People won't have kids even if you pay them

Tuesday, November 28, 2023

Hi everyone,

It's Dylan Scott again, looking out on an early snow here by Lake Erie. Here's the agenda today:

UP FIRST: You apparently can't even pay people to have kids anymore

CATCH UP: It's Giving Tuesday!

UP FIRST

The government can't convince people to have kids

AM YEH/AFP via Getty Images

Birth rates are dropping all over the world, and nobody seems to have great ideas for bringing them back up. The US birth rate has been in decline since the Great Recession; the developed countries of Europe and Asia have in some cases battled slowing population growth for decades.

This is, at least in part, a result of improvements in people's quality of life. People generally don't depend on children economically like they used to, and scientific advances have made it easier to prevent unwanted pregnancies. Having kids is more of a choice than it has ever been.

But fewer children being born does invite long-term risks. Economists warn of a "people shortage" in the future, in which the tax base of a shrinking working-age population is unable to support a growing number of seniors entitled in most developed nations to generous welfare. Older people often rely on younger family members to help care for them; there will be fewer sons and daughters, nieces and nephews around to share that burden.

It's a slow-rolling crisis but an important one. Worryingly, however, it has proven stubbornly resistant to interventions.

Governments across the world recognize the problem and they have tried to fix it. Taiwan has spent $3 billion on expanding its paid parental leave and tax breaks. It's even held singles mixers. Austria gave new mothers two and a half years of maternity leave; Germany guaranteed a spot in public day care for every child over the age of 1.
But these policies don't seem to convince people. They may alter behavior on the margins, particularly people's decisions about when to have kids. But they "don't ultimately affect the number of kids people have," said Alison Gemmill, a professor of population, family, and reproductive health at Johns Hopkins University.
The world today gives people plenty of reasons not to have children. Experts say climate change, war, and the deterioration of democratic norms in parts of the developed world may be contributing to young people's reluctance to procreate. The raw economics are also not helping. About a quarter of Americans say they have or plan to have fewer children than they ideally would, in large part because of the cost.
Experts worry about coercive policies meant to boost the birth rate. Iran has reversed its once-liberal contraception policy, cracking down on abortions and access to birth control to push people to have more babies. China has a history of authoritarian fertility policies; experts fear the country could punish women who don't have enough children.
The focus instead should be on making it easier for people to have the families they want. Many experts believe that the best thing governments can do to increase birth rates is help people have as many kids as they want. Investments in maternal health care, paid family leave, and more support for child care are some of the obvious targets.

Read the rest of Anna North's rundown on the failed experiments to stem the worldwide drop in birth rates.

CATCH UP

Your Giving Tuesday questions, answered

Louise Gubb/Corbis via Getty Images

It is that time of year again: After Black Friday and Cyber Monday comes Giving Tuesday, a chance to focus on giving to others instead of getting for ourselves.

Vox's Dylan Matthews has an ambitious giving goal, one he is urging readers to share: Donating 10 percent of income to highly effective charities. For the average American household, with an income of $75,000, that would be equivalent to $7,500 in donations in the year. That can feel like quite a lot — but it can go a long way. GiveWell, a nonprofit that evaluates charities' effectiveness, estimates that a $5,000 donation to its top charities fund can save one person's life.

I have been donating to GiveWell charities since I first read about them on Vox a few years ago. With an assist from our other Dylan, here's an easy way to think about giving to charity:

Every donation can make a difference. Don't sweat too much whether you're giving 10 percent or 5 percent or even just 1 percent. You might see GiveWell's $5,000 estimate above and think: A "mere" $750 donation isn't making that big of a dent. If you keep giving year after year, your impact is going to add up.
Helping others is a team effort. The whole idea of charity is a collective coming together to support a worthy cause. If you do your part, and others do theirs, together we can make a change. If the world's top 1 percent gave away 10 percent of their income, we could extinguish extreme poverty worldwide.
Make sure your donation counts. Part of what persuaded me to follow Dylan's advice about giving to GiveWell specifically is I don't want to see my money wasted and I'm sure you don't either. GiveWell is rigorous about which charities are part of its top fund and their activities focus on the developing world, where there is more bang for one's buck than in an already-wealthy country like the US.
GiveWell's donations help people, but you can give to aid animals too. Dylan singles out the Humane League as one of his favorite charities in this space, but you can also check out the Animal Charity Evaluators for ideas about effective organizations that may be working on a project close to your heart.

VERBATIM

🗣️ "I think there is a little bit of an economic consensus now that the administration under President Obama didn't quite invest enough [in big public works projects], that there should have been a much more vigorous fiscal response to the financial crisis. And in China, they did not really have anything like this underinvestment response. They had this enormous infrastructure building spree. They built about 20 Japans' worth of high-speed track in the aftermath of 2008. They built about 140 million housing units."

—Dan Wang of Gavekal Dragonomics and Yale Law School, on the divergence between the United States and China after the Great Recession [The Ringer]

AROUND THE WEB

The National Transportation Safety Board is recommending all cars be manufactured to prevent speeding. It may be a tough sell, but the potential benefits are enormous: An estimated 12,000 people die annually in speed-related car accidents, and hundreds of thousands more are injured. [NBC News]
More than 40 Indian construction workers were rescued from a collapsed tunnel. A landslide had trapped the men 17 days ago. They were evacuated one by one through a three-foot pipe and miraculously none of them appeared to be injured. [Times of London]
Who are the Palestinians being released in Gaza hostage exchanges? The Israeli government labels many of them terrorists. Some of the prisoners have been convicted of crimes, which range from attempted murder to "throwing stones" or carrying a knife, but others have been held without being charged with a crime at all. [Washington Post]