Housing and fertility: The forgotten conversation

Low fertility:

It's strange how we measure the success of a given modern society on anything other than the most natural parameter - it's ability to breed and multiply.

We celebrate the great economic success of places like Japan, Germany and Switzerland for example, yet consistently fail to mention that their fertility rates--about 1.4 children per woman--is well below the replacement level of 2.1.

Is that normal? What species willfully embraces this kind of slow-burning inter-generational extinction? Something can't be right. And this is a conversation that we surely should be having.

Housing:

Part of the problem, in many places, is housing unaffordability. If you want people to have less kids, then one way to do it is to make the family home appallingly expensive. And that is of course what we do today - certainly here New Zealand, Australia, and so many other places in the world.

Young people can't comfortably afford to raise children when so much of their money is spent on a giant mortgage. It means Mum and Dad both working full time jobs and kids being sent out to daycare centres, for if the parents can afford to have children at all whilst not being a 'welfare family'.

So housing unaffordability is an assault on the fertile population. With modern policy we are inarguably taking resources away from the fertile population, and concentrating them towards older people who have already had their families and are ready to retire.

When artifically imposed, this process is corrupt, and from a reproductive outlook it is crazy.

It's also a direct expression of a dysfunctional society. If grandma and grandpa don't care about their children's ability to bring forward the next generation, then you don't have a functional society. You've got a rat-race operating on an every-man-for-himself basis which is, it appears to me at least, a society set for failure.

Immigration:

But then you might think that it really doesn't matter if the domestic population fails to breed, because we have immigrants ready to take their place. To a degree I can buy that argument, except suppressing fertility for the wrong reasons is clearly an evil.

What's more, there are concerns over the type of immigrants you bring in to compensate for weak domestic fertility. Are they intelligent? Are they sane, or do they come from horrific war-torn backgrounds? Do they have cult-like religious convictions? And what are the fertility rates of these new people we bring in, and how do they treat their children? etc...

If we are to be concerned about the long-term prosperty of our society, then these are questions we need to ask. Even if the questions are somewhat politically incorrect.

Conclusion:

Though housing is becoming a big factor in impacting fertility, I should note it's certainly not the only factor. The expansion of institutional education over the decades has been vast, and this clearly suppresses fertility as it delays marriage, gets people hooked into all-consuming careers, makes bringing up children hard work, and all of which leads to smaller families. I could go on.

But again, we need to look at housing affordability in the context of fertility. Because from a humanistic outlook this is the most important conversation of all, and it's silly to pretend that it's not.

Note: On political correctness:

Why can't we talk plainly about housing affordability in the context of fertility?

My best guess is that the Hitler show has made these kinds of conversations awkward.

History has demonised the idea of relating state policy to human fertility so comprehensively, that we can't have a plain conversation about it without feeling like we're talking about something that we shouldn't be talking about. Especially when it tangos with that gruesome 'eugenics' word.

However, we need to get over it. Because how can we promote our policy convictions as being the correct ones, when we're not prepared to think about all the important issues? A serious public policy advocate must be complete in their thinking to have a legitimate opinion, I feel.