Thread by @kearney_melissa

Seems like every month or so there is another essay suggesting that US births are down bc the price of having kids has gotten too expensive in the US over the past 15 yrs or so.

A look at data & evidence just doesn’t really support that explanation…

https://t.co/DzpITjanY1economicstrategygroup.org/publication/ke…

https://twitter.com/wsj/status/1690611704491892737

Here’s my take on the data & evidence w/ @phil_wellesley -

economicstrategygroup.org/publication/ke…

@phil_wellesley No doubt having kids is expensive - they take time & money. But what changed around 2007 that suddenly made kids more expensive? There doesn’t seem to be a ready answer.
More likely, what changed …

@phil_wellesley is that people entering childbearing years in 2000s and later feel differently about kids/careers/parenting/adult priorities than earlier cohorts…

Note that births are also way down in EU countries with generous child care and paid leave…

@phil_wellesley Here’s a great paper by @mdoepke & coauthors putting forward ideas that might help explain these trends & patterns across high income countries -

nber.org/papers/w29948

@phil_wellesley @mdoepke Why so many countries are now below replacement level fertility & what to do about it is a really important Q.

Unfortunately, there isn’t an easy incremental policy answer or solution.

(Though ⬆️ immigration is an obvious way to immediately increase size of working age pop.)

@phil_wellesley @mdoepke PS - Here are a couple figures from my @AEAjournals paper w/ @phil_wellesley & @parduel of potential interest -

Lack of X-sectional correlation btw chg in births and various factors:

@phil_wellesley @mdoepke @AEAjournals @parduel Shift in childbearing across cohorts: