Glad to be in @SCMPNews today talking about the recent report Laurie DeRose and I published for @FamStudies :

WORKISM explains why pro-natal policy in Asia seems to be failing. scmp.com/comment/opinio…
The fundamental problem is that while there is not *necessarily* tension between economic growth and stable fertility, there absolutely IS tension between "developmentalist states" and stable fertility (cc @Noahpinion ).
By imposing strict discipline on labor and making extremely large investments in infrastructure and education *beyond some natural rate*, developmentalist states super-charge growth.

But it has a price.
Strict discipline of labor leads to working conditions that are terrible for families in terms of hours, promotion opportunities, and conditions.
Meanwhile, massive educational investments unpaired with massive increases in demand for equally-educated workers (since a lot of the actual economic growth comes from low- and moderate-skilled workers in export-oriented sectors) create perverse competition and wage dynamics.
The wage benefit of a degree in these states is much smaller than in other countries, because there is a massive supply of graduates compared to the actual number of degree-demanding firms.
Because of this oversupply, these countries 1) export skilled labor (i.e. lots of people go to foreign universities or go be doctors in America, etc), and 2) have tournament-style rewards in schooling and work.
This results in the creation of so-called "two-tier labor markets" or alternatively "salaryman" norms: basically, young people are stuck in low quality work with bad wages, no security, and few benefits, and face tournament-style competition for a limited number of secure jobs.
This experience is phenomenally unpleasant for everyone involved, especially children and young adults, and could help explain why stated fertility and marriage intentions in east Asia are so low.
Indeed, many qualitative studies of family preferences in e.g. Taiwan, PRC, and Korea have found young people explicitly name the miserable experience of the educational system, or the competitive pressure of early career, as reasons *not to have children*.
Not, mind you, that having kids would make the *parent* miserable, but that having kids would make *that child* miserable because they'd grow up in the same competitive system.
So this explanation not only explains low fertility *outcomes*, it has the feature of also explaining low marriage and fertility *preferences*.

It also explains why Chinese and Koreans *in America* do NOT have low fertility preferences!
It's not the ethnic background!

It's the developmentalist states!
Note that this is not to say that *all economic development* leads to Asian levels of fertility.
It is widely understood in the development literature that "developmentalist states" are kind of their own thing. You get people talking a lot about Korea, Japan, China, Taiwan, Singapore.... places that adopted conscious export-led-growth strategies.
However, this paradigm of development has become increasingly popular over time and various elements are being adopted fairly widely, especially as China largely seeks to export this developmental (and related political) model.
My argument, then, is that this strategy has a big problem:

It absolutely wrecks the population structure. It drives considerable amounts of out-migration selectively among the most educated, and it pushes fertility to exceptionally low levels.
This is a problem because developmentalist states also engage in "financial repression," which tends to limit the investment and savings options available to households, which in turn leads to lower real rates of return on retirement savings.
This is an issue because the age cohorts in these states are MASSIVELY out of whack implying HUGELY imbalanced retirement systems, which means you've got vast numbers of people aging into retirement with poor savings for it.
Hot tip:

Elder poverty in Japan and Korea (and China!) is WAY above the OECD average, even controlling for background income levels generally.
Observing elder poverty creates more anxiety about the need to save among younger people and BOOM now you're in a low-fertility-trap.
The only way out is for the state to stop engaging in financial repression, adopt a pro-consumption economic approach, and to begin to act as a pro-labor agent. Which is a very cool way of describing "Why the Nordic Model Works," by the way!
BY THE WAY, this is also a convenient explanation for why Communist countries tended to have high birth rates compared to income despite also having extremely progressive family policies re: contraception and abortion!
Perhaps unsurprisingly, birth rates are lower in South Korea than North Korea, lower in South Vietnam than North Vietnam, lower in West Germany than East Germany (Berlin excepted as a weird special case) etc.
Wildly enough, if you compare the Shenzhen hukou-population to Hong Kong Permanent Residents, it's hard to get a good estimate, but Shenzhen with its mega-low TFRs may even beat HK.
The issue is Shenzhen has massive numbers of people who don't have equal legal status or who are "structurally temporary" and so getting a baseline population is tricky.
While Communism still prevailed, birth rates in eastern Europe were quite high!

