
Birth Rates Dropped Most in U.S. Counties Where Home Prices Grew Most - jseliger
https://www.zillow.com/research/birth-rates-home-values-20165/
======
lkrubner
From previous:

" _In nations in the West, an important limiting factor is the ability to get
one’s own apartment. That is, the ratio of average male wage to average rent.
In the USA, the happiest year for this ratio was 1958, when people were
spending 22% of their income on rent, on average. Not by coincidence, this was
the peak year of the Baby Boom. In some sense, it was the best year in history
to be a young white male in the USA. It was the year when it was easiest for
an 18 year old male to get out of high school, get their own apartment, marry
their high school sweetheart, and start a family. And of course, young people
did this in huge numbers, which is why 1958 remains the peak year for teenage
pregnancy in the USA._ "

[http://www.smashcompany.com/philosophy/do-men-become-
warlike...](http://www.smashcompany.com/philosophy/do-men-become-warlike-if-
they-do-not-have-women)

1958 is when men had the best wage to rent ratio, and that helped create
families and have children. And likewise, nowadays, as rents increase faster
than wages, we should expect the birth rate to decline.

~~~
baddox
In pretty much every analysis involving housing costs, I try to mention that
percentage of income spent on housing is not a great metric. A better metric
is absolute income minus housing costs.

All else being equal, I would gladly earn $1 million per year and spend 75% of
it on rent, because that remaining 25% would be a heck of a lot of money.

I doubt this metric would significantly change the conclusions of this
article, but I’d like to see that metric used.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _I would gladly earn $1 million per year and spend 75% of it on rent_

No, you wouldn’t. As income goes higher, long-distance transportation becomes
(a) more comfortable and (b) smaller as a fraction of income. De-camping to
Washington State and commuting to San Francisco doesn’t make sense at
$200,000; it does at $1 or 2 million.

~~~
manfredo
I'm not sure I follow. Assuming the $1 million is post tax, it equates to
$250,000 post tax and nearly entirely disposable income. Compared to, say,
someone making $200,00 post tax and spending only 25% of that on rent it is
strictly better. The point that the above commenter is making is that if the
percentage of income spent on rent is higher, but the purchasing power
adjusted income is higher it can cancel out.

I'm not sure what transportation has to do with this. Someone could increase
their commute time to reduce rent, but that's the case regardless of income.

~~~
nostrademons
I think he's saying that as absolute incomes get higher, commuting cost as a
percentage of income drops, because commuting cost is largely fixed regardless
of income. And so it makes more sense to live in a low-COL region and commute
to a high-COL region.

For the average person, flying to work every day is unrealistic. If you are
making $1M/year, it suddenly becomes very realistic. Same day roundtrips
between SFO and Seattle via coach are about $200 when purchased 3 months out.
Times 200 workdays/year, that's only $40K/year. You end up _way_ ahead
financially buying in Seattle and commuting by plane to your job in SF, if
you're willing to stomach the ~6 hours/day of commuting time.

Then if you don't want to spend an hour and a half in the terminal, you can
fly private jet. Private jet time apparently runs about $5k/hour. At ~600
hours/year, you're looking at about 3 million a year to commute by private jet
from Seattle to SFO. Still out of your price range at a million in salary, but
quite doable if you were making say $10m, and your commute time isn't much
worse than sitting in traffic on 101 between Google and the Marina.

Replace Seattle with Las Vegas and all 3 of (housing, flight time, expense)
get better. Round-trip to Vegas is about an hour and a half; coach prices go
as low as $59 and private jet prices would be about $1-1.5M/year; and houses
can be had for $200K, freeing up lots of money for flying.

~~~
isostatic
Why would you commute for 6 hours for $200 when you could stay in a hotel
during the week? What's the point in going "home" to sleep?

~~~
nostrademons
The thought-experiment that started this thread assumes that rent in SF would
reach $750K/year if salaries were $1M/year. Hotel rates are unlikely to stay
at $200/night if rent is $750K/year. If they rise proportionally, expect hotel
rates of ~$4000/night at that price level.

------
toasterlovin
Keep in mind that there is probably a significant selection effect going on
there. In other words, if you don't plan on having children, expensive cities
are still an option for you. Whereas if you plan on having children, they are
not.

~~~
pitt1980
Considering the ratio of career gains that go to those working in a few
expensive cities, even if this is largely selection effects, I'm not sure this
paints a very rosy picture of the society we're creating.

