Culture also play a large and much less qualifiable role: In the GDR there was a general expectation to have at least one child by the your late twenties at least and people who didn't were generally seen as weird or suspected to be homosexual. This was true across the whole class and educational spectrum too (cf. Angela Merkel, her childlessness and the persistent rumors swirling around her and several women close to her).
> Hungary, where women are exempted from income tax after a certain number of children, which in turn discourages the male-breadwinner family model and places the tax burden even more squarely on the shoulders of married fathers.
Has any country tried the reverse, making fathers tax exempt after X kids? Unlike the $200K handout this would incentivize productive people to have lots of kids.
No, but it would work. Which is the obvious solution.
Simply having large non-refundable tax breaks is probably enough. Hungary’s big problem is it has no concept of “married filing jointly”, so the benefit can only go to the woman.
I did not knew Hungary has no "join filing", thank you very much! I was thinking the same, btw: sneak a "male only" tax brake as a "working parent only" tax brake.
Hungary already has large, non-refundable tax breaks, which can also go to men. If you have 3 children, you only have to pay the 33.5% tax on income over approximately 2/3 of the average wage. The new change just makes mothers with three (and later two) children completely tax exempt.
It is going to take hard work, but reversing the trend should be fully doable.
1) Society must be slowly re-engineered so that one-income families are the norm, not two-incomes.
2) Take away women's right to vote. Eventually they become so bored they will have more kids.
3) Change culture to be pro-kids, not pro-hoe. Pictures of beautiful but childless women are everywhere. No pictures of women without a child.
4) Tax the elderly harder and take away their right to vote.
5) Dating culture must be changed. Just sell the girls to the highest bidder when they finish school. If they drop out of school they are sold immediately.
6) Cost of pro-natalist efforts are financed by extra taxes on homosexuals, the childless and the elderly.
You correctly identify that increasing Married (especially male) post tax income based on family size is the only way to increase fertility, then throw up your hands and say “well not everyone is doing that, some of their policies are suboptimal”.
That’s why we have these policy debates! To get better policies!
Look, if you give me a bigger child tax credit I’ll have more children. Yeah, it’s going to have to be close to the actual cost of the child. But I pay a lot of taxes so I’m really just asking for my fair share back.
Do I think that tax credit should be non-refundable, yes! Do I think it should double if you’re married, yes! There are a zillion ways to make this work. You could tie it to payroll taxes since having kids funds future retirement benefits.
What do you think is going to work? Nothing? Really. The whole system is going to collapse that way. It’s going to be nothing but geezers and Africans. Who the fuck is going to bring a kid into that world? To spend their lives working to pay for the geezers and Africans? Fertility is only going to go further down that way.
Interesting, the point about tax breaks coming from married-male income is particularly elegant to explain the failure of these policies. A pity we can only dream of a state with old-to-young redistribution.
I would add one potential explanation for East Germany (and early Russian SR) - ideology. I don't know if this is an effect of protestantism or something else but East German population was the most devoted to communism and the state in the Eastern Bloc. It showed in every facet of the society: every fourth East German was a Stasi collaborator while sportsmen and sportswomen were packed with hormones for the glory of East Germany.
In light of the above I don't think it's a coincidence that fertility rates shot up around the time the first generation fully grown in East Germany started having kids, and that it collapsed immediately after East Germany collapsed (most of the pronatal policies were still in effect even after the reunification, and you'd think that East German couple who got a new apartment in 1989 would still have kids in this apartment - but no, they did not apparently). Fertility drops were much more gradual in other eastern bloc countries after 1989.
"I don't know if this is an effect of protestantism or something else"
Yes, the cause of their devotion is "something else" which among Socialist countries operated and was openly demonstrated only in East Germany and Cuba (see DDR flag/coat of arms), so there was no deep changes to the governance structure.
"Fertility drops were much more gradual in other eastern bloc countries after 1989."
In Germany a large quantity of fertile females left immediiately to Western Germany as there was no bureaucratic and language barrier (unlike in other eastern bloc countries).
You mention the Bolsheviks repealing sodomy laws, but then when discussing Stalin's reversals don't mention that he re-criminalized it.
