Thank you for framing this in terms of wanting to support women have children that they desire—often when people talk about wanting to ‘increase the birth rate’ they don’t disentangle ‘helping people have kids that they want to have’ from more coercive measures, which makes me nervous.
‘The primary interventions I think a funder could make to support women achieving their fertility goals are through political advocacy and research. I don’t think any philanthropic funder, no matter how rich, is capable of directly moving this issue by, for example, offering financial support to families.‘ -why wouldn’t offering financial support be effective?
Does the research on ‘missing children’ ask why the respondents didn’t have as many children as they wanted? Because this would be useful to know, and would help determine what interventions might be most effective. For example, if most people say that they didn’t have as many children as they wanted because they couldn’t afford it, then financial support would be the best intervention; if they say that they didn’t find the right partner in time, maybe the best intervention is ?trying to make dating sites better?; if they say they waited too long and were then unable to conceive, then the fertility education you suggested might be very effective. Other reasons I can think of might be: lack of maternity leave, lack of social support, or their partner didn’t want more kids.
I imagine the financial claim isn’t that offering financial support doesn’t work, but a claim more like—there aren’t enough resources to offer enough financial support to enough people to meaningfully alter the US fertility rate on the basis of this alone.
Like—how much does it take to raise a child? I’ve heard 250k, so let’s go with that. You don’t need to offer the entire amount as financial support, but something like 5k/year seems reasonable. Across 18 years, that’s still $90,000. That means that if you give a billion dollars away as financial support, with zero overheads, you’ve supported the birth of ~11,000 children. This is a rounding error compared to the size of the issue, so I wouldn’t see it as “directly moving the ”. To directly move the needle at a cost of 90k/child, you’d need to invest hundreds of billions of dollars. It would probably work effectively, but the resources just aren’t there in private philanthropy.
By contrast, political advocacy actually could work on the scales that we’re talking about.
Thank you for framing this in terms of wanting to support women have children that they desire—often when people talk about wanting to ‘increase the birth rate’ they don’t disentangle ‘helping people have kids that they want to have’ from more coercive measures, which makes me nervous.
‘The primary interventions I think a funder could make to support women achieving their fertility goals are through political advocacy and research. I don’t think any philanthropic funder, no matter how rich, is capable of directly moving this issue by, for example, offering financial support to families.‘
-why wouldn’t offering financial support be effective?
Does the research on ‘missing children’ ask why the respondents didn’t have as many children as they wanted? Because this would be useful to know, and would help determine what interventions might be most effective. For example, if most people say that they didn’t have as many children as they wanted because they couldn’t afford it, then financial support would be the best intervention; if they say that they didn’t find the right partner in time, maybe the best intervention is ?trying to make dating sites better?; if they say they waited too long and were then unable to conceive, then the fertility education you suggested might be very effective. Other reasons I can think of might be: lack of maternity leave, lack of social support, or their partner didn’t want more kids.
I imagine the financial claim isn’t that offering financial support doesn’t work, but a claim more like—there aren’t enough resources to offer enough financial support to enough people to meaningfully alter the US fertility rate on the basis of this alone.
Like—how much does it take to raise a child? I’ve heard 250k, so let’s go with that. You don’t need to offer the entire amount as financial support, but something like 5k/year seems reasonable. Across 18 years, that’s still $90,000. That means that if you give a billion dollars away as financial support, with zero overheads, you’ve supported the birth of ~11,000 children. This is a rounding error compared to the size of the issue, so I wouldn’t see it as “directly moving the ”. To directly move the needle at a cost of 90k/child, you’d need to invest hundreds of billions of dollars. It would probably work effectively, but the resources just aren’t there in private philanthropy.
By contrast, political advocacy actually could work on the scales that we’re talking about.
Yeah, this is what I meant. Thanks, Jay!