Are you saying that Israelis are more likely to have kids mainly because Israeli society is more tolerant of kids?
You seem to be supposing a model where most people naturally want kids, but are just discouraged from having kids because...other people might give them a stink eye if their kids run around in a mall.
In my model, people choose to have kids because it's an important life goal for them, and this decision is not very much affected by whether other people might give them a stink eye if their kids run around in a mall.
> Are you saying that Israelis are more likely to have kids mainly because Israeli society is more tolerant of kids?
Yes, absolutely.
I used to work in a big city where friends, neighbors, and coworkers with young kids had to sacrifice their career trajectory, friends, hobbies, savings, personal space, and more. Most couples we knew had no kids, some had one, a few exceptional folks had two. A few couples we knew even commented that they ended up having fewer children than they were planning to because of the difficulty with the one(s) they had.
Then my partner and I moved near relatives to a small, family-friendly town. Most of our neighbors have two kids, some have three, and a few exceptional folks have four or more. Almost everything here revolves around families -- even my company has family events and taking time to take care of kids is normalized.
True, living here did not change our decision to have kids, but it actually did change how many kids we ended up having.
> In my model, people choose to have kids because it's an important life goal for them, and this decision is not very much affected by whether other people might give them a stink eye if their kids run around in a mall.
That's a plausible model, but my model is that people alter their goals based on what they observe happening to other people who pursue those same goals. If young people see their friends, coworkers, and neighbors struggling due to their decision to have children, it seems reasonable that they would reevaluate how important it is to them.
> Are you saying that Israelis are more likely to have kids mainly because Israeli society is more tolerant of kids
Yes.
They are much more tolerant about having kids and making sure to give space to people planning to have kids.
> In my model, people choose to have kids because it's an important life goal for them, and this decision is not very much affected by whether other people might give them a stink eye if their kids run around in a mall.
The more likely you and your peers are to have kids, the more likely you are to live in a society which will accommodate you.
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Heck, Germany gives significantly more monetary and subsidized childcare benefits than Israel (which gives almost nothing), and Israel remains significantly more expensive than much of Germany, yet secular Israelis continues to sustain a much higher fertility rate than similar Germans.
It is hard to describe how kid unfriendly Western society has become.
I think it is more than just tolerance and stink eyes.
Some cultures actively celebrate children and families. They center them in social life in an inclusive way. This covers inclusion in social events, institutions, and civic design.
Kids are not only FUN, but interesting, challenging, and rewarding.
I would be very interested in a breakdown of how the American perception changed over time and what the drivers were.
Since total fertility rates have the same trend all around the world, why restrict the breakdown to Americans?
Seems kind of obvious that doing adult things with freedom during one’s 20s and 30s is deemed more fun than raising children, which necessarily includes foregoing many or all of the adult things due to lack of funds and time.
> Seems kind of obvious that doing adult things with freedom during one’s 20s and 30s is deemed more fun than raising children
This is exactly what I am talking about. Is the obviousness of this statement constant across time? Would someone in the 1960 or 1980 have found it equally obvious?
Alternatively, is it the emphasis on prioritizing fun that changed?
Alternatively, has both the perception and reality of fun given up changed?
Im mostly interested in breakdown in America because I am an American. Some countries match, some dont. If the underlying drivers are common, I would still find them the most relatable and interesting in the American context.
I think in atomic families in the US, more and more people are brought up without really interacting with children much once they are a teen and stop being a child themselves.
What used to be normal teen rights of passage like hanging out with your younger extended family, holding a baby, babysitting the neighbors kids, being a summer camp counselor, helping with youth sports, etc.. are less common.
Teens are busy cramming SATs, doing homework, and polishing up their resume for college.
> Teens are busy cramming SATs, doing homework, and polishing up their resume for college
So are Israelis. Getting into the best IDF units is much more difficult and stressful than getting into an Ivy - it's both academic and physical. But if you get into those units, you will be set for life financially.
Otherwise, your just an infantry grunt who wasted a couple years with no discernible skills and facing a future of (best case) working a dead end job that pays $40k a year in a country with a CoL similar to the Bay Area.
This is why immigrating abroad is still somewhat popular amongst non-techie Israelis (Zohran's electronics store [0] still hits somewhat close to home).
Agreed with your take. The lifestyle choices lead to the costs, and it's sort of a circular problem in the end. My dad's (European immigrant) family lived in one of those multi-generational homes you mentioned, and so there was just far less of this self enforced age segregation you see in atomic families.
From when I was young, I'd see my extended family at least every 2-3 weeks or more, every other holiday was hanging out with people from newborn to 90 years old. Babies and elderly were pretty regular fixtures of my regular life.
By comparison my mom's side which had been here a few generations, I never really saw kids other than when I was a kid myself. I don't think my wife ever held a baby until she was an aunt in her 30s.
Yeah, and it forces kids to need to do "activities" to even see other kids. Makes proper development for kids much more expensive than the essentially free "existing alongside other kids" that happens in the multi-generational home.
In many cities in india, there is somewhat of a revival of this setup. What happened was that people weren't able to get homes with their aspirational square footage in the location they want. So what they end up doing these days is taking their family, the wifes family and the kids and buying 2-3 apartments in the same building. It's the closest you get to a multi-gen home. Will be interesting to see if this trend affects TFR.
Note that the recent +10% increase in TFR in rich indian states (you would expect a decline) is mostly due to better IVF availability/affordability, not due to any of the reasons I mentioned.
