A few weeks ago, I noted that there appeared to be correlation between government efforts to get more people into multifamily housing and low fertility rates. The correlation is not perfect — I estimated about 0.4 — because there are a lot of factors that affect fertility rates, but it appears strong enough that, if the goal is to have a healthy demographic structure, then single-family housing should be preferred.
Click image for a larger view. Source: BirthGauge.
Unfortunately, the census data I had available didn’t allow me to make a standard calculation of birth rates, so I used a substitute. Now, a group called BirthGauge has published the above map showing birth rates calculated the standard way. It does show that birth rates are lowest in the Pacific Coast and north Atlantic Coast states that have done the most to restrict new single-family housing in favor of multifamily.
What is surprising is that the states with the lowest birth rates are not New York or New Jersey, which have the highest shares of people living in multifamily housing, but Vermont and Oregon. More than half of all households in New York live in multifamily housing and more than 40 percent in New Jersey, while Oregon and Vermont are between 22 and 25 percent. As I say, there are other factors that affect fertility rates than density or multifamily housing, but what are they in the cases of Oregon and Vermont?
In response to BirthGauge, someone named Stefan Schubert pointed out the apparent correlation between fertility rates and red vs. blue states. While Vermont is pretty solidly blue, and Oregon has been blue for most of the last three decades, they aren’t the bluest states. But it still leaves open the question: what, other than land-use policy, do blue states do to depress fertility rates?
One possibility is education, meaning the balance of middle-class (college educated) vs. working-class people in a state. Middle-class people who are less likely to have children seem to be more attracted to blue states. Nationally, 35.6 percent of people over 25 have a bachelor’s degree or better. New York, New Jersey, Oregon, and Vermont are all higher than that, while South Dakota, Nebraska, and many other states with higher fertility rates are lower. This isn’t a perfect correlation either, however, as the share of college-educated people in New York and New Jersey is much higher than Oregon’s.
I’d be interested in any ideas readers may have.
By far the best explanation for low fertility rates is from Alex Nowrasteh. Simply, having children is an opportunity cost for other things you could do with your time. The more economic opportunities available, “as well as a fantastic array of entertainment options,” increases the opportunity cost for family formation. It’s why inner cities have higher fertility rates than suburbs: there’s just more to do there.
“New immigrants drop their fertility because the opportunity cost of raising children is higher in a country with enormous economic opportunities, high incomes, and vast cheap entertainment possibilities.”
https://quillette.com/2023/12/14/misunderstanding-the-fertility-crisis/
…why inner cities have *LOWER* fertility rates
I am going to guess it is that the cost of living is the primary driver for the low birth rates. The push for multi-family housing is correlated with the increased cost of living since it tends to be part of an overall scheme that drives up housing costs and hence wage-adjusted cost of living. Also, as a corollary when you look at OR or VT you find states that are mostly rural but because of their restrictive land use laws clamp down on rural development that might make building cheap housing but also bring businesses to rural areas difficult. This then has two consequences. The first is that even comparatively cheaper rural and small-town housing is expensive. The second is that it is difficult to bring new businesses to small towns and rural areas. This is quite obvious in both OR and VT. What this means is that less educated working and lower middle-class people can’t find work in rural areas and usually leave the state. Restrictions on natural resource areas are another driver of this. For the sake of comparison consider mostly rural states that don’t do this, like TN or KY or ME you will see rural areas where incomes are not particularly high but because it is cheap to live there and people can find jobs that match the cost of living plenty of people want to move there. The other likely effect of this is that it likely gentrifies the state since only wealthier educated people can reasonably afford to live even in the rural areas. This should be obvious to anyone who has ever been to Bend or Burlington VT. Lots of yuppie types that made money in big cities resettle to those towns with their cash and remote jobs to live the “country life”. To give you an idea of what this looks like in rural areas here is a video from a density advocate about their “ideal” rural town: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7T9u53Im9E
Fertility rates is dropping worldwide in almost every country from Iran to Uzbekistan, many whom don’t have a “cost of living crisis”, if it’s even a real crisis (perhaps it’s just a personal spending issue). So it can’t be cost of living.
Also, with urban areas a similar analysis applies but it relates mostly to the inability of cities to expand to accommodate working and middle-class residents who will likely have children. What this then does is skew the population distribution in favor or the wealthier more educated classes who have fewer children.