I'm reminded of how few heads of EU states are parents

[https://www.marketwatch.com/story/do-childless-leaders-
mean-...](https://www.marketwatch.com/story/do-childless-leaders-mean-the-
death-of-europe-2017-05-26)

~~~
toasterlovin
This stage of the demographic transition is a huge problem, IMO. The more I
think about it, the more it seems like a ratchet (as in, it only moves in one
direction):

Basically, two incomes are useful, so both people in a relationship pursue
careers. Now they have more money to compete on the housing market. This seems
like a good move, so others follow suit. At first this is largely a win for
people who pursue this route. But, as more people do this, it becomes
_necessary_ in order to compete for real estate in good neighborhoods.

Now there is an advantage to be had by putting off having a family even
longer, or having even less children. So people do this. But as more and more
people follow suit, the advantage evaporates. And so on and so forth until you
have demographic implosion.

For the life of me, I can’t see a way out of this in the short term. Maybe a
wholesale transition to remote work?

~~~
labster
Immigration will offset the demographic implosion, at least if current trends
continue. But speaking as someone who studied climate science, a temporary
population reduction can only be a good thing for long-term human survival.
We're above the carrying capacity of Earth for humans, and though we've done a
lot of tricks to expand capacity, we're currently putting a large swath of the
biosphere in danger.

If there are less people, then pressure for good neighborhoods goes down, and
we'll reach an equilibrium. I think it only seems like a ratchet because we're
in the middle of a downturn after a 5000 year run of exponential growth.

Doesn't mean it doesn't suck to live in this time in terms of housing -- but
in other terms, life is pretty outstanding. The two income thing is mostly
new, but then compare the amount of time that medieval women spent on
childcare and providing clothing. It's so much better now that they're not
expected to spend every spare moment at the spinning wheel.

~~~
nickthemagicman
The issue is that the U.S. isn't overpopulated. India, China are tho.

~~~
CalRobert
Worth remembering that the average person in the US emits far more than the
average person in India or China.

------
anoncoward111
There's correlation here, but likely not causation.

The real underlying cause in the drop in birth rates is an increase in working
hours, an increase in commuting times, an increase in college tuition and
health care costs, and also an increase in divorce rates.

These days, even getting married is an expensive financial arrangement. Having
kids is just another layer on that.

Housing prices have increased because of cheap loans and supply-restrictive
regulations.

~~~
jsonne
How do you square that with somewhere like Denmark with it's equally abysmal
yet they have way less working hours and a large social safety net?

~~~
anoncoward111
I've visited Denmark before as an American :) It's a pretty nice place-- sure
there are pretty generous payments to most members of society, but there is
still some petty crime and different social classes and lack of major
mobility.

I am not precisely sure if they have less working hours. I mean, anecdotally,
I don't know any Danes who have 10 minute commutes working 4 days a week, 6
hours a day or something like that, and making $7,000 post tax per month.
Like, that sounds mythical in America and in Denmark.

I would just equate Denmark's birthrate either to cultural differences (white
birth rates are lower than arab, latino, african etc), or to the same
pressures that American workers have-- the Danish pressures are just slightly
less extreme.

~~~
rsynnott
> ure there are pretty generous payments to most members of society, but there
> is still some petty crime and different social classes and lack of major
> mobility.

By most metrics, Denmark has one of the largest degrees of social mobility in
the world. The US usually comes out worst or second-worst in the developed
world (the UK is gaining on it lately).

~~~
anoncoward111
the rent, salary, taxation, net worth and expectancy data for denmark's 5
million danes is comporable to the AVERAGE american city/suburban resident of
similar background

in the USA we just have 100 million people that are literally in debt up to
their eyeballs and die horrible unhealthy deaths every year.

im not saying this system is justified, im saying it skews our statistics. the
US is like south africa-- a deliberately created class distinction between the
rich and the poor which heavily skews along racial lines, but not always.

~~~
rsynnott
So, wait, are you saying "the US doesn't have a social mobility problem,
except for the large social mobility problem it has"? I don't really follow.

~~~
anoncoward111
The US absolutely, 100% has a social mobility problem. This social mobility
problem is _particularly prevalent_ among the bottom 33% of income
earners/wealth owners in US society (aka +100m truly poor people).

However, _when you control for this group of people_ (aka remove them from
being counted), the US middle class is basically the same as the Danish middle
class, in terms of mobility, income, life expectancy and so on.

------
hanoz
Speaking for the UK, it is certainly the case that couples put off having
children until they've bought their own home, and the shameful reason for this
is that renters have no security of tenure here. Unless you're in state
subsided social housing you live with the permanent threat of being turfed out
of your home at only two months notice, for no better reason than the landlord
wants to do something else with it. Finding a new home and organizing a move
is difficult and unsettling enough for a young working couple, but with
children involved its on another level, not least because it could well mean a
change of school, or result in siblings in different schools.

