Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Fertility Rate Roundup #1, published by Zvi on February 27, 2023 on LessWrong.

Previously: On Car Seats as Contraception

[Editor’s Note: This post assumes the perspective that more people having more children is good, actually. I will not be engaging with any of the arguments against this, of any quality, whether they be ‘AI or climate change is going to kill everyone’ or ‘people are bad actually,’ other than to state here that I strongly disagree. AI content will continue later this week.]

A common theme in childhood roundups has been that existing efforts by governments, to increase the number of children born in various countries, have all been pathetically small in magnitude. The amounts spent and methods used pale in comparison to what is at stake. We reliably see signs that the policies work, even when poorly designed and implemented – the same way that when policies attempt to reduce the birth rate, those work as well.

The core problem is the dose is too low.

Yes. If you give parents money, more people choose to be parents.And the amount necessary to make this happen is, if you crunch the numbers, an amount rapidly aging societies can’t afford not to pay.

The other theme is, as I discuss in On Car Seats as Contraception, that there are lots of other government policies that have much bigger impacts on the felt costs of having and raising children, including the lifestyle and status impacts of raising children.

This is a roundup of related efforts that have crossed my desk recently, to illustrate that this is a highly solvable problem.

Childcare

Child care in America continues to be super expensive. People who understand economics understand that this is true because we combine large purchasing subsidies with onerous baseline requirements that drive up costs. Whereas you could (at least partly) solve this problem in the style of Vermont, by doing much less of both these things – removing price barriers for the bottom half and removing subsidizes for at least the top half, instead Giving Parents Money mostly in the form of lower taxes.

I also continue to think that it is madness to subsidize and massively favor professionally provided child care over family provided child care, where as far as I can tell most everyone agrees children are better off with family provided child care, which we are now essentially pricing out of the market. While in other contexts, of course, massively favoring family provided care via the tax code.

Alternatively, you could do what DC does (direct).

Requiring a college degree to provide child care is one of those places I fail the ITT.

Meanwhile Department of State proposes gutting the Au Pair program. They of course refer to this as things like ‘strengthening the educational component.’ By all reports I’ve seen the au pair program is insanely great as it is except it isn’t large enough. Win for everyone involved.

If prospective parents confidently knew they could participate in the Au Pair program, I would predict a substantial increase in the birth rate. This could be a full plan. Houses or apartments and locations could be chosen with this in mind, and life could be much easier to manage and predict.

A study in Finland finds that paying moms to stay home results in them staying home substantially more and working substantially less, including in the long term, whereas subsidizing child care and thus work (and by extension effectively taxing staying at home) has the opposite effect (although the paper’s results seem to not technically be ‘significant’, so salt as needed). You don’t say. You can either prefer to have mothers stay home or prefer to have mothers work, and people respond to incentives. You can get whatever change you want if you care enough. You do need to choose.

Parental Leave

At People’s Policy Project, Matt Bruenig...