Lyman Stone 石來民  🦬 🦬 🦬

This puts a little bit of perspective into parenting trends. For all that parenting is getting more and more intensive, it's actually getting *less* expensive as a share of income.

This puts in perspective the idea that financial burdens are the main driver of low fertility. To the extent it's true, it's not because parenting got pricier. It's because other stuff got pricier.

Other stuff, that is, which is either more desired, or more necessary, like healthcare or a college degree.

Or, it's because stuff which did NOT get pricier got more desirable to consume. I'm thinking here particularly of international travel.

To be clear, I don't think there's nothing "there" in terms of the cost story. Time-costs have risen, but are a bit harder to graph. And even if cost/income has fallen, childcare costs/entertainment costs may have fallen. Or childcare costs/consumption activity costs.

The cost of having a child *relative to other expenditures* may have risen, even if the cost *relative to income* has fallen. It's just striking to me *how much it has fallen.*

However, this should give you pause on the "THE LABOR MARKET DOESN'T MAKE IT POSSIBLE TO HAVE A FAMILY" hysterics. It takes fewer years of income to raise a child today than it did in 1960. A LOT fewer.

And I should note, USDA's method here isn't to make some abstracted cost of a child. Basically, they review *what families actually spend* on kids, and take that as the norm. So this trend *fully incorporates* changes in parent expectations about stuff to buy for kids.

In other words, in terms of how many hours a parent would have to work to pay for a child's upbringing in the "normal way" of their time, it has gotten EASIER to raise a family, NOT harder.

This doesn't mean there's no labor market story to be told. It just means the story isn't, "The labor market simply doesn't provide enough money to raise kids."

It's more like, "The labor market doesn't provide enough money to pay for healthcare, student loans, smartphones, internet, and kids." I'll cc @WilcoxNMP and @oren_cass and @hamandcheese here as this probably interests them.

By the way, I list those specific categories, because according to the Consumer Expenditure Survey, those are the specific spending categories that have risen the most since 2000. And also "Social services, nonprofits, and religious institutions" as well as "Foreign travel"

The fact that foreign travel is one of the biggest gainers in terms of American consumption habits since 2000 is *chef kiss*.

Good question. My income metric is "Average personal income." So it's simply the total amount of national personal income, divided by the number of people. https://twitter.com/tudsy/status/1085112902481338368 …

Generally speaking, household income in a 2-adult household, whether 2-earner or otherwise, is MUCH higher than average personal income. So this is overstating the years of a family's labor required to pay for a kid.

So VOILA, there's your problem! The problem isn't "families don't have enough income." The income is there! It's just not there ***in the form of median male wages***. It arrives to families in the form of female wages, transfer payments, or non-labor income.

Or in the form of non wage/salary income, i.e. freelancers, business ownership, investment income, etc.

But to be clear, the big driver here is "female income." Now, it's widely demonstrated that men and women get married at lower rates when male incomes are lower relative to females. This is true even in highly egalitarian societies.

But that's now a very different argument, quite far afield from the simple household costs argument. You're now verging into the "culture matters" terrain, a place where, whatever our other disagreements, I am in agreement with @oren_cass for example. It does matter.

My broad point is just to note that ***the rising cost of childrearing cannot in fact account for any share of lower fertility without a lot of other variables included***. You get into like a relative price/shift share type argument pretty fast, and then you're into values again

IN OTHER WORDS: The labor market definitely allows people to raise children. In fact it allows it easier than any time in history. It just isn't conducive to people settling down, getting married, and *feeling* secure.

I should note here that weekly earnings are a popular measure for folks aiming to paint a dire picture. We can use a different measure: average income among people of a given sex earning under $250k.

Got this question. No, this does not factor in tax credits and stuff like that.https://twitter.com/WMiddleton1837/status/1085118978798878721 …

Oh, and I should add, those lines are for people ages 20-60.

So again, it just isn't the case that family incomes are too low to support having kids. Cost of raising a child relative to incomes is well within historic norms.

Based on this measure, the golden age for child-rearing in terms of low costs was.... the late 1980s and early 1990s! Maybe that fits your priors. But I don't think that's what most people are arguing.