Speaker 1: Hello, Stephonomics here the podcast that brings you the global economy,
Speaker 1: and we're talking about babies this week. How some countries
Speaker 1: have too many, others not enough, but that don't seem
Speaker 1: to be many today that get it just right. Birth
Speaker 1: rates have plummeted across many parts of Europe and Asia
Speaker 1: in recent years, and China, after years of doing the opposite,
Speaker 1: is now desperately trying to persuade women to have children.
Speaker 1: But not the Philippines, which still has one of the
Speaker 1: highest fertility rates in Southeast Asia. We hear a little
Speaker 1: about that country's baby boom in a minute why it's
Speaker 1: a headache for the government. I also have a wide
Speaker 1: ranging conversation with the renowned social policy expert is about
Speaker 1: sore Hill on the economics and politics of supporting families
Speaker 1: in the US. But first you might be surprised to
Speaker 1: hear that young American women without children are now richer
Speaker 1: on average than men who make the same choice. An
Speaker 1: increasing number of women are enjoying the freedom and extra
Speaker 1: cash that comes from a child free existence, and good
Speaker 1: for them, but it may not be quite so good
Speaker 1: for the US economy, whose working age population has just
Speaker 1: fallen for an unprecedented third year in a row. Here's
Speaker 1: Bloomberg's US economy reporter Molly Smith. Anna Dixon has a
Speaker 1: great job, tons of friends, a long term boyfriend, and
Speaker 1: a travel history that make anyone jealous. She also has
Speaker 1: no kids, no plans to have them, and no regrets.
Speaker 1: For me, I love being able to very quickly get
Speaker 1: up and go and travel somewhere or whatever I want.
Speaker 1: I also want to enjoy my time and not have
Speaker 1: to worry about the responsibilities all the time back home,
Speaker 1: especially when it comes to kids. I think that makes
Speaker 1: it much much harder to just be flexible which travel
Speaker 1: when you have kids. Some of those treatoms are a lot. Dickson,
Speaker 1: who's forty two and works as a product manager at
Speaker 1: Google in New York City, is part of a growing
Speaker 1: cohort of women who are putting off having children or
Speaker 1: foregoing motherhood entirely, and as a result, they're advancing further
Speaker 1: in their careers than generations passed and accumulating a lot
Speaker 1: more wealth along the way. Single women without kids had
Speaker 1: an average of sixty five thousand dollars in wealth in
Speaker 1: compared with fifty seven thousand for single child free men,
Speaker 1: according to research from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
Speaker 1: For single mothers, the figure was only seven thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: Then there's the cost of having kids to consider, which
Speaker 1: is only rising. With US inflation near a four decade high.
Speaker 1: The expenses and bringing up a child born in through
Speaker 1: age seventeen will run more than three hundred ten thousand dollars,
Speaker 1: according to estimates from the Brookings Institution, which adapted a
Speaker 1: government calculation to adjust for inflation trends. That added about
Speaker 1: twenty six thousand dollars and doesn't include the cost of
Speaker 1: a college education. M little consequence from your earnings of
Speaker 1: having kids UM and sort of the motherhood penalty, but
Speaker 1: abouslye the like you know, non lether fomis character into that.
Speaker 1: This is Julie cash In, director for Women's Economic Justice
Speaker 1: at the think tank Century Foundation purpose UM the women's
Speaker 1: movement that it's not in my choices for women like
Speaker 1: it's it's to really make it for that every viable
Speaker 1: one UM come should not be a thing that dictates
Speaker 1: that UM which terminally is right now. Parenthood was losing
Speaker 1: its appeal even before and the hardships brought on by
Speaker 1: the pandemic appears to have accelerated the trend. Think of
Speaker 1: things like zoom, school and childcare issues, to name a few.
Speaker 1: A few Research Center study last year found that percent
Speaker 1: of Americans ages eighteen to forty nine who don't have
Speaker 1: kids say it's not too likely or not at all
Speaker 1: likely that they will procreate someday. That's up from thirty
Speaker 1: seven percent. In with this newfound wealth comes new opportunities.
Speaker 1: Single child free women are an emerging consumer group with
Speaker 1: a lot of spending power. More of them are ying homes,
Speaker 1: gravitating towards brands with progressive values, and perhaps most of all, traveling.
Speaker 1: Here's Rachel Boone, sor vice president at GfK Consumer Life.
