Often, when we look at disincentives for childbearing, we think of them in terms of opportunity costs for the individual. But if children are cumulatively being considered a societal good, we should also weigh the cumulative opportunity costs to the individuals as a societal tradeoff. It seems to me that Ron Hosh's substack (of "luxury belief" fame) generally lives up to its tagline of "general incoherence," but he raised this point/question in this post. The kids have to come from somewhere; what tradeoff(s) should society make?
Teenage pregnancy? Major tradeoff against developing the human capital of the parents and, thusly, the parents' ability to develop the human capital of the children. (And, if you want to follow the HBD line of inquiry, you might hypothesize dysgenic selection effects.)
College students? Lesser tradeoff than above, but same general issue.
20-something professionals? We're taking human capital out of the economy, just after investing in its development, rather than trying to maximize its compound interest.
Hosh also brings up geography and sexual orientation (same-sex couples using IVF is a thing), though I don't think the tradeoffs here are as clear.
Have any of you thought about this? My answer to "Which couples should be having more children" is "All the couples who don't have as many children as they want" which I don't think cleaves cleanly enough across any demographic to give a more clear tradeoff than the subsidies required to support the children not-conceived out of financial concern. But others here are more open to social engineering than I am.
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Notes -
Physically, sure. Mentally? By my 3rd trimester I felt stunningly stupid and that persisted through my child's early years. My coworkers and managers swore I was fine, I continued getting raises and promotions, but I felt like I was fighting through mental quicksand. It was harder for me to come up with elegant solutions for novel problems. I felt my brain come back online once I started getting decent sleep again and my body wasn't building and sustaining another person. If I were less capable (or in a career for which I was less suited) pregnancy definitely could have knocked me out of my career or paused it. And then after pregnancy there's the whole baby thing. You can't just seal them in a barrel. Even Mark Twain suggested not doing that til they're 12.
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