Figure 1

Birthrate. How? Why?

Pro- and anti-natalism discussions are interesting.

I do not have policy agendas regarding these issues, merely questions.

1 Ethics of

What is an ethics that trades off the interests of children and parents? Is having children a moral good because e.g. it brings new people into the world who experience happy lives? Is it a moral bad because e.g. it imposes costs on existing people and the environment?

Or if you want to cast your moral net wider, is eating meat good because it induces demands for animals that brings more animals into the world?

TBC

1.1 Birth as a transformative experience

Having kids makes you into a different person, quite literally. How should you think about the person you will become? This is the problem of transformative experiences.

1.2 Utilitarianism and population ethics

Parfit’s Repugnant Conclusion

For any possible population of at least ten billion people, all with a very high quality of life, there must be some much larger imaginable population whose existence, if other things are equal, would be better even though its members have lives that are barely worth living

2 Longtermism

I have no interesting opinions about longtermism at the moment, but it is a relevant topic for natalism. Longtermists are presumably pro-natalist.

3 Is the best way to protect children to prevent them?

Incorporating population growth and safetyism.

Our societally-implied preferences on this issue are probably not consistent. There are arguments that we prefer to spend huge amounts of money on saving existing lives at the expense of potential ones; e.g. seatbelt maximalism has been argued to prevent more births than it saves lives (). Cf think of the children.

4 Practical economics of children

Why is the birth rate tanking? Is that bad? There might be many things going on here, but my first guess is that it is a rational response to the increasing cost of raising children.

5 Incoming

Figure 2

“Maybe the low fertility rate here is because people are smart. The risk-free asset in a diversified portfolio is zero kid.”

6 References

Bailey, Currie, and Schwandt. 2022. The Covid-19 Baby Bump: The Unexpected Increase in U.S. Fertility Rates in Response to the Pandemic.” w30569.
Blanc, and Wacziarg. 2019. Change and Persistence in the Age of Modernization: Saint-Germain-d’Anxure 1730-1895.” Working Paper. Working Paper Series.
Nickerson, and Solomon. 2020. Car Seats as Contraception.” SSRN Electronic Journal.
Parfit. 1984. “Reasons and Persons Oxford: Clarendon.”
Spolaore, and Wacziarg. 2006. The Diffusion of Development.” Working Paper. Working Paper Series.
———. 2019. Fertility and Modernity.” Working Paper. Working Paper Series.