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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32909 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 27, 2023

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Russ Roberts talks about how inserting money into things can change the culture around said thing. The example he often goes to is that of day care centers. Some day care centers had a problem with parents picking up their children late (i.e., they were supposed to be all picked up by 6pm or whatever so that the center could close at that time). In order to try to fix the problem, they implemented a late pickup fee. People follow incentives and will then do a better job of picking up their children, right? Whelp, the result was that the number of late pickups went up.

Prior to the fee, parents had a cultural incentive to try to pick up their kids on time. 'I would feel bad if I was late and the workers at the center had to stay later than planned.' After the fee, a person could reasonably believe, 'Well, they set the fee at a rate that appropriately compensates them for the trouble, so as long as it's worth it to me to pay the fee, everyone wins.' And so the culture around how people viewed their choices changed; parents apparently valued not being rude (in the prior regime) more than paying the fee (in the current regime) more than picking up their kids on time... and so late pickups went up.

There have been a lot of discussions lately about financial incentives to have kids. I'd like to finally share an experience I had recently with my wife. We were on a trip in the southern US, and we happened to be out at a restaurant for breakfast on a Sunday morning. The place was pretty busy, and there were a lot of families there with little children. These kids were pretty much all quite well-behaved, and the families seemed pretty happy.

...the sight of this was apparently a crying experience for my wife. Parents actually like their kids?! They're all able to enjoy a nice breakfast out and have just an all-around pleasant morning?! What even is this world?!

You see, my wife immigrated from Canada, where they pretty straightforwardly pay people for having children. The payments are relatively substantial. Her sister is a prime example. Sister doesn't work; sister's husband works a pretty low-paying entry-level job, without a whole lot of hope in sight for significant advances anytime soon; sister and her husband already have two children, will probably be having more. Wife basically thinks that sister is just an example of a phenomenon that she thinks is common in her home country - people basically treating their kids as sources of income.

When I told wife about Hungary's schemes that have been talked about here, she immediately started thinking about how people would game it, how they'd make choices to just barely satisfy the governmental requirements, and how it would change the culture around how people view these choices. She also has gobs of experience with how employees game out the parental leave time and unemployment and so on, so she knows the way these games will be played (she's already confident that many people make choices of how to space out their kids based on how much leave you get, then how many hours you need to work again before you become eligible for another huge chunk of parental leave; you can string along several years of barely working at all if you do it right). "So, around 28-29, every woman will be figuring out when the best time is to hit up a sperm bank, given their job situation and ensuring a high probability of it working prior to 30."

I'm not going to confidently predict that there is going to be some particular unintended consequence (e.g., maybe people who might have otherwise had more than one kid just have their "gov't mandated, sperm bank one", they hate the thing, and overall fertility declines). But hot damn am I sure that there will be some unintended consequences to the culture around having kids if people go to some of the extremes of the financial incentives talked about here. Like, yes, injecting money will produce incentives that will change behavior. Will the resulting behavior be something that we like? Ohhhhh boy. We're in for a wild ride. Mostly, I'm sort of just amazed that this group generally leans right and would be incredibly quick to point out the possibility of unintended consequences for vast social engineering schemes proposed by the left, but is relatively uncritical about possible unintended consequences for vast social engineering schemes proposed to increase fertility.

Mostly, I'm sort of just amazed that this group generally leans right and would be incredibly quick to point out the possibility of unintended consequences for vast social engineering schemes proposed by the left, but is relatively uncritical about possible unintended consequences for vast social engineering schemes proposed to increase fertility.

As others pointed out, these things are pointed out a lot and for quite a some time. Welfare queen is the term used since the Great Society program was enacted by the right as a description of abuse of these types of policies. I also think that there is a growing opposition to what amounts to "nationalization" of basic roles of the family, the so called "cradle to grave" welfare system. In this system, atomic individual is basically just source of taxes and everything else is taken care of by the state be it child rearing through kindergartens and school system, healthcare as well as nationalized pension system. I think this system is unsustainable because it is full of various perverse incentives, it has agent-principal problems and is prone to corruption and gaming of the system. It goes against the very basic idea of subsidiarity where instead of families who are close to the problem you offer some centralized solution on national level. It is great system for population control but at the expense of basic human needs ingrained in each and every one of us, not to even speak about efficiency in its own supposed terms.

