Birthrate in UK falls to record low as campaigners say 'procreation a luxury'
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
The UK should consider making housing and children affordable. The former is particularly easy, because we've had the technology to build multiple housing units on a given parcel of land by stacking the units on top of each other for at least two centuries.
Why would those who do own houses want to see their assets depreciate because of increased supply etc.
Which is a perfectly understandable reaction on the surface, but it ignores the long-term impacts of such a situation. Granted, we humans are terrible at thinking about the very long term.
An example I think many of us that live in places like the SF Bay Area, Seattle, Boston..etc have seen is that at some point, high housing prices start damaging other parts of the local economy. Younger people can't afford to move to the area, so the demographics start slumping towards older people; eventually that will lead to the collapse of some pay-it-forward kinds of social services. Businesses have to pay extremely high wages to be able to find workers that want to work there and are able to afford to live within a reasonable distance; Some of this is solvable via automation/remote work, but I don't think you're going to have your mechanic or your cleaners doing telework. A lot of businesses cannot sustain those sorts of wages without severely increasing prices, but then you get people complaining that their local coffee shop has to charge $15 for a cup of plain black coffee.
I think we just haven't yet seen the fallout from the housing affordability problem fully unfold yet. Unless something changes, we'll be seeing more and more effects from this in the coming years.
But back to democracy, why should we care if parties are only elected for 3-5 year terms?
Absolutely it's going to end in disaster, but also, that's just how the system is currently designed.
Why do people treat houses like financial instruments? I think it's a combination of the cost, dual functionality, and devaluation of money. When something costs a significant amount of your labor over your lifetime, you want to make sure it does a little more than keep you dry. If all it does is keep you dry you could live in a tent. If you're looking for a place to invest capital, and you need a place to live, why not have that serve both purposes? And finally, if you want to save your capital, sticking cash on a shoebox or a checking account simply won't do, it will lose purchasing power.
I think these all have the same solution. Houses are expensive because they grow in nominal terms while our labor does not. People who want to invest can't afford that and a home at the same time and so have to use their home for both. And devaluation of money... I think the solution to the housing crisis we are in is simply money that cannot be devalued.
This just means assets are getting more concentrated, effectively increasing inequality. Increased inequality usually means the ones with capital become a greater force in the market, not a weaker one.
So the politicians either keep housing as a good investment (un-affordable) and piss off the younger people who can't afford to buy, or they make housing affordable (bad investment) and piss off the older people who already have houses.
They can't win either way.
I personally think housing should never have been made an "investment", and we should start taking steps to move it away from that. It's a basic human nessessity, and like water or food, everyone should have access, and it shouldn't be something that people make wild profit from.
Go make wild profit from commercial real estate or cars or golf clubs. Not houses people need to live in.
We need to take these steps:
Step 1: Only humans can own houses (no corporations, no business, no hedge funds or whatever else)
Step 2: Limit the number of houses any one human can own, until it's eventually only one per person (a rich couple could still have one each, but not more)
These steps may take 10 years to phase in, but they will make a big difference and be worthwhile.
I'd prefer if step 1 was something like "remove government subsidies to people who buy or own real estate". And step 2: Build publicly owned apartments.
Why should a company own a residential property for the purposes of renting it out and spinning a profit? I'm saying we must remove that if we want housing to be affordable.
> I'd prefer if step 1 was something like "remove government subsidies to people who buy or own real estate".
This is such a classic misunderstanding of the problem. Government subsidies are not the core problem here, and they have extremely minimal impact on the cost of housing, or the availability of housing for sale.
> And step 2: Build publicly owned apartments.
As we know projects like this take forever and go through literally decades of red tape and bureaucracy. There is a much simpler and faster way that will address the crisis NOW. Let humans who need a house to live in buy the houses that already exist but are being horded by companies and other people whose sole purpose to own the house in the first place is to spin a profit.
We absolutely should not let companies like Nestlé buy all the available drinking water on the planet so they can sell it for high profits, so why the hell are we letting companies (and people) buy all the available housing for the purpose of renting it at a profit?
