Female earnings decline after the birth of their first child. But according to a new paper released a few days ago:
Kleven et al. (2018): Child Penalties Across Countries
… it happens to markedly different extents across different countries and cultural blocs.
Robert Dur summarizes:
The short-run earnings penalty is about twice as large in Sweden as it is in Denmark. (2/6)
The UK and US feature less dramatic short-run earning penalties, but larger long-run penalties: 44% in the UK and 31% in the US. (3/6)
By far the highest earnings penalties are found for Germany and Austria: up to 80% in the short run and 60% in the long run. (4/6)
The earnings hit is surprisingly well correlated to public opinion on stay at home moms.
It’s also pretty clear that there’s a strong relationship between this, and realized fertility rates (high in Scandinavia and the Anglosphere; low in the Germanic world).
Plus Cicerone also points out that fertility is less dysgenic in the Scandinavian states than in the rest of the developed world after adjusting for the effects of Third World immigration:
And more importantly, the degree of dysgenics seems to be dependent on government policies. The Nordics with their comprehensive family policies suffer from little dysgenics among their native population. They simply provide the environment that makes highly educated women breed as well or even more so than their low educated co-ethnic brethren. Migrants obviously distort that picture, but in Sweden, third world migrants have less kids than in France, which follows a more “blind” pronatalist policy. By far the worst dysgenic trend, when judged by education level (has its shortcomings, I know!), can be observed in the Latin American countries. Their lower classes still have quite some kids, while their educated classes are as sterile as their counterparts in Spain or Portugal. Why? Because public services suck in these countries, and private schools, security and all other additional perks that are needed to lead a first world lifestyle in Latin America cost a lot of money, meaning that even upper middle class families can’t afford to have a bunch of kids in such an environment.
If you want to solve the fertility problem – it’s either the Scandinavian Model, or White Sharia. No in betweens. Mainstream social conservatism is a failure, as it is in most things.
White Sharia isn’t politically feasible, so that really leaves just the former.
EACH CHILD = MILLIONS OF DOLLARS; WHITE SHARIA=POOR LANGUAGE.
You have an interesting article, Sir.
I want to make 2 points: First, having kids should be considered an investment or asset. Each male child that grows up can earn millions of dollars in a lifetime, so the loss of income to the mother temporarily will be more than made up.
Yes, govt. should help, I agree, with policies that encourage white women to have more white kids.
The liberals are smart and their first scam is to invent positive terms for themselves. For example, the radical left’s war on culture is barbaric and they should be called lib-barbarians, or savages, but instead they call themselves “progressive”. What criminals!!
They do not call their alien invader scum burglarizing 1st world nations as animals scum; they call them migrants.
But the stupid right calls restoration of traditional culture “white sharia”. How stupid! A better term would be simply “restoration of traditional culture” which is what existed world over for millienia—men working and women taking care of the house and raising kids.
What about set of social policies aiming at promoting half-time jobs? I’ve read the studies showing that the biggest rise in women’s satisfacton is from half-time job compared to both full-time and no-job.
These posts are interesting to discuss, because there is a “real intellectual mystery” of the subreplacement fertility – and a lot of contradictory arguments which seem sensible but never really explain the situation.
The above viewpoint would concord more with Golikova, than the earlier post.
If Scandinavian experience is generalizable, then new policies announced by Golikova, should have a positive impact at least in reducing severity of the subreplacement fertility.
However, there are things which make the lack of replacement fertility problem seem more mysterious, and less a product of policy, and more a product of the fashions of mass psychology.
Countries which are neighbouring each other – and particularly related nationalities – seem to follow very similar trends in each year, even when they have different governments with different economic policies, and their business cycles are not synchonized.
Cicerone’s quoted comment implies this, and contradicts his own explanation, when he writes: ” their educated classes are as sterile as their counterparts in Spain or Portugal.Why? Because public services suck in these countries” .
Lack of public services might explain sterility of educated classes in Latin American countries, but then how do you explain their suspiciously similar behaviour to their ethnic and cultural cousins in Spain, who live in a country where public services are so excellent and free?
Isn’t similarity of behaviour – despite very different incentive conditions – between Spanish in Spain, and educated Latin Americans in Latin America, the more interesting observation (i.e. data which needs explanation) within this comment?
ACtually, continuing with my comment at @2, you could even try to sell “parttime jobs” without mentioning women at all. You could advocate solutions which would increase attractiveness of parttime jobs for everyone, just conveniently mostly concentrating in jobs chosen by women. Or even not that; you could just create legal solutions increasing feasibility of parttime jobs, advocating that this is to reduce unemployment etc and never mentioning women and fertility at all – still with reasonable hope, that it would be mostly WOMEN who would choose part time jobs.