Like Warren, I blame double-income lifestyle becoming the norm. If I were to suggest my own idea of how to stimulate the TFR using heavy-handed government regulations that would never get implemented and probably wouldn't work, I would ban working full-time with one exception.

You are not allowed to work more than 20 hours a week. If you want to have a full-time job, you have to get married and have a homemaker spouse. He or she can't go back to work unless you move back to part-time.

  • what about picking up a second job? Not allowed unless you're married and have a homemaker spouse, every employer has to register its employees with the state.

  • what about running a business? Not allowed unless you're married and have a homemaker spouse, because you need a business license from the government.

  • what about driving an Uber or working another gig job? It's running a business, see above.

  • what about illegal immigrants working full time? Yes, what about them? How can you hope to fix the fertility rates if you can't fix immigration?

  • what about single mothers who can't support their family on a single part-time paycheck? I recommend adoption.

  • won't this place an undue stress on the businesses? Not really, the total compensation should stay more or less the same. It will increase at first because they will have to compete with each other to double the headcount, but:

    • I'm quite sure we will learn that people working part-time do more in 20 hours that a full-timer does, so we won't need to literally double the headcount

    • the businesses will eliminate a lot of useless positions themselves to reassign people to the positions where increasing the headcount is necessary

Money and exchange directs economic activity. "the total compensation should stay more or less the same" may be true in nominal dollars, but if the number of hours worked goes down dramatically, output, i.e. things produced or useful activity undertaken, necessarily decreases as well. And when "amount of money" stays the same but "output" decreases ... you have the same share of a smaller pie. Some jobs are straightforwardly "hours worked = output" - like they're manual labor jobs, simple service jobs (hours spent serving customers), etc. Even in other jobs, just because some of 40 hours are wasted doesn't mean a 20hr work week will cut the less-efficient hours disproportionately. The less efficient hours are often background work necessary for the more 'efficient' hours (commute, wind-up and wind-down, general coordination, finding clients), and in ""knowledge work"" each hour builds ... knowledge that makes a worker more productive over time.

Just by econ 101, this has massive deadweight loss over the 'tax single people', like a pigouvian tax vs a production restriction. If an unmarried person wants to work 40 hours a week and donate half their income (and actualized productive activity) to the married, isn't that better than working 20 hours a week and spending the other 20 on video games?

I think I may have just fallen in love with you.

On a more serious note, I wish this was brought up more! It’s amazing how even though double income full time only happened a few decades ago it’s so ingrained in the culture people can’t fathom going back. Capitalism is a gnarly beast.

What if I as a man want to be the one staying at home???

I prefer apparently gender-neutral policies.

Ah, but what if I don't want to restore gender roles?

what about illegal immigrants working full time? Yes, what about them? How can you hope to fix the fertility rates if you can't fix immigration?

Good recipe for land of omnipresent black markets and universal snitching and snooping (nothing like laws that ban something everyone does and everyone has to do to survive).

Such countries have many problems, but illegal immigration is not one of them. Such countries do not need big and beautiful border walls, such countries need strong anti-fascist protection barriers.

everyone does and everyone has to do to survive

.. everyone needs illegal immigrants ?

I am talking about whole of OP's clever plan, forbidding people to work for living (not even private patch of potato allowed).

Such times and places existed, but they were not immigration magnets, to put it mildly.

Mostly, I'm sort of just amazed that this group generally leans right and would be incredibly quick to point out the possibility of unintended consequences for vast social engineering schemes proposed by the left, but is relatively uncritical about possible unintended consequences for vast social engineering schemes proposed to increase fertility.

The dysgenic effect of some of these schemes and the track record of failure of others gets pointed out all the time.

I didn't get around to writing a comment about it on that thread, but I was thinking that the policies don't necessarily have to be as narrowly focused on carefully only giving money to people with children. There's multiple issues going on, but one of them is certainly that there's people who would want children but can't imagine ever affording them, which could be significantly improved by making (family-sized, i.e. 2-3+ bedroom) housing and education less expensive (leaving aside precisely what policies would best accomplish those goals). That's not a direct subsidy to people having children, but it makes those wanting to have children more able to do so.

I fully agree that there'd be unintended consequences and dysgenics, plus many countries would need to spend about 2% of GDP on the subsidies to have any effect. And that's an optimistic estimate.

I talked about this earlier: https://www.themotte.org/post/370/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/66987?context=8#context

I think a better option is to manipulate status such that parents or married people can more easily find jobs and high-end education. But even this would have perverse consequences as well. Maybe you can have a social credit scheme such that if your child behaves well and learns in school the parent would get a reward, or if not a punishment. But that could be gamed as well or produce excessive stress on stupid students, who knows?

Yet we don't really have a choice here. Fertility must be raised if human civilization is to be maintained. It's generally good to avoid perverse incentives but sometimes you just have to say 'damn the torpedoes' and press on at maximum speed.

Some day care centers had a problem with parents picking up their children late (i.e., they were supposed to be all picked up by 6pm or whatever so that the center could close at that time). In order to try to fix the problem, they implemented a late pickup fee. People follow incentives and will then do a better job of picking up their children, right? Whelp, the result was that the number of late pickups went up.

I've heard that story before and I always feel like it's being subtly misinterpreted. The original source for that anecdote is this paper and the fee was 10 NIS in 1998. Converting from Israeli shekels to USD and then adjusting for inflation, that's a $5 fee.

I would argue that this isn't so much "inserting money changes the culture", it's that putting a fee on something is a signal of how much you want to discourage it, and a fee of $5 is sending a very clear signal that you don't really mind all that much. You would get the same effect if you signalled "I only care about this as much as a cup of coffee" by any other non-monetary means.

Right. If an increase in parents picking up children late is a problem, you're not charging enough. If you charge the right price, either parents will pick their kids up on time, or you'll make enough money from the late fee that you don't care.

I don't think those two interpretations are at odds. Like I had said, "parents apparently valued not being rude (in the prior regime) more than paying the fee (in the current regime) more than picking up their kids on time". Such a relation can be changed by jacking up the amount of the fee, past the amount of value parents get from picking up their kids late. That's not really the important one of the two relations. The important one of the two relations is the one that involves the cultural value - that people didn't pick their kids up late when the monetary cost was $0. Attempting to signal that picking up kids late is bad, but doing so poorly and actually signalling that picking up kids late isn't nearly as bad as you thought it was actually does change the culture around picking up your kids.

That's one program. If you're in Ontario, you're also going to get $1,500ish/year for the Ontario Child Benefit, another $1,500ish/year from Trillium. Don't know the exact numbers, but you'll also get a boost in GST and Carbon Tax, probably around $1,000/year combined.

If you're on welfare, you'll probably get around $1,000/month if you have a kid, taking you up to $22,000/year. Might also get some subsidized housing (either public or private; I think the rent-geared-to-income program would cap your rent at like $226?). You'd basically be making the same as someone working fulltime at minimum wage, except you don't have to put 40 hours in each week, and your expenses are lower. Plus you'll have easier access to a multitude of programs and benefits, and the time to do so.

Does that include other means tested benefits where the number of children you have affects how much you need to make to qualify? At least in the US food stamps and other welfare programs are easier to qualify for if you have more kids.

https://www.uah.org/get-help/snap

Thank you for providing the citation. That is a substantial amount of money, especially for a couple that is otherwise living off of one entry-level income. Shit, in other conversations where we're talking about UBI, that's not that far off from the line at which a... let's go with "not insubstantial" (heh) percentage of folks said they'd be willing to quit their jobs and just live off of UBI. And that's just for two kids.

Define "cost of living". I'm pretty confident wife's sister's husband doesn't make as much as that random source says is necessary to live. Are you saying that if Canada wasn't paying them to have children, they'd be dead? Boy is that a substantial monetary incentive to have children....

Typically "cost of living" is "a made up number to justify wealth redistribution".

I can't recall ever seeing a "cost of living" number that was lower than the 70-80'th percentile of global income after adjusting for PPP.

Whether they're being "paid to have kids" is a claim that is not reflected in the legislation

So wait, you don't get

a maximum annual benefit of $6,833 per child to help with the cost of raising a family.

$6,833 per year ($569.41 per month) for each eligible child under the age of 6

$5,765 per year ($480.41 per month) for each eligible child aged 6 to 17

?? I thought you had a citation and everything!

on the whole I'd say it is paying people who have had children, not "paid to have kids."