Knowing the deep aversion to risk the owners of these companies have I guess it would only take one successful ruling to discourage pretty much the whole market and significantly reset house prices.
Private landlords would take a bit more finagling given that renters also dream of one day owning multiple homes they can rent out but maybe one could sweeten the pot by finding ways to help folk retire more easily?
Implementing this may take winning a national election and a non-trivial amount of social engineering but it's not like it hasn't been done before in other places at other times.
I do like your ideas.
This is precisely what needs to stop.
As soon as you have some people buying multiple houses to make a profit from, you make housing un-affordable, and there are not enough to go around because some people have many.
We do because private companies are often good at running things and usually their profit is small compared to the benefits they bring by being competent and professional. This is far from always the case, of course, but in my experience the renting market works well and I'm happy I don't have to deal with the hassle of owning an maintaining part of a building.
For Step 2 though, what about instead of limiting how many houses you can own (as there will probably be significant legal challenges to that) what about progressively punitive property taxes on additional properties. Every house past the first pays 10% more annual property taxes than the previous one. By the time you're on your 10th house, you owe more than the value of that house every single year in property taxes. That gives those with really large amounts of fuck-you money the chance to still have those sorts of houses, but they operate at a pure loss, and we all get the benefit of that tax money.
What you're saying makes logical sense, though I think as soon as you make a carveout, it will get exploited.
Many countries around the world have a housing crisis. There is no reason for a house to be held for some decendant to have it later. People need houses to live in NOW, not for them to be tied up waiting for some person to have it sometime in the future.
It's ruthless, but I would just as soon force them to sell it so someone else can use it. Like drinking water or food, it is not reasonable to horde a limited resource which then means others miss out.
> For Step 2, what about progressively punitive property taxes on additional properties. That gives those with really large amounts of fuck-you money the chance to still have those sorts of houses, but they operate at a pure loss, and we all get the benefit of that tax money.
Still doesn't fix the problem.
We don't want more tax money, we want houses for people to live in. A billionaire could still own 100 houses and just run them all at a loss and not care. That's 99 people that now don't have a home because one person is greedy.
> as there will probably be significant legal challenges to that
Well, yes. We're talking about changing the LAW to make this thing explicitly illegal. That means there will be people that won't like it, and interestingly enough it will only be the greedy people who are hording and stopping other people having houses that will be upset. That is what we want. If those people are not upset, we're not doing enough to stop them ruining society for everyone else.
The ruthlessness is part of the problem. You need some escape hatches, or you strongly incentivize a lot of people to not go for this. You want to give those on the fence a reason to go to your side of it.
> We don't want more tax money, we want houses for people to live in. A billionaire could still own 100 houses and just run them all at a loss and not care. That's 99 people that now don't have a home because one person is greedy.
Well, I would argue that having to pay 1000% of the houses' value every single year will be beneficial to the rest of us. Yes, sure, it takes some houses off the market, but a $1m house would be generating $10m in tax revenue every single year for the locality. At that sort of return, let them have their 100 houses. We can use the money they pay to fund building more housing or maintaining infrastructure.
I'm willing to let a few dozen billionaires have their vanity homes if it means we get to absolutely fleece them for the privilege.
By very definition if we do literally anything that makes housing more affordable, we make it less of a good invetment, which means a lot of people will not go for it. We already covered that in my first comment.
Old people that own houses want them to be a good invesment.
Young people that do not own houses want them to be affordable.
Pick one group to make happy.
> We can use the money they pay to fund building more housing
Now you're complicating the issue and getting away from the core issue/problem here. Yes, building more houses would be great, but that is NOT the fundamental problem here.
The fundamental problem that has to be addressed first, is that housing can not simultaneously be a good investment AND be affordable. We MUST fix that first.
This sounds very simplistic. The majority of homeowners don't care.
You talk a lot about investment but if you ask homeowners if their house is an investment or a home, the majority will say the latter.
