
Highly educated women no longer have fewer kids - vezzy-fnord
http://www.voxeu.org/article/highly-educated-women-no-longer-have-fewer-kids
======
wiremine
These two paragraphs highlight the findings the the hypothesis explaining the
50%+ change:

"During the 2000s, highly educated women had higher fertility rates than women
with intermediate levels of education. Importantly, this is a result of a
substantial increase in fertility among women with advanced degrees who
increased their fertility by 0.7 children, or by more than 50%"

"What can explain the rise of fertility among highly educated women during the
period that saw the largest increase in the labour supply of highly educated
women? We argue that the growing income inequality over the past three decades
created both a group of women who can afford to buy services that help them
raise their children and run their homes, and a group who is willing to supply
these services cheaply."

They don't mention anything about birth control, which I found interesting.

~~~
thejteam
Another thing that happened during this time frame is that certain
professions, specifically teachers and nurses, began to require more and more
education. I would also speculate, without offering any proof, that women in
these professions were more likely to have children than other women of
similar education. Therefore the increase.

~~~
anentropic
ok, no proof, but how about a rationale at least? what makes you think that?

~~~
douche
Possibly bullshit rationale for teachers:

Teaching unions have generally negotiated better-than-average natal leave
policies and decent health insurance. With a small amount of planning and
foresight, it would be possible to get pregnant such that the baby is born in
the spring, and the post-natal leave extends to the summer break, effectively
extending the leave period by an additional 2-3 months.

Teaching tends to not have a lot of cut-throat career advancement, compared to
some other professions. Mostly, you get salary increases based on seniority
and years of service, or one-off boosts, like completing a master's program.

Being a female-dominated profession, where the bulk of the other employees
have been, are, or are planning on being mothers, there's likely more
understanding and acceptance of child-related absences. Also comparatively
generous sick-time policies.

Completely unsubstantiated, but people that choose to spend the bulk of their
working hours with children might be more favorably disposed to them in
general than people who choose other occupations.

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digi_owl
Makes one wonder if the old generational family units had not been broken up,
because of the constant demand for mobility in the modern work place, there
would not be as much fretting about fertility.

I know of people that made good use of their retired parents as babysitters,
and the parents were quite happy to do so (getting to spend time with their
grandkids and all that).

~~~
rayiner
My wife and I are both lawyers and spend three hours a day commuting. Having
grandparents pitch in to take care of our daughter has been a huge blessing.

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dudul
"We argue that the growing income inequality over the past three decades
created both a group of women who can afford to buy services that help them
raise their children and run their homes, and a group who is willing to supply
these services cheaply."

Somehow this sentence makes me very uneasy. Rich people start having more kids
because they can pay poor people to take care of them.

This "everything as a service" trend of modern society is very scary because
it relies heavily on income inequality, I can foresee a time in the near
future where we will go back to feudal laws, a rich person will own a domain
and have poor people taking care of it on their behalf.

~~~
jarboot
Saudi Arabia is that way. Even poor people have a driver and a housemaid.

------
tomp
I would love this to be true. But as always, I'm very skeptical of all
social/psychological studies. _Provided it turns out to be true,_ I guess
there still is some hope for the human race!

~~~
pen2l
Yeah, these numbers to me don't look right too.

Relatedly (and I'm sorry I'm saying this - I feel terrible saying this): women
really really need to have children earlier, preferably before age 28.

30 years ago you saw only 7.2 deaths of mothers per 100,000 live births in the
US, in 2011, despise tremendously better healthcare, it was 17.8 deaths per
100,000 births. One of the reasons for the jump is women postponing having
kids. And completely separate from this, risk of chromosomal abnormalities in
babies goes up very high when having them at a later age.

Men and women both need to have children early, for so many reasons. It is a
great pity that it's so fucking difficult to do so in this day and age.

~~~
vezzy-fnord
_It is a great pity that it 's so fucking difficult to do so in this day and
age._

Elaborate.

~~~
pen2l
Having children is reaaaaaally expensive. Much more than people would expect.

Most 25 year old couples don't have this money, in this day and age. It would
require out of them that they both work hardcore hours... but then when baby
has come, who will take care of it? Babysitters? Daycare? They're expensive as
hell. Clothes, food stuff, toys, childcare services, carseats, strollers, etc.
all add up to something humongous. This is not to mention the mental toll of
getting up each damn night at 3a.m. to calm crying babies.

Daycare often times costs more than what one of the parents _make_ , it's that
expensive. For whatever reason Americans want to get away from their parents
after getting married (unlike a lot of Asian countries), so if you can't rely
on your parents to help out it's really difficult and it'll exhaust you out
before you know it.

~~~
douche
Most educated 20-something couples will also have the equivalent of a hefty
mortgage payment dedicated to servicing their educational loans. Take a
considerable chunk off the top for that, and then it becomes harder to
establish the savings necessary to make a down payment on a home, which locks
our couple into renting, at rates that are commonly well above what the
mortgage payment would be, without the benefit of building equity in the
property. Moreover, to earn the kind of money to service those loan payments,
our couple has to abandon their local social networks that might be able to
assist with childcare, shared resources, etc, and move to a different area
with more competitive wages, or possibly just an area where employment is
possible, which results in yet higher costs of living. Throw in parents and
family that have the attitude that they pulled themselves up by their
bootstraps, and so their children ought to be able to as well, ignoring the
fact that when they got their education, it was possible to earn enough money
working in a summer to cover their tuition and living expenses for the rest of
the year. Or that it used to be possible to earn a middle-class income with no
education beyond high school.

It's kind of a vicious circle.