Robin Hanson's proposal is to grant mothers a fraction of their children's future stream of taxes. That would negate the problem you mention of it funneling money to underclass consumers of taxes. https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/can-govt-debt-solve-fertility
"If the government gave a no-questions asked $200,000 check per kid, you would see a subculture of women having a kid for the check, immediately blowing the money, and then having another kid next year pop up overnight. Having a dozen kids, not really raising them (someone will take care of it, since we don’t let kids with negligent parents die), and living like a millionaire would be a genuine lifestyle for some women throughout their childbearing years"
Could a solution be to have the $200k (to a maximum of $1m) vest as superannuation payment on retirement where the biological parents were married at the time of birth, and remained married at retirement age, with them splitting the $200k 50:50?
The obvious way to approach this is to make child tax credits a proportion of total tax owed (i. e. tax bill reduced 10% per child). This incentives eugenic fertility better than anything else.
If you torture the data enough, they will confess to anything. And clearly, pronatalism for it's own sake really has a very poor track record in practice. Perhaps pronatalism is not the answer at all. HUMANISM is.
Why don't we just accept that birthrates are destined to remain low for a while, and that in an overpopulation world in severe ecological overshoot, that is, on balance, a GOOD thing? And that women's rights are also, not coincidentally, a GOOD thing on balance as well. And that "dysgenics" fears are essentially a racist and eugenicist myth?
Interesting article. I think designing a pro-natalist policy that takes into account changing incentives is difficult.
I am curious what you think about my proposed Working Family Tax credit. It is not designed to be pro-natalist, but it might have some positive effects in that domain. It is basically a refundable tax credit that only goes to married families with children and at least one employed worker in the household. The amount is sizable, but it scales down as income increases.
Two or more of your own children over the age of five living with you from birth gets you free university or vocational school - tuition and expenses, including for the kids. While you continue to pass your classes, of course. Three children gets you grad school.
Encourage the high-conscientiousness people to have kids young. Fewer health problems and probably more children..
Culture also play a large and much less qualifiable role: In the GDR there was a general expectation to have at least one child by the your late twenties at least and people who didn't were generally seen as weird or suspected to be homosexual. This was true across the whole class and educational spectrum too (cf. Angela Merkel, her childlessness and the persistent rumors swirling around her and several women close to her).
Rabenmutte.
This article has contributed more to the topic than almost everything said on twitter over the last decade.
> Hungary, where women are exempted from income tax after a certain number of children, which in turn discourages the male-breadwinner family model and places the tax burden even more squarely on the shoulders of married fathers.
Has any country tried the reverse, making fathers tax exempt after X kids? Unlike the $200K handout this would incentivize productive people to have lots of kids.
No, but it would work. Which is the obvious solution.
Simply having large non-refundable tax breaks is probably enough. Hungary’s big problem is it has no concept of “married filing jointly”, so the benefit can only go to the woman.
I did not knew Hungary has no "join filing", thank you very much! I was thinking the same, btw: sneak a "male only" tax brake as a "working parent only" tax brake.
No, it's not enough.
Hungary already has large, non-refundable tax breaks, which can also go to men. If you have 3 children, you only have to pay the 33.5% tax on income over approximately 2/3 of the average wage. The new change just makes mothers with three (and later two) children completely tax exempt.
Hungary doesn't have a concept of "married filing jointly". Each person files their own taxes.
"you only have to pay the 33.5% tax on income over approximately 2/3 of the average wage"
In America we don't have a tax rate that high until you are in the 1%.
That will never happen. The reason fertility is low is because of our feminist blank slatist globohomo world order.
This order is exactly why fertility declines have only accelerated and why as long as it exists a reversal will never happen.
The solution is excruciatingly obvious (roll back women's lib and the states which enforce it) but is the direct opposite of our system's purpose.
"Robin Hanson has proposed a $200,000 lump-sum payment per child. … This incentive would be far stronger for the underclass" No, my proposal is to pay parents a transferable % of kids future tax payments, which wouldn't pay much for underclass kids. https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/four-uses-for-personal-tax-assets?utm_source=publication-search
It is going to take hard work, but reversing the trend should be fully doable.
1) Society must be slowly re-engineered so that one-income families are the norm, not two-incomes.
2) Take away women's right to vote. Eventually they become so bored they will have more kids.
3) Change culture to be pro-kids, not pro-hoe. Pictures of beautiful but childless women are everywhere. No pictures of women without a child.
4) Tax the elderly harder and take away their right to vote.
5) Dating culture must be changed. Just sell the girls to the highest bidder when they finish school. If they drop out of school they are sold immediately.
6) Cost of pro-natalist efforts are financed by extra taxes on homosexuals, the childless and the elderly.
Some combination of this will eventually work.