For homeowners who want to live in their home (as opposed to house flippers) the value of the house is not relevant. They live there, they plan to continue living there. Having the value go up is not good, it just means paying more taxes for the same home. It's better for the value to remain constant or even go down (same home, less taxes, yay!)
> housing can not simultaneously be a good investment AND be affordable
That's impossible from simple economics. As long as there is inflation (and there will always be inflation, it is a goal of the fed), a durable good cannot go down in price over the long haul (unless the whole city collapses like Detroit, but that's not good for anyone either). What you wish for is impossible.
What do we mean by "good investment"? When I use that term, I generally mean something close to "someplace I can put my money and have it grow faster than inflation".
In that sense, something that is a "good investment" will tend to get more expensive over time in real dollars (by definition).
If housing is affordable at some moment in time and is a good investment, it will increase in real price until it becomes unaffordable at some moment in time. This argument is the fundamental reason that it's bad economic policy to try to make housing into an investment, but rather to have policies that tend to make it a poor investment, in order to preserve affordability.
Housing is not a share of stock, it's a place you live in. So by good investment, I think the criteria is not that it beats any kind of index fund, but simply that it beats renting. Because you have to live somewhere. Either rent or buy.
> to try to make housing into an investment
What does this mean? Who is trying this? What do they do?
As a homeowner who is reasonably (best I can) politically aware and always vote, I have never experienced these forces trying to make housing an investment. It's never been on the ballot here.
> have policies that tend to make it a poor investment
I believe that's impossible. Only way would be a dictatorship that says your house will be taken away from you and demolished every 30 years, or something like that. Would you want to live in such a world?
By that logic, a used (rather than new) car is a good investment as well. Since they're a good investment, I guess I should load up on used cars.
> Step 2
So you've almost completely eliminated rentals from existing, is that good?
From these discussion, it seems there are people who like and want to rent.
It seems odd for people to not consider the highly beneficial aspects to some tenants of a useful/viable rental market existing.
I’ve been paying more attention to the intractable social problems such as housing as similar to the talk about offshoring of US manufacturing 10+ years ago.
I have family in the mid-west who suffered downward pressure on their wages. Meanwhile the technology industry wages are skyrocketing. Money in the economy, but not for them.
They have turned towards the more radical political factions who promised to help. I witnessed suffering people welcome chaos as a force for change.
I want to know who is benefiting from the housing crisis? I bet they’re entrenched in legal and moral loopholes, and lobbying that reforms will lower your home value and put your ‘investments’ underwater.
That’s what I’m thinking about. And I’m reminded that leaving the EU seemed, as seen from the US, like it would be difficult. But the UK managed to do it, for good or bad.
The UK is still scarred from the last time it tried highly dense housing - people think of failed developments such as Hulme Crescents:
If banks only leant 2x or 4x (like they used to) house prices would quickly depress.
Except that would route the wealth from the middle class upwards, so it's unlikely to ever be allowed to happen.
The governing party (Conservative Party) lost a seat it had held for decades (since it was created) in a by-election because Boris Johnson (then PM) wanted to change planning regulations to allow more housing to be built. The government then had to reverse those plans.
This is also the case at the local council level. People will turn out to argue against new housing but people do not turn up to planning meetings to support it.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-5747203...
https://www.cityam.com/planning-reforms-govt-u-turns-over-in...
This seems like a good idea regardless, but I wonder if making children affordable actually influences people to have more children. Despite being intuitively obvious, it seems like wealth has the opposite effect on procreation. People who have lots of children seem to be motivated mostly by non-economic factors.
Poverty of meaning seems more relevant to this issue. If you don't have an intergenerational identity that you derive deep meaning from, and believe that the future after you die matters more than the present (and near future) where you're alive, then having kids is just brutal suffering for nothing.
It's like trying to convince anarcho-communists to join the military by offering really good salaries. Okay, do that. But also wonder - why don't people believe in your society? Why don't they want to fight for it? None of this is to say we shouldn't pay soldiers well, you see? Because in the past, parents and soldiers lived significantly less secure, comfortable lives, and yet...