------
bayesian_horse
Considering generations in the past, and still in a lot of poor countries have
raised multiple children in the smallest of spaces, I just don't believe there
is a causative relation.

Much more plausible to me is the association to women's education, causing
women to delay their first pregnancy and opt out of further children. Also
there seems to be an association between general misery or fatality and birth
rates.

~~~
bojan
While it is of course possible to raise a lot of children in a tiny space, it
is not something you necessarily want to do. Especially if no-one in your
environment is doing it.

It is not really a happy life if you have to spend your evenings in utter
silence because there is a baby or a toddler sleeping in the same room two
meters away.

~~~
bayesian_horse
All these arguments assume rational arguments, especially economical, are the
most important factors in deciding to make children.

I believe that irrational factors are easily overlooked but predominant. There
is a certain biological drive to raise children, stronger in some people
compared to others. And various factors modulate this drive, again
unconsciously.

Most of the time, in free societies at least, it is the woman who makes most
of the decision. If she really wants to have a child, nothing and nobody can
stop her, short of a reproductive problem.

------
mattigames
With the rapid destruction of soon-to-be-depleted resources and worsening
climate change I argue that "Baby Recovery" is a very misleading titling of
birth rate decline; the next generation will likely have a better quality of
life if there are _fewer_ of them, not more.

~~~
Robotbeat
That is ridiculous. Wages have never been higher, and there have never been
more people. There are incredibly strong network effects from having more
people (in cities, etc), and the benefit of international trade relies on more
people to enable better specialization. All kinds of incredibly important
markets, like semiconductors (including computer chips, solar power) and even
mining rely on having a lot of people to sell to to pay for the upfront and
continuous high costs of setting up these operations. The economies of scale
are incredibly important. Additionally, a shrinking population means that the
working-age population shrinks relative to those who are too old to work. That
means less care and less quality of care (and at greater cost) for the
elderly. It also means the elderly will be forced to work longer. Does this
sound like improved quality of life?

This zero-sum Malthusian thinking is not only untrue, but following it
collectively will make us much, MUCH poorer and worse off. It's a common way
of thinking on both the left and the right, and it is fundamentally anti-human
and contradicted by reality.

~~~
dvdhnt
I think it’s pretty arrogant to conclude that the human race is somehow exempt
from the concept of a carrying capacity.

Wages are higher because of inflation, the floor has moved, and it’s
relatively meaningless as the cost of rent, healthcare, and food has greatly
outpaced such growth.

To put it bluntly, your semiconductors are insignificant if we can’t house and
feed our population.

~~~
paulddraper
It's also pretty shortsighted to underrate human advances in adapting their
abilities.

~~~
dvdhnt
That’s not the point. What good is the ability to grow enough food for
everyone if we arbitrarily withhold it from them?

I’d argue patching a system that values the very few over the many is not an
advancement.

~~~
paulddraper
It's hardly a solved problem, but it's getting much better.

Wordwide undernourishment rates went from 19% to 11% from 1991 to 2015. [1]

Another couples decades of human progress and starvation will be rather rare.
:fingerscrossed:

[1] [https://ourworldindata.org/hunger-and-
undernourishment](https://ourworldindata.org/hunger-and-undernourishment)

~~~
dvdhnt
The numbers are positive and I respect your optimism.

I have nothing to add but wanted to say that.

------
kanox
Correlation is not causation.

Low birth rates and high home values are both also highly correlated to
education and women in the workforce and high income and economic growth and
trendy hipster bars and many other nice things.

Picking just two items and claiming that "people don't have children _because_
homes are expensive" is not very enlightening at all.

~~~
surfmike
The article specifically says they might not be causal. The correlation is
interested, however; anecdotally I know many of my friends feel like buying a
house is a necessary prerequisite before having kids so a causative effect is
plausible.

~~~
lev99
I haven't gotten a dog because I feel like renting isn't stable enough
environment for a dog. I get the owning a home is a prerequisite for children
point of view.

------
gnadx
Seems like it's more likely home prices are the key factor, not home values.
Subtle but important difference I'd say. If you can't afford a place to live,
you probably can't afford to have children.

~~~
CydeWeys
Is it a difference? Home values are determined by looking at what comparable
houses in the neighborhood are actually selling for. You can't value homes if
no transactions are taking place because then you have no idea what it's
worth. Asking prices are meaningless; prices of actual sales are all that
matter.

