
How can families afford children? - jeffreyrogers
http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2018/03/can-families-afford-children.html
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craig1f
"Jobs for women are higher-paying and more satisfying than ever before, and
that raises the opportunity cost of having large families"

This is not true. Depending on the wife for income prevents her from focusing
on having a large family. Without the assistance of a grandparent or some
expensive nanny, this tends to limit the number of children in the family to 2
or 3.

Also, women working has driven the price of houses up, so it's difficult to
get by with one working parent now. Women have less of a choice to work now,
and more of an obligation.

This doubling of eligible workers also drives down the salary of everyone,
making men pull in less money, further forcing women to work whether they want
to or not.

Not to mention how expensive large vans/suvs are to actually drive them
around.

~~~
CalRobert
"Not to mention how expensive large vans/suvs are to actually drive them
around. "

Just driving is pretty expensive. Not owning a car saves loads. Unfortunately,
it usually takes a lot of money to live somewhere that doesn't require one.

Also worth noting - my wife would be at home with the kid right now (I have a
much higher income) except she has substantial student debt, so off to work
she goes. This means paying for creche too.

We couldn't afford creche fees for two kids, and she can't afford not to work
due to aforementioned debt.

Also we had a kid because we were approaching mid thirties and it was a now or
never thing, but it would have been nice to get a home big enough for two kids
(a 3 bed apartment, or a bigger 2 bedroom apartment, would suffice) but the
numbers don't add up.

~~~
craig1f
If you drive down my friend's neighborhood in North Virginia, you see house
after house of moms with law-degrees, math degrees, engineering degrees, most
with Masters, who said "fuck working" after 5-10 years and decided to become
stay-at-home. All with substantial student debt that they didn't work long
enough to justify.

The number of women who WANT to work is a lot lower than everyone wants to
admit. And when they see the option to leave the working world, many of them
take it. So much education that just gets wasted when they realize that having
a career is not nearly as fulfilling as they have been led to believe.

If I won the lottery tomorrow, my first thought would be "sweet, we can afford
a third kid!"

~~~
watwut
Why do you assume they are full filled now or that they decision to stay at
home was not pragmatical? Or not sacrifice for what they believe is best for
children?

Some are fullfilled, some are not.

~~~
creep
He/she is saying that this is the case for most women. Most women like to lead
more balanced lives, and a part of that is getting an education, then working
for some time, traveling, then taking care of the kids and yet more traveling.
Most men like to work for most of their lives.

------
compiler-guy
The standards we expect for childrearing are also dramatically higher today
than ever before.

Previous generations just sent the kids off to play after school, without much
attention; they expected kids to be 100% on their own after highschool (and
even before); and on and on.

Today we expect far more parent involvement than ever before (at least in the
US), this makes it comparatively more expensive to raise children now than in
years past.

~~~
dazc
'Today we expect far more parent involvement than ever before (at least in the
US)...'

True also in the UK. As a kid, the normal after-school routine was to walk
home, get changed and play out until it was dark. All achieved with minimal
contact with parents.

Now kids seem to have very little independent time and this, in my opinion,
is/will be very much to their detriment in later life.

~~~
aidenn0
Is there a trend in the UK of nosy neighbors reporting unsupervised children
to the authorities? This has been a disturbing trend[1] in the US that makes
it harder to provide kids with independent time, particularly when the person
responding to the complaint is guaranteed to be heavily armed.

1: I say trend, though it's probably much less than 1% of the population, but
kids are seen by more than 100 adults in a week, and the nosier adults self-
select for being more likely to be looking for kids doing something wrong.

~~~
dazc
'Is there a trend in the UK of nosy neighbors reporting unsupervised children
to the authorities?'

I'm not sure it's so common but I wouldn't be surprised if it happens from
time to time. I guess it depends what time of day and how far away from home
they are?

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bmcusick
Globally, the main thing is that married families have transitioned from small
farm cooperatives (where the husband works the fields and the wife in the
house) to market-based work for both of them. The problem with market based
work is that it's usually incompatible with keeping one eye on small children,
unlike the household chores of a farm. Also, kids are pure burdens until they
can join the market themselves, whereas farm kids could help collect eggs and
feed chickens starting pretty young.

In America at least the cost disease of education, housing, and healthcare all
make it worse, but the first part is the primary culprit. And I'm not sure
there's any fix for it besides long parental leaves and subsidized childcare.

