Thread by @scottsantens

In 1982, Alaska distributed its first dividend to everyone, including kids. Until 1982, the fertility rate had been rising. After 1982, it began falling. I'm not saying the dividend caused the decline, but this destroys the argument that a child UBI would mean births for profit.

Because our poverty line scales by household size, an optimal UBI plan would be designed around that, and so I will continue making the case that the one biggest improvement to @AndrewYang's platform is a child UBI component that replaces the EITC + CTC.

scottsantens.com/why-should-adu…

The fears that a child UBI would lead to women pumping out kids for profit is baseless and quite frankly mysgonistic. The decision to have a child goes far beyond financial incentives, and with an annual cost of at least $10,000, there is no profit in a $4,000/yr child allowance.

Birth rates also vary according to income, with the most kids born to poor and rich parents. So if we lift more people into the middle, and tax them more at the top, it seems even more unlikely that we'd observe any kind of birth spike as a result of further decreasing poverty.

What we can instead expect to observe with a Freedom Dividend of $1k/mo for adults and $333/mo for kids are things like reduced teen pregnancies and more kids born into and raised by economically secure families, which we know saves us from spending even more on kids as adults.

If you're still not sure child UBI is a good idea, consider this on an incentive level compared to now. Now, you basically get nothing if you don't have a kid. So you go from $0 to say $16k. UBI means you already get $12k, and a kid is only $4k more. That's 25% of the incentive.

Finally, I just want to remind everyone that child allowances exist elsewhere. Evidence from Canada shows it seems to have the strongest effects on boys' educational outcomes and girls' mental health outcomes. No child should ever live in poverty. Period.

aeaweb.org/articles?id=10…

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