{"id":7037,"date":"2017-07-31T06:56:40","date_gmt":"2017-07-31T12:56:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/?p=7037"},"modified":"2017-07-31T07:29:25","modified_gmt":"2017-07-31T13:29:25","slug":"economists-alternate-take-childlessness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2017\/07\/economists-alternate-take-childlessness.html","title":{"rendered":"The Economist’s alternate take on childlessness"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"http:\/\/www.mountainhome.af.mil\/News\/Photos\/igphoto\/2000602500\/<\/p>\n

Some time ago, I wrote a blog post asking, \u201cIs Megan McArdle a freeloader?<\/a>\u201c, referencing her because she\u2019s told at least part of her (childless) life story in her recent(-ish) book and because there\u2019s at least some degree of overlap between her (admittedly much more numerous) readers and mine. \u00a0The answer to that rhetorical question was a somewhat lame, \u201cno, not really.\u201d<\/p>\n

But this weekend\u2019s Economist<\/a> had a somewhat different take on the issue. \u00a0The childless, they say, are not freeloaders who spend all their free time having fun, but do actually contribute to the world \u2014 they contribute more to charity upon their deaths (though by a measly $10,000), are more likely to create charitable foundations (though the absolute number of foundation-creators has got to be small in total) and certain key politicians \u2014 e.g., 5 of the 7 G7 leaders \u2014 are childless.<\/p>\n

But despite that push by many environmentalists for a shrinking population, the Economist takes the still-conventional wisdom approach that a society needs to reproduce its population in order to keep its economy healthy. \u00a0How they reconcile their praise of the childless with this recognition of the need for a next generation is interesting:<\/p>\n

But to sustain public pensions in the long term, countries do not actually need more parents. What they need instead is more babies. It is possible to combine a high rate of childlessness with a high birth rate, provided people who become parents have more than one or two children. That was the pattern in many Western countries a century ago. Ireland, yet another country with a childless leader, still manages it today.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In other words, The Economist\u2019s suggested model, in light of a substantial portion of the population not having children, is for the rest of us to pick up the slack, or, alternatively, to not worry about the Duggar\u2019s 19 kids, or the half-dozen or so kids in what counts as \u201clarge families\u201d in my own neighborhood.<\/p>\n

And in some ways this makes sense. \u00a0After all, there are economies of scale in child-rearing. \u00a0You have hand-me-downs, both clothes and toys, and the experience you gain with the first child, allows you to manage numbers two, three, or even four with greater ease. \u00a0If this path, of a mix of childless and multi-child families, works out to a reasonably sustainable total fertility rate without individual couples being pushed into one direction or another, that\u2019s great.<\/p>\n

But is such a demographic outcome sustainable, if it goes too far, if the proportion of childless individuals becomes too great? \u00a0I mean, sure, you can get the numbers to work in a number of ways. \u00a0Half the population can be childless, and half can have an average of 4 children apiece, and half of those children would, in turn, chose to reproduce and half not. \u00a0But this would produce, and at the same time presumably cause a significant cultural splintering.<\/p>\n

The key question is whether, if present trends continue in the long term, the Economist\u2019s rosy assessment of \u201cchildless people spend their time and money helping society, so it\u2019s all good\u201d will be true (to the degree that it\u2019s even true at the moment, instead of only being true for a minority), or whether, instead, the snide comments about \u201cbreeders\u201d and the attitude underlying them (as well as the new philosophy<\/a> that parents bear the moral responsibility for their descendants\u2019 carbon emissions, up to infinity) will provoke conflicts between parents and nonparents on such issues as how much money the government should spend on programs benefiting children. \u00a0But, hey, as long as the rates of the childless are well below a majority, the rest of us can outvote them, right?<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Image: \u00a0http:\/\/www.mountainhome.af.mil\/News\/Photos\/igphoto\/2000602500\/ (public domain; US gov\u2019t photograph)<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some time ago, I wrote a blog post asking, \u201cIs Megan McArdle a freeloader?\u201c, referencing her because she\u2019s told at least part of her (childless) life story in her recent(-ish) book and because there\u2019s at least some degree of overlap between her (admittedly much more numerous) readers and mine. \u00a0The answer to that rhetorical question […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":7026,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[699,700],"class_list":["post-7037","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-childlessness","tag-fertility"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Economist's alternate take on childlessness<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Some time ago, I wrote a blog post asking, "Is Megan McArdle a freeloader?", referencing her because she's told at least part of her 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