There has been centuries-long, worldwide trend of humanity’s increasing urbanization, resulting in women being better educated, independent, financially better off, and lo and behold, they often use that autonomy to choose to have less children.
The Antiplanner notices this and thinks: “I wonder if this because of housing policy in Oregon and Vermont.”
In the book “Green Illusions: The Dirty Secrets of Clean Energy and the Future of Environmentalism”, Author Ozzie Zehner goes through the realities of “Green Energy” and the realities of what it can actually accomplish. What kind of solution does he end up proposing for the “Declining Fossil Fuel Era”? His solution is to educate women, which inherently reduces the birthrate, which will eventually reduce the global population and allow future generations to utilize the remaining resources to continue to live in a modern society.
The Antiplanner is not disputing worldwide trends. His post is about differences between states in one country.
In light of the map above, are women more “better educated, independent, financially better off” in Vermont, as opposed to neighboring New Hampshire? Or in Oregon, as opposed to Washington? Or North Dakota, vs South Dakota?
Rather than engage in a thoughtful way, you instead choose (as usual) to troll the admin. Do us all a favor, Jane: go back under your bridge. Better yet, go jump off of it.
Because children are expensive and a huge amount of work…. Duh…. It’s about as non-political, universally agreed upon issue as you can get. 3 kids will keep you busy for the rest of your life. I can vouch for that first hand. The birthrate in the U.S. and the world has been going down for at least 60 years. And will continue to do so. That’s reality. Hopefully no one is implying that people “owe” society to keep the population growing to “sustain” the current societal business model. That is pretty “anti-libertarian.” But it would just go to show that the “Socialism is Satan, unless it benefits me, then it’s Fine” mindset permeates hardcore believers of every stripe. Reality is that essentially zero population growth was how humanity worked for almost its entire several hundred thousand year existence. It’s only changed during Humanity’s transition through the modern medicine and fossil fuel Eras of the last few hundred years. It took awhile to change out of the “have 9 kids so 2 make it to adulthood” mindset. Now population growth is returning back to zero, which in one way is a good thing because perpetual population growth is impossible. It would stop, one way or the other. The most pleasant way is voluntarily. The bad thing about the end of population growth is that “perpetual growth” is the go to solution for solving all the world’s problems, as that’s the only way the world’s problems are easily solved.
Birth rates inherently depend upon the population demographics. Consider:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_demographics_of_the_United_States
I think the answer is obvious: people wanting to start families leave.
My mom and dad came back to Oregon when they wanted to start having a family. Today I’m looking starting a family and I certainly can’t imagine sticking around Portland metro. I grew up in Beaverton and frankly it’s too expensive. The condo my mom bought for $90k in the 90’s is now $450+, and even though I make over $100k/yr it’s just not reasonable price to pay when I can go anywhere else and make the same money, have a bigger house, and a lower cost of living.
People who proactively plan families leave.
fidelity, for me, the best part of living in the suburbs is driving my kids everywhere they need to go. It’s important bonding time with kids that city parents rarely experience.
Parents living in big cities drive their kids everywhere they need to go. Subsidies to workless people and/or fentanyl addicts result in children being exposed to behavior no sane parent allows. As a result in my big city I detour around blocks with public schools so as not to be stuck in traffic jams caused by parents waiting in their idling vehicles to pick up or drop off their children from school.
Religiosity matters. The more religious an area is, the higher its fertility rate tends to be. That is why Israel has such a high total fertility rate despite being clearly first world in economic development. New England and the western US (Mormon Utah is an exception) tend to have higher rates of irreligion so their fertility rates are low compared to the US average. New Jersey actually is more religious that the US average so that could be part of the reason the Garden State isn’t as low on fertility as you expected. Also, despite its overall density, New Jersey has more single family homes than you would expect – its home ownership rate is only a tad below the US average rather than down at the levels of New York and California.
It’s more than red/ blue states. It’s culture, even religiosity. The type of liberals in blue states. VT and OR are more “progressive” liberals that are focused on environmental issues and tend to wait later to have kids, and some even have an anti-child / anti-human views. States like CA and NY are less granola, they have more immigrants and working class democrats that are culturally conservative (ie, more likely to get married, have kids). I bet if you compared with church attendance you’d be shocked at the correlation.