Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Birth Rates Dropped Most in U.S. Counties Where Home Prices Grew Most

zillow.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 359 posts

Re: Birth Rates Dropped Most in U.S. Counties Where Home Prices Grew Most

#211

Post by brainwad »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #45
baddox wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In pretty much every analysis involving housing costs, I try to mention that percentage of income spent on housing is not a great metric. A better metric is absolute income minus housing costs. All else being equal, I would gladly earn $1 million per year and spend 75% of it on rent, because that remaining 25% would be a heck of a lot of money. I doubt this metric would significantly change the conclusions of this ar…

> I would gladly earn $1 million per year and spend 75% of it on rent No, you wouldn’t. As income goes higher, long-distance transportation becomes (a) more comfortable and (b) smaller as a fraction of income. De-camping to Washington State and commuting to San Francisco doesn’t make sense at $200,000; it does at $1 or 2 million.

If I earnt a million a year, I wouldn't be commuting more than 5 minutes to to work. Commuting sucks.

Re: Birth Rates Dropped Most in U.S. Counties Where Home Prices Grew Most

#212

Post by Swizec »

iainmerrick wrote: post #203
Swizec wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s 2+ hours per day of your life that you’re never getting back. You can always make more money, but time lost is gone forever. How much is 2x5x52 = 520 hours worth to you? If you’re selling your time for even just $100/hour that’s $52,000/year right there. With a 300k salary your hour is worth way more than $100. For your family, it’s priceless.

If you commute by train it’s not all necessarily wasted time. You can read, play games, listen to podcasts, etc. I always read many more books when I commuted than when I didn’t commute. I find myself making new year’s resolutions to read more. But it was easy when I had the commute as a forcing function. (Not having internet on the subway probably helped...)

If you don’t think reading books is valuable enough to do when you aren’t commuting, is it really valuable to you? Or are you just doing the best you can to salvage a shitty situation?

(I audiobook when running so I’m no better)

Re: Birth Rates Dropped Most in U.S. Counties Where Home Prices Grew Most

#213

Post by iguy »

mrighele wrote: post #208
kgwgk wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not about you , it’s about aggregate housing costs. If everyone was earning $1mn and spending $750k on rent, the remaining $250k may not be a lot of money. But of course you’re right, everything else being equal I would also be happy to earn $1bn and spend 99% on rent.

I guess his point is that what is important is the amount of money that is left after paying rent that you can use to raise kids (at least in this context). An homeless person spends 0% of his income in rent, but he's not in a good position to raise kids

What baddox's comment (about only the difference mattering) misses is this: what if you need another bedroom?

In other words, it's ignoring the fact that houses come in many sizes. Anyone spending 75% of income on housing has an enormous incentive to choose a slightly smaller apartment. And is completely unable to contemplate expanding slightly. What if you want two kids... and the second one turns out to be twins? Can their grandmother come to stay for the summer & help out?

If you're spending 20% of income on housing, then you have a lot more room to solve these problems. (And, as others pointed out, to get a different job which pays slightly less, etc.)

Re: Birth Rates Dropped Most in U.S. Counties Where Home Prices Grew Most

#214

Post by collyw »

anoncoward111 wrote: post #90

There's correlation here, but likely not causation. The real underlying cause in the drop in birth rates is an increase in working hours, an increase in commuting times, an increase in college tuition and health care costs, and also an increase in divorce rates. These days, even getting married is an expensive financial arrangement. Having kids is just another layer on that. Housing prices have increased because of c…

Maybe it that people want to do different things with their lives and have more choices available.

I even see higher divorce rates as a positive thing in some ways. 50 years ago it may not have been a valid choice for a woman to leave an abusive husband and set up on her own. Now they have a lot more choice in that regard.

Re: Birth Rates Dropped Most in U.S. Counties Where Home Prices Grew Most

#215

Post by beebmam »

mylons wrote: post #130
hshehehjdjdjd wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You won’t, because you were smart and rented instead. :)

haha, but what if it doesn't pop and we see something like Japan's economy from the early 90's on? High prices that never come down, combined with wage stagnation? We're kind of already seeing it now.

Japanese real estate has been in a hole for a long time. It's significantly cheaper to live in Tokyo than in a major US city now.

