Can cheaper housing massively boost fertility?
Can cheaper housing massively boost fertility?
New paper says yes. But it isn't what it seems. Correct answer is "yes, but not like this."
Not an open-ended thought provoking question. Locking.
Wrong community for this. Also, cheaper anything can boost fertility. People who have the means to support children are more likely to have children, duh
*intelligent people. Problem is that dumb people lack the cognitive capacity for the long term planning to understand the the financial burden of a kid would mean significant loss of standards if not getting a raise beforehand
This study I think adds to the huge pile of evidence that housing costs are a major bottleneck for fertility. When people get houses, they have more babies. So solving housing is hugely important.
But this paper emphatically tells us nothing about the actual magnitude, scale, or even sign of effect of something like “building more housing to make market rate housing cheaper.” It doesn’t even tell us the effect of something like “giving families a per-child housing subsidy.” All it tells us is “housing is a bottleneck.”
And that’s a very useful finding! But folks, this ain’t no silver bullet