[next quote is reformatted so that I can make it a quote]
This can be interpreted in two ways: wealthier people see children as higher cost and elect not to have children because of the costs; or wealthier people are not under as much economic pressure so have fewer children because they can afford to get away with it. At the margin, both of these things are going on at the same time.
Glad to see we agree—and again, the important point for my argument isn’t whether most of existing low fertility can be attributed to the existing cost of kids, but whether adding extra cost per kid will reduce the number of kids (as the law of demand predicts).
The capacity to home-school is roughly all-or-nothing. Home-schooling one kid immediately scales to home-schooling all your kids.
I’m sure this can’t be exactly right, but I do think that the low marginal cost of home-schooling was something I was missing.
This means that, for a given family, you essentially chose between having kids and home-schooling all of them (expected-cause of home-schooling doesn’t scale with number of children) or having no kids (maximum social penalty). Electing for “no kids” seems like a really undesirable trade-off for most people.
I continue to think that you aren’t thinking on the margin, or making some related error (perhaps in understanding what I’m saying). Electing for no kids isn’t going to become more costly, so if you make having kids more costly, then you’ll get fewer of them than you otherwise would, as the people who were just leaning towards having kids (due to idiosyncratically low desire to have kids/high cost to have kids) start to lean away from the plan.
This leads me to believe that, compared to other pressures against having kids, stigmas against home-schooling will have an unusually low marginal effect.
(I assume you meant pressure in favour of home-schooling?) Please note that I never said it had a high effect relative to other things: merely that the effect existed and was large and negative enough to make it worthwhile for homeschooling advocates to change course.
I continue to think that you aren’t thinking on the margin, or making some related error (perhaps in understanding what I’m saying). Electing for no kids isn’t going to become more costly, so if you make having kids more costly, then you’ll get fewer of them than you otherwise would, as the people who were just leaning towards having kids (due to idiosyncratically low desire to have kids/high cost to have kids) start to lean away from the plan.
Yeah, I was thinking in broad strokes there. I agree that there is a margin at which point people switch from choosing to have kids to choosing not to have kids and that moving that margin to a place where having kids is less net-positive will cause some people to choose to have fewer kids.
My point was that the people on the margin are not people who will typically say”well we were going to have two kids but now we’re only going to have one because home-schooling”; they’re people who will typically say “we’re on the fence about having kids at all.” Whereas most marginal effects relating to having kids (ie the cost of college) pertain to the former group, the bulk of marginal effects on reproduction pertaining to schooling stigmas pertain to the latter group.
Both the margin and the population density at the margin matter in terms of determining the effect. What I’m saying is that the population density at the margin relevant to schooling-stigmas is notably small.
However, I’ve actually been overstating my case here. The childfree rate in the US is currently around 15% which is much larger than I expected. The childfree rate for women with above a bachelor’s degree is 25%. In absolute terms, these are not small numbers and I’ve gotta admit that this indicates a pretty high population density at the margin.
(I assume you meant pressure in favour of home-schooling?) Please note that I never said it had a high effect relative to other things: merely that the effect existed and was large and negative enough to make it worthwhile for homeschooling advocates to change course.
Per the above stats, I’ve updated to agree with this claim.
[next quote is reformatted so that I can make it a quote]
Glad to see we agree—and again, the important point for my argument isn’t whether most of existing low fertility can be attributed to the existing cost of kids, but whether adding extra cost per kid will reduce the number of kids (as the law of demand predicts).
I’m sure this can’t be exactly right, but I do think that the low marginal cost of home-schooling was something I was missing.
I continue to think that you aren’t thinking on the margin, or making some related error (perhaps in understanding what I’m saying). Electing for no kids isn’t going to become more costly, so if you make having kids more costly, then you’ll get fewer of them than you otherwise would, as the people who were just leaning towards having kids (due to idiosyncratically low desire to have kids/high cost to have kids) start to lean away from the plan.
(I assume you meant pressure in favour of home-schooling?) Please note that I never said it had a high effect relative to other things: merely that the effect existed and was large and negative enough to make it worthwhile for homeschooling advocates to change course.
Yeah, I was thinking in broad strokes there. I agree that there is a margin at which point people switch from choosing to have kids to choosing not to have kids and that moving that margin to a place where having kids is less net-positive will cause some people to choose to have fewer kids.
My point was that the people on the margin are not people who will typically say”well we were going to have two kids but now we’re only going to have one because home-schooling”; they’re people who will typically say “we’re on the fence about having kids at all.” Whereas most marginal effects relating to having kids (ie the cost of college) pertain to the former group, the bulk of marginal effects on reproduction pertaining to schooling stigmas pertain to the latter group.
Both the margin and the population density at the margin matter in terms of determining the effect. What I’m saying is that the population density at the margin relevant to schooling-stigmas is notably small.
However, I’ve actually been overstating my case here. The childfree rate in the US is currently around 15% which is much larger than I expected. The childfree rate for women with above a bachelor’s degree is 25%. In absolute terms, these are not small numbers and I’ve gotta admit that this indicates a pretty high population density at the margin.
Per the above stats, I’ve updated to agree with this claim.