I don't think I trust the polls about ideal fertility vs. realized fertility to be communicating something meaningful.
In general, I'm leery of polls that ask people how they would behave in hypothetical situations. It just seems rife for social desirability bias.
The most charitible way to interpret these polls is "If I had more options, than I would choose to have more children." But it's precisely the women with the *most* options who are having the *fewest* children!
These are the types of situations where I trust people's revealed preferences more than what they say. The reality is that if you really want to have three kids as a woman, it's pretty straightfoward. You have to (a) marry at a reasonable age (mid-to-late twenties at the latest) and then (b) have three kids with your husband. That's it! If you don't make getting married early a priority, then the natural conclusion to draw is that you don't really value kids all that much.
The entire shortfall amongst high iq women is amongst high IQ leftist women. High iq conservative women aren’t seeing the same fertility shortfall.
Note that this divergence only happens as you move towards the top. Ideology have no effect on fertility at the bottom. Probably because dulls don’t really have a life philosophy or make active choices. It all “just happens”.
All the other correlates flow downhill. How many conservative women stay in school and live in the big city till their mid 30s before trying to settle down? Is the lifestyle causing the shortfall or is the ideology causing the lifestyle. It’s not that hard to get a man and move to the burbs if you want to.
Anyway, the simplest solution is to give huge tax breaks to parents, especially young parents. Like x10 what they get today. You really want to reward SAHM, especially when the children are young.
Women think that taking a few years off will just “destroy” their career. In reality it’s not as bad as they think, especially if they do it young. Reward those that can get over such neuroticism.
One fundamental fact in the fertility discussion is this: raising children is time-consuming, difficult, and expensive. If people generally don’t feel that it is truly necessary to have children, then they will generally have fewer. All the government subsidies and programs to increase the number of children, especially among the cognitive or social elite, will fail if the potential parents don’t have a felt need to have more children.
Policies that make higher education more friendly to those who want early families would help with this, and be palatable - for example mandating that all schools and universities have on-site childcare, and that accommodation be made available to students with partners and children. More contentious, perhaps, would be larger loans or grants for students with families, but it could be argued politically that it is economically efficient to encourage women to reproduce before entering the workforce, rather than after, as this removes a potential gap in their income tax contributions.
I really like that a lot more people are talking about fertility decline and under population, however I think one thing worth noting is that its possible that decline in fertility rates has a more fundamental cause than what say the standard Gary Becker/Jacob Mincer increasing cost (in particular opportunity cost with respect to income) and the quantity quality trade off of children model suggests. In particular I'm fond of Robin Hanson's theory that moderns are status drunk basically due to evolution messing up, if this theory of fertility decline is true then it seems like the issue of declining fertility is a much more intractable problem.
If schools all had earlier opening hours and later closing hours (while not expanding class hours) then child care would be much less of a burden. I know parents who arrive to work later and leaving earlier to drop off and pick up kids. If they have jobs that do not let them do this then I do not know how they manage. Also, not all school districts have busses. Where and when I grew up all the schools around us did. Parents have a hard time juggling work and kids. That's a disincentive for making babies.
Just had first kid (I’m the dad) and have become completely radicalized on maternity leave. Baby brain is real. Maternity should start at week 36. Then I think three months post delivery. Has to be fully paid. That’s not even enough. We need a culture shift. Bosses help “catch up” women who had to take time off to have a kid at work, not just no penalties. Could offer a perk to working moms to subsidize childcare. The economic benefits of keeping the highest achieving women in the workforce are enormous, there’s almost no cost that’s too high.
Education-based problems are similar to obesity. Humanity suffered from lack of foods in the past. There is reverse problem nowadays. But modernity didnt spread everywhere. What is your opinion about 3rd world? For example Taliban banned education(university level) for girls. What should they?
I don't think I trust the polls about ideal fertility vs. realized fertility to be communicating something meaningful.
In general, I'm leery of polls that ask people how they would behave in hypothetical situations. It just seems rife for social desirability bias.
