not sure what. Yes, she'd be happier if her parents arranged a marriage for her with Mr. Good-enough. But they're not going to, and even if they want to do this they don't know how, and even if they did, she wouldn't know this is better in the long run. She could I suppose be wooed during college, but we're busy telling young men not to do this, that it would ruin their lives on both ends, and steadily demonizing the kinds of age gap relationships that could probably route around this. When this woman does partner up it's as a forever girlfriend who becomes immensely frustrated at the lack of marriage and babies but is not, herself, the driving force behind their absence(yes, yes, she could refuse to cohabit and fornicate. But almost definitionally the average woman has rather lackluster talents at denying social pressures).
It comes down to a lot of factors- there's lots of women who, sure, are unhappy over a long enough timeframe without a relationship, but that timeframe is long, they don't have the pangs of loneliness and empty unsatisfaction from the lack thereof enough to motivate them to do the mildly uncomfortable things entailed in putting themselves out there. But the modern west's relationship progression also just takes entirely too damn long; during the fifties baby boom courtships were measured in months on the long end. In today's world, people date for a year and then move in together for several years and then think about getting engaged eventually. This is a pure bad thing, obviously- there are no benefits to cohabitation, literally. But, you know, it's what we have to live with.
Isn't this how they can return, if the pressures and incentives are re-aligned?
Yes. You can harshly stigmatize being a single woman, but it won't do anything if you don't also harshly stigmatize men for leading women into forever girlfriendship, because it is mostly not female choice that causes the late age of marriage in anglosphere countries- they would be perfectly happy marrying much earlier in a relationship.
You want a marriage boom, you stigmatize spinsterhood, yes. But you also need social pressure on men to go ahead and marry the girl. And the sexes' relative vulnerabilities to social pressures being what they are, I suspect that the pressures applied need be unequal.
Could men be motivated to marry via tax policy or free SUV if you fill it with a wife and kids?
Are there still jurisdictions where they prohibit cohabitation?
You could probably motivate cohabiting couples to marry with a house, I suppose.
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