Natalism and fertility

Won’t somebody think of the unconceived children?

2024-12-06 — 2025-05-30

Wherein the waning birthrate and rising costs of raising children are examined as a possible rational response, and tensions between parental transformation, population ethics, and longtermist implications are outlined.

economics
ethics
gene
incentive mechanisms
institutions
mind
Figure 1

Birth rate. How? Why?

Pro- and anti-natalism discussions are interesting.

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

1 Ethics of

What kind of ethics trades off the interests of children and parents? Is having children morally good because, for example, it brings new people into the world who experience happy lives? Is having children morally bad because, for example, it imposes costs on existing people and the environment?

Or, if we cast our moral net wider, is eating meat good because it increases demand for animals, which brings more animals into the world?

TBC

1.1 Birth as a transformative experience

Having children turns us into different people, quite literally. How should we think about the person we 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 don’t have any interesting opinions about longtermism at the moment, but it’s a relevant topic for natalism. Longtermists are presumably pro-natalist.

3 Is the best way to protect children to prevent their birth?

This incorporates population growth and safetyism.

Our societally implied preferences on this issue are probably inconsistent. Some argue we prefer to spend huge sums saving existing lives at the expense of potential ones. For example, seatbelt maximalism has been argued to prevent more births than it saves lives (Nickerson and Solomon 2020). See 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’s a rational response to the rising 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.