The most charitible way to interpret these polls is "If I had more options, than I would choose to have more children." But it's precisely the women with the *most* options who are having the *fewest* children!
These are the types of situations where I trust people's revealed preferences more than what they say. The reality is that if you really want to have three kids as a woman, it's pretty straightfoward. You have to (a) marry at a reasonable age (mid-to-late twenties at the latest) and then (b) have three kids with your husband. That's it! If you don't make getting married early a priority, then the natural conclusion to draw is that you don't really value kids all that much.
So we don’t have a cultural problem. Desires are where they should be. The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.
The big missing piece here is ideology.
The entire shortfall amongst high iq women is amongst high IQ leftist women. High iq conservative women aren’t seeing the same fertility shortfall.
Note that this divergence only happens as you move towards the top. Ideology have no effect on fertility at the bottom. Probably because dulls don’t really have a life philosophy or make active choices. It all “just happens”.
All the other correlates flow downhill. How many conservative women stay in school and live in the big city till their mid 30s before trying to settle down? Is the lifestyle causing the shortfall or is the ideology causing the lifestyle. It’s not that hard to get a man and move to the burbs if you want to.
Anyway, the simplest solution is to give huge tax breaks to parents, especially young parents. Like x10 what they get today. You really want to reward SAHM, especially when the children are young.
Women think that taking a few years off will just “destroy” their career. In reality it’s not as bad as they think, especially if they do it young. Reward those that can get over such neuroticism.
One fundamental fact in the fertility discussion is this: raising children is time-consuming, difficult, and expensive. If people generally don’t feel that it is truly necessary to have children, then they will generally have fewer. All the government subsidies and programs to increase the number of children, especially among the cognitive or social elite, will fail if the potential parents don’t have a felt need to have more children.
Policies that make higher education more friendly to those who want early families would help with this, and be palatable - for example mandating that all schools and universities have on-site childcare, and that accommodation be made available to students with partners and children. More contentious, perhaps, would be larger loans or grants for students with families, but it could be argued politically that it is economically efficient to encourage women to reproduce before entering the workforce, rather than after, as this removes a potential gap in their income tax contributions.
I really like that a lot more people are talking about fertility decline and under population, however I think one thing worth noting is that its possible that decline in fertility rates has a more fundamental cause than what say the standard Gary Becker/Jacob Mincer increasing cost (in particular opportunity cost with respect to income) and the quantity quality trade off of children model suggests. In particular I'm fond of Robin Hanson's theory that moderns are status drunk basically due to evolution messing up, if this theory of fertility decline is true then it seems like the issue of declining fertility is a much more intractable problem.
If schools all had earlier opening hours and later closing hours (while not expanding class hours) then child care would be much less of a burden. I know parents who arrive to work later and leaving earlier to drop off and pick up kids. If they have jobs that do not let them do this then I do not know how they manage. Also, not all school districts have busses. Where and when I grew up all the schools around us did. Parents have a hard time juggling work and kids. That's a disincentive for making babies.
Just had first kid (I’m the dad) and have become completely radicalized on maternity leave. Baby brain is real. Maternity should start at week 36. Then I think three months post delivery. Has to be fully paid. That’s not even enough. We need a culture shift. Bosses help “catch up” women who had to take time off to have a kid at work, not just no penalties. Could offer a perk to working moms to subsidize childcare. The economic benefits of keeping the highest achieving women in the workforce are enormous, there’s almost no cost that’s too high.
Have you realized that if every couple have exactly two kids, it is still dysgenics due to mutation accumulation? Read my paper https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0191886923000600
What do you think of Robin Hanson's proposal to boost fertility?
https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/win-win-babies-as-infrastructurehtml
Education-based problems are similar to obesity. Humanity suffered from lack of foods in the past. There is reverse problem nowadays. But modernity didnt spread everywhere. What is your opinion about 3rd world? For example Taliban banned education(university level) for girls. What should they?