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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

#371

Post by mensetmanusman »

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 does help, and it helps immensely if they had kids (you or partner) when they were younger (20s), or else they are more likely to have health issues and low energy themselves.

Re: Child-safety laws may reduce the birth rate

#372

Post by mensetmanusman »

_carbyau_ wrote: post #264
drfuchs wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Going from two kids to three, you have to switch from one-on-one to zone defense."

:-) I only have one. And we think we'll have a second and leave it at that. Partly for the reason of not wanting to be outnumbered. But also partly from a social/environmental point. Two kids means we replace ourselves when we die.

But you don’t replace your bachelor uncle, which is why on average the population replacement rate is greater than 2. :)

Re: Child-safety laws may reduce the birth rate

#373

Post by giantg2 »

throwaway201103 wrote: post #317
lotsofpulp wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Medicare pays primarily for emergency hospitalization scenarios (referred to as Part A). Anything that happens outside of a hospital stay (called outpatient services) and medications come from Parts B, C, and D. Coverage for parts B, C, and D is insanely complicated and involves some means testing and who knows what else. There’s private health insurers involved too, and if you can’t afford that, then you can go to t…

And "Medicare for all" is a serious proposal?

Yeah, I don't really get it. I imagine it's just catchy marketing like the defund the police movement (it's really about adjusting their duties in specific situations by augmenting the force with civil servants of different training).

You spend 40ish years working and funding Medicare with a 3% tax to use it for 20ish, with still paying these costs. I don't see how it would be feasible to extend the plan to everyone under that system (kids never paid in, how do they get coverage; what about young adults with no work history nor the savings to pay the premiums?). So the proposed systems must be fundamentally different from that.

Re: Child-safety laws may reduce the birth rate

#374

Post by giantg2 »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #328
throwaway201103 wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And "Medicare for all" is a serious proposal?

I don’t think people mean copy it in it’s current form, at least not forever. It’s just a catchy name to refer to a program where the government pays for healthcare, even though the current iteration of Medicare is hardly that. The idea is probably to expand the current system to everyone, which is better than nothing, and then work on improving it.

I would image that's the plan, although with different motives. By placing a majority of the people into a broken system, you bring the people's attention to it and force a new system into existence using that public support. If you look at the strategy behind the ACA, it is intended to lay the framework for a replacement by a federal plan/system.

Re: Child-safety laws may reduce the birth rate

#375

Post by seanicus »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #328
throwaway201103 wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And "Medicare for all" is a serious proposal?

I don’t think people mean copy it in it’s current form, at least not forever. It’s just a catchy name to refer to a program where the government pays for healthcare, even though the current iteration of Medicare is hardly that. The idea is probably to expand the current system to everyone, which is better than nothing, and then work on improving it.

Hard to get velocity behind improving something half the voting population would rather be rid of, even if it's against the very same voting population's best interest. So it goes in the US.

Re: Child-safety laws may reduce the birth rate

#376

Post by jgalt212 »

aidenn0 wrote: post #310
jgalt212 wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the vast majority of cars today simply don't work for a family of five Yes, but only if you count by unique line items. If you count by market share, the large family market is well served. “S.U.V.s made up 47.4 percent of U.S. sales in 2019 with sedans at 22.1 percent,” said Tom Libby, automotive analyst at IHS Markit. “By 2025, we see the light-truck segment that includes S.U.V.s, vans and pickups to make up 78 p…

There are plenty of SUVs that won't fit 3 car seats in back any better than a Civic.

very true. consumers would be well served by car reviews that indicated total car seat capacity.

Re: Child-safety laws may reduce the birth rate

#377

Post by swift532 »

souprock wrote: post #199
throwaway0a5e wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the 80s people didn't care that much. An 80s van is still gonna beat an 80s car in terms of crash test results. And the bad results are only for the driver's legs. The kids in rows 2/3/4 are safe as can be

Don't forget the 5th row. My van has 15 seats. I'll fill the final seat this summer. The safety problem is that most drivers can't deal well with a suspension that lets the vehicle movement lag well behind the driver inputs. Drivers would roll the vans over while driving on perfectly straight roads with good pavement. It's the same as pilot-in-the-loop oscillation. When the vehicle has a delayed response, the operato…

I don't get it, do you have 13 children?

Re: Child-safety laws may reduce the birth rate

#378

Post by seanicus »

globular-toast wrote: post #337
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…

Yeah, that's mostly due to feminism as some of the already buried comments here point out. You only have to look back a short time and there was no such thing as "child care". The children were cared for by their mothers. Imagine that! A mother having time to raise her own children! Now they are "free" to be drones in the corporate machine instead and can't get out because the family needs that money. The children no…

Pretty sure the economic impact of doubling the workforce as well as decades of frozen wages has had a significant effect on social acceptance of 2-worker households, but blame whatever boogeyman/woman you'd like to.

Re: Child-safety laws may reduce the birth rate

#379

Post by giantg2 »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #279
giantg2 wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree it's mostly about the ratio of workers. It can be below for relatively short periods (a few generations maybe). But if it stays below for long periods of time, you will run into some structural issues. Like the young workers you mentioned, tax burdens, some consumer durable industries, and possibly housing/real estate.

A slow rate of decrease doesn't really run into issues. To use the number of 1% per decade again, if we kept that up for 300 years we'd have no worker shortages as we slowly crept down to a "mere" 240 million people. (For reference, the population in 1950 was 152 million.)

Don't you still run into labor force participation rate issues due partly to wealth accumulation when shrinking the family size?

For example, if you receive your parents inheritance at age 50, you might be inclined to retire early. Even if you have to split it with one sibling, that could still be enough for early retirement depending on the specifics of the assets.

Re: Child-safety laws may reduce the birth rate

#380

Post by sleepysysadmin »

frongpik wrote: post #144
sleepysysadmin wrote: post #86

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 a…

Well educated kids is obviously an asset to our society, but it puzzles me how the same society not only doesn't reward men for raising kids, it makes kids their biggest liability. It's like planting a tree because our society cries wolf about deforestation, and then years later getting a 500k bill from USFS because they had to do some works related to that tree. Men really need a lot of altruism to start a family th…

As a father there are certainly upsides. The problem is the nanny government is all cases. There is a good intention but in turn adjust a social balance that is in place.

Even something like alimony is a liability. So men simply don't get married anymore. The government seeing the failure of the system then that having a woman as your roommate is 'common law' and still counts. So you literally just cant have a woman roommate.

Yes the original reasoning was that the woman might hinder her career by tending kids and shouldn't be punished. However it has evolved well past those goals. The government is practically incentivizing divorce or never having a relationship with women to beginwith.

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