Americans Aren’t Making Babies, and That’s Bad for the Economy
There is an obvious short term cause, which is that the US is stuck with pandemic conditions for quite a long time, and pregnancy and delivery is quite a medical thing. The idea of going through that when the local hospital is overwhelmed with coronavirus patients is not appealing. And you don’t know if it will be because you have to forecast 9 to 12 months ahead.<p>Meanwhile we have a housing crisis where even very high income people are having a difficult time finding family sized housing in the places that they work.<p>Having lived in San Francisco for years with children, I would very much like to get a three bedroom two bathroom home, but the cheapest places that are reasonably safe are in the $1.3 million range and up. I don’t want to move to a low cost of living area, I like living in the city. And besides, most of the so-called lower cost of living places aren’t actually that much cheaper. One example: living anywhere near downtown Austin, similar houses have a wider range from as low as 600k (most seem around 800k), but with much higher property taxes the payments are comparable to $1M+ properties in SF. And that’s living in car town without the beauty, walkability, or convenience of an older city.<p>(Once you adjust for the huge pay cut that leaving the Bay Area brings, there aren’t any great options. The “winning” strategy instead is to horde as much savings as you can in the Bay Area then move to a true LCOL location (rural America &#x2F; rust belt) as a form of early retirement, living mostly off those accumulated savings for the long haul.)<p>But the problems I’m describing, frustrating as they are, are nothing compared to the struggle that a family living with median income is facing.<p>If we don’t get serious about fixing housing, then it won’t surprise me at all if we have a permanent dramatic decrease in birth rates as many adults are not willing to try and raise a family without feeling economically secure, and a lot of people do not feel economically secure until they own their own home.