Speaker 1: They have that money to sort of do what they
Speaker 1: want with it, and I think, you know, the general
Speaker 1: trend of experiences over possessions is not brand new by
Speaker 1: any means, but this is definitely one of the sort
Speaker 1: of audiences that is really prone into that. Dixon has
Speaker 1: embraced this aspect of her life with trips to Alaska, Switzerland,
Speaker 1: and Anguila on the last year. Those vacations have largely
Speaker 1: been with friends from a group of about people who
Speaker 1: are mostly unmarried and don't have kids. Ultimately I started
Speaker 1: meeting all these people who were living these incredible lives
Speaker 1: and traveling all the time and had great jobs, and
Speaker 1: we're going out and having fun and um, you know,
Speaker 1: dinners together and traveling together and activities. And I just said, I,
Speaker 1: that's that's the life that I want. Seeing other people
Speaker 1: not have kids and seeing other people who uh were
Speaker 1: living that life definitely validated it for me that that
Speaker 1: was something that I could do and be happy doing um,
Speaker 1: and that that was really really appealing to me. It
Speaker 1: all fits into a broader rethink on the concept of
Speaker 1: family that's at the heart of the research of the
Speaker 1: DC based think tank Family Story, led by Nicole's Susster Rogers.
Speaker 1: There's a pretty widespread culture reckoning with the notion of
Speaker 1: family as beyond biology, you know, not just for England,
Speaker 1: and I think there's a lot of people for people
Speaker 1: feel less of an obligation to the family they were
Speaker 1: born into in all sorts of ways um and were
Speaker 1: actually and I think to embrace this notion of children's family.
Speaker 1: Of course, this lifestyles have its drawbacks. People who are
Speaker 1: single and child free pay more in taxes and housing.
Speaker 1: There is a lot harder to afford on one income
Speaker 1: than too, especially with home prices and rents near record
Speaker 1: highs and mortgage rates on the rise. Another worry for
Speaker 1: those without children is who will care for them in
Speaker 1: their old age, But as Dixon points out, it's not
Speaker 1: as if adult children always come through for their parents.
Speaker 1: For her, the pluses of parenthood don't outweigh the minuses
Speaker 1: um Alice and Janny. I read that she said this
Speaker 1: a few years ago, and it really really resonated with me,
Speaker 1: which is that I would much rather regret not having
Speaker 1: kids than regret having them. For Bloomberg News, I'm Molly Smithy. Now,
Speaker 1: clearly it has economic implications for the US or any
Speaker 1: other developed economy if women are systematically choosing not to
Speaker 1: have children, and we will get into that in a minute,
Speaker 1: but first, since we are always global on Stephanomics, I
Speaker 1: wanted to zip briefly to the other side of the
Speaker 1: world and a country that potentially has the opposite problem,
Speaker 1: the Philippines, which along with Indonesia, currently has one of
Speaker 1: the highest fertility rates in Southeast Asia two point five
Speaker 1: children per woman. In fact, it's one of the handful
Speaker 1: of countries that the United Nations expects to account for
Speaker 1: fully half of all global population growth between now and
Speaker 1: twenty and that is posing its own challenges. Siegfried Delgado
Speaker 1: is our economy reporter and Manila, Siegfried, I know you're
Speaker 1: in the middle of reporting this story, so thanks very
Speaker 1: much for taking the time to do this. What's going on? Okay? So, UM,
Speaker 1: there's really an art shoot of the World Population Prospects reports.
Speaker 1: As you mentioned, UM identifies the Philippines along with eight
Speaker 1: other countries, which will account for more than half of
Speaker 1: the protected increasing global population until twenty fifty. So we're
Speaker 1: really looking at UM, you know, what's the driving force
Speaker 1: behind this statistic? Because if you look at the birth
Speaker 1: rate UM or the fertility rate in the Philippines, it's
Speaker 1: actually declining in recent years. However it has remained high.
Speaker 1: So what we're really trying to do UM answer here
Speaker 1: is you know, why is this the case and what
Speaker 1: can the UM the government due to sort of slow
Speaker 1: the birth rate. In order to read benefits of demographic dividend,
Speaker 1: we should probably explain the demographic dividend. So that's what
Speaker 1: happened in a lot of East Asia economies and was
Speaker 1: one of the things that helped to support their growth.
Speaker 1: You're growing fast at the same time as your population
Speaker 1: growth is slowing very rapidly. So you end up with
Speaker 1: a bulge of lots of working, high saiving um people
Speaker 1: in the economy contributing to growth who don't have the
Speaker 1: same large number of dependent children. And that gives a
Speaker 1: sort of period where the economy is a kind of
Speaker 1: turbo charged by having those extra workers relative to the
Speaker 1: number of children. Is that what that's basically what we're
Speaker 1: talking about, isn't it. Yes, Yes, that's it. And what's happened.
