This post relies heavily on the claim that on average, US women want more children than they have.
I was skeptical of this claim because itâs not in line with my personal experience or common sense (it seems like most people could have more children if they really wanted)
Stone 2018 seems to be the only reference for this. Itâs a non-peer reviewed blog post on the Institute for Family Studies website. IFS seems to be a conservative think-tank with a strong agenda.
Good point on the bias of IFS, but Iâll push back on this claim not being in line with common sense. Why do you think most people could have more children if they really wanted? It seems like financial constraints, infeasibility of finding childcare, and increasingly tight marriage markets (as represented by older age at marriage) are all factors holding people back.
If you surveyed people on whether they âwant to speak another languageâ I think most people would say yes. But do they go and do it in practice? No, because of the enormous amount of time/âmoney/âwork. That doesnât seem like a tragically unmet âwantâ.
I think that analogy proves too much. You could also survey people on whether they âwant to go to the doctor more often than they doâ, and if they said yes, you could shrug and say âwell they donât do it because it costs a lot of money, that doesnât seem like a tragically unmet wantâ. Whatâs the limiting principle behind âif people donât do something because they are responding optimally to their financial/âeffort costs, then public policy doesnât really need to help them do itâ?
This post relies heavily on the claim that on average, US women want more children than they have.
I was skeptical of this claim because itâs not in line with my personal experience or common sense (it seems like most people could have more children if they really wanted)
Stone 2018 seems to be the only reference for this. Itâs a non-peer reviewed blog post on the Institute for Family Studies website. IFS seems to be a conservative think-tank with a strong agenda.
Good point on the bias of IFS, but Iâll push back on this claim not being in line with common sense. Why do you think most people could have more children if they really wanted? It seems like financial constraints, infeasibility of finding childcare, and increasingly tight marriage markets (as represented by older age at marriage) are all factors holding people back.
If you surveyed people on whether they âwant to speak another languageâ I think most people would say yes. But do they go and do it in practice? No, because of the enormous amount of time/âmoney/âwork. That doesnât seem like a tragically unmet âwantâ.
I think that analogy proves too much. You could also survey people on whether they âwant to go to the doctor more often than they doâ, and if they said yes, you could shrug and say âwell they donât do it because it costs a lot of money, that doesnât seem like a tragically unmet wantâ. Whatâs the limiting principle behind âif people donât do something because they are responding optimally to their financial/âeffort costs, then public policy doesnât really need to help them do itâ?
You can look up the survey data and check yourself. I relied on IFS for doing the work of graphing it and explaining it clearly.
So for instance here is information from Gallup up to 2013.
Here is data from GSS.
I donât take these polls very seriously because itâs ambiguous if the âideal number of childrenâ includes the financial/âwork/âtime costs.
Lots of people have a different idea of what the âidealâ is vs. what they want in practice.