Fertility: Women are choosing fewer babies

     "So as far as controlling the means of reproduction, you can say that in the rich countries at least, women have been 'on strike,' or are at least maintaining a 'work slow-down'.”

                  Jim Stodder

It is no secret. The birthrate for American women is below replacement rate.

College classmate Jim Stodder is an economist with a special interest in "decision sciences." American women--indeed women worldwide where women have choices--are having fewer children. He has prepared a two-part Guest Post on what is happening and why. Today's post looks at the data--what is the reality of family size. A subsequent post will look at the reasons why a traditional cultural "deal" between the sexes is falling apart. Men were breadwinners; women were child bearers. Now, not so much.

Jim Stodder has a PhD. in Economics from Yale (1990) and is a Visiting Professor in the Department of Administrative Sciences at Boston University where he teaches financial regulation and international economics.  His current research is on the best design for carbon taxes and on digital "local community currencies" developed for Barcelona, Brussels, Switzerland, and Bavaria.  He has consulted professionally with all of these. 

Guest Post by Jim Stodder

The ‘Deal’ Between the Sexes -- is Falling Apart, Part One. What the Data Say.

Something big has been slowly building over the last 50 years. In 1970, Shulamith Firestone wrote her brilliant Dialectic of Sex. In it she predicted that just as socialist workers’ movements aimed to control the means of production, the women’s revolution must seize the means of reproduction--the control of sex and childbirth.

That revolution was already underway at the time Firestone was writing, as shown by the World Bank time-series on Fertility--the average number of children born per woman--in “High Income” countries like the U.S. Click and Click Falling steadily over the last 60 years, in 1960 that number was 3.03, and in 2019 it was 1.57. So as far as controlling the means of reproduction, you can say that in the rich countries at least, women have been “on strike," or are at least maintaining a "work slow-down.”

And not just in the rich countries. Here I’ve plotted that same fertility measure from 145 different countries against per-capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as adjusted for purchasing power in each country, or “Purchasing Power Parity” (PPP).  Click  I’ve labeled the 12 richest countries. ‘Predicted’ and ‘Actual’ Fertility for each country are plotted against the same GDP, so predicted and actual quantities are always lined-up vertically. But predicted how?

I ran a statistical regression that best “fits” the data to explain variation in fertility. The three explanatory variables are (1) GDP per capita (PPP); (2), an Index of Gender Equity. The four top countries are Iceland, Norway, Finland, and Sweden, with scores ranging from 87.6% to 82%.) Variable (3) is the joint effect of (1) times (2) – so a rough ratio of female-to-male economic power.

As is clear from the graph, variable (1) or GDPpc is doing most of the work. This variable alone explains 36% of the variation in fertility between countries. Adding Gender-Equity gets us up to 41% of variation. And finally, looking at Equity times GDP – female-centered economic development--we can explain 46% of total variation. All three variables were “highly significant,” with less than a one-in-a-thousand chance that the apparent correlation is merely by chance.

Now explaining 46% of the variation in fertility might not seem like much. Those 145 countries differ in so many ways that explaining this much fertility variation among those 145 countries, with just 2 variables (plus their joint product), is a big deal.

I think the most interesting thing is the negative effects on fertility from the 1st and 2nd variables--GDPpc and Gender Equality, in contrast with their positive joint effect--GDP weighted by gender equality. Click This says that at low levels of economic development, more female choice often means fewer children. But when a higher level of development is reached, more resources controlled by women can mean an increase in their willingness to have kids.

Let’s look at a subset of richer countries, all of them fairly “Westernized” in values, ordered here by fertility (not GDP). France is at the front of the line with South Korea bringing up the rear. Most of those at the rear are not famous for their gender equity. The four Asian countries are rich but patriarchal; Spain and Italy are famous for their macho cultures. Women in such cultures may face a stark choice: You can put on a pantsuit and conquer the world, or you can stay home and be a mother, but it’s very tough to do some of each. 




France, the rich country with the highest fertility rate, has famously 'pro-natalist' policies: three years of paid leave for either parent, generous tax breaks, and subsidized or free day care up to school age. And yet even France is still well below the crucial "replacement rate" of about 2.1 children per woman. That’s true throughout the rich world.

I think they have interesting political implications. I think all our rich low-birth societies need to re-evaluate immigration and become even more pro-natalist than France.

It’s always been unfair that women had to invest so much more time in childcare, but with birth control and more economic opportunity, it’s now unsustainable. If we want women to be highly educated and have children--and as a society, we do--we must support them in both. This also gets us more healthy well-educated children--the most important factor for long-term economic growth. France shows the limits of what can be achieved by mild economic incentives--or else not rely on women’s bodies to bear children. And they have a monopoly on that.