> Babies and elderly were pretty regular fixtures of my regular life.
Yeah, this exposure also blunts some of the fear&uncertainty that puts people off of having kids.
> "unless you can give your children a perfect life, you shouldn't bother".
Except in real life, income is negatively correlated with fertility. Meaning, those most able to give their kids the "perfect life" are the least likely to have kids, while those least able to give their kids the "perfect life" are the most likely to have kids.
Yes - because they have high standards! Higher than achievable standards, and more income to give up if they start trading off time from work to actually raising their own children.
Yes, the "cost of having kids" argument is 100% bunk. Africans in abject poverty are having 6-7 kids, while individuals living in the richest countries are having 1 or none even though they clearly can afford many more.
Even within Western countries income is negatively correlated with fertility - those most able to afford kids are having the least number of kids.
I can't agree with you enough. I am so sick and tired of the cost of living argument. Back in the 1800s people were living in tiny cramped places and having 5-6 kids while barely able to afford necessities.
People then also largely worked on family farms and having kids was the economically sensible thing to do. Times change and people expect differently for both their own lives as well as the lives of their children.
FWIW I have one child and financial strain is a big reason I don’t have more.
I would absolutely start looking for an actual wife if I had any certainty I would not be renting at some point, and my parents sold the detached house they raised my brother and myself in to move into a condo closer downtown, so they didn't even profit. But with rent very nearly doubling from 800 to 1400 for a single bedroom apartment since covid, my savings is evaporating and not even going into something I can sell, so I intentionally got with an infertile girlfriend instead.
Yes, Trump is also successfully destroying the demand side of the labor economy at the same time. Is that what his supporters imagined that sentence means? It is nevertheless the case that the prime-age labor force participation rate is bouncing off 85% and getting it any higher than that is impossible.
Even if that’s a metaphor for hyper-personalized education, my point still stands.
Society and the labor market benefits from everyone meeting a baseline level of education across certain areas.
Ideally, everyone that graduates high school can read and write English at a HS level, perform basic algebra, understand percentages and interest rates, etc. For the purposes of school, there’s no need for “diversity of thought” in the school system - we aren’t even delivering on the basics these days.
In the past 50 years, not a single chess world champion started playing chess after the age of 10.
I suspect the article is playing some games with statistics, and in any case I hope people don't come away from this article with the idea that "you can become a chess world champion even if you never touched chess as a child!"
Marx said that concentration of wealth can be a good thing as rich people can invest their money in capital heavy things, such as factories, whereas poor people tend not to do that.
Despite the common image, Marx was a huge fan of capitalism. He thought it was a huge step forward, and not least that capitalism was an absolute necessity to bring production to a level where he believed socialism would become possible... He just also thought it had flaws that he believed would eventually make it obsolete.
Yeah, typically people don’t understand the point of Marx at all.
He saw capitalism as a natural and necessary step before developing communism.
Hence why most criticism of soviet and Chinese communism is fundamentally flawed, since they tried to develop communism in feudal societies.
FWIW I am libertarian leaning, but it is obvious to me capitalism has obvious defects that must be either compensated for, or be done away with entirely.
Capitalism and socialism is a false ideological dichotomy. Mr. Beat has a good video on this. We live in a mixed economy.
Not to fall into the "communism is when free stuff" trope, but...
Most people like public schools, public roads, public transit, public parks, and public libraries.
The benefits of public goods are well known. This is the whole field of public finance economics.
Market failures are also well-known. Negative externalities, moral hazard, adverse selection etc. Hence carbon taxes, congestion charges, and universal healthcare.
In other words, sometimes free trade capitalism works, other times it doesn't, and it's not a mystery when. Marx's whole spiel about contradictions is wrong and largely throws the baby out with the bath water, so to speak.
The notion of a "mixed economy" is really orthogonal to Marx arguments over capitalism, though it is relevant to other socialist ideologues. To Marx, what mattered was the dominant "mode of production", and the result power dynamic resulting from that. The existence of public services doesn't change that. A socialist system with a free market remains socialist. A capitalist system with public services remain capitalist. Calling either "mixed" doesn't alter what the dominant mode of production is.
As for Marx "spiel about contradictions", all he did was take capitalists seriously on the notion that competition in a truly free market will tend to drive down margins once the market is fully exploited.
One can certainly disagree with his conclusions over the consequences of that - e.g. whether societies will succeed in continuing to mitigate the negative effects, or end up in crises, but the core theory of Marx on capitalism was that competition and markets works as advertised.
The existence of different modes of production is an absurd and false dichotomy. Worker co-ops exist today. People are free to make them, and join them if the co-ops will take them.
And by socialist system with a free market do you mean one where private ownership of the modes of production remains legal, but simply isn't chosen, or do you consider banning private ownership compatible with free markets?
> And by socialist system with a free market do you mean one where private ownership of the modes of production remains legal, but simply isn't chosen, or do you consider banning private ownership compatible with free markets?
I would consider public ownership but not state ownership compatible with free markets. The only essential element for free markets is competition with sufficiently low regulation. Some socialist ideologies are inherently incompatible with markets, some are not. E.g. libertarian Marxism and other form of libterian socialism are, because they reject centralised government entirely.
You seem to be supposing a model where most people naturally want kids, but are just discouraged from having kids because...other people might give them a stink eye if their kids run around in a mall.
In my model, people choose to have kids because it's an important life goal for them, and this decision is not very much affected by whether other people might give them a stink eye if their kids run around in a mall.
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