~~~
vram22
>when they got their education, it was possible to earn enough money working
in a summer to cover their tuition and living expenses for the rest of the
year. Or that it used to be possible to earn a middle-class income with no
education beyond high school.

Talking about the US or EU, I guess?

Any idea why it was that way, back then (also, when was "then"?) and not so
now?

~~~
douche
I was speaking on the US, and the difference between the experience of
Millennials vs the Boomer parents.

It seems like runaway costs, more than anything. Tuition and room and board
have nearly quadrupled[1], while the amount of money that it is possible to
earn in the kind of low-level, part-time work that a college student is
capable of fitting in has sort of stagnated. I was able to earn $5-6k over the
course of a summer working, which isn't a whole lot different than what my
father, for instance, was able to earn in his summers in the 70s. That might
pay my tuition for part of one term, whereas it paid his whole year.
Meanwhile, housing costs have rocketed up as well, and the price of gas was
$4/gallon, rather than $.50.

[1] [http://trends.collegeboard.org/college-pricing/figures-
table...](http://trends.collegeboard.org/college-pricing/figures-
tables/tuition-and-fees-and-room-and-board-over-time-1975-76-2015-16-selected-
years)

~~~
vram22
Got it. I've heard from much older friends and relatives that in those earlier
days people used to think nothing of driving across the whole of the US, for
fun. On the same lines as what you say ...

------
jensen123
There are many arguments in favor of income equality/social democracy, and
some of them make sense (less crime for example). However, I've never heard
anybody point out before that it's not genetically sustainable in the very
long-term. Well, ok, there was that movie Idiocracy...

------
brlewis
tl;dr 16 years of education 1.74 children, > 16 years 1.89 children

Overall more education still means lower fertility rates. There's just a
slight blip at the end of the graph.

------
swagv
This means population control requires poverty once again

------
DougN7
Not to be rude or anything, but this should be good news for the gene pool.

~~~
collyw
Education has nothing to do with genetics.

~~~
fucking_tragedy
I have met too many people who truly believe intelligence is heritable. These
people also believe they're smarter and better than 95% of the population.
Most of these people are the self-described entrepreneurial types and
engineers.

What I am saying is you may have opened the floodgates for a horrifying debate
where pseudo-eugenicists come out of the woodwork.

~~~
newjersey
I strongly believe not everyone should have children[footnote]. I also
strongly believe that we should not provide incentives (and rather dis
incentivize) people from having too many children.

I think the one child policy is a great idea. The society at large will
subsidize the first (one or two at most) child for any person. Anything beyond
that and the parents must be prepared to meet the financial obligation
themselves. (And it costs a lot to raise a child, even when you take away the
cost of health care with universal health care).

I don't think this stance is unreasonable at all. It is surely unpopular
though.

[footnote] People should decide for themselves if they are fit to be parent
though. We have that choice now and we should always have this choice.

~~~
vezzy-fnord
_I think the one child policy is a great idea._

How do you deal with those who defy it, deliberately or otherwise?

~~~
newjersey
They don't get any subsidy. Possibly taxes, garnished wages and so on. This is
not a completely fleshed out idea. How do we deal with twins, triplets and so
on?

~~~
vezzy-fnord
What subsidy? When you mentioned "society at large," I was assuming some
hypothetical communal or kinship arrangements. You should be more clear.

The second idea is vile and destructive. Someone elects to have more than one
child, and you come in storming to deduct from their payrolls and tax their
income as if you deliberately want to wage a war of attrition against the
parents' standard of living for raising a child.

~~~
toomuchtodo
> What subsidy?

At least in the US, we provide a credit for each child someone claims as a
dependent on a tax return.

> The second idea is vile and destructive. Someone elects to have more than
> one child, and you come in storming to deduct from their payrolls and tax
> their income as if you deliberately want to wage a war of attrition against
> the parents' standard of living for raising a child.

Uhh, that's how tax policy works. You tax things you don't want people to do,
and provide deductions or credits for things you do want them to do.

~~~
vezzy-fnord
That doesn't make the maneuver any less abhorrent or coercive, unless you
regard attacking the development of your country's infants as a positive, of
course.

~~~
toomuchtodo
You're free to your opinion! As someone without children, I don't want tax
dollars subsidizing having children. I don't think you should be stopped, but
please pay for them yourselves.

~~~
vezzy-fnord
I don't have children either, and I oppose any subsidy in general.

I interpreted you as arguing in _favor_ of it.