Speaker 1: The problem for Philippines and Indonesia has been that this
Speaker 1: this demographic change has been too slow really to get
Speaker 1: that dividend. Why do you think the Philippines in particular
Speaker 1: has struggled with this demographic change? And it seems like
Speaker 1: the government has has had difficulty when it's tried to
Speaker 1: address this issue. Okay, so Stephanie, officials have a multiparmed
Speaker 1: approach to addressing this issue. They have health measures, they
Speaker 1: have economic measures in place which are aimed at slowing
Speaker 1: the birth rate. They're trying to update the economic development planned.
Speaker 1: You've focus on reducing adults and pregnancy, and you know,
Speaker 1: addressing admit demand for family planning among couples and individuals. However,
Speaker 1: UM these measures actually face a lot of sombing blocks
Speaker 1: from cultural, social, and even fiscal factors. UM family planning
Speaker 1: is viewed as taboo UM in the Philippines, where of
Speaker 1: the population identifies it as Catholic. It took about thirty
Speaker 1: years for a reproductive health measure to be passed into
Speaker 1: law in twenty twelve. This law was viewed as a
Speaker 1: cure all for maternal care, family planning, and sex education issues,
Speaker 1: but it faced another two year fight at the Supreme Court,
Speaker 1: and when finally implemented, women's rights groups and other stakeholders
Speaker 1: said key provisions including teenagers access to contraceptives for watered down.
Speaker 1: There are also misconceptions about contraceptives that are circulating in
Speaker 1: social media, and this presents a challenge to policymakers and
Speaker 1: healthcare workers in offering birth control options, particularly to vulnerable
Speaker 1: groups such as the poor, end and educated. Filipinos are
Speaker 1: among the heaviest Internet users, spending hours on end on
Speaker 1: social media, and while the Philippines does have a population
Speaker 1: management program UM, it continues to compete with other priorities
Speaker 1: such as infrastructure and disaster risk management. For an already
Speaker 1: stretched budget and they think, you know, when you talk
Speaker 1: about priorities and budgets, Um, this is something that's apparent
Speaker 1: in a lot of immerging market economies. And I guess
Speaker 1: the big issue for you know, we heard earlier in
Speaker 1: the program about you know, young women enjoying that the
Speaker 1: the opulence that the relative opulance that comes with not
Speaker 1: paying the cost of childcare and the cost of raising
Speaker 1: a child. I mean, I guess the flip side of
Speaker 1: that in the Philippines is is exacerbating inequalities and poverty.
Speaker 1: To have this high birth rate, which I think is
Speaker 1: concentrated in lower income part of the of the population.
Speaker 1: Is that right, it is It is typically the urban
Speaker 1: poor or women in the countryside that black access to
Speaker 1: maternal care and family planning services, and you know, um,
Speaker 1: traditionally they are they're just more vulnerable. So this actually
Speaker 1: poses as a huge challenge to the economic team of
Speaker 1: President Ferdinand Marcus Jr. Who actually targets to bring down
Speaker 1: a stubbornly high poverty rate in you know high teams
Speaker 1: currently and uver down to single digits by the end
Speaker 1: of his term. See Fi de Lagado. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Steph M Well, I'm delighted now to be
Speaker 1: joined by Isabel Sawhill, who's a senior fellow in economic
Speaker 1: studies at the Brookings Institution in Washington and also head
Speaker 1: of the Center on Children and Families. UM. We heard
Speaker 1: from my colleague Molly Smith there earlier Isabel about what
Speaker 1: for some it is eliberating phenomenon. You know, young upwardly
Speaker 1: mobile women choosing not to have children. But for a
Speaker 1: developed economy like the US, it's it's not necessarily good
Speaker 1: economic news. If more and more women are making that choice, right, Well,
Speaker 1: I think it depends on your perspective. I mean, there
Speaker 1: are many people who say that if we don't have
Speaker 1: enough children, we will not have a later on enough
Speaker 1: adults to um pay into the obscurity and medicare systems
Speaker 1: and support our social insurance policies. But others would say no,
Speaker 1: from an environmental perspective, it's better to have fewer children
Speaker 1: coming into the world. And if we need more people
Speaker 1: in the United States, we could always import. I mean,
Speaker 1: people want to immigrate to the US, and raising barriers
Speaker 1: to immigration would give us any rate of population growth
Speaker 1: we might like. And there was something specific that happened
Speaker 1: in the pandemic something of a of a baby bust. Um.