They fell with the collapse of communism and have not recovered, because the post-Communist regime is less pro-family!
This is not a *defense of communism* by the way, it's just a convenient "for instance" where we can see that *in the extreme case* it appears to really be true that the market-oriented developmentalist program has particularly large fertility effects.
Because those effects largely relate to the creation of norms, institutions, and even population cohorts that will persist for many decades, the effects can even outlive the formal state policies themselves!

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More from @lymanstoneky

29 Apr
Folks I am SO EXCITED for a report that I wrote for @AEI to be published TODAY! This has been a labor of love for over a year, and it is finally AVAILABLE FOR YOUR READING. aei.org/research-produ…
Why has American civic life become so divisive and impoverished in quality? Why is associational life in decline? Why are our intermediating institutions failing?

Using data from 1750-today, I argue the answer is BREAD AND CIRCUSES. aei.org/research-produ…
Basically, I argue that 19th century American life was NOT one of "dense associational life." The "nation of joiners" epithet WRONGLY attributed to de Tocqueville is also just wrong: the associations of "Democracy and America" are not Putnamesque at all!
Read 71 tweets
29 Apr
TIL that it is legal for fraternal societies to discriminate in providing services based on membership status in the group (so for example a Christian mutual-insurance benefit society can limit membership to Christians)...

but it's ILLEGAL to limit EMPLOYMENT to members!
It is apparently actually the law that you can make a "KNIGHTS OF PYTHIAS ONLY" rule for selling your products, but it's illegal to limit *employment and leadership* to that *exact same class*.
Religious organizations have the right to discriminate in religious roles, but it's insane to me that it's a crime for overtly religious organizations with "secular" functions to *ask if the person actively opposes the religion*
Read 5 tweets
29 Apr
The Federal government pays a considerable share of public education costs and declines to offer those funds to support students going to non-public schools (which often reopened!) so I think it’s wrong to say the Federal government isn’t involved.
I think the argument here is not that JUST FEDERALISM will do the trick but that federalism is PART OF a push for a more pluralist government at all levels. So you’d need the Feds to say “our education dollars will go to whatever schools states deem fit to permit”
The reality is that schools which were opening were broadly less likely to be receiving Federal funds, while schools staying closed were getting Federal funds. That the federal government did not issue an explicit policy doesn’t make that imbalance irrelevant!
Read 5 tweets
29 Apr
The reason we tax the things we tax and in practice the whole political debate about tax policy is simply the intersection of ability to pay by the payer and ability to enforce by the state and that’s why all the imputed rent or taxing home production stuff is idiotic.
Economists like to say tax policy is based on idk efficiency or something but there isn’t really any evidence that’s actually what it’s based on... and also no compelling argument that it ethically *should* be based on this
But if you think it’s somehow “unfair” to tax a worker who gets paid to do something but not to tax someone who does that thing in their own home idk maybe you don’t understand the ethical intuition behind taxes
Read 5 tweets
28 Apr
How often to Republicans complain about facially neutral policies *specifically by pointing out* that they help black people?

I don’t *think* that’s common. Indeed it is the rarity of this phenomena that gives rise to the idea of “dog-whistling”!
Republicans may often oppose facially neutral policies on the grounds that they help “undeserving” people, generally meaning “nonworking,” and we know more racial diversity causes assessments of deserving ness to change.
Ie when you know the nonworking are racially other, you’re less likely to support helping them

But that’s not the point made above. The claim made above is Democrats must use explicitly racialized arguments because Republicans do so.
Read 4 tweets
28 Apr
Nice article about Biden's family policy proposals. Virtually all quoted experts emphasize PERMANENCY: nobody wants to see expiration dates on any proposed policies.
But from there, disagreements abound!

I'm very much on the "CASH ALONE" team.

But what's striking to me is the comment made about parental leave by Glass, saying she explicitly wants a generous leave program ***in order to justify*** lower direct cash payments to family.
My quote is basically, "I'm worried we're gonna get half-measures across all policies because the Biden team wants to appease all these interests and the result will be a weak commitment to cash."
Read 9 tweets

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