Child-safety laws may reduce the birth rate • Hacker News Board

Re: Child-safety laws may reduce the birth rate

#41

Post by gowld » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 6:36 PM UTC

giantg2 wrote: post #9

I can see this as being correlated, but I don't see this as being causative. And that's from someone who thinks some of the child/society safety laws are a bit absurd. I think maybe it could go something like this: child safety laws are more prevalent/stringent in advanced society, living in an advanced society carries a higher cost of living, as the cost of living goes up (without matching income raises, like the US…

This article teases apart factors: https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2020/11/28/...

Re: Child-safety laws may reduce the birth rate

#42

Post by anonAndOn » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 6:36 PM UTC

kube-system wrote: post #17

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.

Minivans are only un-cool until you are forced to appreciate their practicality. They can transport groups of kids and all their gear, a bunch of dogs, a surprising amount of furniture or even large sheets of lumber or drywall. I would only consider replacing my minivan with an electric minivan.

Re: Child-safety laws may reduce the birth rate

#43

Post by gowld » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 6:37 PM UTC

jimbob45 wrote: post #31

minikites wrote: post #8

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

Because we don’t want to be Japan, which is about to become an expansion state of immigrants since their birth rate can’t support their future population. Africa has a high birth rate. Should we crack down on that? Or are you just saying it’s a problem when rich, low-crime nations have high birth rates?

What's wrong with Japan?

Re: Child-safety laws may reduce the birth rate

#44

Post by war1025 » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 6:37 PM UTC

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…

We ended up buying Diono Radian carseats [1], which are marketed as "the 3-across car seat"

We can fit our three kids in the back of our Honda Civic perfectly well.

But we've had exactly the same conversation. In order to have a fourth kid, we'd need to swap out our vehicles. House is fine, insurance is fine, income is fine, but we'd need to upgrade vehicles, and that seems to be just enough friction to make the idea unappealing.

[1] https://www.diono.com/us/product/radian-3r-2020/

Re: Child-safety laws may reduce the birth rate

#45

Post by simmonmt » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 6:38 PM UTC

ashtonkem wrote: post #22

munificent wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I absolutely buy the step-wise argument, especially for housing, but I do not buy it for cars. Americans buy way more large SUVs and trucks than the rest of the world, even those with fewer than three kids (or no kids). The idea that car size is a meaningful barrier to the number of children one has, especially compared to housing and education costs, simply does not pass the sniff test to me. From a pure financial s…

It's probably a mistake to put "SUVs and trucks" all in one bucket. Can you even fit a third car seat in a crew cab pickup, assuming two adults in the front?

See https://advocacy.consumerreports.org/research/the-rise-of-th...

That massive green chunk is for crossovers, which typically have space for two adults and two car seats. Fitting a third means graduating to a full-size SUV (or minivan), which means a significantly more expensive vehicle (assuming similar trim levels, etc).

Re: Child-safety laws may reduce the birth rate

#46

Post by 0942v8653 » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 6:38 PM UTC

kube-system wrote: post #14

> 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…

Newer cars disable the passenger airbag if the weight of the occupant is less than a certain threshold (65 lbs according to https://owners.honda.com/vehicles/information/2018/Civic%20S...).

Re: Child-safety laws may reduce the birth rate

#47

Post by toomuchtodo » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 6:38 PM UTC

giantg2 wrote: post #37

toomuchtodo wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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]). […

I pretty much agree. What would be an example be of an economic policy that would maintain stability while bringing the birth rate down below the replacement rate?

Direct cash transfers to those who opt out of having children voluntarily (as their opt out has value they should be compensated for), while accepting that more tax revenue will be needed to support entitlements during the population decline curve. We’re in a sort of resource debt and will end up having to pay it back, balancing gdp cost with quality of life of those here now who will eventually age out.

Can’t grow forever in a physical system with constraints.

Re: Child-safety laws may reduce the birth rate

#48

Post by jefftk » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 6:38 PM UTC

Underlying paper: https://privpapers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3665...

In the comments on my post about the paper when it originally came out (https://www.jefftk.com/p/three-car-seats) people pointed out that the methodology cannot determine whether there is a common cause, and a common cause is actually quite plausible. Posit that over time people are becoming more protective of children, for whatever reason. This (a) makes parenting substantially more work/money (closer supervision, more childcare hours), leading to people having fewer kids on the margin, and (b) makes people supportive of legislation to protect children (car seat laws). So while it looks that car seat laws are causing fewer children, they could actually both be caused by changing societal attitudes toward child protection.

Re: Child-safety laws may reduce the birth rate

#49

Post by VBprogrammer » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 6:39 PM UTC

gowld wrote: post #28

kube-system wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Minivans seat 7-8, which is 6 kids.

With today's car seats, it can be made to work but it's a challenge. Realistically 2 kids in car seats makes the middle seat of anything but the largest cars impractical. At which point you are going up an extra row of seats, 6 seat layouts are uncommon.

Re: Child-safety laws may reduce the birth rate

#50

Post by minikites » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 6:39 PM UTC

jimbob45 wrote: post #31

minikites wrote: post #8

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

Because we don’t want to be Japan, which is about to become an expansion state of immigrants since their birth rate can’t support their future population. Africa has a high birth rate. Should we crack down on that? Or are you just saying it’s a problem when rich, low-crime nations have high birth rates?

>an expansion state of immigrants

Why is immigration bad?