Anomie
> The total fertility rate (TFR) decreased to 1.49 children per woman in 2022 from 1.55 in 2021; the TFR has been decreasing since 2010.
> Fertility rates decreased overall and in each age group, except for women aged under 20 years where the fertility rate increased.
> There were 605,479 live births in England and Wales in 2022, a 3.1% decrease from 624,828 in 2021 and the lowest number since 2002; the number remains in line with the recent trend of decreasing live births seen before the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.
> There were 2,433 stillbirths in 2022, a decrease of 164 (6.3%) from 2,597 in 2021.
> The stillbirth rate in 2022 decreased to 4.0 stillbirths per 1,000 total births from 4.1 in 2021; this is higher than the rate seen before the coronavirus pandemic in 2019 (3.9).
> The number of births outside of marriage or civil partnership remains higher than births within marriage or civil partnership in England and Wales; 311,306 live births (51.4%) were registered to women outside of a marriage or civil partnership.
The data actually points in the exact opposite direction. People with the least wealth are the most likely to decide to have more kids.
The above is a big reason why you often see higher-comp working class wait until the last minute (biologically) to have kids. It’s the only way to accumulate anywhere near enough surplus resources to be able to afford a well-cared-for family without risk of a badly timed flurry of bills putting them out on the street.
By contrast, if you’re poor having children doesn’t change a whole lot financially. You’re living on the edge and struggling either way, regardless of your desires.
This is why if it’s a goal of governments to boost birth rates it should be by making raising a family with a high quality of life less burdensome, not by making the population more poor.
Anecdote: I know a few couples where their financial situation improved when one of the spouses stopped working and started taking care of the kids. The cost of having someone else watching the kids, such as daycare, was more than one of the spouses was bringing in. So they had a choice of being in a more precarious financial situation until the kids could be more independent with both spouses working, or having one spouse give up a long chunk of their career and potentially end up worse off later because they missed on years of advancement.
And of course, if both spouses work a lot, you end up with latchkey kids, which ain't the best situation either.
It's basically not even a question which one we're choosing. I'll keep my quality of life, thanks.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/241530/birth-rate-by-fam...
At a certain level of income you lose access to a lot of resources that the government provides that allows a certain minimum level of care for each child. Food stamps, financial aid, tax breaks, all start to fade away as you make more money.
We're always on our phones and the internet. There's no space left for even entertaining the idea of kids. Cellphones took their place. And capitalism filled the gaps to occupy us with entertainment for any spare moment. (Who knew we needed "escape rooms"?)
Kids were perfect for the farm and nomadic societies. They were essentially free labor to help around the house. They don't fit very well into today's society, where you might just go on a random trip, go partying late at night, or spend your income on your hobby / pet project.
I'm saying all of this both tongue-in-cheek (kids are the future and we need them), but also in earnest. I truly think this is a big driver or component of why people aren't having kids.
I think this, more than cost burden, is the reason. We're too into our own thing to let a young infant have space.
It’s also the reason why wealthier people have fewer kids.
What did they have that the rest of the world didn't?
Or maybe other countries had a similar fertility decline that was masked by other factors. Did you remember to adjust out the effects of immigration (not just immediately, but in subsequent generations)?
Or maybe other countries had a similar fertility decline that was masked by other factors
Or maybe they didn't. You are throwing out nonsensical guesses, I linked you real information.
Did you remember to adjust out the effects of immigration (not just immediately, but in subsequent generations)?
What are you talking about, I linked you a graph of long term statistics. If you have questions about it, click on the link and read.
I think it may have been due to having great entertainment options, of which the things I mentioned are indicative examples.
> I linked you real information.
No, you linked a Japan-specific graph and then asked "What did they have that the rest of the world didn't?". Which is obviously a meaningless question without knowing what you're comparing to.
That's called real information. You are throwing out nonsense with nothing to back it up.
"What did they have that the rest of the world didn't?"
And you thought that bowling and cassette tapes for some reason dropped fertility rates in japan.
Which is obviously a meaningless question without knowing what you're comparing to.