Re: Birth Rates Dropped Most in U.S. Counties Where Home Prices Grew Most

#216

Post by lawlessone »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #55
sandworm101 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Births" ... not pregnancies. There is a monumental difference. We know about the births because they are vital stats. But for the pregnancies, at best, we know about the reported pregnancies, the girls who went to doctors and those doctors contributed to the stats. That doesn't cover the girls who did not see doctors nor those who, for whatever reason, did not carry the child to term. >> less than 15% of teenage bir…

>And exactly how many of those occurred less than 9 months after the wedding? Being pregnant and unmarried in 1958, even temporarily, was not a happy place from which to start adult life. People survived just fine. Life isn't all rainbows and unicorns. Raising a kid as a young couple who are only together for the kid probably sucked a lot less in 1958 because there was a heck of a lot less economic pressure (and bad…

>People survived just fine. Life isn't all rainbows and unicorns. Raising a kid as a young couple who are only together for the kid probably sucked a lot less in 1958.

severely naive and rose tinted.

Re: Birth Rates Dropped Most in U.S. Counties Where Home Prices Grew Most

#217

Post by jexah »

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #102
geodel wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While you are right, it is an exceptional scenario to earn that kind of money. So it is statistically insignificant to calculate absolute income minus rents etc.

It's quite significant even within much more common ranges. If you make $60K/year and spend 25% of it on rent, you net nearly 20% more than someone who makes $40K and spends 5% on rent. Looking solely at percentage of income spent on housing will lead you to a very wrong conclusion in that circumstance.

You're forgetting about income tax.

Re: Birth Rates Dropped Most in U.S. Counties Where Home Prices Grew Most

#218

Post by CalRobert »

toasterlovin wrote: post #9

Keep in mind that there is probably a significant selection effect going on there. In other words, if you don't plan on having children, expensive cities are still an option for you. Whereas if you plan on having children, they are not.

Anecdatum, but:

My wife and I live in an expensive city. It's pretty fun.

Except, we just had a child. She's pretty fun too. In fact, we think we might like another.

She makes all the fun stuff in the city irrelevant (not heading to the bars these days), and the bad stuff in the city pretty horrible.

* She's inhaling poison every morning I walk her to creche.

* If I let her ride a bike on our street she will die.

So, thinking to ourselves "this is crap" we decided "let's have dad get a remote job and buy a cheap place in the country". She hates her job anyway.

Lo and behold, a few days after we said "all right, that's it, we're doing it" she gets two interviews for jobs she'd really like, in her sector (museums and heritage) - In the city (around the corner, in fact).

So, if she gets the job we're staying in the city and not having another kid. If she doesn't we're moving to the country and probably having another kid.

In all this, you'll notice I never said "we could find a place with more room within a reasonable distance from her potential new job" - because it's not really an option. They're quite expensive, and on top of that, banks here (not the US) make it quite challenging to get a mortgage. We've managed to save a reasonable deposit (if we could get a mortgage) but can't quite buy a place in the city for cash. We could get a place in the country for cash, though.

Re: Birth Rates Dropped Most in U.S. Counties Where Home Prices Grew Most

#219

Post by AstralStorm »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #168
seattle_spring wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spending your day commuting and living in a car dependent hell hole is smarter, just because you can retire a bit sooner? What alternative universe has HN transformed into?

For NYC it can be an easy 30-45 minute train ride where you are free to occupy your time with something productive.

Something productive that can be done in a car or train you mean. Not, say:

- Being with your kids, spouse or helping them out to school or work

- Housekeeping

- Working out

- Doing anything that requires undisturbed attention

Re: Birth Rates Dropped Most in U.S. Counties Where Home Prices Grew Most

#220

Post by jexah »

nostrademons wrote: post #135
defterGoose wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some alternate reality where everyone's goals and chosen locale are identically that of their parents, yes.

In theory, if your goals and chosen locale are not identical to your parents, you can sell their house for cash and use the cash to buy a house in your chosen locale. In practice, a large percentage of the population are getting screwed because a.) their parents lost their home in the foreclosure crisis, the bank repossessed it, and it got sold to a private investor b.) their parents had inadequate savings and needed…

You could have opened with d, man. Clearly the most common case.
Post reply on HN