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Notes -
“Young adults are poor despite every metric which suggests otherwise” link
This is trending on Twitter so might as well discuss it here anonymously.
I know more than a few people say it’s just vibes and the data is good but I think this article makes a strong point that a real loss of social capital has actually made younger people poorer. And I believe this links into the fertility debate because the goods that you could buy before with social capital are especially needed with children. Having kids has gotten very expensive. I think everyone knows education, housing, and health care have boomed in costs. Being single means you don’t need to take on these costs. You can have kids if you are poor and live off government resources or you can have kids if you are rich but it’s a financial disaster for the upper middle class.
I largely come down to diversity (mass migration) and the Great Migration killing American social capital that the boomers had. Before these things occurred we had cheap urban housing because people weren’t afraid of their neighbors and cheap public schools. And homogenous urban environments have a lot of social capital for their residents. Also you had cheap babysitters because your neighbors were like you and you trusted them. Your kids could just go to the park alone. So childcare was free. I feel comfortable blaming diversity on rising housing costs (zoning the poor away from good communities) and for rising educational costs (falling public school quality).
So yes I think today’s generation is poorer in a lot of ways that really matter due to less social capital (but richer in other ways). And I do think the ways we are poorer today are especially bad for fertility where you now need to buy those goods in the market but they were free before.
Conflating Great Migration and mass migration makes me think you’re reasoning backwards.
As I understand it, immigration slumped during the Depression and didn’t recover until Reagan. Wiki shows a different trend but still suggests the bulk of migration happened before WWI. So I find it unlikely that immigration could explain the effects you want.
Actually, when are those effects, exactly? Because I think it makes a huge difference if you point at the 60s vs 70s vs 80s. Depending on the specific point, I can think of a dozen technologies which have changed how people handle their kids, even without talking about demographics or gang violence.
I think you’re skimming over economics in your rush to blame black people. Automation and the World Wars pulled more and more women out of the home. That alone should have had a bigger effect on childcare.
Women were not pulled out of the home by economics. It was culture- male wages were steadily rising and the US did not experience prolonged unemployment during the period when it shifted from unusual to the default. That cultural shift had knock on economic effects.
They were pulled from the home by economic incentives, not economic need. As wages rose, employment became an increasingly attractive alternative to staying home.
I actually think this is only half truth. The issue here is with the welfare state and rise of taxation. The tax as percent of GDP was remarkably low in 19th century: between 1-3% of GDP. This changed after WW1 and The New Deal rising to 15% and 20% GDP, peaking at 30% by 1960s.
This is however artificial incentive. For instance today the average cost of elementary school student in USA is $17k a year. Imagine if family with three children can decide: wife stays at home, maybe creates a pod with other mothers and manages schooling and the government gives them $51k tax credit a year that they can spend as they they want it. Maybe children have to pass a test on par with at least with second lowest decile results compared to local public school. On top of that the wife can cook, she can take care of household chores and to other management such as driving and so forth. Also she could easily sell her surplus of cakes or jams on market or outside of house without constant government meddling with endless regulation. Her net contribution toward household could easily approach $100k a year.
This is the tragedy of the current situation. Women still take care of children, do the laundry, they do bring beer and sandwich to men, they still take care of elderly and sick as they used to do it in the past - only in capacity such as teachers, maids, waitresses, cooks and nurses. Only they do it for strangers and not for their own family, losing value in the process. It is all just and illusion and scam.
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