America’s TFR is 1.67. I wanted to understand what it would actually take to get back to replacement (2.1), so I built a simulator where you can stack policies and see the projected effects.
Every policy has cited effect sizes (Cohen, Milligan, Raute, etc.) with confidence levels. You can click any policy title to see the methodology and sources. The model includes:
Fiscal tracking (policy costs, deficit impact, GDP effects)
Diminishing returns when stacking similar interventions
Immigration with selection mechanisms and generational convergence
Tax increases and entitlement reform as funding options (with growth drag)
A few “illiberal” policies for analytical completeness
The honest answer seems to be: it’s really hard. Most realistic packages get you to ~1.9-2.0 at enormous cost, and that’s assuming the effect estimates transfer to the US context (they might not).
Built with vanilla JS. Feedback welcome – especially on the methodology or effect estimates I got wrong.
DramaticSimple4315 on
There are problems in the way your GDP projections are assesed. Simply activating a higger corporate tax rate – without tweaking it – and having it at 28% – leads to a dreadful -40% in long term GDP Projections. Not credible imo. The compunding effect is way too sensitive and reproduced in infinity. In the real world an improved fiscal outlook can provide for addition public investment that does not crowd out private enterprise as it focuses on growth-inducive projects such as infrastructure and so on.
Same for a maginal tobin tax – for it to have a 10 point long term impact on GDP is straight from Hayek’ wildest fever dreams.
Either highly ideological assumptions, or the modelling might need to be adjusted in that regard.
Other than that this is an interesting dish you cooked!
ale_93113 on
The problem is that fertility is much much more cultural than it is economic, and you cannot predict cultural changes in society, so this is all not credible
paperfire on
The issue with these pronatal policies is they target couples who are already paired and debating whether to have an extra child because of money. That’s a real group, but it’s a minority of the fertility decline.
The bulk of the drop comes from two things:
1. People who never form a long-term partnership at all
2. People who pair much later and run out of time to have the number of kids they would’ve wanted
These policies are flawed in that they don’t touch these two groups who represent the majority of the fertility crash so you’re not truly addressing the issue.
Ancient-Bat8274 on
It’s more cultural and societal than economic. Even with all the financial incentives it’s not going to fix anything. When housing is 10xs TWO incomes, daycare is a second mortgage, people work 2-3 jobs or 60 hour weeks just to survive not even thrive, families live far away so there’s no village to help, all the jobs are in crowded expensive dirty urban spaces like children become a liability not an asset that many choose not to do. Why sacrifice what little money you’ll get from a career for something that drains your resources and energy? The choice is obvious when you have choices
Prince_Ire on
Managed to get the fertility rate to 2.29 while eliminating the deficit. My plan would probably be considered politically unfeasible, but I support a lot of things IRL that are politically unfeasible.
Wity_4d on
I can only speak from a personal perspective, but at age 30 (about to get married), the main reasons we are seriously debating staying childless are:
1) Both of us work 10 hour days. Not only are we beat by the end of the day, but the resulting potential cost of childcare pushes the price of having a child out of reach. While this may matter less as we make more, that will result in correspondingly longer work days.
2) The increasing cost of goods, decreasing amount of purchasing power, and future issues caused by the climate crisis make us feel as if our potential children are guaranteed to have a lower quality of life than we had.
3) Somewhat related to item 2, but a long term projected consolidation of white collar jobs combined with erasure of social safety nets increases the chance that, even if we give them every opportunity we can, they’ll still end up with less than we have.
I know a lot of this can be explained away as doomer mentality, but these pervasive feelings have greatly chipped away at the desire we’ve had over the past decade together to have kids.
7 Comments
America’s TFR is 1.67. I wanted to understand what it would actually take to get back to replacement (2.1), so I built a simulator where you can stack policies and see the projected effects.
Every policy has cited effect sizes (Cohen, Milligan, Raute, etc.) with confidence levels. You can click any policy title to see the methodology and sources. The model includes:
Fiscal tracking (policy costs, deficit impact, GDP effects)
Diminishing returns when stacking similar interventions
Immigration with selection mechanisms and generational convergence
Tax increases and entitlement reform as funding options (with growth drag)
A few “illiberal” policies for analytical completeness
The honest answer seems to be: it’s really hard. Most realistic packages get you to ~1.9-2.0 at enormous cost, and that’s assuming the effect estimates transfer to the US context (they might not).
Built with vanilla JS. Feedback welcome – especially on the methodology or effect estimates I got wrong.
There are problems in the way your GDP projections are assesed. Simply activating a higger corporate tax rate – without tweaking it – and having it at 28% – leads to a dreadful -40% in long term GDP Projections. Not credible imo. The compunding effect is way too sensitive and reproduced in infinity. In the real world an improved fiscal outlook can provide for addition public investment that does not crowd out private enterprise as it focuses on growth-inducive projects such as infrastructure and so on.
Same for a maginal tobin tax – for it to have a 10 point long term impact on GDP is straight from Hayek’ wildest fever dreams.
Either highly ideological assumptions, or the modelling might need to be adjusted in that regard.
Other than that this is an interesting dish you cooked!
The problem is that fertility is much much more cultural than it is economic, and you cannot predict cultural changes in society, so this is all not credible
The issue with these pronatal policies is they target couples who are already paired and debating whether to have an extra child because of money. That’s a real group, but it’s a minority of the fertility decline.
The bulk of the drop comes from two things:
1. People who never form a long-term partnership at all
2. People who pair much later and run out of time to have the number of kids they would’ve wanted
These policies are flawed in that they don’t touch these two groups who represent the majority of the fertility crash so you’re not truly addressing the issue.
It’s more cultural and societal than economic. Even with all the financial incentives it’s not going to fix anything. When housing is 10xs TWO incomes, daycare is a second mortgage, people work 2-3 jobs or 60 hour weeks just to survive not even thrive, families live far away so there’s no village to help, all the jobs are in crowded expensive dirty urban spaces like children become a liability not an asset that many choose not to do. Why sacrifice what little money you’ll get from a career for something that drains your resources and energy? The choice is obvious when you have choices
Managed to get the fertility rate to 2.29 while eliminating the deficit. My plan would probably be considered politically unfeasible, but I support a lot of things IRL that are politically unfeasible.
I can only speak from a personal perspective, but at age 30 (about to get married), the main reasons we are seriously debating staying childless are:
1) Both of us work 10 hour days. Not only are we beat by the end of the day, but the resulting potential cost of childcare pushes the price of having a child out of reach. While this may matter less as we make more, that will result in correspondingly longer work days.
2) The increasing cost of goods, decreasing amount of purchasing power, and future issues caused by the climate crisis make us feel as if our potential children are guaranteed to have a lower quality of life than we had.
3) Somewhat related to item 2, but a long term projected consolidation of white collar jobs combined with erasure of social safety nets increases the chance that, even if we give them every opportunity we can, they’ll still end up with less than we have.
I know a lot of this can be explained away as doomer mentality, but these pervasive feelings have greatly chipped away at the desire we’ve had over the past decade together to have kids.