Liberal economics and replacement-level fertility: Are they contradictory?

I'd like to refer our readers to John C. Caldwell and Thomas Schindlmayr' 2003 paper "Explanations of the fertility crisis in modern society: A Search for Commonalities", originally published in Population Studies 27.3, pages 241-263. This paper is a detailed examination of the dynamics behind lowest-low fertility, examining historical trends, government policies, family structures, and so on in a wide variety of countries (Mediterranean Europe, post-Communist Europe, Japan and so on). Their conclusion? The factor common to these different countries and responsible for the shift to lowest-low may well be our globalized economy.

[A] global economy governed by liberal economics creating a high degree of economic individual insecurity may be incompatible with societal replacement. Cohort fertility levels are quite likely to move to ever-lower plateaux, each transition being governed by some severe shock to the system. The mechanisms may be ever fewer couples planning to have more than two children, some deliberately remaining childless or settling for one child, but more failing to achieve a two-child family because of intervening temptations for education, occupational advance, travel, companionate pleasures, or expensive housing.

There are too many different groups of countries with very low fertility and different specific explanations for their situations for us not to conclude that there must be a common deeper explanation for all their conditions. Over-arching conditions common to all developed countries determine fertility decline, but local and sometimes transient idiosyncrasies shape the timing and tempo (see Watkins 1990). That explanation at its broadest must be the creation of a world economic system where children are of no immediate economic value to their parents. Related integral factors include, among other things, rising educational attainment for women and labour force participation. Yet, differences at the national level in legislation, policies, and the response of the population to these institutional settings, as well as family structures, partner relations, childcare expenses, and attitudes towards children determine the shape of the decline. Certainly at present the situation is aggravated by many peoples feeling the cold blasts of liberal economics to a greater extent than previously, but the acceptance of liberal economic policies is largely the outcome of the decision to award economic growth a higher priority than demographic growth. It may be a system to which the world will adjust, much as it is claimed the Anglo-Saxon world has.

The broadest explanation would echo the 1937 view of Kingsley Davis (1997) that ultimately the reproduction of the species is not easily compatible with advanced industrial society. This is a consequence of that society’s rewards in the form of a career for women outside the home and the almost measureless temptations of the modern consumer society. The example of the richest countries, and the impact of modern advertising in the context of a global economy and a near-global political system, makes people in poorer countries yearn for the same possessions, especially motor cars, often giving the desire for such possessions priority over children. There is an extraordinary simultaneity in the contemporary world. Children do not easily fit in with a great deal of travel, and the entertainment they provide can be replaced by the electronic media and other pleasures. Yet couples will probably continue to regard two children as ‘ideal’, partly because they provide a unique and different kind of fulfillment, and usually admire even parents who make little impression on their peers. There is an awareness too that children will ultimately build up a network of relatives, the only adequate network many people may possess; and that, even in a wellinsured welfare state, children may be needed in old age for company as well as physical and financial assistance. These advantages may prove to be sufficient to raise fertility to replacement level or higher in nationalistic states facing declining numbers and with a mandate from their electorate to spend hugely to overcome the difficulties faced by women or couples who want all the modern world can provide but who, if that provision can be maintained, are willing to have children as well. This time may not come for decades but it is likely that prototypes will begin to develop.

In their different ways, France and the United States might be these prototypes. Then again even in these countries there's dissent, as evidenced by French writer Corinne Maier's No Kids: 40 Good Reasons Not to Have Children. She received substantial international attention for her thesis.

Q: Your two children, Laure and Cyrille, 14 and 12, are old enough to read your book and to be affected by it. What was their reaction?

A: When it was released I explained to them what it is about but they haven't read it because they aren't very interested in what I do. They prefer to read Harry Potter and (books by) Stephen King.

Q: What about their friends, and their friends' parents?

A: My name is different. They have the name of their father so nobody knows who I am.

[. . .]

Q: How would you characterize the reception to the book, aside from its huge success on the stands? Has the reaction been hostile? Welcoming?

A: Some people laughed because it was written to be funny. Other people thought it was shocking. Some people wrote to me to tell me that I was a monster. Some journalists wrote that my book was in extremely bad taste and a bad read. Many people disliked it and said it was inappropriate. They thought that a mother of two should not be allowed to write such things about children because, of course, "children are our future" and "they are so important," and "nothing is more beautiful than a smile on a child's face."

And in Canada, a place with a TFR of ~1.5 and cohort fertility of ~1.7, the front cover of the latest issue of English Canada's newsmagazine MacLean's is promoting the article "The Case Against Having Kids" (They can hurt your careeer, your marriage, your social life, your bank book. Why bother?).

Stay tuned.