~~~
jtbayly
Yes there is a difference in that one implies current ownership and the other
implies inability to own.

Also, actual sales mean actual prices, not asking prices.

------
fixermark
Obvious conclusion: _children wreck property values._

(this result published in "The Journal Of Correlation Implying Causation ;) )

~~~
Rebelgecko
worded slightly differently, "adding 1+ people to your family who don't work
will decrease your disposable income"

~~~
sobani
No, having more children will lower the value of the property you currently
live in.

------
rsynnott
I don't really buy this. A really, really obvious counter-example; Germany.
Germany has pretty cheap housing by Western European standards, but also a low
birth rate by Western European standards. On the other hand, Ireland has the
highest birth rate in the EU, and some of the most unaffordable housing.

~~~
nopinsight
Across countries, culture and perhaps public policies are huge confounding
factors. Comparison within the US is at least less influenced by those
factors.

------
OliverJones
Duh.

The boomer generation (of which I am a member) has systematically disinvested
in future generations. We've stripped resources from education, housing, and
infrastructure. And we've successfully concentrated ourselves into certain
geographical areas (counties) and driven housing prices up.

And now our generation's birth rate has (except for trophy wives) fallen to
zero. That happens to every generation.

So, young people who want to live in our enclaves have to work really hard, or
have to live in our cellars. Those who can afford it don't have time for kids,
and those who can't go to live in areas we consider less "desireable."

------
jstewartmobile
Oswald Spengler in 1923:

" _And at that point, too, in Buddhist India as in Babylon, in Rome as in our
own cities, a man 's choice of the woman who is to be, not mother of his
children as amongst peasants and primitives, but his own "companion for life",
becomes a problem of mentalities. The Ibsen marriage appears, the "higher
spiritual affinity" in which both parties are "free"—free, that is, as
intelligences, free from the plantlike urge of the blood to continue itself,
and it becomes possible for a Shaw to say "that unless Woman repudiates her
womanliness, her duty to her husband, to her children, to society, to the law,
and to everyone but herself, she cannot emancipate herself." The primary
woman, the peasant woman, is mother. The whole vocation towards which she has
yearned from childhood is included in that one word. But now emerges the Ibsen
woman, the comrade, the heroine of a whole megalopolitan literature from
Northern drama to Parisian novel. Instead of children, she has soul-conflicts;
marriage is a craft-art for the achievement of "mutual understanding"...

At this level all Civilizations enter upon a stage, which lasts for centuries,
of appalling depopulation. The whole pyramid of cultural man vanishes. _It
crumbles from the summit, first the world-cities, then the provincial forms,
and finally the land itself, whose best blood has incontinently poured into
the towns, merely to bolster them up awhile.* At the last, only the primitive
blood remains, alive, but robbed of its strongest and most promising
elements.*"

[https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Oswald_Spengler#The_Decline_of...](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Oswald_Spengler#The_Decline_of_the_West_\(1918,_1923\))

------
ppeetteerr
It's a rather specific sample (2010-2016, ages 25-29). I wonder how much of
this is coincidence. Is it not possible that both birthrates and home prices
have nothing to do with one another but happen to be just following
independent trends?

~~~
toasterlovin
Birth rates are highly likely to be tied to house prices in some way, though
if it is causal, and which direction causality flows in, if it is, is probably
not knowable. All you really need to know is that larger families compete with
smaller families for real estate. But smaller families generally have more
available income _and they need less real estate_. Those facts alone are bound
to link birth rates to housing costs.

~~~
ppeetteerr
I agree with you and you could even make another argument. It could also be
that people these days spend more on experiential activities than physical
goods and both child rearing and home ownership are suffering as a
consequence.

Correlation studies are fun but hardly informative.

------
nitwit005
It's almost as if you could afford more of something, like housing, if you
spent less on another thing, like children.

~~~
quickthrower2
Moreover you tend to need more space, and therefore a more expensive house, if
you have children.

Also without children you can live somewhere regardless of worries like school
catchments.

