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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   32882 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 31, 2022

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Back in September a commenter here on the TheMotte posted an argument about fertility trends claiming that among rich countries fertility actually increases with feminism. I did not have time to respond at the time, but this is something that I have heard many times, so I wanted to make an effort post explaining why I don't believe the claim. Here are some examples of prestige outlets making the same claim, from a New York Times op-ed:

The culture of misogyny and gender inequality [in South Korea] may be affecting family life, in a country facing predictions of population collapse. Research shows that a low fertility rate in developed countries reflects backward attitudes over female gender roles. source

And here is the United Nations Population Fund:

Want to increase birth rates? Try gender equality. Many countries in Eastern Europe face what is often perceived as a population crisis....There is broad consensus on what needs to be part of such a policy package: Quality, affordable childcare starting from an early age. Flexible and generously paid parental leave for both parents (with incentives for men to take what they are entitled to). Flexible work arrangements, and providing equal pay for women. Programmes to encourage men and women to equally share care and household work. And affordable housing as well as financial support for low-income families. source

The original TheMotte commenter wrote:

However, what I have noticed is that rich female friendly nations do far better in terms of birth rate than rich conservative strict gender role societies. For example - France has a fertility rate around 1.8. 1.7 for the US. Germany 1.4. In the east with more strict gender norms the rich societies however have far more abysmal fertility rates - Japan 1.3, South Korea 0.8, Taiwan 1.1, Singapore 1.2.

I will address three big problems with the argument, and then I want to talk about the elephant in the room.

The first problem is that this is cherry-picking examples. We could just as easily cherry-pick other countries that show a reversed trend: Spain has a parliament that is 50% women but a fertility rate of merely 1.3. Finland ranks number one on female empowerment, sharing many of the same policies as Sweden, but has a a very low fertility rate of 1.3. In Ireland, where men only do 43% of the housework (which is low for Europe), women have a fertility rate of 1.6.

You might think we could get around the problem of cherry-picking by running regressions against a broader dataset. But turns out there are still too many researcher degrees of freedom. In playing with the data myself, and in reading about others who have played with the data, I could get anything from a massively negative impact of female empowerment on fertility, to no impact, to modestly positive. Here are some charts I made:

That parental leave or subsized childcare has no correlation with fertility rates should dispense with any notion that these are the magic policies that will fix fertility while reconciling child bearing with women pursuing careerist paths.

The second problem is that fertility rate itself is confounded by sub-cultures within a country. The poster children for feminist family polices with high birth rates are Sweden and France. However, their fertility stats are hopelessly confounded by the fertility of more patriarchal subcultures -- that of non-European immigrants. Unfortunately, it is fiendishly hard to find accurate statistics on how much this impacts the numbers.

France, for instance, bans collecting statistics by race. But this report showed 38% of new births in the cities were considered high-risk for sickle cell anemia -- meaning the parents are of Arab or African origin. That's a huge number.

In the United States, fertility is boosted by less feminist groups, such as recent immigrants, Amish, Mormons, and evangelical Christians. Israel's fertility is boosted by ultra-Orthodox Jews who have a fertility rate three times that of secular Israelis.

(continued in the replies due to excess word count)

Thanks for this post, I remember seeing a similar comment on slatecoderindex (under the 10,000 years of patriarchy post, I believe). It is true that cities and the population density in these areas outright disincentivise child rearing by raising costs of living. This piece and others by the same author seek to rebut generally held notions regards demography. Would be curious to hear your thoughts on this.

The more I read about cities denser and more populous than mine, the more dystopic I see them. If a city were to truly ban cars, only the rich could afford to work less than half an hour’s walk plus two bus/train stops from their politically legible residence-box.

Sorry, I meant transfers. Also, I meant dense megalopoli where even the sprawl is too expensive for janitors.

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