El blog de Albert Esplugas

Tener hijos tampoco era rentable antes

Bryan Caplan señala que tener hijos nunca ha compensado desde un punto de vista económico, tampoco en la sociedad pre-industrial, al contrario de lo que se cree comúnmente.

One popular story about the decline in family size over the last two centuries goes like this: Back in the old days, having kids paid.  Children started working when they were quite young, and provided for their parents in their old age.  Then industrialization and/or the welfare state came along and changed everything.  Young children ceased to contribute much economically to their families, and once Social Security, Medicare, and so on were in place, people stopped supporting their aging parents.

It turns out that this story is only half true.  Yes, in the modern era, people give little financial assistance to their elders; even in late adulthood, old-to-young transfers remain larger than young-to-old transfers.  The flaw in the story is the assumption that things used to be different.  In an eye-opening 1996 JEL piece, Ted Bergstrom summarizes evidence showing that even in pre-modern societies, kids did not pay.

Entonces, ¿por qué tenemos hoy menos hijos?

Robin Hanson cita las 5 razones de Wikipedia:

¿Qué queremos del Estado?

Según Robin Hanson, queremos que nos proporcione algo más que paz y prosperidad, a saber:

 1. governments with forms like those of recent high status regimes,
 2. to be part of large rich powerful empires, since those are high status,
 3. democracy over autarchy, as it gives us more illusion of control,
 4. proportional representation, as we then more control who represents us,
 5. equal votes per person, as otherwise others have more votes than us,
 6. states controlled by groups we identify with, so we seem in control,
 7. stigma attached to assistance given groups we don’t identify with,
 8. more regulation of competing high status folks, to bring them down to us,
 9. more support of affiliated high status folks, to lift us as they rise, and
 10. laws that treat them but not us like children, as that degrades folks.

Maternidad con status

Robin Hanson cree que las mujeres tienen menos hijos en sociedades ricas porque el éxito profesional señaliza más status que la maternidad. Si esto es así, ¿cómo puede incentivarse el aumento de la natalidad?

Mothering can be time consuming, but, relative to career success, succeeding at mothering isn’t seen to signal good abilities much besides a kind heart and willingness to work hard.  Very successful career women are far more respected than than very successful mothers.  So women who want to look good focus on a career, and hope to have kids later once they’ve succeeded there.  Apparently once-adaptive status cues now induce a maladaptive obsession with status markers that only careers can bring.

(...) Maybe what we instead need is some form of extreme parenting, i.e., a parenting style that, when done successfully, says great things about parent abilities.  A parenting style that requires not just time or cash, but also great intelligence, social savvy, artistic taste, and so on.  One where a successful mom could look as good or better than a successful author, actor, or businesswoman.

Home-schooling seems a step in the right direction; is this why home-schooling is so popular?  Could we at least start by more visibly celebrating moms who have done a fantastic job, such as via a better funded and higher profile greatest mom of the year award?