Tommaso Leso

In my latest, I argue that Culture beats Policy when it comes to modulating birth rates - and discuss what this means for the future. I bring historical examples, ranging from Communist Romania to 18th Century France. writingruxandrabio.com/p/cul… I warn that so far people have thought in a purely Policy driven way about the problem, which is misleading -- indeed, and has led to largely unsuccessful attempts to increase birth rates. There are theoretical considerations for why we should expect Culture to act as a more powerful mechanism than Policy: "Replace methodologists here with policy makers and you get what I am saying: the ultimate enemy of wanna-be social engineers is the sheer computational complexity of human interactions: the so-called “maze”. Targeted interventions are unlikely to be able to measure and characterise this complexity. By contrast, culture equips each individual citizen with a set of values that they can then enforce upon themselves and others in a myriad of small ways. What these little interactions lack in terms of power (compared to the state) they make up in terms of adaptability, subtletly, pervasiveness and sheer number. You don’t need a Secret Police if each citizen acts as a small enforcer of norms; and, more importantly, if they do so out of their own volition. My argument for why Culture works better than Policy is akin to the arguments for free markets over centralised economies. Culture empowers individuals to act on deeply held beliefs, culminating in a force far exceeding the sum of its parts, its impact often elusive until after the fact. Biology, akin to a mighty river, is channelled through banks of Culture. While we might envisage societal control as the engineering of a great dam, I think in reality it's more akin to casting pebbles into the stream, hoping to alter its course." We also have "natural experiments" for the Policy Maximalist position -- and we know it does not work: "In 1967, Romania, under Nicolae Ceaușescu's regime, implemented strict policies to increase birth rates as part of a larger strategy to boost the population and workforce. These measures included banning abortion and contraception, imposing a celibacy tax on childless individuals and couples, and conducting regular gynecological examinations on women of childbearing age to ensure pregnancy compliance. Additionally, the state introduced incentives for large families, such as financial benefits and priority in housing allocations. Despite initial upticks in birthrates, the policies eventually led to severe social and health issues, including a rise in the number of orphaned children and a spike in illegal and hazardous abortions that, in extreme cases, resulted in fatalities. (...) Let’s leave aside these horrific consequences for a moment. Were these policies even successful at achieving their stated aims - increasing birth rates? Initially, very much so. There is an increase in the total fertility rate (TFR) to a staggering 3.5 observed immediately following the implementation of these measures. This uptick is noteworthy when compared to other nations that share similar characteristics but did not adopt equally stringent pro-natal policies. However, women slowly adapted and found ways to prevent conception: throughout the 70s birth rates hovered around 2.5 and went below that in the 80s. But what’s really striking is what happened after the Revolution, when these policies were lifted: birth rates fell to a record low of 1.3 in the 90s. This was concomitant with an enormous rise in abortions: in 1990 pregnancy terminations outnumbered live births 3:1." By contrast, we have very strong evidence for the importance of Culture, more exactly religion, coming from 18th century France, a country that experienced the First Fertility transition unusually early. A new paper convincingly shows this is largely because of the earlier secularisation of France. "The author used crowdsourced genealogical data to estimate fertility in specific geographical locations across France and the presence of “refractory clergy”2 in 1791 in those regions, as a proxy for the degree of secularisation in each region. The effect sizes are quite large: secularised regions in France experienced a significant decline in fertility rates more than a hundred years earlier than their religious counterparts. The estimated marginal impact of the presence of refractory clergy in 1791 on fertility is approximately one. Remarkably, this effect size mirrors the decrease in fertility observed during the latter half of the eighteenth century, where the average number of children born to a woman dropped from 4.5 to 3.5 over a span of around forty years. Another interesting finding is that secularisation seems to have mostly affected fertility at its extensive margin: large families were the most impacted3. To isolate the impact of secularisation from other location-specific institutional factors influencing fertility trends, the study employs several empirical methods. The one that I found most convincing relied on tracking second-generation migrants during the fertility decline and analyzing how the origin district's exposure to refractory clergy affected fertility across generations, despite migration. This approach uncovers a lasting impact of refractory clergy presence on fertility rates that transcends geographical relocation! This paper is not unique in its conclusions. It adds to a growing body of literature emphasising the importance of culture in mediating economic decisions. I chose it because I did find its results to be among the most striking. Together, these findings add a layer of complexity on top of the purely materialistic understanding of the fertility transition. As economic incentives change, humans decrease the number of kids they have. But culture can greatly modulate the magnitude of this drop: religion and societal pressure stemming from it can greatly boost fertility levels even in economic circumstances that would otherwise be conducive to lower birth rates." In conclusion, I discuss the forecasts regarding an increase in childless adults in younger generations and identify some elements of our culture that are leading to this. "Nevertheless, there seems to be a dissonance between what people—particularly the youth—believe will fulfil them (money, career, status) and what they ultimately find most rewarding (spending time with family). How can this seemingly paradoxical situation exist? The explanation lies in considering, once again, Culture and Biology. A culture that exalts career success will naturally lead young adults to prioritise it. Parents, wanting stability and status for their children, nudge them towards societal ideals. Yet biology asserts itself when children arrive, triggering a profound instinct to nurture, hence why parents end up finding children more rewarding. Putting these two pieces together, we get at the final picture: children become a 'guilty pleasure,' indulged in once one has 'earned' it through career and financial success. (..) Society instils a deep-seated anxiety about parenthood—the fear of missing some critical preparatory step is pervasive. Having children is no longer portrayed as the default, a hard but ultimately manageable task for most people, but rather as a sort of test, that one can easily fail if not sufficiently prepared for (...) In many ways this attitude towards taking the leap and starting a family could be seen as part of a broader “Cultural Anxietying” — a trend towards risk aversion, techno-pessimism and exaggerated caution, that I have flagged a few months ago. That this Anxietying is real keeps getting vindicated in different surveys and polls, despite what the naysayers proclaimed at the time. It’s important to note these attitudes are not coming out of nowhere: they have long been in the making and they reflect in large part the views of intellectual leaders of older generations, now trickling down and becoming mainstream in the younger ones"