~~~
bryanlarsen
As somebody who collected eggs and fed pigs at a very young age, it would have
been much faster and more efficient for Dad to do it himself. :)

~~~
bmcusick
Buddy, may I introduce you to the concept of comparative advantage? :-)

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jawns
It used to be that having a large number of children was more important to
your family's survival. Childhood mortality was higher, and children often
contributed to the family business. My dad was one of 11 born to a farming
family, and the kids were expected to help operate the farm.

I happen to know a bunch of large families (7+ kids), and I think the common
thread among them is:

* The choice to be open to more children into the family, whether by birth, adoption, or fostering, is not primarily because they perceived themselves to have extra free time or extra resources, but because they had more love to give. Which is not to say that families who have fewer are less loving, or that material circumstances don't factor into the decision. But it seems like the families I know recognized that they could parent more children, and give them all sufficient love and care, and that was the motivating factor.

* They tend not to have highly scheduled, highly involved kids -- and the kids turn out just fine.

* There are increased costs as the number of children increases. But having, say, six children does not cost twice as much as having three.

~~~
cwbrandsma
I have 5 kids. As you say, there are a lot of things we don't do. There are
not individual sports that we rush one kid to and then another for different
kid. Often we pick full family activities, like swimming (or swim team) where
2-3 kids can all participate together, and the other kids can still have fun.
We also don't live in a high cost-of-living area, so housing costs are
[somewhat] low. Also child care, we made the decision early on that my wife
would stay home with the kids. She couldn't earn enough for us to afford child
care anyway. So this was the cheaper option. That also affords her more time
to work on food prep as well, so we don't eat out much at all.

~~~
ppeetteerr
Curious why you wanted 5 kids. Seems like a large number these days.

~~~
aantix
I'm not the OP that you were asking, but I do want to chime in.

My wife and I make a pretty good team. Even the most tense arguments
eventually get resolved with a laugh.

We have three boys, we're probably going to have a fourth. We feel we have a
lot of love to give. And giving someone life is the ultimate pay-it-forward
act of gratitude. My parents did it for me. If I can give a few children life
and send them out into the world with a good grounding, my life is a win.

~~~
mustardo
> And giving someone life is the ultimate pay-it-forward act of gratitude

Also likely the worst thing you can do for the environment

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snowwrestler
There is another way to look at children, which is from the societal level.

New humans are still the most important inputs to human society. As societies
become more specialized and productive, the powers and burdens of new humans
go up. Thus, richer societies need fewer people, but each person needs to be
more specialized and capable. And inversely, a society that is not producing
new humans who are more specialized and capable, is a society that will have
trouble advancing.

Evaluating public policy from this perspective produces some different
conclusions than the more traditional family-oriented perspective which is
often used to look at policies related to children.

Policies that empower women professionally and reproductively mean that only
women who affirmatively choose to have children will have them--increasing the
chance that they will have the means and will to invest heavily in each child.

And policies that give each child the chance to maximize their potential can
be seen as long-term investments, not handouts.

Conversely, policies that permit or force children to develop sub-optimally
are wastes that should be eliminated. Today many societies promote policies
that encourage procreation (no access to sex education or contraception,
incentives for more kids), but don't invest in children (no early childhood
education, bad primary and secondary education, poor health care, poor food
programs, etc.).

If someone bought a car but refused to pay for gas and oil changes, you would
probably say they are making some damn bad decisions. Either maintain the car,
or if you can't afford to do that, don't get one until you can.

Traditionally, the analogous kid blame game has fallen on the parents
themselves. But parents are part of a larger society, and ultimately, given an
~80 year life span, will only manage about 25% of a new human life. Society
will manage the other 75%, but in a lot of ways, our thinking about policy has
not caught up to that reality.

