For those of us in the gene-culture co-evolution school, culture is a much broader thing. Economics and politics are subsets of culture. Economics, for example, is a combination of physical laws and cultural norms and institutions. It is *not* an external environment in which individuals and frim interact through market exchange, though that is a useful way to think about it. The reason, of course, is a true environment external to people is one that exists independently of people. Obviously if there are no people there is no economy, though the natural environment will continue to exist.
An example is explaining how it was that in the three decades after WW II, the economy grew more rapidly than it had in the three decades before the Depression or since 1980 for that matter. Some argue that there was less foreign competition because of war damage, which is not supported by import trends:
Another hand-waving argument made is the loss of high-productivity manufacturing jobs. It is based on an assumption that wage and productivity should be correlated at the individual job level. On aggregate this is true, since it follows for physics, but for individual jobs the ratio is arbitrary, set by culture.
Manufacturing employment was large after WW II, but also in the decades before the Depression. Since the strong growth only occurring during one of these periods, manufacturing isn't the key factor.
On fertility, imagine a classroom. A high school teacher asks students what they want to be when they are grown up. How many teenage girls are going to answer, “I want to be a mom with lots of children!” And if someone did answer that way, imagine how the teacher and classmates would respond, and how that might have been different 200 years ago. That’s culture. It’s no one thing that got it here, and no one or two policy changes will reverse it, but fertility will not make significant improvements until teenage girls in large numbers can say to teachers, parents, classmates “I want to be a mom” and expect to receive compliments and praise for their important and exciting future.
But you can’t just say “it’s culture” and be done with it. Why did something so fundamental change almost everywhere? Culture is endogenous to everything. Saying “the culture changed” is like saying “the economy changed” in response to the question “why is inflation so high?” It’s not a useful answer.
Decline of religion, rise of a certain strain of Simone de Beauvoir-style femininity and motherhood-hating feminism, critical theory professors using feminism as a cultural wedge in the university to divide society and then taking over education departments and later K12, economic situation (or maybe consumer expectations?) creating a demand for 2-worker households, governments incentivizing women at work, reduced stigma of working women over time. Increase in welfare and social security, reduction in farm work making it so that children aren’t a financial investment anymore. Laws and regulations (car seats, etc) that make big families more difficult, urbanization reducing space and increasing housing costs. Environmentalist theories that having children is bad for the environment, general pessimism about the future. But each of those things has its own But Why? historical trail and it gets messy. Im sure I’ve gotten some things wrong and missed other key factors.
You aren’t going to put all this toothpaste back in the tube. Personally, I am with Robin Hanson in thinking that a religious revival or re-emergence is the most likely way fertility gets back on its feet.
This brings me back to my comments in the green room at Fox. Immigrant fertility rapidly falls because immigrants, especially women, have significantly more economic opportunity in the United States, so they make the choice to have fewer children and work to make more money. People who are very concerned about the fertility crisis and want to reverse it should be the most interested in understanding the causes of the decline in the first place. This is why I find the vague “cultural” arguments that people raise for not having children so frustrating. Culture is the set of human actions that evolved to partially deal with the problems of the past and to harness opportunities. Culture is not some magical force outside of economics, politics, or technology but a set of human actions affected by economics, politics, and technology. Culture, in turn, affects economics, politics, and technology. To argue for changing the “culture” without changing the rest is simply unserious.
Enjoyed reading your quillette piece. Also agree that opportunity costs seem like the most straightforward yet neglected lens to analyze this through. If I had to find a way to incorporate the effect of religiosity to the opportunity costs framework, I’d say that the lack of religion and tradition makes it easier for people to see the decision of whether to have kids as just another consumer choice that’s subject to competition from other choices. Intuitively it helps you make sense of higher fertility among secular Jews in Israel too. Even if religion per se isn’t driving that, it’s likely that the ideological/societal goal of reversing the demographic damage by the holocaust is serving a similar purpose, or the idea that kids in that society are not just economic assets but also indispensable human capital to defend territory. But again if we want to make inferences on how to increase fertility, it matters which of those drivers (if any) is doing most of the heavy lifting. As you allude to in your piece, continue to be perplexed by why the pronatalist crowd doesn’t start with informational interviews and ask - “hey how come you decided to pop 0,1,2,3 babies?” (or maybe I’m not aware if they have)
For those of us in the gene-culture co-evolution school, culture is a much broader thing. Economics and politics are subsets of culture. Economics, for example, is a combination of physical laws and cultural norms and institutions. It is *not* an external environment in which individuals and frim interact through market exchange, though that is a useful way to think about it. The reason, of course, is a true environment external to people is one that exists independently of people. Obviously if there are no people there is no economy, though the natural environment will continue to exist.