------
beezle
Given that Zillow home value 'estimates' are poor, often all over the map in
areas with near idential homes, I would not take anyting they offer up with
more than a grain of salt.

~~~
lev99
To be fair to Zillow, looking at historical home sale data is a much easier
problem then predicting what a home will sell for the future.

------
prirun
"Large differences from the trend reflect the fact that only 19 percent of the
variation in fertility changes can be predicted by home value changes."

I would think high university tuition and student loans also play a big part
in decreasing disposable income to the point where college-educated couples
are delaying starting a family or having fewer kids.

I think most people believe that a 4-year college education is mandatory for a
decent life in the US these days (I don't agree), so it's rational for a
couple to decide to have only 1 kid that they can afford to educate vs 2. Kids
used to be able to pay for their own tuition with a part-time job. It may have
taken 6 years to graduate, but it was doable. That is a lot harder /
impossible now.

------
plassma
“Children are expensive”

~~~
ekianjo
They are expensive because we want them to be. We have never had so much
disposable income and so few children in History.

~~~
someguydave
That's because the disposable income is mainly going to bid up the price of
real estate. Nobody is making more real estate and the existing owners
patronize the government to lock out competition. The federal government then
pours gas on the fire by subsidizing demand through housing loan guarantees.

Meanwhile, as the young prospective parents work harder than ever to save for
children, the government claims that they aren't producing enough new citizens
to keep the welfare state going. This is taken as justification for bringing
in immigrant labor. This suppresses wages for everyone, making saving and
reproducing harder.

No, I don't believe the free market is a zero-sum game. But it's not exactly
free either.

~~~
majidazimi
Exactly this. This is an interminable stupid loop.

1\. People want their own house, 2 cars, ....

2\. So they work more, to earn more.

3\. In some cases you need to study more, to get better job.

4\. Women also get involved in this shitty loop.

5\. Getting loans are easier now. However housing supply is not sufficient. So
prices go higher.

6\. People end up working/studying more, because they need even more money
now.

7\. They end up having 1 child.

8\. Now, since government wants more workers (1 child is not sustainable),
they have to bring immigrants.

9\. It is getting dangerous now. Corporations lobby politicians, to keep
minimum wages at a very low level.

10\. Ambitious immigrants are ready to work like a horse. (Don't feel
offended, I'm also an immigrant)

11\. Corporations bully current employees to work more, since if you don't
work more, there is an immigrant out there to replace you.

12\. People have to work even more to satisfy their employers.

13\. Go to 1.

~~~
someguydave
Yes, precisely this. Taken from a cynical perspective it appears that many
people are making large personal sacrifices to bid-up the prices of real
estate held by rich urban landowners, as well as to fund the welfare state.

With respect to real estate, I would suggest that the government at least stop
pouring fuel on the fire. End all real estate tax subsidies, including
mortgage interest tax deductions. End all government real estate loan
guarantees. End any favorable tax treatment of real estate as an asset.

On the supply side, the government should greatly curtail restrictions on
property development. I think some concern about the quality of housing is
justified, but nearly all zoning should be eliminated.

------
millzlane
Reminds me of the opening scene of the movie Idiocracy. It makes sense that
those that can afford the greater priced homes are thoughtful enough not to
have lots of children.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwZ0ZUy7P3E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwZ0ZUy7P3E)

------
fooker
I once attended a lecture by a well known statistics professor, who
demonstrated a similar correlation between the price of a kg of apples and the
rate of divorce in his country.

~~~
paulddraper
Are apples and divorces plausibly related?

Or was the professor simply drawing from an enormous number of metrics to find
a spurious relationship (and report just that).

~~~
ajmurmann
That snake was trying to tell us something!

~~~
gsich
An apple is not mentioned there ;)

------
oriol16
Low birth rates also correlate with a tendency to see women and men competing
against each other, instead of complementing their roles. Where women acquired
male roles, birth rates drop. You can observe this behavior both between and
within countries.

------
0x445442
I think there are also cultural differences between areas where real estate
prices differ that have effects on the birth rates of those areas.

------
rgejman
This data is also consistent with the idea that people _leave_ expensive areas
in order to have children in cheaper areas.

------
kyrieeschaton
This is fundamentally Steve Sailer's model of affordable family formation vs
the blue state model.

------
yolo1897
good news, people become responsible

------
phkahler
Idiocracy was inspired by the real world.

------
daodedickinson
duh

------
Karishma1234
I think this is a wonderful way to tackle climate change. Higher housing if
leads to lower birth rates then it might be good for planet.

I wonder if there is analysis been done as to what birth rates we need to
achieve to ensure the planet is fit to live for our kids.

~~~
fixermark
I believe the driving factor of climate change isn't total world population
though; it's fossil fuel exhaust generated for energy. There's correlation
with total population but not necessarily direct linkage; if there are fewer
people, but each person is consuming 2.5x as much electricity as the
generation before, we wouldn't expect to see the fossil fuel burn rate lower.

~~~
tremon
Climate change is not all about electricity or fossil fuels though.
Agriculture also has a massive impact, because of deforestation to create more
arable land or, overuse of fertilizers and other chemicals. And the need for
more/better agriculture is definitely driven by the growing world population.