This is a textbook example of a distinction without a difference. The whole premise of the original comment was the oodles of conversations here about using financial incentives, given to people who have had children, in order to nudge people in general to have more kids. Do you just think that, as a matter of first principles, this theory of incentivization doesn't actually conceptually link? This would be a novel challenge to the prevailing view around here, and you should really flesh it out. Preferably in a long-form top comment rather than buried here. I think lots of folks here would be interested in subscribing to your newsletter hearing your theory.

More comments

Russ Roberts talks about how inserting money into things can change the culture around said thing. The example he often goes to is that of day care centers. Some day care centers had a problem with parents picking up their children late (i.e., they were supposed to be all picked up by 6pm or whatever so that the center could close at that time). In order to try to fix the problem, they implemented a late pickup fee. People follow incentives and will then do a better job of picking up their children, right? Whelp, the result was that the number of late pickups went up.

Yeah this has been cited in endless TED talks and business and pop science books. It makes sense. Elite status are things in which money alone is insufficient, like academic prestige, top college admissions, etc. As soon as a price tag is put on something, suddenly it becomes more commonplace, even luxury goods and fancy cars, which thanks to social media and Americans becoming much wealthier overall on a real basis, seem so commonplace nowadays. Harvard knows it has to keep a tight lid on its enrollment if it's to maintain its prestige even if that means possibly leaving some $ on the table.

The criminal justice system works in this way too, in which justice is blind to wealth (at least in theory, but the evidence does suggest some truth to this in America, as huge white collar sentences have shown). Otherwise, we'd have a situation like in South America, Russia, etc. in which corruption is far worse due to bribery.

In the case of governments paying people to have kids, I don't think this is as effective because the incentive structure does not work as well. For two reasons: it does not confer status or some privilege, such wealthy parents donating to elite colleges (kids are common, unlike Ivy League degrees). Second, it does not buy connivence, like the example regarding late parents paying a fine. Sure, you get extra money, but kids are also a lot of money and time. Since it fails in both of these, the value proposition is not that good.

Elite status are things in which money alone is insufficient, like academic prestige, top college admissions, etc. As soon as a price tag is put on something, suddenly it becomes more commonplace

Marketing BS had a good article on this recently and how "paying for status" has led to interesting dynamics in a few different markets that had explicit "status" markers.

I'm not a fan of large social engineering projects, and wasn't one of the people advocating for fertility stuff.

The problem will eventually work itself out. The higher fertility places and cultures will become more dominant. It will just happen on timelines that are too long for people to care about. Probably at least two or three generations 40-60 years.

The scenario you bring up reminded me of something ... people like to start by fixing problems at a societal level. They want the federal government to just step in and wave a magic wand to fix things. But if you are forced to actually solve a problem, this is a backwards way of thinking about things. Instead of thinking at the national level, people should be thinking at the personal and local level. "What would make me have more kids?" and then "What would make my close family and neighbors have more kids?"

Me and my wife have good jobs so I don't really find myself money constrained when thinking about having more kids. We are actively trying to have more kids right now. (which will be number three, but earlier in my life I thought about having four kids, and now I don't think I can do it). I feel kid constrained because of time, stress, and space constraints. The two kids I do have I feel like they require a ton of effort, it feels impossible to just get everything done that needs to get done. The time spent hanging out with my kids is often one of the best times to get a bunch of important tasks done.

I tend to feel more stressed, because there is a local expectation of closely watching your kid. There is a playground right behind my house. I'd be able to see my kids from my house if they went to this playground. I think my parents might have just let me wander off and go play at the playground when I was my kids age, but I feel like if I did that for my kids it would be frowned upon.

Our house is a decent size, but we'd like to expand it if we were having more kids. We can't expand it due to regulatory constraints. We might be able to get around these regulatory constraints, but it will take time and stress (areas where I already feel resource constrained).

When I look around at my family and neighbors, the main additional constraint is medical (some of them have trouble having kids).

Its not that money isn't a true constraint for anyone, its just kinda lower on the list. And maybe if we had enough money some of the other constraints could be handled. I've considered hiring a personal assistant to deal with more of my life problems, but my wife hates that idea.

For me, and maybe some of my family and neighbors, we would be having more kids if the following things happened:

  1. Reduced local regulatory constraints on housing expansion.

  2. More communal child care opportunities. (things like birthday parties are great, my kids can get in some social time, and so can I). Its a pain for someone to host these, but everyone else usually enjoys coming along.

