Nearly three months ago, I suggested that trying to get people to live in high-density housing projects was a good way to “kill a country” by reducing fertility rates. Not everyone was persuaded; one comment stated that there is “Not a shred of evidence other than his bald assertion that people in Korea have no room for kids.”
South Korea has the lowest fertility rate in the world at a mere 0.7 births per woman. But ?? is not alone. Several regions have fertility well below 1.
A look at places with ultra-low birthrates, how they got there, and some lessons for all of us.
Important ?, please share! pic.twitter.com/p7oZhOGR0H— More Births (@MoreBirths) February 25, 2024
A Twitter user calling itself “More Births” has reached the same conclusion as the Antiplanner. After noting that South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and Thailand all have very low fertility rates, More Births asked what these regions have in common. The number 1 factor listed: ultra-dense housing policies.
First, all have adopted ultra-dense housing configurations. Here is Macao, with a fertility rate that was just 0.58 births per woman in 2023. Seoul, with a TFR of just 0.54, is just as dense.
Such extreme density is not necessary. Most of Korea is sparsely populated! 4/14 pic.twitter.com/M6CcsUV6Lk— More Births (@MoreBirths) February 25, 2024
As the Antiplanner noted, many factors affect fertility, and More Births included historic propaganda aimed at preventing overpopulation, Asia’s work culture, and low marriage rates. But density is still important; as More Births pointed out, density is a factor in differences in fertility in the U.S.
To be honest, I would feel more comfortable noting More Birth’s agreement with my hypothesis if I knew who More Births was. More Births is Daniel Hess, but I can’t find much information about him. More Birth’s Twitter page also says, “HT to Lyman Stone and other great demographers.” Lyman Stone is a researcher at the Institute for Family Studies who has written several articles about fertility rates in the United States.
The Institute for Family Studies has been labeled a “right wing” organization because, even though it “does not come out directly and say they oppose same-sex marriage,” it “routinely promotes two-parent heterosexual families as the ideal.” That’s a pretty weak argument. While there are a lot of conservative Christian overtones to IFS and Stone’s writings, he and I would still agree on a lot of issues.
Update: Here’s Lyman Stone (who lived in Asia for several years) on why Asian fertility rates are low. In a nutshell, despite subsidies, housing is terrible and old age pensions are low, which means people have to save a lot of money, which conflicts with having children. Also, believe it or not, KPOP because KPOP mandates that its artists be childless which effectively celebrates childless lifestyles. And here’s a BBC article on why South Korean birth rates are low. In a nutshell, working hours are long and housing is expensive.
As I’ve mentioned before, another demographer who believes that density policies reduce birthrates is Peter Zeihan, who writes and speaks about geopolitics. Among other things, he has blamed Russia’s low fertility rates on Khrushchev, who “forced everybody into condos which reduced the birth rate.” Far from right wing, Zeihan is a classical liberal who favors free trade even though the thesis of most of his books is that globalization is in decline.
We used to worry about overpopulation. Concerns about fertility rates are not necessarily inconsistent with those worries. Instead, fertility rate problems deal with the imbalance when too many people are retired and not enough are working to support themselves and the retirees. If fertility rates were 2.1, we could maintain the population without such an imbalance. The same would be true if they were around 1.66 (the current U.S. rate) but we allowed lots of immigration from countries with high fertility rates. But today’s density policies depress fertility rates and the anti-immigration movement make it more difficult to compensate for those policies. Fortunately, some are getting the message that “maybe we should rethink” YIMBYism.
There's a growing consensus on YIMBY Twitter that we need to build a lot of new high density housing in the biggest cities. Maybe we should rethink that idea
— Argos Open Tech (@argosopentech) February 26, 2024
Considering israeli jews have high birth rates, so do low income blacks and they live in dense urban settings?
It is only the orthodox and ultra-orthodox women who have the “high birth rates” you speak of. The rest of the women have sensible birth rates (around 2.4).¨
In having many children, the orthodox Jews rae motivated by religion (and welfare). Some low income, or rather zero W-2 income, “blacks living in dense urban settings” (your words) are similarly motivated by welfare.
