Huemer Responds on Natalism

I recently shared commentary on Mike Huemer’s essay on natalism. Now Huemer responds. He’s in normal text, I’m in bold-face. Enjoy.

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Some comments on natalism:

(1)

It’s worth pointing out that at least in the U.S., the direct effect of income is apparently to raise fertility. It’s education — the classic correlate of income — that’s anti-natal. Granted, that’s small comfort if you believe that education is essential for economic prosperity. If, however, you accept the heresies of educational signaling and credential inflation, the situation is more hopeful. We don’t have to give up prosperity to reverse falling birthrates; we just have to stop wasting taxpayers’ dollars and young people’s twenties to pretend to teach piles of irrelevant (and often toxic) book learning.

I understood that the thesis of The Case Against Education was only that signaling accounted for some significant fraction of the value of a degree, not that the learning was entirely useless.

I haven’t looked into this, but why would education reduce fertility, apart from increasing career opportunities? Because professors are teaching students that having kids is bad? I’m sure that has some negative effect, but my impression was that the effect applies to all kinds of schooling, not just schooling at recent left-wing colleges where this might be taught.

Btw, the competition between career and family is not only about income. It could also be about interestingness of one’s career. E.g., people might put off having kids to go to grad school, because they want a more interesting (but not necessarily well-paid) career.

(2)

Much too agnostic. Basic Darwinism, combined with the fact that fertility is heritable, should make us highly confident that low fertility won’t last more than a few centuries. The rebound is coming.

Yes, we can hope that selection pressure will result in future generations who like kids more and therefore have more of them. I’m just not sure that will happen. I’m not sure there are enough genes for “really wanting to have lots of kids” in the gene pool. Heritability only means that what variation there is in fertility is to some degree explained by genetic variation; that doesn’t tell us whether there is enough variation to get a desired result.

It may be that nearly all humans are built such as to not want to have children if put in conditions of extreme wealth (and given lots of interesting other things to do). It’s just that a bunch of people are not yet in such conditions. That’s compatible with the possibility that, in less extreme conditions, people’s desire for kids varies with genetic variations.

Anyway, complete human extinction is an unlikely outcome. But there are some societies that are in serious trouble, in the pretty near future. South Korea has 0.9 fertility. Singapore has 1.0. I wouldn’t like to see either of these societies evaporate, even if the rest of humanity continues.

Yes, Mike Huemer appears in Build, Baby, Build, coming in April 2024!

(3)

Though this sounds entirely plausible, it’s only half the story. In prosperous nations, humans don’t just have better career options; they have better parenting options! Food preparation, laundry, and electronic babysitters all make raising kids far easier than it used to be.

True, but then people raise their standards for what counts as good parenting. My armchair impression is that raising kids in poor countries isn’t a big burden because the parents don’t do all that much, and the kids actually help them with work. In rich countries, we can’t put our kids to work, and we (falsely, as you note) think we have to do lots more for the kids to count as good parents. So my guess is that overall, kids impose a greater burden in richer countries.

(4)

And in contrast to earlier eras, modern parents rarely have to witness their children suffer, much less die. …

True; however, it seems that the risk of having some of your kids die increases fertility. At least, that’s the message I got from Amartya Sen; people have extra kids to compensate for the child mortality.

(5)

We should distinguish between “a good time in the short run” and “a good time in the long run.” Yes, lots of casual sex is fun in the short-run, especially for males. That said, human beings, including males, seem  much happier in long-run relationships.

Agreed. I wrote here about the importance of marriage:

What's So Great About Marriage?

My point was that the spread of liberal values causes people to marry later and/or be less likely to marry at all. Maybe that’s partly because young people have false beliefs or imprudent tendencies. But anyway, given those beliefs and tendencies, liberalism reduces/delays marriage, which in turn reduces fertility.

(6)

You can acknowledge that lots of people — especially immature young adults — make poor life choices while respecting their right to do so.

Agreed. However, I think it’s part of modern liberalism that one doesn’t judge those people too harshly either. You don’t get on their case, call them “immoral”, etc.

(7)

Again, you can reframe the conservative view as, “In the long run, family typically matters more for your happiness than either career success or what passes for ‘personal fulfillment.’” And a pile of happiness research backs this up. Indeed, the main thing most people like about their jobs is making friends and being part of a team, not the tasks themselves.

Sure. That’s compatible with the idea that your career is of comparable importance to family life; that’s just a comment on what about your work life is valuable.

I’m not sure the conservative view is what you say. I think the conservatives might say that it isn’t about your happiness at all. That’s a selfish concern. They might say that having a family is just intrinsically good, that it’s part of your role, that God wants you to do it, etc.

Agreed that family life is very important to most people’s happiness, and is probably undervalued by young people.

(8)

The correct, rational view is that there are medium-to-large differences between men and women on almost everything important. Gender stereotypes remain highly accurate.

Of course. I certainly never meant to deny biological sex differences. I discussed some of them here:

In Defense of Nature

and here:

Why Humans Fight

I just meant that women don’t have to remain barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen. It’s totally cool for women to want a career. It’s also cool if they don’t. Individuals should decide what’s best for themselves. Conservatives of previous generations didn’t agree with that.

(9)

In practice, traditional religion is pro-natalist. Religious people do have more kids. In theory, however, traditional religion’s commitment to natalism is mixed at best: See the glorification of celibacy in many religions.

Fair. St. Paul says that complete celibacy is the best option, followed by marriage; premarital sex is of course sinful. But given that most human beings are not remotely prepared to accept celibacy, that message winds up being a pro-marriage message.

(10)

Besides the complexity of the moral arguments, there is good evidence that women overestimate the negative effects of unwanted pregnancies. Women who say, “A baby would ruin my life” are typically deeply mistaken.

Completely plausible. Even more importantly, they probably don’t realize how much they’re going to love the baby and the emotional rewards that will result.

(11)

Again, what if a lot of this is just social contagion of troubled youths? We can be accepting of the small share of the population that really is happier living a non-straight lifestyle while wondering if the recent rise of LGBT is “obviously fine.”

Of course. I’m saying it’s fine to be (genuinely) gay or trans. I’m not saying that it’s fine to try to convince other people that they’re gay or trans when they’re not. Abigail Shrier’s recent book has evidence about the social contagion effect: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B084YC53BR/. I am highly skeptical of the ability of social pressure to make people actually gay or trans, but Shrier shows evidence that it can make people say and even believe that they are trans.

(12)

At least in the First World, the effect of parenting on adult outcomes is much lower than most people believe. A large share of unpleasant parental “investment” is therefore better seen as waste. …

Most parents select their family size based on myopic feelings of exhaustion with young kids. The rational approach, however, is to weigh costs and benefits over your entire lifetime. …

Population also has large positive effects on innovation, choice, and retirement systems. And in economic terms, most of these are not merely benefits, but positive externalities that self-interest alone tends to undersupply.

All sounds right.

In this piece, I argue that a good solution is to encourage fertility with tax credits rather than baby bonuses. The more taxes you normally pay, the bigger the gain. Indeed, I like the idea of giving parents a full tax holiday for a year or more for every kid they have.

I am unclear about the difference between a tax credit and a “baby bonus”. But I had in mind a larger tax deduction, whereby, if you have a kid, then you get to subtract some amount from your taxable income for purposes of calculating your income tax.

Maybe, rather than a fixed dollar amount, you should get to deduct a fixed percentage of your income per dependent child that you have, on the theory that the cost of raising kids goes up with your income. I would do this every year, rather than a big credit at the beginning (so people don’t, e.g., father kids then abandon them). I wouldn’t give a full tax holiday, though; that sounds like too much.