The party that tries to implement any of this will simply be destroyed in an election. Need a complete change in government to implement this
You correctly identify that increasing Married (especially male) post tax income based on family size is the only way to increase fertility, then throw up your hands and say “well not everyone is doing that, some of their policies are suboptimal”.
That’s why we have these policy debates! To get better policies!
Look, if you give me a bigger child tax credit I’ll have more children. Yeah, it’s going to have to be close to the actual cost of the child. But I pay a lot of taxes so I’m really just asking for my fair share back.
Do I think that tax credit should be non-refundable, yes! Do I think it should double if you’re married, yes! There are a zillion ways to make this work. You could tie it to payroll taxes since having kids funds future retirement benefits.
What do you think is going to work? Nothing? Really. The whole system is going to collapse that way. It’s going to be nothing but geezers and Africans. Who the fuck is going to bring a kid into that world? To spend their lives working to pay for the geezers and Africans? Fertility is only going to go further down that way.
Interesting, the point about tax breaks coming from married-male income is particularly elegant to explain the failure of these policies. A pity we can only dream of a state with old-to-young redistribution.
Very interesting article!
I would add one potential explanation for East Germany (and early Russian SR) - ideology. I don't know if this is an effect of protestantism or something else but East German population was the most devoted to communism and the state in the Eastern Bloc. It showed in every facet of the society: every fourth East German was a Stasi collaborator while sportsmen and sportswomen were packed with hormones for the glory of East Germany.
In light of the above I don't think it's a coincidence that fertility rates shot up around the time the first generation fully grown in East Germany started having kids, and that it collapsed immediately after East Germany collapsed (most of the pronatal policies were still in effect even after the reunification, and you'd think that East German couple who got a new apartment in 1989 would still have kids in this apartment - but no, they did not apparently). Fertility drops were much more gradual in other eastern bloc countries after 1989.
"I don't know if this is an effect of protestantism or something else"
Yes, the cause of their devotion is "something else" which among Socialist countries operated and was openly demonstrated only in East Germany and Cuba (see DDR flag/coat of arms), so there was no deep changes to the governance structure.
"Fertility drops were much more gradual in other eastern bloc countries after 1989."
In Germany a large quantity of fertile females left immediiately to Western Germany as there was no bureaucratic and language barrier (unlike in other eastern bloc countries).
You mention the Bolsheviks repealing sodomy laws, but then when discussing Stalin's reversals don't mention that he re-criminalized it.
Robin Hanson's proposal is to grant mothers a fraction of their children's future stream of taxes. That would negate the problem you mention of it funneling money to underclass consumers of taxes. https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/can-govt-debt-solve-fertility
"If the government gave a no-questions asked $200,000 check per kid, you would see a subculture of women having a kid for the check, immediately blowing the money, and then having another kid next year pop up overnight. Having a dozen kids, not really raising them (someone will take care of it, since we don’t let kids with negligent parents die), and living like a millionaire would be a genuine lifestyle for some women throughout their childbearing years"
Could a solution be to have the $200k (to a maximum of $1m) vest as superannuation payment on retirement where the biological parents were married at the time of birth, and remained married at retirement age, with them splitting the $200k 50:50?
The obvious way to approach this is to make child tax credits a proportion of total tax owed (i. e. tax bill reduced 10% per child). This incentives eugenic fertility better than anything else.
If you torture the data enough, they will confess to anything. And clearly, pronatalism for it's own sake really has a very poor track record in practice. Perhaps pronatalism is not the answer at all. HUMANISM is.
Why don't we just accept that birthrates are destined to remain low for a while, and that in an overpopulation world in severe ecological overshoot, that is, on balance, a GOOD thing? And that women's rights are also, not coincidentally, a GOOD thing on balance as well. And that "dysgenics" fears are essentially a racist and eugenicist myth?
Interesting article. I think designing a pro-natalist policy that takes into account changing incentives is difficult.
I am curious what you think about my proposed Working Family Tax credit. It is not designed to be pro-natalist, but it might have some positive effects in that domain. It is basically a refundable tax credit that only goes to married families with children and at least one employed worker in the household. The amount is sizable, but it scales down as income increases.
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/the-case-for-a-working-family-tax
Two or more of your own children over the age of five living with you from birth gets you free university or vocational school - tuition and expenses, including for the kids. While you continue to pass your classes, of course. Three children gets you grad school.
Encourage the high-conscientiousness people to have kids young. Fewer health problems and probably more children..
The graph on SSR fertility is really dubious. There is simply no way Estonia had a TFR of 7 well in the 70's.