An example is explaining how it was that in the three decades after WW II, the economy grew more rapidly than it had in the three decades before the Depression or since 1980 for that matter. Some argue that there was less foreign competition because of war damage, which is not supported by import trends:
https://mikealexander.substack.com/p/why-the-postwar-prosperity-was-not#:~:text=postwar%20economic%20performance.-,Some%20argue,-that%20the%20post
Another hand-waving argument made is the loss of high-productivity manufacturing jobs. It is based on an assumption that wage and productivity should be correlated at the individual job level. On aggregate this is true, since it follows for physics, but for individual jobs the ratio is arbitrary, set by culture.
https://mikealexander.substack.com/p/why-the-postwar-prosperity-was-not#:~:text=the%201970%E2%80%99s-,Another%20excuse,-made%20for%20why
Manufacturing employment was large after WW II, but also in the decades before the Depression. Since the strong growth only occurring during one of these periods, manufacturing isn't the key factor.
https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6df6bce2-bfda-4ff6-ae38-894900db94ff_607x281.gif
Here I put the concept of economic culture in more concrete terms:
https://mikealexander.substack.com/p/how-economic-culture-evolves
Good piece!
Thank you !
On fertility, imagine a classroom. A high school teacher asks students what they want to be when they are grown up. How many teenage girls are going to answer, “I want to be a mom with lots of children!” And if someone did answer that way, imagine how the teacher and classmates would respond, and how that might have been different 200 years ago. That’s culture. It’s no one thing that got it here, and no one or two policy changes will reverse it, but fertility will not make significant improvements until teenage girls in large numbers can say to teachers, parents, classmates “I want to be a mom” and expect to receive compliments and praise for their important and exciting future.
But you can’t just say “it’s culture” and be done with it. Why did something so fundamental change almost everywhere? Culture is endogenous to everything. Saying “the culture changed” is like saying “the economy changed” in response to the question “why is inflation so high?” It’s not a useful answer.
Decline of religion, rise of a certain strain of Simone de Beauvoir-style femininity and motherhood-hating feminism, critical theory professors using feminism as a cultural wedge in the university to divide society and then taking over education departments and later K12, economic situation (or maybe consumer expectations?) creating a demand for 2-worker households, governments incentivizing women at work, reduced stigma of working women over time. Increase in welfare and social security, reduction in farm work making it so that children aren’t a financial investment anymore. Laws and regulations (car seats, etc) that make big families more difficult, urbanization reducing space and increasing housing costs. Environmentalist theories that having children is bad for the environment, general pessimism about the future. But each of those things has its own But Why? historical trail and it gets messy. Im sure I’ve gotten some things wrong and missed other key factors.
You aren’t going to put all this toothpaste back in the tube. Personally, I am with Robin Hanson in thinking that a religious revival or re-emergence is the most likely way fertility gets back on its feet.
Absolutely, I make a similar point here:
This brings me back to my comments in the green room at Fox. Immigrant fertility rapidly falls because immigrants, especially women, have significantly more economic opportunity in the United States, so they make the choice to have fewer children and work to make more money. People who are very concerned about the fertility crisis and want to reverse it should be the most interested in understanding the causes of the decline in the first place. This is why I find the vague “cultural” arguments that people raise for not having children so frustrating. Culture is the set of human actions that evolved to partially deal with the problems of the past and to harness opportunities. Culture is not some magical force outside of economics, politics, or technology but a set of human actions affected by economics, politics, and technology. Culture, in turn, affects economics, politics, and technology. To argue for changing the “culture” without changing the rest is simply unserious.
https://quillette.com/2023/12/14/misunderstanding-the-fertility-crisis/
Enjoyed reading your quillette piece. Also agree that opportunity costs seem like the most straightforward yet neglected lens to analyze this through. If I had to find a way to incorporate the effect of religiosity to the opportunity costs framework, I’d say that the lack of religion and tradition makes it easier for people to see the decision of whether to have kids as just another consumer choice that’s subject to competition from other choices. Intuitively it helps you make sense of higher fertility among secular Jews in Israel too. Even if religion per se isn’t driving that, it’s likely that the ideological/societal goal of reversing the demographic damage by the holocaust is serving a similar purpose, or the idea that kids in that society are not just economic assets but also indispensable human capital to defend territory. But again if we want to make inferences on how to increase fertility, it matters which of those drivers (if any) is doing most of the heavy lifting. As you allude to in your piece, continue to be perplexed by why the pronatalist crowd doesn’t start with informational interviews and ask - “hey how come you decided to pop 0,1,2,3 babies?” (or maybe I’m not aware if they have)
Quillette is a gem and I wish more people knew about it. I really enjoyed your piece.