It is sort of weird how little attention the changing age demographics of mothers (and also fathers) gets, given that empirically almost all the decline in fertility is due to declines in teen and early to mid 20s pregnancy, with older ages at historical peaks. Once you realize this the obvious causes of low TFR seem to be stuff like education/long career paths etc. resulting in later family formation.
Any proposed solutions to our collapsing demographics should start by addressing the point Bryan (and others) raised. We need to get very creative and quickly-- think streamlining K-12 would do wonders.
I have seen this explanation for the education—->low fertility effect quite a lot of times. No idea you could have not thought of it sooner or at least seen someone mention it.
My wife and I had our first child during my junior year and her senior year in college in the US. The second child came 2 months after my graduation. It was very difficult, and I ended-up dropping-out of a PhD program within the first semester due to the pressures of being a breadwinner. I have no regrets whatsoever, as going on to get a PhD in computer science would have been possibly the worst financial decision of our adult lives, missing out on 4 or 5 years of a booming software sector in the early 2010s. Add that to having our four children being 4 of the best decisions of our lives, and we feel incredibly blessed with the way things have turned out.
Solid post. Two interesting “counter examples.” 1) Latter-day Saints have children while still in graduate school. Education levels are still pretty high. 2) Charles Darwin’s wife gave birth to 10 children. One as late as age 48.
In conclusion, you can still be a hard working scholar and have a bunch of kids, but it takes a culture of fertility to bring it about. Better religion might be a better way of increasing fertility. Your self-help program might benefit from a few fertility tweaks.
The question isn't whether it has gone down, because obviously it has for everyone (per Catherine Schulmann, "Second demographic transition comes for everyone"). The question is whether it has gone down _less_ than for educated people, and that seems to be true.
Theoretically every aspect of having a kid can be stigmatized! Women and men when conceptualized as a single entity in marriage/ partnership are stigmatized for never having kids and focusing on school AND having kids while in school AND having kids while not in school! I agree that the stigma concerns money and people who immediately launch into rhetoric that blames low fertility on perceived lack of inclination toward responsibility are not seeing the whole picture.
I don't know that I've seen it explicitly discussed in anything academic, but I feel like there's been plenty of discussion about the mechanism of extending the time to complete education de facto extending the time before trying to get pregnant?
But I don't think the issue is the stigma against having kids before finishing education. I think it's mainly about money. There is a stigma against getting married before finishing your bachelor's degree, which basically has the same effect as a stigma against having babies when paired with the stigma against having babies out of wedlock. I do think the stigma against getting married before a bachelors degree is largely that it's associated with low status, but I think part of the way it became low status is the stigma against proposing to a wife that you can't financially support. We had one friend that got married before their senior year of college and everybody was just flabbergasted that they were married and still being supported by their parents.
But being married in graduate school is much less uncommon. Outside of medical students, I don't think there is an educational track that can credibly claim that it actually gets easier to manage kids time-wise after starting a job. People that want kids should, absent money concerns, want to have kids in grad or professional school when it will be easier. But they don't, partly because how are they going to pay for daycare while their in school? And probably a bigger part of the money thing is that people want to enjoy a few years with money before they have the responsibility of kids. It was pretty common in our circle of friends to go on a pretty big trip or two in the last year before trying to get pregnant, knowing that it may be years before they can do certain types of trips again.
And the people in our social circle that had kids immediately after finishing school (or sometimes in school if it was medical or law school), were uniformly well off with parents willing and able to help not just financially but with watching kids. Having kids just would not impact their lifestyle the same way, so there wasn't a reason to wait for them and plenty of reasons to have kids sooner (e.g., younger and healthier grandparents to help babysit).
This is actually bad news because I think the only way to really address this is to reduce credentialism and encourage people to finish school earlier. Changing any perceived stigma about having kids before completing education won't address the money issues.
Theoretically every aspect of having a kid can be stigmatized! Women and men when conceptualized as a single entity in marriage/ partnership are stigmatized for never having kids and focusing on school AND having kids while in school AND having kids while not in school! I agree that the stigma concerns money and people who immediately launch into rhetoric that blames low fertility on perceived lack of inclination toward responsibility are not seeing the whole picture.
It would be interesting to see if it would be possible to get students to have kids or if the perceived discrimination in hiring having a kid results in will still cause deferment
It is sort of weird how little attention the changing age demographics of mothers (and also fathers) gets, given that empirically almost all the decline in fertility is due to declines in teen and early to mid 20s pregnancy, with older ages at historical peaks. Once you realize this the obvious causes of low TFR seem to be stuff like education/long career paths etc. resulting in later family formation.
"But my obvious-once-you-think-about mechanism implies an extra point of leverage: undermine the norm against students having babies."
Or, undermine the norm that having a lot of education is needed for most people in the labor market.