  3. More relaxed social attitudes, aka allow free range kids.

  4. Less bullshit bureaucratic things I have to deal with. Car stuff, taxes, and recently the city changed all our street addresses (cuz the old ones were racist or something). Those are annoyances that I wouldn't choose to deal with. But there are also things I choose to deal with that feel like they are made more difficult because of regulatory crap. I am trying to become a wedding officiant for my sister's wedding, trying to get banquet license for a recreational event, trying to setup doctors appointments for myself, trying to apply to some private schools for my daughters, etc. This is just the current stuff that is on my mind, but it feels like I've had a list of things just as long for the last few years even though I keep knocking things off the list every month.

The last one is the real kicker for me. Each one thing is usually no big deal on its own, but there are these constant bureaucratic bullshit things added on top of them that make each item take longer. And the kind of impulse people have that says "the federal government should do a thing to solve some societal issue" is exactly why I think that list of bureaucratic bullshit keeps growing. Everyone always thinks their one issue is so important, and they always think that any minor costs imposed by imposing their top down solution are very minimal. But the shit adds up. I can only imagine the nightmare that a national kids registry might choose to impose. How long before they start tying your kid benefits to other crap they care about. Oh, you can't get your child tax credit unless they have x doctor visits a year, because we need to actually make sure your kid is being taken care of. Submit the reports made by your daycare, or the child visitation officer who comes to inspect your home.

If there is one big societal problem that I want the federal government to fix then it is this one: people having the desire to fix big societal problems all at once via the federal government. I want a federal agency that makes it their goal to determine how much time the average American spends on bureaucracy, and when that number gets too high they have the power to go around axing bureaucratic requirements at other agencies. You think your issue is so important? Too bad, we are gutting your "save everyone at once at the federal level" program that requires hours of every American's time.

That is my little pipe dream. Just writing this should have been a stress reliever. But I feel more stressed now, I could have spent these moments of coffee fueled productivity to slog through another government form. And now I am one day closer to multiple deadlines hanging over my head.

I don't understand why you'd use a monetary fee—just add a line to the registration form "we know plans change, and keep the pick-up window open 24 hours a day—and no matter how late the hour, we guarantee a fast pick up with no questions of a child similar to the one you dropped off."

eg. many theoretically good small restaurants fail because their owners literally have no idea how to price food based on their costs and average covers/occupancy).

I must have the cheap gene because, despite being wealthy, at restaurants I scan the menu and try to pick out the best values. At a fancy restaurant, I'll often order a bunch of dishes which end up being similar to a tasting menu but like half the price. Maybe I should stop doing that. I'm just playing a zero sum game with the restaurant owner, I'm better at it, and they need the money more that I do.

But I just love bargains. Can't help it.

The fee was absolutely not high enough. From the original source the fine was 10 NIS in 1998 (which works out to about $5 if you convert to 1998 USD and then adjust for inflation). They provide some comparable values in the paper for various fines in 1998 Israel: this was 0.13x the fine for illegal parking, 3% of the fine for not collecting your dog poop, or 1% of the fine for running a red light.

This study is almost always misreported. What it really shows is that if you blatantly signal "this isn't a big deal" by putting an absurdly low price on something, people will do that thing. This doesn't mean that using money caused that, the money was just a way to communicate to everybody that "hey, I care about this about as much as a cup of coffee".

In the absence of any such signal people used their own best judgement and figured that late pickups were probably a pretty big deal. When the parents saw a price of $5 they thought "Oh, I guess it's not that big of a deal to them after all!" and acted accordingly.

misreported

I don't think that word means what you think it means.

I think it does. Unless you go with Scott and think that you can be as misleading as you want as long as you are literally true.

I don't think that you can be as misleading as you want as long as you are literally true. I think that there is nothing in what I've said that is "misreporting" the result. I very clearly stated:

parents apparently valued not being rude (in the prior regime) more than paying the fee (in the current regime) more than picking up their kids on time

Which is 100% consistent with the comment above. The value they got from paying the fee and picking their kids up late was more than the value they got from picking their kids up on time. If you jack the fee up (as the commenter suggested), this would change at some point (different points for different consumers). There is nothing misreported here. What do you think is misreported?

It leaves out the information that the fee is so small that it could be taken to mean that to mean that it's unimportant to the center.

"Whether the amount they pay is more than the value they get" is not the only basis on which humans in the real world make such decisions. The information that implies that there are other plausible bases for that decision has been omitted.