~~~
jl6
I’m not going to disagree with your overall thesis, but there is something I
find oppressive about the idea that society manages 75% of your life, rather
than managing your own life during adulthood.

~~~
snowwrestler
Yeah, the word "manage" is not great because of the supervisory overtones,
which have oppressive connotations.

What I mean in more words is the process by which we create the logistics we
need to thrive (food, clothing, shelter, power, comms, currency, etc),
combined with the incentives to produce the society we want to live in
(physical safety, freedom of expression, opportunity for work and love, etc.).

It's hard to talk about this without judgmental overtones. But essentially
what I mean is, picture your best life--how do we make that possible for each
and every person? It won't happen by accident. And it's to everyone's benefit
it we can make it more likely.

And when that doesn't happen--when people don't have the skills to find work,
when they commit crime, when they fall to addiction, when they're mentally or
physically ill, etc... at that point we do sort of "take them under
management." They go on unemployment or disability, they go under medical and
mental care, they go into prison. Those are direct costs we all pay, and
probably even greater is the opportunity cost of that human life. (And not
just from a strictly economic perspective, but also art, emotion, love, etc.)

But people become part of society when they're born. And a lot of what makes
each person who they are, is set during childhood. Letting a person go without
investment for 20 years, then paying direct costs to manage them if it doesn't
work out, doesn't seem smart to me.

If you take any life and trace it back to the beginning, early management is
in the family. But there is a lot that society can do to help that process be
more successful. And I would argue it's in all of our benefits.

And again, to make it clear, I'm not talking about authoritarianism. In modern
democracies, in an ideal sense, we should be managing ourselves. To some
extent we're discovering the society we want as we go along, so our management
system need to be adaptable, and that's what democracy should give us. I'm
advocating for certain policy choices we can make democratically--give women
more power of their lives and reproduction. Invest fully in the health and
education of all children. Provide support to families so that they can do a
better job of raising their kids. Etc.

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sudhirj
This is re. India, but might also apply to other developing countries - public
school is not an option. Because the public school system is so abysmal, it is
used mostly by the very poor who have no other choice. Sending your kids to
private schools is a fundamental aspiration, one that is realized even with
single mothers who work as maids / domestic help.

This point along puts a huge cost on having children, even for people below or
just around the poverty line. When sex was the only recreation option
available with no known birth control methods, lots of kids was the norm. That
has changed now, though. People at all levels of society know that raising a
child with an semblance of upward mobility is expensive, and logarithmically
so - the good private schools are 10X more expensive than the regular ones,
with the international schools going to 100X.

Breaking the norms is difficult, but it looks like the country is already
tending towards a voluntary one child policy, at least for any parents that
hope their children will live better than they did.

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andy_adams
The article focuses on very utilitarian ways of thinking of a family, which is
a sad way to look at kids.

I know lots of large families - many who are extremely poor - who are the
happiest people I know. The difference being that they've made their family
their source of joy, and don't look somewhere else to find fulfillment.

I'm writing this in case someone reads this article and thinks "well, the math
doesn't support having children, so I won't". There's a _lot_ more to kids
than financial calculation.

~~~
ppeetteerr
I can only imagine that those couples with a lot of children find happiness in
having many. It's not that large families make people the happiest. Just want
to clarify in case some depressed person thinks they will cure their
depression with many, many kids.

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ppeetteerr
Maybe the Norwegian model/Canadian model is a good example (not that it's
increasing fertility, but it's improving affordability). We have:

\- Subsidized daycare

\- Subsidized education

\- 1.5 year maternity leave

\- Subsidies for families with children under a certain income bracket

It's affordable, but couples in western countries don't really want more
children (just under 2 is the average)

~~~
colmvp
> It's affordable, but couples in western countries don't really want more
> children (just under 2 is the average)

I was looking at how many contraceptions and items my friends bought for their
newborn ranging from things related to feeding/sleeping/playing. And that's
not including the highest expenses, namely shelter/transportation/food. I
thought to myself, my goodness how did we ever raise children in previous
millennia? Anecdotally it feels like it's becoming more and more expensive to
have children. I'm fairly well-off myself, and I would probably be fine with
just one child, if any.

