Good point on the bias of IFS, but I’ll 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 “want to speak another language” I think most people would say yes. But do they go and do it in practice? No, because of the enormous amount of time/money/work. That doesn’t seem like a tragically unmet “want”.
I think that analogy proves too much. You could also survey people on whether they “want to go to the doctor more often than they do”, and if they said yes, you could shrug and say “well they don’t do it because it costs a lot of money, that doesn’t seem like a tragically unmet want”. What’s the limiting principle behind “if people don’t do something because they are responding optimally to their financial/effort costs, then public policy doesn’t really need to help them do it”?
Good point on the bias of IFS, but I’ll 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 “want to speak another language” I think most people would say yes. But do they go and do it in practice? No, because of the enormous amount of time/money/work. That doesn’t seem like a tragically unmet “want”.
I think that analogy proves too much. You could also survey people on whether they “want to go to the doctor more often than they do”, and if they said yes, you could shrug and say “well they don’t do it because it costs a lot of money, that doesn’t seem like a tragically unmet want”. What’s the limiting principle behind “if people don’t do something because they are responding optimally to their financial/effort costs, then public policy doesn’t really need to help them do it”?