Sometimes a perceived problem doesn’t have a solution

We’re told that fertility rates are a problem:

Yet around the world, women are choosing to have fewer children and there is no consensus on why.

In England and Wales, fertility rates have sunk to the lowest level on record, at 1.41 children per woman – well below the replacement level of 2.1.

This clearly brings challenges for society. The most obvious is for public finances: if fewer future taxpayers are being born, who will pay for public services?

If people are living their lives as they wish to live them - the liberal dream - then anything that follows on from that isn’t a problem it’s just a side effect. But we agree we’re probably a little lonely in that position.

We’d also say this isn’t all that surprising. In a richer world there are more things to do with a life. Therefore any one thing that can be done with a life will be done less often. Opportunity costs are real, after all.

But it’s this that annoys:

“The Nordic countries [are] generally quite generous in terms of parental leave, having childcare facilities that are high quality and cheap, and also having a general social normative context that emphasises the importance of parenthood,” says Hudde.

All often pointed to in this discussion. Free childcare, high maternity pay and leave until the kid leaves to go to - free - university. All of which might be desirable, might not be. But they don’t solve the fertility problem in the slightest - for the fertility rates in the Nordics are the same as or, in Finland’s case, lower than the UK. Where, of course, mothers get a free crust and three days before they have to go back to work.

Low fertility rates are something that individuals will decide to cure or not, as the case may be. But as a “problem” that can be “solved” we don’t think that’s possible. Largely on the grounds that absolutely nothing that anyone has done has budged the fertility rate, anywhere, even close to replacement level.

Tim Worstall