And with part-time women would have more time for family, higher life-satisfaction which could, in theory, lead to more decisions to have children. Just add kindergartens to the mix, “mom bonuses” etc.
In most countries, proportion of part-time jobs available has increased significantly in the last 20 years, though.
I believe the trend of increased part-time jobs as a proportion of work will only increase in the future economy.
But will this trend (which is happening anyway) increase fertility? Perhaps “other things equal”, it might help.
But in absolutes – in the USSR, over 80% of women were with full-time jobs (if not studying) and these were including physical industrial jobs. And there was no association found between employment and not having children among women then.
Compare the situation to today. (Today we are even much more delicate about women, and some unsuitable industrial jobs which women were having in the USSR, are even specifically banned for women due to concerns about damage to reproductive health.) In the USSR, women had almost perfect, replacement fertility rates, while they were having full-time jobs concurrently – while today full-time employment of women is lower, and so is fertility.
Most Soviet people were first or second generation urbanized villagers. In village mentality, women are expected to work like horses, unmarried people are shamed, and you shouldn’t be different from your neighbors (i.e. in the number of children).
And what is the Scandinavian model? The state pays a large allowance to educated women for the birth of a child?
I do not think so. I think Anatolij thinks same as Jayman once did, i.e. women work, and state do anything possible to allow them to be mothers while working fulltime (i.e. social assurances an go to work, kindergartens, special allowances for mothers, mandatory father’s vacations, mother’s vacations etc)
Scandinavian model is a bad idea. White sharia is much better. Scandinavian model will bankrupt it self.
Anatoli you observed that there are groups that are breeding like crazy like Mormons. They are white sharia. Anti dysgenic component could be incorporated into white sharia.
Also f women working the way liberals envision. It’s a waste of societies resources.
“It’s also pretty clear that there’s a strong relationship between this, and realized fertility rates (high in Scandinavia and the Anglosphere; low in the Germanic world).”
Fertility rates are not “high” in Scandinavia, you have not idea what you are talking about, Karlin. This was in the past. But things have changed, and Scandinavia is just as ill as the rest of Europe. There could be even some eastern europeam countries with higher or similar TFR to Scandis.
TFR 2018
Finland 1,41 (a total joke)
Norway 1,56 (probably 1,51 for native whites)
Iceland 1,72
Sweden 1,75 (probably 1,65 for native whites)
Denmark 1,75 (probably 1,72 for native whites)
Germany 1,56 (probably 1,47 for native whites)
In other words whites in Scandinavia are dying off, there is nothing special in those countries fertility wise, and on average they are only slightly better than Germany.
TFR native whites Scandinavia all countries 1,6
TFR native whites Germany 1,47
So not much of a difference or something to brag about.
Plus Cicerone is wrong about dysgenics as well, as these days nearly 40-50 % of people in the West are university educated, as opposed to 10-20 % in the past or in developing countries. Stats compare people with secondary and tertiary education, but they have different shares in western and in third world countries and thus different IQs.
So he compares the TFR of two very large groups (with secondary and with tertiary education) in western countries, where “almost everyone” gets a degree and thus the average IQ of people with degrees is not very high, and claims little dysgenics, and then compares the TFR of one very large group (with secondary education) and one very small group (with tertiary education, probably no more than 10-15 %), thus with obviously very high IQ, and then claims big dysgenics in developing countries.
For example only 14 % of brasilians have college degree and only 17 % of chinese, as well as mere 8 % of South Africans. Obviously they must have pretty high IQ and this will lead to the appearance of “strong dysgenics” in developed countries. But the effect is caused due to the very small university educated population, as opposed to the very large (and therefore with lower average IQ, and therefore with higher TFR) university educated population in the West
In the same way, dysgenics were “higher” in western countries in the 50s but also the share of the university educated population was way lower, which means that you are comparing the IQ of the average population vs people with very high IQ, and obviously this gives you bigger dysgenics in the past and smaller today.
Point is dysgenics is “smaller” today simply because the “high IQ group” became nearly 50 % of the population.
In other words he underestimates dysgenics in western coutries and overestimates dysgenics in developing countries.
A better way would be to compare only people with advanced degrees in the West (smaller share of the population) compared to all of those with university degrees in developed countries.
When you look at Norway a pretty good dysgenics of natives emerges. Look at TFR of women with advanced degrees only (which should be equivalent to all people with degrees in third world countries as a share of the population).
2,2 for those with low level education vs 1,78 TFR for those with advanced degree.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/236230798_Childbearing_impeded_education_more_than_education_impeded_childbearing_among_Norwegian_women_Proceedings_of_the_National_Academy_of_Science_July_19_2011_vol_108_no_29_11830-11835
TLDR:
Still the situation is better in the West overall.
