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Comment by automatic6131 | Hacker News Reader

We have socialized the gains of children (via their adult tax receipt used to pay for benefits and healthcare) but (largely) privatized the costs of children solely onto their parents.

In the modern world, if you do not have children, but instead save your income in a retirement fund, you have an even better claim to the labor of the next generation than the childrens' parents through your increased retirement fund.

Privatized X matched with socialized anti-X is the classic condition for a moral hazard to emerge.

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Good point - I also think we have a race to the bottom w.r.t housing. When homes were abundant one income could support a household (ish). Then we added more women to the workforce at the same time NIMBYism took hold and peer competition meant you needed two incomes. Then fewer people had kids and you needed two stressed out incomes without the expense (in time and money) of kids to support one. Hell, the “who’s hiring” thread sometimes has companies talking about massive overtime being expected, hard to raise a kid like that.

Perhaps in time we’ll see more polycule formation driven by housing costs…

(These are all on average of course, there are still high earners who manage)

Average amount of living space per person in a new house has nearly doubled in just the last 50 years. Price per square foot is pretty much the same as decades before (adjusted for inflation).

Isn't it the abundance of housing?

>>When homes were abundant one income could support a household

Was it the case, though? Could one income support household with 3000sq ft house, big new truck and college for each kid back then?

No, but it also is much harder to buy smaller homes (especially townhouses, etc.), and you didn't actually need a vehicle nearly as much as you do now. The NIMBYs I mentioned made it much harder to have a decent ~1200 sqft home where your family needed one (or no) vehicle for their daily life.

College is actually another good example- sending more people to college mostly just meant everyone else _also_ needed to go to college in order to compete with their peers for jobs that didn't used to require a degree. We can see this across borders - jobs that require a bachelor's in the US often require a master's in Europe, because too many people in Europe have master's degrees compared to the number of jobs that should actually need one.

People often have master's degrees in Europe, because master's has been the primary university degree since the middle ages. Bachelor's degrees only started becoming popular in most European countries with the Bologna Process ~20 years ago. And the industry hesitated accepting them for a long time, often considering them little more than glorified dropouts.

Interesting! Sounds like European industry imposes enormous unnecessary costs (especially opportunity cost) on new entrants.

You did not went into massive debt for life for that.

One bit difference is that European system did not had first three years of college as "life experience, basically generic study without specialization, basically another high school" thing.

You picked a field and studied that one. And that was structured as five years old study. If you are in the middle, you are eligible for the same positions as those who did not study at all - because you are not qualified yet.

It’s getting more expensive, but I was mostly thinking of opportunity cost

In that system, demanding bachelor is the opportunity cost. Because basically there should be a trade school for that.

Like a nurse - before you would go to nursing high school and become qualified nurse there. The new demand to have bachelor made studies longer and did not brought higher quality nor was needed. Same with kindergarten teachers. Same with basic administration etc.

What actually happened was whole bunch of positions that did not required university suddenly formally requiring it. And half baked school programs to get you diploma. And 40-50 years old people going to diploma mills so that they can be formally better competitive apply to positions that required only high school before.

It was mostly about the perception that people with a bachelor's degree had not learned anything useful yet.

There is a lot of variation between countries, but European countries often have a dual-track system in higher education. You can choose between the academic track (universities) and the vocational track, with more people ending up in the vocational track. Some fields are available in the academic track, some in the vocational track, and some in both. Professional fields such as healthcare, business, and engineering are often available in both, with the tracks preparing for different roles in the field (such as nurse vs. doctor).

Imagine being used to an educational system with two kinds of degrees. Some indicate practical studies preparing for a job, while others tell of longer theoretical studies and specialization. Suddenly the system changes and you start seeing a third kind of a degree: shorter theoretical studies without going particularly deep in anything. What use do you have for people like that?

I know plenty of people with “only” engineering bachelors degrees from my Alma Mater who would easily outperform people I’ve met with masters, so the same thing as the masters-holders I suppose?

It's not about being better or outperforming someone. A doctor is not supposed to be a better nurse. Similarly, engineers in the academic track are taught different things and prepared for different roles than engineers in the vocational track.

If you just need an engineer, someone from the vocational track will probably be more productive than an academic engineer due to more relevant education. Assuming a similar level of talent, of course. You only hire an academic engineer if you have an actual need for theoretical education. Or if you have a job where the specifics of the education don't really matter. Or if the academic engineer is from a higher-tier institution and likely more talented, despite the education.

Yeah, I do not know why this is downvoted. It is largely true. You went to university to study a field and that meant masters.

The bachelor was added so that basically people could transfer to American system without wasting time. Otherwise it was seen as unfinished degree.

> Isn't it the abundance of housing?

You also need to consider the distribution of housing sizes. The average being driven up by rural or suburban McMansions is not representative of the conditions of million of people living in large cities.

Homelessness rates say opposite. What that say there is inequality

Homelessness is not related to the housing prices. With any job one can afford to rent a room.

Homelessness is a complex issue, but a healthcare is the main cause. Lack of proper treatment of addictions and mental illness is the main cause of homelessness.

That is simply not true. Homelessness goes up and down with housing prices. You can see that in the data.

If housing is cheap, mentally sick person or even addict can get one in an easier way. And their relatives have easier time to help their mentally ill relative find a place.

Being homeless makes both addictions and mental illness worst, to the point of unsulvable.

But it also affects your safety net. If rent is 60% of your income, it's much easier to drown in it than if it's 30%. Especially considering once you start drowning, you'll need to pull 3 months' rent out of somewhere for the deposit of a new (cheaper) place.