~~~
dragonwriter
> I was looking at how many contraceptions and items my friends bought for
> their newborn

“Contraceptions” for a newborn seems a bit...premature.

~~~
votepaunchy
Clearly meant to be “contraptions”.

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Broken_Hippo
This article claims a lot of things and assumes many more.

I think "affording" children has never been the primary goal of folks having
children. Most folks aren't all that good at predicting what it will cost to
raise a child or three. Some costs aren't as much with multiple children (used
clothing, for example, or sharing rooms makes housing more affordable). Others
are higher, such as child care and food costs. Some things are improved if one
parent stays home. I think the main thing that drives folks to have smaller or
larger families is desire to do so rather than costs themselves. Oddly enough,
education can help as well, if you are in a country that thinks it needs more
or less children in total.

I find it appalling that it is socially unacceptable in many places for the
man to stay home while the woman works. If my immigration status didn't depend
on my husband working and we were at all keen on having children at all, I'd
work while he stayed home with children.

I'm not sure jobs are any more satisfying, as it is a difficult thing to
compare. Many parts of the world simply didn't allow women the same sort of
opportunities as men 100 or 150 years ago. Some didn't 40-50 years ago. I got
turned down for a job 20 years ago because "females just couldn't do the work
required".

We also don't actually need large families any longer, not like we did in the
past. Between better infant mortality rates, better survival of giving birth,
and birth control, and the financial reasons given earlier, it really isn't as
necessary. It's OK to do, but it should be a choice. I think society should
have laws allowing maternity and paternity leave and time to tend to the
children. This should include a parent staying home... at least until the
child is in school and/or mature enough to spend some time alone. In so many
places, this is missing.

There are opportunity costs if someone has multiple children, though. What
chances does a woman have to be CEO if she also wants 5 children in a 10-year
time frame? If she takes the proper time off for both her pregnancy and infant
care, it becomes difficult. This can be worked around with strong paternal
leave policies: After all, once a woman is healed enough to do her job, she
doesn't need to be the one staying at home. It also puts the opportunity costs
on both sexes.

~~~
jeffreyrogers
There's some evidence that when women start to out-earn their husbands they
divorce at higher rates. Whether biological or social (and probably a bit of
both), there is an expectation that men contribute more financially than women
do, which explains a lot of why men work more after having children than women
do. Plus, women obviously invest more in having children than men do.

~~~
dragonwriter
> There's some evidence that when women start to out-earn their husbands they
> divorce at higher rates. Whether biological or social (and probably a bit of
> both), there is an expectation that men contribute more financially than
> women do

Alternatively, women who aren't financially dependent on men don't put up with
as much in terms of negative situations within marriage. If that's the reason,
there's no pressure unless your intent is to keep a wife through material
dependence.

~~~
jeffreyrogers
That's probably part of it, but they aren't mutually exclusive. The difference
in wages between spouses is small anyways (but men usually earn more), so I
don't think the marginal increase in a woman's income changes her ability to
provide for herself all that much.

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achou
Demographic decline seems almost inevitable given our economic system, sans
immigration.

I'm a parent in SF. The cost of housing and availability of quality care (day
care, nanny), and schools are definitely factors among the parent community
here in deciding not to have more children. Many of the parents I know are
doing well financially (they must be to be raising kids in SF), so I get to
see the non-financial reasons for smaller families. One that's pretty
important: quality of life. The opportunity cost of having children is about
much more than money.

The options for doing things you enjoy are hugely greater today than in the
past. Fancy restaurants, sports events, cruises, gaming, live music, Netflix,
social media. World travel. Rewarding work. You name it. The world has become
much better and better at providing things that people enjoy spending their
time and money on.