But even in Scandinavia among natives the problem remains, pretty clear dysgenics exist there,
(see Iceland for another study)
https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2017/01/10/1612113114
and in most other western countries the problem could be worse.
Scandinavia is currently at a sharp low, while Germany is at a moderate high, by their standards. It makes more sense to look at multi-year averages.
The trend in Scandinavia is bad for the last 5 years. It is dropping in Finland, Iceland, Sweden and Norway, and staying at non-impressive 1,75 in Denmark (with the migrants).
Anyway, these people never had positive TFR during the last 50 years, so they will disappear and be replaced. As women have children later and later in life, i doubt that anything could be fixed, infact it could get worse.
https://rsc.byu.edu/sites/default/files/image/LDS%20Social%20LIfe/4_5%20ldssoc.jpg
http://www.fullerconsideration.com/images/rev6_Figure6_Birth_Rate.png
It’s not a “white” religion, it seeks to convert people of all races. Where I live, there are lamppost ads of Mormons offering free English lessons for recent immigrants. And it’s hardly Sharia except for the teetotaler part, and the original Sharia doesn’t impede the demographic transition either:
https://en.actualitix.com/chart/pak/pakistan-birth-rate.png
“the original Sharia doesn’t impede the demographic transition either”
It does actually. Religious people generally have positive birth rate. For example even in urbanised US, Canada and Europe muslims are one of the groups with the highest birth rate (2,6). And their birth rate stays positive. It is above 3 in Scandinavian countries. In the same way, Israel increased its birth rate due to jewish sharia (Haredim) to pretty good 3,13 per jewish woman. Georgia recently increased its birth rate due to rechristianisation. Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazackstan recently increased their birth rates as well, probaly due to islamisation and growth in religion in central Asia.
Muslims have consistently shown that they achieve higher birth rates than non-muslims in any region of the world (Africa, Europe, North America, or Asia).
Thus in modern times religion has shown very well that it is capable of raising birth rates above replacement level, and to pretty decent numbers as well (up to 3 per woman).
Thus religion is capable of counteracting and reversing the proposed (by some demographers) demographic transition to a certain extent.
It’s a big dip down from the past TFR of 6-8 in Muslim countries.
https://mk0brilliantmaptxoqs.kinstacdn.com/wp-content/uploads/fertility-rates-1970-2014.png
Saudi Arabia just fell below replacement to 2.09.
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2127rank.html
Between 2 and 3 children is a normal, not freakish number. It shows they use birth control like almost everyone else. And the ugly custom of sex-selective abortion would not appear if Muslims didn’t find it necessary to limit their births. When a woman absolutely must have a boy, and is given only 2-4 shots at it, it’s logical that she decides or her family pressure her to abort when ultrasound shows it’s a girl.
Oh, yes, there is a big dip in the muslim world, but yet there is structural difference between muslim TFR and non-muslim TFR in almost all world regions. Regional Muslim TFR is higher than non-muslim TFR in North America, Europe, Asia and Africa. These days it looks like it stabilised in the MENA region at 2,9
https://imgur.com/a/0SINrI0
I can’t find official data for Saudi Arabia and their Wiki sites CIA.
Sorry, but CIA almost always gives wrong data which is based on “estimates”, that have nothing to do with official data. The official data is often (although not 100 percent) given via Wikipedia country pages.
I would advise you not to use the CIA factbook for TFR estimates because they give “estimates” that have nothing to do with official data and are consistentnly way off than official data.
For example CIA gives TFR 1,87 for USA 2017, even though all available sources, including wiki and official US stats, give 1,76.
CIA gives 1,75 for Finland 2017 and 2018, even though all available sources, including wiki and the offical Finland statistics give around 1,49 for 2017 and 1,4 for 2018.
I suggest you stop using this useless source, they give “estimates” that are published by CIA even before the year is over and have nothing to do with official data. They confused me in the beginning too but i did my own research and noticed that their numbers almost always differ from official data.
Wiki numbers generally (though not always, a few times Wiki used CIA data) coincide with official data, i suspect that government teams are editing most countires official pages. So use wiki as a source or direct data from government sites.
By the way Indexmundi uses CIA “estimates” too so i advise you not to use that site for TFR data as well.
So while there can be a drop in SA (although CIA gives wrong data in all cases i’m aware of), on the other hand, overall in muslim countries TFR looks quite high, with increases in TFR in some muslim countries, where religious influence has increased (Central Asia). Meanwhile as i mentioned TFR has increased in Israel and Georgia as religious influence has increased there too.
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I woudn’t say that a TFR of 2,5 – 3 is “normal” for urban, developed countries.
In sum, i would say that the fact that religion can give you a TFR of 2,5 – 3 in urbanised, developed countries is a big deal. Non-religious populations in such countires stay below replacement rate.