Post

Conversation

Lyman Stone 石來民 🦬🦬🦬
@lymanstoneky
Hi! I wrote the meta-analysis. This take is wrong. Taiwan's GDP per capita is ~$40k. A 4% present-value benefit yields ~1% TFR increase. TFR is 0.87, so needs to rise 141% to hit 2.1. That means benefit present value must equal 500-600% of GDP per capita. A $12-$15k,000/yr child allowance would do that. At full implementation, this would cost Taiwan 9-22% of GDP depending on dynamic growth effects. That's a lot, but it's not impossible or absurd. Taiwan's government is 18% of GDP right now; this would indeed be a 50-100% expansion in government spending, but if the alternative is "The end of the Taiwanese people and the collapse of Taiwanese sovereignty" idk man sometimes you just pay the price on the price tag. And MANY countries have government spending at 30-50% of GDP. Taiwan could absolutely spend its way back to replacement. Especially since each child born in Taiwan generates absolutely massive production and tax revenues for the Taiwanese economy and government, the long run balance is probably not even that bad in terms of debt/GDP. But more to the point: there's NEVER going to be a silver bullet. If you're looking for ONE policy to close the gap between current and replacement fertility, you will NEVER find one. There IS NO SUCH POLICY. Rather, successful pronatalism will involve dozens of different policy changes each of which will nudge fertility a bit. Taiwan could get to replacement fertility for a lot less than 20% of GDP by doing more modest financial incentives plus a bunch of other stuff including various cultural interventions. A massive cash grant could close the gap, but it would be wiser to do a mix of cash and a bunch of other policies that tackle various leverage points in the fertility process.
Quote
uncorrelated
@uncorrelated_
Child benefits are absurdly ineffective From a meta-analysis of pro-natal policies, a 10% household income benefit yields 0.5%-4.1% more births Thus, taking Taiwan to replacement fertility requires 269% more births or ~$450,000 USD per child x.com/BirthGauge/sta…
72.5K
Views
David Watson 🥑
Post your reply

Daniel Di Martino 🇺🇸🇻🇪
@DanielDiMartino
It is immense and I fear impossible. But a good start worldwide would be to direct all welfare towards those with children through CTC-like programs. No more other programs. Only way to make these moves affordable
1.4K
Jens Nordmark
@NordmarkJens
The fraction of our lifetime spent in childhood is a bit over 20% so makes sense at least 20% of our total lifetime tax payment should be spent on childhood related stuff (incl school, healthcare etc)
890
Collin Reid
@CREID2852
Reviewing the realities of such plans I don't have a ton of confidence in this plan of working to that level of success. I can forsee a baby bump to 1.6 fertility but I believe such plan would simply make housing, and child care cost higher mitigating a complete success.
319
Damian Mooney
@gaeltachtlar
Let’s pump more money into it. That’ll fix it. Someday, we’ll realise that it’s all about values. Oscar Wilde anyone?
40
Bolsa
@OwnNothingBFree
It’s so interesting to see this debate. First there were decades when nearly everyone denied there was a problem and now when they accept there is, nearly everyone says nothing can be done I suggest most ppl never look at data or research — not then, not now — and just talk BS
8
Randy Lazarus
@MarysRoommate
Why woudnt this massive subsidy also massively inflate the price of the goods and services associated with childrearing and thus have strongly diminishing if not negatove returns
99
Rycrmml
@rycrmml
Like so many others, I am fascinated by how high fertility rose during the baby boom. There seems to be a definite effect of following what the peers are doing. Once young women started having lots of babies, many followed along. I doubt they really gave it any thought.
87
Simon Acerton
@SAcerton
Globalism to paraphrase Snow Crash has "taken away all those historical inequities and smeared them out into a broad global layer of what a Pakistani brickmaker would consider to be prosperity" this means low fertility everywhere
13

Discover more

Sourced from across X
OSINTtechnical
@Osinttechnical
American vlogging family with three young kids moves to Russia. Husband is promised Russian citizenship and rear area service as a welder if he joins the RU Army. Gets sent to the Ukrainian frontline after 3 weeks of training.
Image
1.2M
sydney
@demiurgently
feel like people (me) underestimate how much insistence you need about norms for them to work i visited a coffee shop in Maine before catching a flight and, in a rush, accidentally left without paying 😑 i realized what happened a few hours later & called the store to ask how i
464K
Steven Godofsky
@sgodofsk
If the Air India crash was pilot murder-suicide like it appears to have been, that would make murder-suicide the probable cause of 781 deaths since 2014, likely more than any other cause in airline accidents. Weird to think that might be the most salient issue in aviation safety.
1M
Romy
@Romy_Holland
of course fat ppl are fat from eating too many calories, the thing nobody talks about is that everyone would eat too many calories if they felt as hungry as many fat ppl do. you don’t have superior self-control, you were just born with functional satiety signaling.
239K