> A new paper from a Nobel-prize-winning economist provides an intriguing solution to the puzzle of declining birth rates around the world: more supportive men.
> Men willing to play a bigger role in parenting and house-work, lift birthrates, finds Claudia Goldin, an economics professor at Harvard, who won a Nobel in 2023 for her work on women in the labor market.
> She presented her paper “The Downside of Fertility” at the Jackson Hole Economics Conference on Friday morning.
> “Fertility is higher when men and women share more in household- and child-care, and is lower when men do little in the home,” she said.
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> Goldin examined how this dynamic plays out across two groups of countries. The first includes the U.S., France and Germany, and has moderately low fertility rates that first started declining a half-century ago.
> The second group, including Italy, Japan and South Korea, has the lowest fertility rates in the world and started falling more recently and more sharply.
> The difference? In the first group of countries, economic modernization has been underway for almost a century. Society has had time to adjust its traditions.
> In the second, economic modernization happened more quickly and more recently. There’s a greater mismatch between what women want (more agency) and what men want (keep the traditional status quo).
Maximilianne on
she isn’t wrong but the culture isn’t there yet 🤣, ie we are a long way away from “the real househusbands of *insert XYZ city*”
WanderingMage03 on
All of the birth-rate concern bros who want to use declining fertility rates as an excuse for rolling back equal rights are gonna conveniently ignore this.
gringledoom on
>Between the lines: Among some pro-natalists there is a push for women to embrace being “tradwives,” taking a more traditional stay-at-home approach to work and family.
The funniest segment of this group are the ones who believe this, but are *also* on high alert for “gold diggers”.
“I want a woman who is totally and completely reliant on me financially, but she’d better not expect that she’s going to be totally and completely reliant on me financially, nosiree!”
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Excerpts:
> A new paper from a Nobel-prize-winning economist provides an intriguing solution to the puzzle of declining birth rates around the world: more supportive men.
> Men willing to play a bigger role in parenting and house-work, lift birthrates, finds Claudia Goldin, an economics professor at Harvard, who won a Nobel in 2023 for her work on women in the labor market.
> She presented her paper “The Downside of Fertility” at the Jackson Hole Economics Conference on Friday morning.
> “Fertility is higher when men and women share more in household- and child-care, and is lower when men do little in the home,” she said.
#
> Goldin examined how this dynamic plays out across two groups of countries. The first includes the U.S., France and Germany, and has moderately low fertility rates that first started declining a half-century ago.
> The second group, including Italy, Japan and South Korea, has the lowest fertility rates in the world and started falling more recently and more sharply.
> The difference? In the first group of countries, economic modernization has been underway for almost a century. Society has had time to adjust its traditions.
> In the second, economic modernization happened more quickly and more recently. There’s a greater mismatch between what women want (more agency) and what men want (keep the traditional status quo).
she isn’t wrong but the culture isn’t there yet 🤣, ie we are a long way away from “the real househusbands of *insert XYZ city*”
All of the birth-rate concern bros who want to use declining fertility rates as an excuse for rolling back equal rights are gonna conveniently ignore this.
>Between the lines: Among some pro-natalists there is a push for women to embrace being “tradwives,” taking a more traditional stay-at-home approach to work and family.
The funniest segment of this group are the ones who believe this, but are *also* on high alert for “gold diggers”.
“I want a woman who is totally and completely reliant on me financially, but she’d better not expect that she’s going to be totally and completely reliant on me financially, nosiree!”