I wrote:

After the fee, a person could reasonably believe, 'Well, they set the fee at a rate that appropriately compensates them for the trouble, so as long as it's worth it to me to pay the fee, everyone wins.'

What do you think is "misreported"?

Real human beings don't make decisions that way. They would assume that it's only even possible to appropriately compensate them for the trouble if the fee is very small, and that a larger fee is meant as punishment, which is not the same thing as compensation. It misreports this by omitting the information that the fee is small.

The incident is commonly reported to mean "people will treat any fee as compensation" when the facts don't support this, and instead support "people will treat a small fee as compensation".

More comments

optimization problem. having multi-their fine structure for habitual offenders is a common strategy.

In related news, Texas has proposed property tax breaks to large families. The structure of it would make the typical welfare queens ineligible, but I do wonder what the behavior effects of offering middle class families with 3 kids thousands of dollars cash in perpetuity to have a fourth.

It seems odd to me to classify following the rules of the benefits / incentive program as 'gaming' . If you follow the rules and have the children, it seems like it's producing the desired outcome.

Doesn't the Hungarian model require marriage beforehand?

I don't think were going to sperm bank and single mother our way out of low fertility. Certainly that would produce negative consequences.

It seems odd to me to classify following the rules of the benefits / incentive program as 'gaming' . If you follow the rules and have the children, it seems like it's producing the desired outcome.

I think this would come under following the letter rather than spirit of the law.

That said, I don't think any government currently extant understands how to set up a system immune to this kind of thing, they're rather unimaginative.

I understand the letter vs spirit distinction I don't see how it applies here.

How is spacing the births in order to benefit under the programs rules, gaming?

Simply having more children is (or should be) a part of the greater goal, which is to raise fertility and produce functional families. Improving fertility just so that you can have a generation full of ticking time bombs raised in dysfunctional homes is only a marginal improvement over the default of people having fewer kids.

We don't need to swell the fertility of the bottom quintile or increase the representation of single mothers. I don't see how spacing births to benefit under a program does either.

Arguably the spacing cohort is able to plan / delay in order to meet program requirements.

My wife also occasionally mentions a girl she went to school with who at this point has like 4-5 kids (I can't remember how many), each with a different baby daddy. "She finds some guy who is about to make a bunch of money working in the oil industry, convinces him that she loves him, and that lasts just as long as it takes for her to have another kid."

By her account, this woman is able to plan/delay in order to meet the requirements of the 'program' that she is pursuing. That doesn't imply that these are the types of behaviors we really want to promote as a society.

But in any event, the spacing/repetition to go several years with minimal working isn't, itself, an example of an atrocious consequence. It's just an example of how people will make adjustments to just barely meet the requirements, and we may or may not end up liking the results.

This sounds a bit like the dependapotamus seen near military bases.

It's distintinctly different from an employed women having a child every two years to receive a maternity leave benefit.

In your example is she really delaying, or does it just take some time to find a new mark and gain his confidence?

Different things are different, yes. But on the core question of whether they require planning/delaying/spacing/whatever, I think they're similar. At least, because I had thought that you were basically just resting something on the "ability" to plan/delay, as though such ability implied something about functionality/dysfunctionality of a family relationship. Dependapotamus isn't just a slave to her passions in the moment; she's not going home with broke-ass dude from the bar. She's capable of planning her strategy out according to the rules of the game she thinks she's playing.

I mean, in theory all "throwing money around" programs are just giving back to people money they gave the government. Plus the overhead of all the salaries of all the bureaucrats involved in the process. Being allowed to keep more of what you earned because decades of government policy have made it borderline impossible to afford to raise a family is kind of a solution. But then boiling it back down to "The government pays you to have children" seems to just assume the government owns all the money and we just borrow it.

Fuck. That might actually be more accurate.

God damnit. Nevermind I guess. I had a point I was striving to get to, but I think I just black pilled myself out of it.

Edit: I guess to talk about the cultural aspects of having kids, I was talking about that with my wife a few nights ago. She was lamenting, and I was in a similar situation, that we never grew up around babies. We had vanishingly few, and inconsistent, examples of how to be parents to babies. Our aunts and uncles, mostly white collar, spread to the 4 winds following career and education opportunities. They provided us with vanishingly few cousins that we rarely saw. And zero of those cousins ever had kids of their own. Both our family trees have gone through the shredder of modernity and we're basically all that's left.