Speaker 1: How significant was that there was a baby bust during
Speaker 1: the COVID crisis, and I think it was temporary, most
Speaker 1: likely temporary, but superimposed on a longer term trend, which
Speaker 1: has been that fertility rates have been dropping for a
Speaker 1: long long time. And I think that's mainly related to
Speaker 1: the fact that women have more opportunities uh than they
Speaker 1: used to, and the cost of dropping out of the
Speaker 1: labor force or even cutting back on one's career ambitions
Speaker 1: are getting much more expensive and much more constantly went
Speaker 1: shall for most women. And I guess we we heard
Speaker 1: actually Molly talk about the baby penalty or the motherhood penalty,
Speaker 1: and of course the flip side of that is a
Speaker 1: it was a benefit if you are not taking time
Speaker 1: out to have have kids. I guess the other side
Speaker 1: of this, which you have um you have described in
Speaker 1: some of your work for Brookings, is that the costs
Speaker 1: of raising a child have swords. So there's the there's
Speaker 1: the opportunity costs what you're losing in the workforce, but
Speaker 1: also the sheer costs that go into bringing up a
Speaker 1: bringing up a child. Yes, that's right. The just the
Speaker 1: direct costs of raising a child are now over three
Speaker 1: hundred thousand dollars. That's over the entire childhood period, and
Speaker 1: it includes everything from extra costs for housing and food
Speaker 1: to childcare and extra education. Does not include college though,
Speaker 1: so if we included college or university training, that figure
Speaker 1: would go way up. Now that figure was calculated for
Speaker 1: the typical middle class family with two children and a
Speaker 1: married family, so it would be it would vary from
Speaker 1: you know, what you're depending upon what you earn and
Speaker 1: where you live and many other factors, how many children
Speaker 1: you have. But that's the that's gives you a rough
Speaker 1: sense of the of the costs of raising a child.
Speaker 1: And as you just said, that does not include the
Speaker 1: fact that one parent, typically the mother is going to
Speaker 1: have to take some time off and or um herb
Speaker 1: her own career aspirations, and that is very very costly
Speaker 1: as well. President Biden, one of the things he was
Speaker 1: going to do is support families and um give um,
Speaker 1: give more money, make it more of a financially viable
Speaker 1: choice to have children. How's that played out? That's exactly right.
Speaker 1: President Biden had a build Back Better plan that included
Speaker 1: major support for families in the form of child care,
Speaker 1: in the form of child tax credits that are like
Speaker 1: a child allowance, uh, and in the form of paid leave,
Speaker 1: And none of that has happened because the US Congress
Speaker 1: failed to ever enact any of those proposals. So we
Speaker 1: are stuck as being one of the countries amongst all
Speaker 1: of the advanced countries, all of the rich countries, of
Speaker 1: not doing very much for families with children. So if
Speaker 1: you want to have children in the US, um you're
Speaker 1: going to have to pay for most of it yourself.
Speaker 1: Are we potentially looking at a different balance? The babies
Speaker 1: that are born are potentially going to be more skewed
Speaker 1: towards um the lower income families. I'm sort of thinking
Speaker 1: about how the change in abortion laws plays into this.
Speaker 1: It's already much harder in most states of the US
Speaker 1: to get an abortion than in other parts of certainly
Speaker 1: than in Europe. UM. But that would that would be
Speaker 1: be limiting the choices of young women in another way
Speaker 1: if they don't have the financial means to to go
Speaker 1: somewhere else. That's exactly right. We know that unplanned pregnancies,
Speaker 1: which are typically what leads someone to seek an abortion,
Speaker 1: unplanned pregnancies are much much higher amongst low income women,
Speaker 1: amongst women of color, amongst they're less educated. So they're
Speaker 1: the ones who are going to be hurt most by
Speaker 1: these restrictions on abortion, and we're going to see more
Speaker 1: unplanned pregnancy, more to see some most very young, disadvantaged women,
Speaker 1: and that is going to put a burden on our
Speaker 1: social assistance system, which is already not very robust. And
Speaker 1: in fact, we did some analysis at Brooking's that shows
Speaker 1: very clearly that the states who are being most restrictive
Speaker 1: on the on the abortion front are also the states where, um,
Speaker 1: the most disadvantaged children live and where government policy does
Speaker 1: the least to help them out. I was going to say,
Speaker 1: are those the states that would one would think naturally
Speaker 1: be in favor of giving more support for people having
Speaker 1: children if you're so encouraging of people to have children.
