Fascinating paper by Claudia Goldin on drivers of low fertility in advanced economies. Countries where economic progress outstrips social progress (in particular, gender equality in household division of labour) see the most rapid falls in fertility.. www.nber.org/papers/w33311 - ThreadSky

jdportes.bsky.social • 112 days ago

Fascinating paper by Claudia Goldin on drivers of low fertility in advanced economies.

Countries where economic progress outstrips social progress (in particular, gender equality in household division of labour) see the most rapid falls in fertility..

https://www.nber.org/papers/w33311

Comments

asuaki.bsky.social•112 days ago

Was clear to me before I even saw this graph. Providing more free labour on top of paid labour is simply a net loss for women and they opt out. The real chilling part is that men did not adept to this evolution in most parts of the world.

martti.bsky.social•112 days ago

Exactly. Men running around trying to “fix” women when the answer is to respect us…and they say nah.

Okay then. Be alone.

minkysma.bsky.social•112 days ago

This is just common sense. Economic success that doesn't bring everyone along, excludes people categorically and even is based on the continued enlistment of these groups in the enrichment of a few...well people will start declining to participate wherever they have discretion. They will say "Nope!"

cindyabawi.bsky.social•112 days ago

They are fixing to take it all away

jamie.squad51.us•112 days ago

They might try but if the chart is to be believed I don’t think it’s going to work.

jdportes.bsky.social•112 days ago

As a follow-up I highly recommend this by @sjshancoxli.bsky.social for a complementary sociological perspective

https://www.liberalcurrents.com/the-crisis-of-gender-relations/

jdportes.bsky.social•112 days ago

[PS - a number of people in replies/quotes to original post saying "well duh/that's obvious". In part my fault for choice of graph, but Goldin's argument is more complex than just that - it's that this effect is strongest when *economic growth is very fast* but gender norms remain static.]

wndlb.bsky.social•112 days ago

That the economic growth of a Singapore or South Korea outpaces the sociology of the place, let alone bedroom behavior and choices.

shaenon.bsky.social•112 days ago

The de facto situation in many well-off nations, including the U.S., is that women can support themselves if they're single and childless but are pushed into dependency if they're married and/or have kids. The cost of starting a family, economically and personally, is potentially huge.

nerd7132.bsky.social•99 days ago

We need a totally new family structure system. This one's busted beyond repair

newsupdates.bsky.social•111 days ago

Yes. It’s a licence to be bullied.

catanita.bsky.social•112 days ago

In most advanced economies, it has become necessary for families to be two-salary households, which is a lot of work

minkysma.bsky.social•112 days ago

With women still doing most of the extra labor on the home front...now THAT's a lot of labor.

catanita.bsky.social•112 days ago

yes exactly

3dogdad.bsky.social•112 days ago

What is the fertility rate for countries where men do more household work than women? I didn't see that on the chart.

babs05.bsky.social•112 days ago

suzanneorsler.bsky.social•112 days ago

Me too 🙏🏻

5h09un.bsky.social•112 days ago

Has anybody studied that?

newsupdates.bsky.social•111 days ago

Because it doesn’t exist

aaronhoyland.bsky.social•112 days ago

a-g-benson.bsky.social•112 days ago

😂

nowwithmorecheese.bsky.social•112 days ago

Does such a country even exist

fionamullency.social•111 days ago

If it does exist my bet is that it would be Iceland.

gangleri.bsky.social•111 days ago

No, we may be the most equal but that doesn’t mean we’ve actually reached equality.

fionamullency.social•111 days ago

Ah ok. Are you still making more babies than the rest of us? 😀 Last time I had to look at it was 20+ years ago so am out of date! By “us” I mean high-income economies.

gangleri.bsky.social•111 days ago

We were for a while, but it tanked pretty hard recently. Don’t think it can be solely blamed on who does more chores.

3dogdad.bsky.social•111 days ago

I did some research on this. Imaginationland (where men and women share household chores equally) has a fertility rate 3.1 and Youcantbeserioustan (where men actually do 2 hours more per week) is at 5.2. So the trend holds.

kbyrd.bsky.social•112 days ago

So ... what are the data showing? That when societies provide opportunities for women to have careers, but where male partners don't support career women, that there's a sudden drop in fertility?

jjofbc.bsky.social•112 days ago

showing women who have choices are less likely to choose to live under the thumb of a regressive oaf

muralive.bsky.social•112 days ago

So if women feel they don't have enough support in house chores/work then they choose to not have kids?

taiwanomaly.bsky.social•112 days ago

Wondering how Taiwan, one of the “lowest of the low” TFR nations, fits in. I was able to find data suggesting only a +1 hour extra household labor for (fully employed) female partners, which would put it as quite the outlier! Does chart use all women not just FT females?

faithwilson.bsky.social•112 days ago

I'm sure Harrison Butker will get right on this😜

stevenmejia.bsky.social•112 days ago

This paper on economic globalization and fertility may be of interest:

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/00113921231223184

zanello.bsky.social•112 days ago

Economists love averages but segmenting the population would produce more meaningful data. ie, Sweden’s native-born vs immigrant population would have statistically different data for both fertility and the at-home work differential between men and women.

corah.bsky.social•112 days ago

I've said so many times that it's exactly this thats put me off having kids. Knowing I'll be doing basically most of the work not just raising the kids but around the house. Who wants that?!

corah.bsky.social•112 days ago

Plus my job. That's a given. Not working makes you so vulnerable if the relationship doesn't work out.

flxible.bsky.social•112 days ago

Actually, yes, this is why I didn't have kids with my ex. Everything in the relationship up to that point was she had a whim, I had to be the responsible one or it didn't happen, except for grubbing money which she was good at. I'd already raised kids. So, uh, no. Just no.

kzcomments.bsky.social•112 days ago

too much pressure to perform....

andreasbaierl.bsky.social•112 days ago

I doubt that this correlation still holds for the 2023 TFR data Sweden: 1.45, Finland 1.26, Norway: 1.40

jdportes.bsky.social•112 days ago

Yes, but helpfully we in the UK (now 1.45 or so) have dropped right onto the regression line 😉

I haven't looked at all the data but that may just be a shift in the intercept/constant term, with the coefficient remaining similar?

jdportes.bsky.social•112 days ago

[eg latest figure for Korea looks to be about 0.7]

andreasbaierl.bsky.social•112 days ago

yes, could be the case. There was a global drop in TFR but absolute decreases were higher for high-fertility countries (there is an obvious bottom line).
For my taste, the paper contains a lot of theory for describing 20 data points (but that is true for most demographic research)

jdportes.bsky.social•112 days ago

fair

alaska.bsky.social•112 days ago

I wonder what the trend line would look like among the 50 U.S. states.

jdportes.bsky.social•112 days ago

that's an interesting question (to ask Claudia!) although I think you would need a more sophisticated modelling strategy that accounted for endogenous interstate migration (which can safely be ignored here in the cross-country context)