Compared to my friends who are more religious, it's night and day. They all have large extended, mostly blue collar, families that they live near and see regularly. Some cousin or sibling is always having a kid, because they have like 20-30 of them. There is almost always a new baby they see at least once a month. The institutional knowledge of how to be a family is always being renewed and passed on.

Not so for myself or my wife, and it's been a struggle. It's had consequences. Namely utterly dashing my hopes of having a larger family. Frankly it's been depressing.

Yes, this is a hugely important aspect of this all that doesn't seem to get much attention. It's clear to me that, generally speaking, the more rare babies and small children are in your vicinity, the more it erodes your inclination to have children of your own, and not just for the reason you mentioned. After all, you know that if you have a child of your own, there'll be vanishingly few children of similar age for him/her to play/socialize with, that playgrounds will be sparsely visited or even empty on occasions etc. It's one reason why I believe that demographic implosion is a self-reinforcing trend that ultimately results in the extinction of the affected genus/population as it existed.

It's not clear to me that being around more kids moves the needle one way or another. As an anecdotal counterpoint, I have 11 nieces and nephews and it hasn't increased my inclination to have children at all.

I think it can go not only either but indeed both ways:

During university years I found myself living in a very strongly communitarian, church-oriented subculture, which made me excited about the idea of having kids of my own one day: I was surrounded by good models of strong families and the kind of "village" that makes raising kids seem not too daunting. Alas, things didn't work out as I might have hoped, due to my poor social skills and atheist (or at least strongly agnostic) views disqualifying me as a partner for essentially my entire peer group.

Latterly, during the pandemic, I had front row seats to my sibling's family; I still love my nephew and niece a great deal but seeing the day-to-day reality of raising a family absent a strongly family-positive community—and the strain it put upon the parent's relationship, which eventually dissolved—makes me now terribly reluctant to consider that path for myself.

How many kids do you have? What is the sticking point for more kids? An older nanny might be able to help you with some informal child-rearing lessons.

But then boiling it back down to "The government pays you to have children" seems to just assume the government owns all the money and we just borrow it.

There really is a Yes Minister quote for every occasion.

Jim - 5 billion for tax cuts, and what do I find? -

Humphrey- What do you find, Prime Minister?

J- The Chancellor opposes me. A great chance to be popular with the voters and he says no. Doesn't that surprise you? H- No.

J- Why doesn't it surprise you?

H- He's advised by the Treasury and they don't believe in giving money back.

J- It's not theirs, it's the taxpayers'!

H- That's one view, it's not the view the Treasury takes

Having said that, I actually agree with the Treasury here, and it I don't think that's cause for despair. After all, without the state there would be no society at all in which one could earn a living.

Here's my proposal:

10% of what a kid pays in income taxes instead goes to their parents*. Kids can opt out of the program** and just pay regular taxes instead if the want to.

This aligns all incentives pretty well. There's a degree of luck in the program but it doesn't look like the kind of luck people dislike or feel is unfair.

*payments are in proportion to time spent being primary custodian during ages 0-17, to handle adoptees, strange family situations and avoid an adult-adoption loophole.

**opt-out is granular, e.g. you can chose to opt out your dad but not your mom.

That doesn't help at all. People need the money when the kids are kids, not when they have grown up to be tax payers.

If you anticipate future income but need cash now, maybe there could be a bank where you could go to borrow against your projected future income.

Isn't that every bank?

I think the purpose of this program isn't to fund the parents, but rather to provide incentives to the parents to raise their kids as if they love them instead of as if they're meal tickets. I'm skeptical this would be at all effective, partially since receiving money from one's kids in the future seems like a relatively low incentive compared to other factors when it comes to how one treats one's kids. Also, parents most likely to treat their kids in a way that would make their kids prefer to give taxes to the government instead of them also seem likely to have higher time preference and thus less likely to be moved by such a policy.

See also The Unincorporated Man.

The alternative is the fertility rate cratering to new record lows on an annual basis as it is now. Under our current framework of liberalism you aren't allowed to use sticks to nudge/coerce people in that direction, so you're left with carrots and the easiest and most accessible carrot from a policy perspective is tossing some cash around. Barring some religious revival a la another great awakening or some very illiberal governments coming in that don't mind swinging a stick dropping stacks of cash will probably be about all that gets done.

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