What comparison do you need and why didn't you do it yourself? Japan's fertility as a country started dropping in the 70s and continued on a steady decline. Why did that happen? Your answer? Bowling.
They also mow the yard and help with heavy lifting!
All kidding aside, children are also useful/needed in the later life phase of their parents. I watched my wife visit her Mother everyday for the last ten years of her life.
https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/Probabilistic/POP/TOT/9...
It seems to me the environment would be much better-off with fewer people. And also people would be better off with fewer people, with more resources to invest in each life.
It seems like maintaining financial growth is the real concern behind this 'news'.
Medical advances increase the number of older people. Lower fertility reduces the number of working age adults.
A sustainable future means settling for a stable population and retiring with less than infinite growth could provide.
Most of the problems (wars, food supply issue, pandemics, climate change, surveillance) would be easier to tackle.
China and India have a genuine space (and weather!) issue to deal with, they cannot stay like that eternally, so it may eventually lead to conflicts.
We may see the world self-regulate anyway. Corona was probably just a trial for the next big depopulation event (either violent, or passive like lack of fertility) :|
Easy to say when you've positioned yourself as one of the 100m that gets to live - and with 7 billion people's worth of man-made resources to be shared round.
I think the journey towards it would be catastrophic under capitalism (and any transition away from capitalism could also be catastrophic, at least in the short term).
"gets to live" is not the correct way to put it. If birth rates keep going lower, everyone gets to live their life just fine.
But over the long haul, population goes down as people die of old age and younger generations are smaller.
A lack of procreation doesn't turn a country green. It turns it brown.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AW-6dQvQrFk&list=RDMMAW-6dQv...
By choice, some of us wants to go to sleep before we reach that situation. Need no need to be looked after. We want the right to death with dignity.
The people are there to serve the economy. Immigrants are treated better than the natives. Houses are casinos rather than homes. The old are more important than young. Sameness is valued over variety.
Those questioning it are labeled 'far' or 'extreme' by the same media whom just happen to benefit from the economic growth created by the status quo. Get back in your Overton box. Jeffery needs a new rocket and there is a new dance meme on TikTok.
I think it's a fairly foolish and self-defeating position in the long term, but I'm not the one making those decisions.
Even for the far-right political movements, immigration is too favourable to actually stop. They're populists who sell cheap lies rather than actual solutions. Trump's not going to deprive his rural farmer voting blocs nor his big corporate sponsors of their cheap labour. Europe's far-right is even more closely allied with farmers right now.
The populists just virtue signal a bunch without doing anything about the problem.
This is a very bold statement to just put out there with zero explanation.
> Immigrants are treated better than the natives
This is where economic reality meets far-right conspiracy. You're going to have to substantiate that claim.
This person is a nationalist. Their goal is to spread hate about immigrants.
>As always with western countries the political class will simply fill the void with more and more immigrants rather than fixing the core issues like living costs or crime.
Righttt... because politicians' primary goal is to cater to the people that can't actually vote for them or keep them in power.
>The people are there to serve the economy. Immigrants are treated better than the natives. Houses are casinos rather than homes.
In what country are "immigrants treated better than natives" - and how so? I can't think of a single country where immigrants have more rights, or access to more social programs than citizens.
>The old are more important than young.
Sure, because as a percentage of the population, they vote in higher numbers. Of course they're generally more likely to be against immigration so your mental gymnastics are straining hard.
>Sameness is valued over variety.
So they simultaneously want to fill the country with immigrants from myriad cultures, while making everything the same? I can think of a lot of ways to make everything in your country the same - preferring immigrants from other cultures over citizens that probably have at least some shared culture would not make the top 100 of that list.
>Those questioning it are labeled 'far' or 'extreme' by the same media whom just happen to benefit from the economic growth created by the status quo. Get back in your Overton box. Jeffery needs a new rocket and there is a new dance meme on TikTok.
Well right, because they're racist tropes, and as evidenced by your post tend to contradict themselves unironically. The fact you think politicians are simultaneously catering to old people and immigrants is... interesting to say the least.