Implies that fertility is actually tractable. We know that K-12 is incredibly wasteful for college-bound students. Learning could be much faster
If we can create a route to a bachelors degree at even 19 or 20, that is a 20% increase in available easy fertility window (no IVF/etc needed).
Any proposed solutions to our collapsing demographics should start by addressing the point Bryan (and others) raised. We need to get very creative and quickly-- think streamlining K-12 would do wonders.
I have seen this explanation for the education—->low fertility effect quite a lot of times. No idea you could have not thought of it sooner or at least seen someone mention it.
My wife and I had our first child during my junior year and her senior year in college in the US. The second child came 2 months after my graduation. It was very difficult, and I ended-up dropping-out of a PhD program within the first semester due to the pressures of being a breadwinner. I have no regrets whatsoever, as going on to get a PhD in computer science would have been possibly the worst financial decision of our adult lives, missing out on 4 or 5 years of a booming software sector in the early 2010s. Add that to having our four children being 4 of the best decisions of our lives, and we feel incredibly blessed with the way things have turned out.
Can't you just compare the fertility rate of uneducated versus educated people with the same level of income?
Solid post. Two interesting “counter examples.” 1) Latter-day Saints have children while still in graduate school. Education levels are still pretty high. 2) Charles Darwin’s wife gave birth to 10 children. One as late as age 48.
In conclusion, you can still be a hard working scholar and have a bunch of kids, but it takes a culture of fertility to bring it about. Better religion might be a better way of increasing fertility. Your self-help program might benefit from a few fertility tweaks.
I suggest that Charles Darwin’s wife having a child at age 48 was unusual, especially at the time.
It would be fascinating if the opposite were true. It makes me wonder how age of last birth has changed over time. Who wants to dig up that data?
Here’s my reference.
https://substack.com/profile/39148689-scott-gibb/note/c-74450510?utm_source=notes-share-action&r=nb3bl
Easy test for this: Has fertility gone down for those without a college degree (once you control for disposable income)?
The question isn't whether it has gone down, because obviously it has for everyone (per Catherine Schulmann, "Second demographic transition comes for everyone"). The question is whether it has gone down _less_ than for educated people, and that seems to be true.
Theoretically every aspect of having a kid can be stigmatized! Women and men when conceptualized as a single entity in marriage/ partnership are stigmatized for never having kids and focusing on school AND having kids while in school AND having kids while not in school! I agree that the stigma concerns money and people who immediately launch into rhetoric that blames low fertility on perceived lack of inclination toward responsibility are not seeing the whole picture.
Yep, something that I tried to cover when consolidating every perspective on the fertility crisis: https://ronghosh.substack.com/p/consolidating-every-perspective-on
I don't know that I've seen it explicitly discussed in anything academic, but I feel like there's been plenty of discussion about the mechanism of extending the time to complete education de facto extending the time before trying to get pregnant?
But I don't think the issue is the stigma against having kids before finishing education. I think it's mainly about money. There is a stigma against getting married before finishing your bachelor's degree, which basically has the same effect as a stigma against having babies when paired with the stigma against having babies out of wedlock. I do think the stigma against getting married before a bachelors degree is largely that it's associated with low status, but I think part of the way it became low status is the stigma against proposing to a wife that you can't financially support. We had one friend that got married before their senior year of college and everybody was just flabbergasted that they were married and still being supported by their parents.
But being married in graduate school is much less uncommon. Outside of medical students, I don't think there is an educational track that can credibly claim that it actually gets easier to manage kids time-wise after starting a job. People that want kids should, absent money concerns, want to have kids in grad or professional school when it will be easier. But they don't, partly because how are they going to pay for daycare while their in school? And probably a bigger part of the money thing is that people want to enjoy a few years with money before they have the responsibility of kids. It was pretty common in our circle of friends to go on a pretty big trip or two in the last year before trying to get pregnant, knowing that it may be years before they can do certain types of trips again.
And the people in our social circle that had kids immediately after finishing school (or sometimes in school if it was medical or law school), were uniformly well off with parents willing and able to help not just financially but with watching kids. Having kids just would not impact their lifestyle the same way, so there wasn't a reason to wait for them and plenty of reasons to have kids sooner (e.g., younger and healthier grandparents to help babysit).
This is actually bad news because I think the only way to really address this is to reduce credentialism and encourage people to finish school earlier. Changing any perceived stigma about having kids before completing education won't address the money issues.
Theoretically every aspect of having a kid can be stigmatized! Women and men when conceptualized as a single entity in marriage/ partnership are stigmatized for never having kids and focusing on school AND having kids while in school AND having kids while not in school! I agree that the stigma concerns money and people who immediately launch into rhetoric that blames low fertility on perceived lack of inclination toward responsibility are not seeing the whole picture.
It would be interesting to see if it would be possible to get students to have kids or if the perceived discrimination in hiring having a kid results in will still cause deferment