Speaker 1: That doesn't sound like the chronicle that the states that
Speaker 1: are are most eager to restrict abortion are also the
Speaker 1: ones that are doing the least to help families with children.
Speaker 1: I mean, stepping back. We had also had a short
Speaker 1: chat with one of my colleagues in Manila, because the
Speaker 1: Philippines has the opposite issue. It has had a very
Speaker 1: slow demographic transition. They've struggled with that actually for for
Speaker 1: for cultural reasons, and that there has been pushed back
Speaker 1: from the largely Catholic population on efforts to increase family
Speaker 1: planning and everything. It is a very difficult balance for
Speaker 1: modern economies to strike between um having enough population, encouraging
Speaker 1: families to bring up children and making it easier, but
Speaker 1: on the other hand also making it possible for people
Speaker 1: to make choices about family size and the way they
Speaker 1: live their lives. Are we any closer to finding a
Speaker 1: balance or is there still a difficult balance to strike
Speaker 1: even in economies that have been very rich for a
Speaker 1: very long time. Well, I think it is a difficult balance,
Speaker 1: and I think that uh, the biggest example of this
Speaker 1: is China. Uh. China for many years had this one
Speaker 1: child policy, and then suddenly they realized that they weren't
Speaker 1: going to have enough people to both man the economy
Speaker 1: or provide the labor force they needed, and also not
Speaker 1: enough people to support a growing elderly population. So you
Speaker 1: do get an imbalance in the age structure of the
Speaker 1: population when you suddenly have a decline in fertility. So
Speaker 1: the Chinese have now shifted and are moving towards encouraging
Speaker 1: people to have children, and so they kind of made
Speaker 1: a mistake and they're now realizing it. So they're the
Speaker 1: probably the best example of the kind of imbalance you're
Speaker 1: talking about because at the same time giving women more
Speaker 1: options interesting careers that they might choose to Another thing
Speaker 1: that came up briefly in Molly's pieces that we also
Speaker 1: have other allegiances, new bonds that we've we've formed with
Speaker 1: friends and other sort of groups that we've sought out
Speaker 1: in life, you know, become kind of more important or
Speaker 1: as important as as as family bombs. I guess that's
Speaker 1: a that's a yes. I'm not sure. I think that
Speaker 1: there's certainly are efforts for people to connect through social media,
Speaker 1: but personally, I think those bombs are much weaker than
Speaker 1: the ones that occur in person and that require lots
Speaker 1: of time they voted to the relationship, and that are
Speaker 1: less performative and more real, if I can put it
Speaker 1: that way. So I don't think that that's going to
Speaker 1: replace uh, family ties, but I do think that um
Speaker 1: people are going to have smaller families, and they're going
Speaker 1: to have them when they're older, rather than when they're
Speaker 1: just out of high school. For example, we know that
Speaker 1: the amongst the educated women in America at least uh,
Speaker 1: they are marrying and having children much later than they
Speaker 1: used to. And that's a healthy trend in the sense
Speaker 1: that they're mature enough uh to devote time and resources
Speaker 1: to their children, and they know what they're doing. They've
Speaker 1: planned to have these children, and they're devoting the time
Speaker 1: of vote parents to doing that. What's happening is we
Speaker 1: are not seeing the same thing amongst the less educated.
Speaker 1: Amongst the less educated, we're seeing more and more um
Speaker 1: uh people just having children without having a plan for
Speaker 1: how to pay the costs of raising them and how
Speaker 1: to spend the time that it takes to raise your job.
Speaker 1: It's fascinating. Isabel Soil, thank you so much. Thank you. Well,
Speaker 1: that's it for Stephanomics. I'm off to persuade my children
Speaker 1: not to go to college in the US. But tune
Speaker 1: in for a special episodes next week from the Bloomberg
Speaker 1: New Economy Forum in Singapore and check out the Bloomberg
Speaker 1: News website for more economic news and views on the
Speaker 1: global economy. You should also follow if you don't already
Speaker 1: at economics on Twitter. This episode was produced by Summer
Speaker 1: Sadi Young, Young and Magnus Hendrickson, with special thanks to
Speaker 1: Carmen Rodriguez, Molly Smith, Siegfried Alagado, and Isabel Sawhill. Mike
Speaker 1: Sasso is the executive producer of Stephanomics