It also makes it make more sense to live in a car. A car costs the same, mostly everywhere, so if you're in a stupidly expensive location, it might start to sound reasonable to live in a van.

Drugs, poor financial literacy and insanity are the main reasons, but expensive housing is also there.

> Average amount of living space per person in a new house has nearly doubled in just the last 50 years

I have no trouble believing that. But what about the mean?

Also, what happens if you include not-new houses?

I think you mean ‘what about the median?’ The mean is the average.

A mean is a type of average (i.e. a single figure that attempts to summarize the data). There can be a geometric mean average, an arithmetic mean a average, a median average, a mode average, etc.

It is often used ambiguously to intentionally create ambiguity as it allows for reaching muddied conclusions, which evoke more emotion.

I dream of a world where all data comes with at least quintile if not decile level distribution details. Especially in the digital age, I cannot think of a single good reason to not provide that detail.

Yes, or even just a simple distribution chart, which makes intuitive sense to someone who might not know about percentiles.

Median also doubled, though the value is a bit lower. But median 50 years ago was also lower than average.

>>not-new houses

If you zoom out for 50y it does not matter. New house built 20y ago is an old house now, but still much bigger than old houses 50y ago.

Also, the homeownership rate of married, unmarried, and divorced individuals are all higher today than in 1980.

What changed is the number is the relative number of people in each category (far fewer married people).

Houses are much more affordable with two incomes than one.

> (largely) privatized the costs of children solely onto their parents.

The single greatest component of the property tax is the local public schools. Federal taxes pay for free lunches at those schools. Approximately half of Social Security’s budget go towards needy families. Over half of college students receive federal aid, and over a quarter receive state aid.

To privatize something implies motion from public to private. What costs of parenthood do you believe have been privatized over the last 200, 100, 50 or 25 years? I genuinely don’t believe that there’s a single one, but I sincerely know that I could be wrong.

daycare

used to be an extended familiy or village thing, now its on the ~1.7 parents per kid to earn enough to pay a commercial supplier.

> To privatize something implies motion from public to private.

Only if you’re being pedantic.

Taking on the responsibility to raise children will completely take over your life. Not even considering the financial cost of daycare or missing second income, the opportunity cost is enormous.

Also parents still pay taxes…

that’s the wrong framing. simpler way is just looking at what the US doesn’t have compared to equivalently well off nations. childcare, parental leave, medical care are all things that are taken up by the comparatively larger wages US families have

Free lunches and college aid are supposed to offset the costs of parenting?

All of the costs of parenting are privatized except for schooling, but even to do that one well costs an enormous amount from the parent

also you're asking which costs have been privatized in the last 200 years, but the entirety of the costs were (always) private and only a small amount has been socialized.

This is likely one of the most important points IMHO in the modern discourse on having kids.

A way to alleviate it could be to give insane tax deductions for having kids - we will likely reach a point where we have to.

Many countries do in some form or another. But the subsidies are trivial compared to the huge expenses of raising a child well.

Yes, saw that I had a typo - I meant insane deductions.

You are right that many countries do - but they are simply not high enough to make it worthwhile and make the same economical sense at not having kids does.

The problem with subsidies is society does not benefit from kids simply existing. Society benefits from well raised kids. Kids not raised well end up costing society.

As “well raised” is not possible to measure, this is not a feasible solution.

One work around has been to bet that those with earned incomes are likelier to raise their kids well, so the subsidies can be non refundable earned income tax credits.

But I doubt sufficient people have sufficient tax liabilities that offset the costs of the minimum quality of life many people require for their kids and them to have.

It always gets a bit fascist to go down this path - but it is at least intellectually interesting.

One way to subsidize parents is to give free child care. As a bonus, the government get to decide exactly how these kids are being raised.

But yeah, it is a material investment for the society to take - which is likely why we have seen the cost of kids being transferred to the parents (and lower birth rates).

> It always gets a bit fascist to go down this path - but it is at least intellectually interesting.

Can you elaborate on what you mean here? Having well-raised kids is fascist? Which part did you mean?

Imposing structures on who and how can raise kids. Almost all western countries have scars around this.

Deciding who is going to raise children well implies deciding who can raise children implies deciding who can have children. It’s a pretty straightforward line.

Well that's easy to fix: tie the tax deduction to kids meeting some minimal reasonable performance bar.

I don't think any simple trick like that is enough. If people are allowed to choose their own paths, they will make different choices, and every aspect of the society has an impact on the choices they make. If we want a society where people have the right number of children on the average (not too few and not too many, as in the societies discussed in the blog), everything must be designed around that.

For example, if having kids is optional, many people will choose to not have kids. Then those who do have need more than two kids on the average to sustain the population. But we have this cultural ideal of a family with two kids, which impacts the design of everything from homes to cars and from furniture to hotels. As well as the expectations on how much effort parents should devote to support each child.

> If people are allowed to choose their own paths

At a macro scale this idea is futile, as people make decisions in a context.

Yes,people should have full agency - also to do things that does not make financial sense.

But if we want something as a society, it needs to make financial sense.

And yes this has consequences, that is why we have a market, so we can service each other under these consequences.

This is a great framing. I've often thought that social security eligibility should be based on how many kids you've had. If you're not recruiting into the Ponzi scheme you shouldn't participate in the "earnings"

Hmm yes, I can’t see any possible issues with incentivizing having lots and lots of children, especially in the age of modern medicine…

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