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Child-safety laws may reduce the birth rate

economist.com

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Re: Child-safety laws may reduce the birth rate

#11

Post by toomuchtodo »

minikites wrote: post #8

The unspoken assertion is that we want a high birth rate. Why do we want a high birth rate?

> Why do we want a high birth rate?

Economic pyramid scheme, such as entitlements and economic growth mandates that rely on it.

A lower birth rate is preferred (less resource contention and impact on the ecosystems we rely on for survival), we should be driving it down with economic incentives (faster than it’s falling naturally). It happens naturally as women are empowered and educated (per Our World In Data [1]).

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate#what-explains-the-...

Re: Child-safety laws may reduce the birth rate

#12

Post by giantg2 »

minikites wrote: post #8

The unspoken assertion is that we want a high birth rate. Why do we want a high birth rate?

Because our entire capitalist economic system is built on consumption, which is largely reliant on the birth rate being above the replacement rate (2.1). This is especially important for some sectors like durable consumer goods, housing, etc.

Re: Child-safety laws may reduce the birth rate

#13

Post by fosap »

svachalek wrote: post #7

This reads like a textbook example of "correlation is not causation". You think there'd be ...some? people talking about how they decided not to have a child because she/he wouldn't fit in the car if it's going to have a measurable effect on birth rates but at least personally I have never, ever heard this one.

Please RFA.

"The reduction they saw was confined to households that did actually have access to a car"

"They discovered that tightening these laws had no detectable effects on the rate of first and second children".

Also, if i understand it correctly, you have about 50 quasi experiments, one for each state.

Re: Child-safety laws may reduce the birth rate

#14

Post by kube-system »

> They discovered that tightening those laws had no detectable effects on the rates of births of first and second children, but was accompanied by a drop, on average, of 0.73 percentage points in the number of women giving birth to a third while the first two were young enough to need safety seats. That may not sound much, but it is a significant fraction of the 9.36% of women in the sample who did become third-time mothers.

> The authors also made two other pertinent observations. The reduction they saw was confined to households that did actually have access to a car. And it was larger in households where a man was living with the mother. The latter point is relevant, they think, because this man would take up space in a vehicle that could otherwise be occupied by a child.

Yikes. The front passenger seat is not an acceptable place to put a car seat anyway.

Re: Child-safety laws may reduce the birth rate

#15

Post by irateswami »

This is an actual conversation I had to have with my wife, having a third kid definitely requires a larger vehicle as the vast majority of cars today simply don't work for a family of five. Child car seats are too wide and the backseats of most cars are too narrow, and the price jump to a vehicle that would be able to handle three child car seats at once is enormous. Throw in some dogs, a couple pieces of luggage that any nuclear family would have to tote around, plus a stroller and it becomes prohibitively tight.

It took me MONTHS of shopping and playing child-seat-jenga in various car dealership lots before I finally found a sedan that was actually able to hold everything (thank you, Volkswagen, for making an actual family sedan that could fit a family!).

Re: Child-safety laws may reduce the birth rate

#16

Post by munificent »

svachalek wrote: post #7

This reads like a textbook example of "correlation is not causation". You think there'd be ...some? people talking about how they decided not to have a child because she/he wouldn't fit in the car if it's going to have a measurable effect on birth rates but at least personally I have never, ever heard this one.

I have elementary school age kids, so I know lots of parents. Anecdotally, there is a big jump between having two kids and having more than two. I've had a lot of conversations with friends on their third pregnancy about having to upgrade to a bigger car because with the size of car seats, you can't fit three of them in one row of a typical sedan. And I've likewise had conversations with parents who decided (like my wife and I did) to stop at two, and many of the reasons are fundamentally about logistics and resources. Transportation is a real component of that.

If you take a step back, it does make sense. The difference between zero kids and one is a major qualititative lifestyle change. It's the transition from parent to non-parent. It means not easily going out at night, schooling, etc. Everything changes.

The transition from one to two kids is a qualitative change for the kid because it means going from no siblings to siblings. That transitively makes it somewhat of a qualitative change for parents. It means the kids always have a playmate and someone their age on vacations. But for parents, it's mostly a change in degree. More work, more cost, more time parenting, but the overall lifestyle is basically unchanged.

The transition from two to three is really just quantitative. 33% more space in the house for sleeping, 33% more food costs, 33% more car space for transportation, etc. So the decision about when to stop is mostly just "how much of this experience do you want?" The transportation overhead here in the US where you do a lot of driving is a pretty big piece of that.

Re: Child-safety laws may reduce the birth rate

#17

Post by kube-system »

irateswami wrote: post #15

This is an actual conversation I had to have with my wife, having a third kid definitely requires a larger vehicle as the vast majority of cars today simply don't work for a family of five. Child car seats are too wide and the backseats of most cars are too narrow, and the price jump to a vehicle that would be able to handle three child car seats at once is enormous. Throw in some dogs, a couple pieces of luggage tha…

When I was young, this was what minivans were for: families with three kids.

Re: Child-safety laws may reduce the birth rate

#19

Post by ashtonkem »

svachalek wrote: post #7

This reads like a textbook example of "correlation is not causation". You think there'd be ...some? people talking about how they decided not to have a child because she/he wouldn't fit in the car if it's going to have a measurable effect on birth rates but at least personally I have never, ever heard this one.

Just to reinforce your point: the idea that Americans are deciding not to have children because they can't fit modern child seats in their cars is outright laughable. Americans drive massive cars compared to the rest of the world; if there is any society where car size would not prove to be a hindrance to having children it would be America.

Re: Child-safety laws may reduce the birth rate

#20

Post by mb7733 »

ortusdux wrote: post #4

I once read a convincing argument that, in some cases, American's resistance to helmets caused helmet laws to have a net negative effect on health. The author claimed that the laws caused enough of a reduction in ridership that the lost exercise outweighed the reduction in injury. I've attempted to find the paper again, but I can't seem to track it down.

I believe you're thinking of Australia. There are very few (if any?) places in the US with helmet laws for adults.
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