If you make people bear the costs for their own kids with their own money, their behavior will change quickly. Good ole’ sticks and carrots.
This remains by far the best explanation I’ve come across:
https://quillette.com/2023/12/14/misunderstanding-the-fertility-crisis/
I have 6 children and when the kids were young every once in a while someone would complain we were over populating the world.
I would shrug and tell them to mind their own business.
A lot of people believed the propaganda, we were over populating the world in the 70s and 80s.
We just enjoyed our family.
While living in a low density suburb.
Your bigger problem is you’re conflating correlation and causation.
Nope. Throughout world history, dense cities were never able to sustain its population without constant migration from the country side. Even in the 4th century, Constantine Augustus passed a series of laws aimed at increasing the fertility rate in the cities.
You don’t understand what the saying “correlation isn’t causation” means. It means, that you should not blindly follow causation from given correlation, but that is what you just did. It’s much more likely, that income determines fertility rather than density (if at all) and cities had always higher incomes than the countryside throughout history. But you will find lower birth rates in higher income cities and higher birth rates in lower income cities. You will also find higher birth rates in low income neighborhoods within the same city and lower birth rates in higher income neighborhoods.
Correlation doesn’t prove causation, but non-correlation pretty much proves non-causation. Thus, it is worth looking at correlations to make sure that causation is possible. Then look at other mechanisms to see if causation is probable. High-income societies where housing is affordable have higher fertility rates than high-income societies where housing is not affordable, so density (which makes housing less affordable) is likely to be one of many causes of low fertility rates.
You mean high income countries like France, which have a higher fertility rate than the United States, despite having much smaller homes? The fertility rate of the US is the same as in Denmark. The fertility rate of Israel, one of the most densely populated countries in the world is way higher than in the US, one of the least densely populated countries in the world. Canada, lots of space, lots of single family homes, yet the fertility rate is lower than in the Netherlands.
Another aspects besides income is culture. For instance, the fertility rate of Japanese Americans is as low as the fertility rate in Japan, despite Japanese Americans having much bigger homes.
Fertility rates expected to plunge to negative infinity as LA approves more bike and bus lanes, say respected fertility experts:
https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2024-03-05/2024-california-election-los-angeles-city-measure-hla-results
This is an instance where “all other factors being equal” needs to be emphasized. “Density” is a substantial factor in reduced birth rates. So too is culture. Black families in South Central LA has long history of living in detached home with the same lay as homes in nearby south Beverly Hills around Pico Boulevard. Tearing these homes and leaving most apartments in the Black area dramatically changes the stable character which Blacks had right after WW II to the extent Blacks went from having stable family units to having predominately single parent households and/or kids living with grandparent/s.
In LA, density leads to higher housing prices and less living space. That causes lower birth rate and an exodus. Blacks started leaving LA before Whites did. Not only did more Blacks see the hand writing on the wall sooner, more Blacks could read what it said.
re-write as I could not edit my prior comment:
This is an instance where “all other factors being equal” needs to be emphasized. “Density” is a substantial factor in reduced birth rates. So too is culture. Black families in South Central LA had a long history of living in detached homes with the same house and neighborhood layouts as homes in nearby south Beverly Hills around Pico Boulevard. Tearing down these Black homes and leaving mostly apartments in the Black area dramatically changed the stable family character which Blacks had after WW II to the extent Blacks went from having stable family units to having predominately single parent households and/or kids living with grandparent/s. (There were other factors in the transformation of Black family structure.)
In LA, density has led to higher housing prices and less living space. That causes lower birth rates and an exodus of family Millennials and Gen Zers. Blacks started leaving LA before Whites did. Not only did more Blacks see the hand writing on the wall sooner, more Blacks could read what it said.
One sad part is that Black LA had much better laid-out communities than East LA and the Black community has many more community institutions under its own control, especially Protestant churches, where the parishioners and not Rome are in control. Thus, LA’s Black community was in an area where they could have remained for a few more generations.