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

Child-safety laws may reduce the birth rate

economist.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 411 posts

Re: Child-safety laws may reduce the birth rate

#81

Post by kube-system »

ashtonkem wrote: post #77
kube-system wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not easy to fit three car seats in the back of seat of the average vehicle in the US. I bet this is not a hinderance in the rest of the world because many of those other places have either: 1. a lack of child seat laws 2. effective public transportation. It's not like Europe is full of A-segment cars with 3 car seats in the back.

The median vehicle in the US is fully capable of seating three child safe seats. Yes, if you get a Honda Civic you're going to struggle. But sales of sedans are absolutely swamped by SUVs and trucks. The best selling car in America by a long shot is the F-series pickup truck, with about 900,000 units sold. You can easily fit three child seats in it[0] Oh, the number two and number three best selling vehicles are the…

Looking at vehicle total sales figures is a very bad way to determine what families drive. Those numbers you cite include corporate fleet sales, which heavily skew domestic truck sales figures. Nor are all of those trucks in a crew-cab configuration.

But yes, even many mid-size cars and SUVs are difficult to fit three seats in.

https://www.consumerreports.org/car-seats/how-to-fit-child-c...

> we assess a vehicle’s ability to securely and easily accommodate three child restraints in the second row. Our test results have shown that unless you’re driving a full-sized crew-cab pickup truck or an Audi Q7, the installation is going to be difficult, if it's even possible.

(It is kind of funny that your source shows a picture of a single cab 97-03 F150 in regards to fitting child seats three across... :D )

Re: Child-safety laws may reduce the birth rate

#82

Post by [deleted] »

giantg2 wrote: post #72
testfoobar wrote: post #33

The reality for a lot of families is that having children is frighteningly expensive. The twin costs of childcare and a reduction in parental work hours (often mom's) and as a result future career and income advancement potential can be substantial drag on a family's income. Each additional child just prolongs this drag. Multigenerational households where grandparents provide childcare are one solution around this pr…

"Multigenerational households where grandparents provide childcare are one solution around this problem that I've seen." Except many grandparents are still working, especially to cover healthcare costs.

[deleted]

Re: Child-safety laws may reduce the birth rate

#83

Post by kube-system »

giantg2 wrote: post #75
0942v8653 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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... ).

Yet some states have outdated, one-size-fits-all laws against it.

As they should. That weight sensor is not intended to make it safe to put a car seat in the front of a car.

Re: Child-safety laws may reduce the birth rate

#84

Post by thrower123 »

0942v8653 wrote: post #46
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... ).

This is a lot of fun when you have a big dog that likes to ride in the front seat, or even if you just put a bunch of groceries in the passenger seat, since it also makes the seatbelt alarm go off.

Re: Child-safety laws may reduce the birth rate

#86

Post by sleepysysadmin »

Marriage rates are historic lows. Birth rates are historic lows. Women having careers is certainly the current belief why these are so low. Though as the article says they dont quite explain the situation.

Car seats are ridiculous. Not a thing I considered before having a kid. It kind of makes sense, now that more kids could happen, the probability of filling the back seats with car seats is certainly expensive and annoying. Thus when that third kid comes along, the minivan must happen.

A convincing argument being made by the article but I feel it's similar in that it's just 1 piece of the puzzle.

The other factor no doubt occurring is how imbalanced the system has become. It has become increasingly risky to even have a relationship with a woman let alone going to the extent of having a kid. The nanny government has come in to 'help' in many ways far beyond just car seats.

Re: Child-safety laws may reduce the birth rate

#87

Post by munificent »

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…

> Americans buy way more large SUVs and trucks than the rest of the world, even those with fewer than three kids (or no kids).

Trucks are a mostly useless metric here. Many of those are work trucks, and most won't fit car seats for three kids. While Americans buy lots of SUVs, many Americans do not have one, and for those, transporting three kids is indeed a challenge.

> From a pure financial standpoint, I'd look more to the cost of education, healthcare, and housing.

Housing definitely comes into play, but I don't think the other two end up being major factors in the decision because they are so far out. In the US, you literally cannot leave the hospital with your baby if you don't have adequate transportation and an approved car seat. So Americans are made acutely aware that they need to have a transportation solution for their family right now before choosing to have a baby.

Healthcare is a non-issue for many because their employer-provided insurance covers as many kids as they have. Education is somewhat far down the road and fairly fungible so it's less likely to be a showstopper.

Re: Child-safety laws may reduce the birth rate

#88

Post by minikites »

jimbob45 wrote: post #63
minikites wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>an expansion state of immigrants Why is immigration bad?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/books/c... Roy Beck here is far more articulate than I could be in the 6.5 minutes I have to type this answer.

>The culture--and even language--of many local communities has been transformed against the wishes of their native inhabitants

>Numerous organized crime syndicates headquartered in the new immigrants' home countries have gained solid beachheads of operations.

I thought the answer would be "racism", it usually is.

Re: Child-safety laws may reduce the birth rate

#89

Post by war1025 »

Someone1234 wrote: post #57
war1025 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The Radian is definitely king of three across. But they're premium priced ($200 each, or $600 for three), and sacrifice comfort particularly for longer trips. In general people who have never had kids don't seem to grasp that the average (non-Radian) car-seat is BIGGER than an adult side-to-side. The Radian series has a niche because they produced a car-seat the same size as an adult (with no loss of safety), but had…

> sacrifice comfort particularly for longer trips.

I guess maybe they are less comfortable than traditional car seats, but since car seats are basically build like lazy-boy recliners, that seems unsurprising.

Our kids have never complained about the comfort or lack-thereof. They seem to have pretty equivalent comfort when compared to the back seat itself as far as I can tell.

Re: Child-safety laws may reduce the birth rate

#90

Post by giantg2 »

kube-system wrote: post #83
giantg2 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet some states have outdated, one-size-fits-all laws against it.

As they should. That weight sensor is not intended to make it safe to put a car seat in the front of a car.

So what's the difference between a front seat without the airbag on and back seat?

My guess is that it's really just automakers CYA so they don't have to treat it as a safety critical system. There's really no reason to have that sensor then.

Post reply on HN