Is population decline a progressive issue?

Is it an issue at all?

This morning the Times has an op-ed from Victor Kumar of Boston University, “Population growth isn’t a progressive issue. It should be.”

Because population decline is widely seen as a conservative issue, many progressives don’t seem to worry about it. But they should. If left unchecked, population decline could worsen many of the problems that progressives care about, including economic inequality and the vulnerability of marginalized social groups.

This doesn’t mean adopting the conservative case wholesale. Progressives need to develop their own version of pronatalism. It should stress the need for government benefits and social services like paid parental leave and subsidized child care while defending the right to abortion and rejecting the traditionalism and nativism that too often characterize the position on the right. …

… right-wing packaging should not obscure the genuine perils to which pronatalism is a response. When populations decline, the average age of people in the population increases. This has several harmful consequences. Eventually, there are not enough young people to care for older people and to economically support them through contributions to social programs; to fuel economic growth, technological innovation and cultural progress; and to fund government services.

So, in a nutshell, conservatives are right to think this is an issue, but their response is wrong.

But I don’t really see where Kumar presents much of an alternative to what the right is saying. His solutions are not a lot different from Republicans in that if the issue of falling fertility rates is a real policy problem (and, I’ll come back to this, I’m not fully convinced that it is), then the solution is for the state to spend money on it, through increased child tax credits, and greater subsidy and provision of child care.

On this latter point, Republicans will more often say that funds ought to go to parents who take care of their children at home or with extended family rather than only applying to purchases through child care centers, and I agree with them on this (why subsidize one means of child care over others?), but it will still involve substantial expense. Child care is what economists call a “cost disease” sector: there isn’t much possibility of labor-saving technological change, and the wages of those who would provide care are rising, regardless of whether it is the wage of a child-care center worker, a parent, or their aunt Betty. We can, and I would, argue that it is right for the state to help pay for this, and that somewhat lowers the cost of having children. But only somewhat.

Kumar’s solutions are market-based: there are all sorts of reasons why people have fewer children now - higher opportunity costs for the parents in terms of wages, higher costs for other aspects of raising children, a trend (long ago identified) of richer families choosing to invest more resources in the “quality” of their children rather than “quantity” (to use Gary Becker’s blunt terminology), and changes in outlook as to what constitutes a fulfilling adult life.

Kumar concludes:

More research — and ethical reflection — needs to be done to understand how best to reverse declines in fertility rates without sacrificing moral or social progress. This is an urgent cause for all humankind. Which is why right-wing thinkers like Mr. Vance shouldn’t dominate the conversation.

To be sure, Mr. Vance should not dominate a conversation about any subject, but I don’t see much of an alternative being presented here.

Which leads to a last point: to what degree is this an issue for public policy at all? Not every change in our world calls for a strategic policy response, especially when these changes are the result of many complex factors, and where we still don’t know much about the outcomes (contra Kumar, a smaller working-age population and higher wages is often a spur, not a damper, on technological change; as for “cultural progress”, that ship left port many decades ago). I don’t need to remind anyone that large scale national policy initiatives to affect birth rates don’t have a sterling record of success. And Kumar, like the ghastly Mr. Vance, seems to have little to say about what the varying perspectives of women might be on this issue.

Which leaves me with the small-c conservative position that while it would be fair and just for the state to help out people with children, subsidizing their early care, making sure all kids get quality schooling, in safe neighborhoods, with places to hang out, I’m not sure there is much to be done beyond that.