Can advanced economies have healthy birthrates?

It seems like an iron rule: as countries develop, their birthrates fall to really low levels. But it's not set in stone. Economic success and healthy birthrates can go together!

There is no question that the competition between work and family is fierce, leading some to suggest that capitalism itself is incompatible with healthy birthrates.

Can we have both economic success and healthy fertility? Yes! Let's explore.

First, the power of pronatal belief is incredible. Israel is economically advanced, high-tech, highly educated, and urbanized. Most countries like that have v. low birthrates. But Israelis believe deeply in the importance of having children, and that makes all the difference!

Second, work and family can be compatible if the timelines of life are structured carefully. I had a conversation with mother of 14(!) and tenured economics professor/author (!!) Catherine Ruth Pakaluk who did it all! She explained to me how she did it.

Third, marriage is pretty useful when trying to balance work and family. You are tag-teaming with another person, and when one person is spent, the other can step in. People are vastly more likely to have kids when that social structure is in place.

Fourth, work-from-home often helps resolve the conflict between work and family. Some data suggests WFH may be quite pronatal. A Demographic Intelligence survey found that women with remote work were much more likely to plan to get pregnant than those without remote work.

Fifth, grandparents' help is underrated. I asked my excellent dentist who is also the mother of two how she does it. She said that the grandparents make it all possible. Claire Lehmann suggests having kids young so the grandparents will be able to help.

Sixth, frugality is essential for most people wanting to have kids. A cruel fact of life is that the best time to have a family is when you are young, when money is tightest. How can you avoid having to work constantly when you need to make time for family? By spending less.

Seventh, we need a return to lower intensity parenting. We make the perfect the enemy of the good, and have too few kids.

Eighth, we need to fix the problem with childcare. The way to do that? Deregulation. States that have fewer rules around childcare have more of it, and it costs less!

Finally, we have to accept the challenge. Work and family will always be in competition for our time, and we just have to struggle to find a balance. There is no easy answer. At the end of the day parents will have to gut it out and prioritize both. Very little that is worthwhile is easy.

If he can do it… Who of us can imagine the responsibilities of Elon Musk? If he can find a way to make it work, what's our excuse? Are we busier than he is?

If our ancestors could do it... Not very long ago, our forebears had it rough, trying to scratch out new lives in places with nothing but grass and trees. They found a way, and had tons of kids along the way!

When things were unimaginably harder

There is a chart I think about a lot. Until recently more than one child died per family. How hard did life have to be back then?

Yet we are here because those before us carried on in circumstances we can hardly understand. Surely, we also can find a way! Children are the most important thing, the reason for everything else!