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Comment by vidarh | Hacker News Reader

I agree with everything you've written.

But since you mention the Nordic countries, it's worth driving home just how high the amounts are:

In Norway it's 100% of pay for up to 49 weeks or 61 weeks at 80% of pay, capped at ~$111k (based on a your salary, capped to "6G" - 6x the national insurance base rate)[1].

So not even up to $111k is enough to convince enough women to have more children to maintain replacement rates (and I don't blame them).

And this is in addition to e.g. legally mandated right to full-time nursery places with the fee cap dropped to a maximum of ~$130/month as of last year.

When people think money will be enough, they need to realise just how much money some countries have tried throwing at parents without getting back above replacement...

[1] in Norwegian: https://www.nav.no/foreldrepenger

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It only takes a few percent of women to decide they don't want kids for career reasons for the replacement rate to drop below parity.

When you add those who don't want kids or can't have them for other reasons - not straight, asexual, emotional trauma, physically unable, others - getting to parity is even harder.

It's not stress. For a lot of history life was far more challenging, uncertain, and dangerous than life today.

Humans kept reproducing, aggressively enough to compensate for infant mortality, wars, and pandemics.

The big change is that the primary role of women doesn't have to be motherhood, where for most of recent-ish history it was.

I'm not saying a return to that is desirable. But I am pointing out that the causes of low birth rates aren't mysterious.

Women who do choose motherhood are more likely to have kids younger.

But if given a choice, a significant proportion of women will either not choose motherhood at all, or will delay it significantly, which lowers fertility and raises infant mortality.

It doesn't need to be a majority of women. A fairly small percentage is enough to shift the numbers.

I'm not sure. I think there's a lot of people out there who want to be parents, but who put it off in favor of employment because they feel like they need money, and end up having fewer children than they wanted to have. I don't think they're all delaying motherhood because they prefer delayed motherhood.(Or fatherhood for that matter).

People think money is enough because they look at their lives and think 'how could I afford kids? Clearly I need money to do that.' and they don't think 'if I had extra money, would I spend it on someone else or on myself?' and the majority of people choose spending it on themselves instead of that potential child someone else.

Those people often don't even consider the time cost either. Which makes sense, if reason A is sufficient to say 'no' then why continue dwelling on other reasons? But even if there was more money and they were willing to not spend it on themselves, they now need to accept giving up roughly 90% of their non sleep/work time to someone else as well. That's not giving away something new you didn't have, that's giving up something you've been using and are accustomed to having.

Most of the people in the pro-natalism space have moved over to the idea that you're not going to be able to convince folks to have a first kid. Instead, you might be able to convince folks to have a third kid. That seems to be where the space is moving towards.

> not even up to $111k is enough to convince enough women to have more children to maintain replacement rates (and I don't blame them)

What is the lifetime private cost of raising a child in Norway? The $111k sounds like it's just offsetting the opportunity cost of birth, not the opportunity cost nor direct costs of raising a kid.

High in absolute terms, but lowered significantly by monthly child support payments and heavily subsidised nursery costs. As such, the total cost relative to the also relatively high incomes are better than in most developed countries.

Your right it doesn't offset opportunity cost. The point is that even providing assistance a high multiple of most other countries has been insufficient to get above replacement.

I'm sure there's probably a number that is high enough, but it clearly needs to be higher than Norway, and even scaling for cost of living differences very few countries are near Norwegian child benefit levels, so it seems likely it will be exceedingly expensive.

> sure there's probably a number that is high enough, but it clearly needs to be higher than Norway

There are three cost buckets: cost of birth, opportunity cost of birth, cost of child rearing and opportunity cost of parenting.

Norway is solving the first and probably the second while subsidizing the third. That leaves the opportunity costs untouched and direct costs, still, a net negative. Norway would need raise its annual payment to parents to completely cover the actual cost of raising a child, and then something for the career hit. I don’t know what those numbers are, but given it would directly increase the tax base, it’s almost precisely what one should borrow for.

Yes, but again, the point is to illustrate just how high a multiple of current benefits elsewhere you can reach without it being sufficient.

Two things I’d think about here:

1. Maybe this isn’t mainly a money problem?

2. And if it is a money problem, there might still be trade-offs. If you give people enough support, some may decide it makes more sense to stay home with their kids. That could mean fewer people working, less tax income, and then less money available to solve the problem long term.

(And yes, I know Norway has the wealth fund, around $400k per inhabitant or something like that. But I’m keeping that out of it here, because otherwise it becomes harder to compare Norway with other countries.)

There are also other things to think about.

For example: Do we want a system where one part of society has more kids and stays more at home, while another part has fewer kids and focuses more on careers?

I’m saying this because earlier in Norway, families had more freedom to choose between staying home with kids with financial support, or sending kids to kindergarten. Some political parties didn’t like that model because:

a) They saw it as bad for gender equality.

b) Immigrant women were more likely to stay home than Norwegian women, which could make integration harder.

So I think there’s probably more going on here than just money, even though money obviously matters too.

So basically they probably don't lose their wage for the duration of their absence but it's likely still a net negative to them (financially aside from the physical and time burdens) and in line with societal expectations created over decades?

I say crank up the numbers then. Give them a bigger tax credit too. Hold it long enough for societal expectations to slowly adjust.

The issue is how many places can afford that. Norway can afford what it does now in large part because of an enormous sovereign wealth fund that owns more than a percent of all publicly listed companies by market cap worldwide, on top of other assets. Despite that, Norway also has some of the higher tax levels.

Elsewhere even reaching Norwegian benefits levels would involve an extremely sharp tax rise or very significant priority changes.

Unless we find other means of driving up the fertility rate, it's not clear most places will stomach the financial adjustments it will take.

> Elsewhere even reaching Norwegian benefits levels would involve a very sharp tax rise or very significant priority changes.

The answer is wealth redistribution. The rich simply hoard too much for society to keep working.

You can get that from the rich as the other person said but that kind of redistribution should be considered on it's own regardless of this matter.

What i'm advocating for is simply internal child related distribution. You don't take it from the states coffers. You for example simply carefully raise the taxes of the childless and lower the taxes of those with kids (probably not directly proportionally to the number of kids) in the process retaining your original government revenue.

You don't have to go overboard with it because realistically any effect drags drastically but you do slowly keep upping the difference in benefits untill you reach either replacement rate or something slightly below replacement in a way that doesn't constitute an outright crisis.

Wait, is that supposed to be a lot? Sounds just like a paid maternity leave, so mother can spend some time with her children without worrying about having a roof and food. 111k is the cap, but in practice this is just a long paid leave.

In my (much poorer than Norway) country we have that, and also women can't be fired for that duration and I think two years more and employer can't refuse then remote work if it's technically possible and parents get some money directly (~around 1/10 of average monthly salary per month is automatic, but also there are other programs for example for women who decide to return to work). And, as a young parent, this is still nowhere near the cost of takes to actually raise a child.

On the other hand, all those programs are still not enough to raise number of children significantly, so your main point stands.

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