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 -
Pregnancy only needs to take you out of the economy for a few weeks. I really don't understand why its effect on women's careers is exaggerated so much.
Okay, so the woman takes a few weeks off from her job to have the baby and recover. And then what? She goes right back to work and leaves the baby in a daycare? Great, so now much of her salary is going to that. And since she doesn't have time to feed the baby, she can buy formula and switch to take out when the kid is old enough for solid food. And speaking of old enough, once he gets to kindergarten age she can sink most of her remaining wages into a zero-sum competition for the scarce real-state with the good schools attached . And...
Or, you know, she could just cut out the middleman. Specially if she is planning to have more than one child.
What's the point of having a baby only to see it raised by strangers?
Children need mothers. They don't need girlbosses.
This is an argument for children being expensive, not for children being a big drag on women's careers.
But mothers can save most of those expenses by staying at home, thus making quitting those careers a much more attractive option. Put another way, children dramatically reduce the value of a woman's career.
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