Having children not only reduces the money you have to enjoy these things, it
puts a huge damper on your time, and _freedom_ to do so. Sure, you could go to
that cool new restaurant with your young children. But it's a completely
different experience than going without them -- so much so that it veers into
negative utility.

For some people enjoying family life and kids is more valuable than all of the
other stuff combined. But as the world gets better and better at giving people
alternatives to spend their time/money/freedom on that they enjoy, having more
children will become less and less attractive for more and more people.

Policies will only do so much to reverse this. Many European countries have
much more family oriented policies than the US, yet look at the reality of
their birthrates:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ageing_of_Europe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ageing_of_Europe).

~~~
dragonwriter
> Policies will only do so much to reverse this. Many European countries have
> much more family oriented policies than the US, yet look at the reality of
> their birthrates

That's not paradoxical; strong social support networks have been known for a
long time to produce reduced birthrates; the usual explanation for which is
that it is because a significant reason people have children is as a form of
do-it-yourself social insurance, especially for old-age support.

Overall, “its too expensive to have kids” isn't the reason the US birthrate is
lower than the past; if it was, birthrates would be higher in the upper income
segments and lower among the poor, but it's exactly the opposite.

------
kevinmqaz
Affording kids is all about choices. My wife and I have 4 kids under 7, and
she does not work. We lived in Seattle last year and moved to Dublin Ireland
in August. We have zero debt, own a house in the states and rent in Ireland.
We don’t own cars in Ireland as they don’t honor the US license and I don’t
want to do drivers ed again. Since moving here in August we went from zero in
checking to an average daily balance of 10k last month; based only on my
income here in Ireland of about 90k a year taxed at 42%. In that time we’ve
paid for flights and trips for 6 to London ( we all got sick and had to ball
none refundable lame), Barcelona ( 4 nights), Berlin ( 4 nights), London again
( booked 4 nights in May money already out of the account) and the big one
back to the states this month @ 3k in tickets.

We don’t eat out much, we don’t owe anyone / pay interest, we don’t spend
money on things we don’t need that don’t a provide a good ROI. We’d rather
walk around and explore a city then take a tour and pay to stand in line some
where, we cut our own hair, shop at thrift stores or sales, Read we are
frugal. Even in the states wife did not work. In the states our cars were paid
for in cash, we had no credit card debit, and we built our own house with our
own bare hands out of cash; it took 3+ years and we lived in a fifth wheel
with 2-3 kids for part of it, but it was all paid for. We made the choices to
have kids, and we worked out how to afford our choice and how to be happy.

Why four kids — We watched the intro to idiocracy a few too man times and
decided we needed to have more vs fewer kids to combat Clevon. We’d have more
kids but we hit 40 this year and that was our stop having kids cut off.

Spend 700$ a month on car payment, 500$ on month on eating out, 500$ a month
on amazon, 2000$ on a house payment, buy alcohol and other vices for hundreds
a month, ETC and shit adds up fast and you wonder how you can even afford
yourself. Don’t have a car payment, or house payment, eat out less, don’t
drink and smoke and the numbers are completely different. We have a huge rent
payment in Ireland that was the biggest hit moving here. Going from paying
property taxes to 2800 a month in rent hurt. But we rented a huge house and
rent a room out for 600 a month; which helps off set costs. The house is
walking distance to work, grocery, train, and kids school – the higher rent
facilities the no care life style. We could live further out and pay half the
rent but we would need 2 cars. We chose higher rent over cars.

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bobthechef
Actually, I recall reading or hearing somewhere that the negative correlation
between income and number of kids mostly applies to consumerist societies,
which is what much of the West has become. I can't find the source ATM, so if
you know, please post.

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purplezooey
In the west, we need a lot more housing, roads, and trains. These could be
doubled and it wouldn't be enough. We need a large government intervention on
the scale of a Manhattan Project.

