"Economically incentivizing women to start having kids while they're in their 20s may be a necessary part of a strategy aimed at bringing US fertility rates back up to replacement levels, but my intuition is that it would be a very expensive one. "
Some countries already tried this with scant results. Some people, (lots of?) just don't want kids. In the past people had to have them for economic reasons or religious pressure. Did they want ALL the kids they had? No. So now people are at a place where they can have kids only if they really want them, and only how many they really want. It's a good place to be in.
Yes, good point that we are lucky to be in this place. And this is why I think at the margin we should help people have the babies they already want to but are struggling to have before we think about ways to convince people to have babies they're not interested in having. That said, I can imagine a world where there's more status accorded to people with big families such that they enjoy having kids more given changes to the incentive structure, just no clue how you'd make that cultural change in terms of what is awarded more or less status.
I don't think humans are "status driven" to that extent. Seems most just want peace and to be able to live in a manner that is healthy, safe and enjoyable to them. I can't even begin to imagine what type of person thinks, "hmmm, let me have kids soI can gain some social status from them." Seems odd.
It's not that they consciously think that, but people do clearly respond to status hierarchies and act in ways to attempt to move up them. Many people do many things that are obviously driven by an unconscious desire for status rather than health, safety and enjoyment. For example, you see people who continue to work very hard (at things they wouldn't do for free) even after they've attained more wealth than they or their family could ever need. Having this drive makes sense when you consider an evolutionary context where people had to compete for mates and resources and having status within the group was a good way to secure that.
Right but having kids involves so much more than continuing to work unnecessarily in a high status career that someone "loves". Some young people I know are looking around at what parents go through and are like, "it's a hard pass for me. Next!"
You’d have to make it a much smaller transfer to get to the same “cost per marginal baby”, since most of those transfers would be going to parents who would’ve had that baby anyways. In terms of geriatric pregnancies I was surprised to find while writing this post that the fertility rate among women in their 40s has actually gone down a little relative to the 1940s and 50s, and I don’t think people were worried about it being “unfair” to those kids. Plus life expectancy has increased and childbirth itself has gotten safer. We also have pre implantation genetic testing which can reduce risk of miscarriages and abnormalities. I think there’s some benefits to having young parents (energy, they’ll be alive with you for more of your adult years) and other benefits to having old parents (maturity and resources, less chance of divorce). Basically I’m pro encouraging fertility for most ages.
I don’t think your position makes sense unless you think the children that would be born to older parents have expected net negative lives, are expected to be net negative for society or would be born instead of (rather than in addition to) kids born to younger parents. I very strongly disagree with all of those and like I said think there are benefits and costs to having older parents and that it’s not clear one is better than the other.
On mutational load, yes, but as I mentioned we have pre implantation genetic testing which can mitigate a bunch of the risks you just listed.
But it’s not necessarily whether they would’ve preferred younger parents, it’s whether they’d rather exist or not. Unless you have reason to believe that any baby born to older parents is substituting for one that could’ve been born to younger parents which I’m sure isn’t true at least in the short-medium term.
I do expect all of this tech to get better. And yes, egg freezing is not a guarantee and women doing it should be made aware of that (I was when I did it) but I incorporated live birth rate estimates into my calculations.
I agree with the general idea. Not sure that university should be shorter, but rather would think less people should go to university as such and more to trade school programs (which would be shorter) instead.
"Economically incentivizing women to start having kids while they're in their 20s may be a necessary part of a strategy aimed at bringing US fertility rates back up to replacement levels, but my intuition is that it would be a very expensive one. "
Some countries already tried this with scant results. Some people, (lots of?) just don't want kids. In the past people had to have them for economic reasons or religious pressure. Did they want ALL the kids they had? No. So now people are at a place where they can have kids only if they really want them, and only how many they really want. It's a good place to be in.
Yes, good point that we are lucky to be in this place. And this is why I think at the margin we should help people have the babies they already want to but are struggling to have before we think about ways to convince people to have babies they're not interested in having. That said, I can imagine a world where there's more status accorded to people with big families such that they enjoy having kids more given changes to the incentive structure, just no clue how you'd make that cultural change in terms of what is awarded more or less status.
I don't think humans are "status driven" to that extent. Seems most just want peace and to be able to live in a manner that is healthy, safe and enjoyable to them. I can't even begin to imagine what type of person thinks, "hmmm, let me have kids soI can gain some social status from them." Seems odd.
It's not that they consciously think that, but people do clearly respond to status hierarchies and act in ways to attempt to move up them. Many people do many things that are obviously driven by an unconscious desire for status rather than health, safety and enjoyment. For example, you see people who continue to work very hard (at things they wouldn't do for free) even after they've attained more wealth than they or their family could ever need. Having this drive makes sense when you consider an evolutionary context where people had to compete for mates and resources and having status within the group was a good way to secure that.
Right but having kids involves so much more than continuing to work unnecessarily in a high status career that someone "loves". Some young people I know are looking around at what parents go through and are like, "it's a hard pass for me. Next!"
You’d have to make it a much smaller transfer to get to the same “cost per marginal baby”, since most of those transfers would be going to parents who would’ve had that baby anyways. In terms of geriatric pregnancies I was surprised to find while writing this post that the fertility rate among women in their 40s has actually gone down a little relative to the 1940s and 50s, and I don’t think people were worried about it being “unfair” to those kids. Plus life expectancy has increased and childbirth itself has gotten safer. We also have pre implantation genetic testing which can reduce risk of miscarriages and abnormalities. I think there’s some benefits to having young parents (energy, they’ll be alive with you for more of your adult years) and other benefits to having old parents (maturity and resources, less chance of divorce). Basically I’m pro encouraging fertility for most ages.
I don’t think your position makes sense unless you think the children that would be born to older parents have expected net negative lives, are expected to be net negative for society or would be born instead of (rather than in addition to) kids born to younger parents. I very strongly disagree with all of those and like I said think there are benefits and costs to having older parents and that it’s not clear one is better than the other.
On mutational load, yes, but as I mentioned we have pre implantation genetic testing which can mitigate a bunch of the risks you just listed.
But it’s not necessarily whether they would’ve preferred younger parents, it’s whether they’d rather exist or not. Unless you have reason to believe that any baby born to older parents is substituting for one that could’ve been born to younger parents which I’m sure isn’t true at least in the short-medium term.
I do expect all of this tech to get better. And yes, egg freezing is not a guarantee and women doing it should be made aware of that (I was when I did it) but I incorporated live birth rate estimates into my calculations.
I agree with the general idea. Not sure that university should be shorter, but rather would think less people should go to university as such and more to trade school programs (which would be shorter) instead.