Fascinating insight that I hadn't seen up until now, despite reading countless essays on this topic. I live (as a parent of a young child) in Sweden, where private tutoring of this type is almost unheard of. Preschool/daycare here is essentially free. University is famously tuition free (with even living costs subsidized by no-interest loans). And other costs of parenting are subsidized to the level that they're much less salient.
In my own experience, my toddler-age son basically costs me less than owning a Golden Retriever! When my son was born, the birthrate here had for the first time averaged higher than in my native United States, and I could certainly understand why: given how we didn't face thousands in out-of-pocket hospital delivery costs, weren't staring down the barrel at five-figures-worth of annual childcare, and basically didn't even really have to factor finances into this reproductive decision at all. What a relief!
However, *even so,* Swedes are still sensitive enough to economic conditions that the birthrate has fluctuated according to how the economy's going (most recently dipping noticeably this year along with Sweden's poor immediate economic prospects to 1.6/woman). Which suggests to me that either there's some factor that overshadows this "status externality" or else parents are *extremely sensitive* to the modest costs that even highly-subsidized Swedish parents face living in a much more egalitarian society than South Korea's (or the United States').
This result confounds my priors and also, it must be said, undercuts my own policy preferences for fixing this issue in the United States. Because Sweden's family-support is basically as good as it gets. The stuff of the wildest dreams of Progressives in the United States (and even many heterodox Conservatives emulating the example of a Poland or a Hungary with far-right "welfare chauvinism" to support fertility). But if the ho-hum result of all that spending is... 1.6 children per woman, on average, that's a bit underwhelming. This is still one of the highest rates in the EU, but that's more a measure of how arguably catastrophic the demographic collapse on the continent is.
1.6 children per woman on average? In China this number is 1.1, while in South Korea it is 0.78. For large cities in China, the number of children per woman in her lifetime is only a pitiful 0.5
Yes, economics/finances matter! But to the same or even greater degree, culture matters more. Society has to become more children-friendly and accord parents higher social status/benefits if you want to have replacement rate fertility.
But I wouldn't ignore financials either. The size of families is indeed constrained by the cost of housing. Build a ton of housing cheaply with a lot of space and we'd have more children. It's not a coincidence that rural areas have more kids pretty much consistently across the world.
If Korean parents are too obsessed about their children's future social status, one way to discourage that would be to compress the country's income distribution, so it matters less which decile the kids end up in.
And one way to do that would be to pay very generous flat-rate child benefits funded by progressive or even proportional taxation... which is also the most straightforward way to incentivize fertility directly.
Wouldn't that likely be more effective than taxing or outlawing private tutoring?
On the subject of East Asian, specifically Korean parents, doing everything for their kids, a Korean couple, with 3 pre-teen kids, decided to move to Kolkata, India about 7 years back.
I met him when they had just opened up a Cafe and Bakery near my house. Peter is a trained barista and his wife an excellent baker. After we got to talking and became friendly, I eventually asked him why they had moved to India.
He said it was because he wanted his kids to know good English and be able to converse fluently. He felt this was going to be a necessity in the future and would give them a competitive edge. He considered the US, but it was too expensive. So he invested his savings to move to Kolkata and open up the cafe and sent his 3 kids to an international school here.
Parents want the best for their kids, especially in India, where families heavily rely on sons for financial support in old age. Meanwhile, local government capacity is weak. So my bet is that rich families will just dodge the rules, pay bribes, and the educational arms race will continue...
I'm not sure. I was looking at some logistics indexes for emerging markets and India placed #2 next to China. State capacity there is definitely increasing. Perhaps that now the state's enforcement has increased they're less likely to have such garbage laws that are clearly meant for virtue signalling.
Fascinating insight that I hadn't seen up until now, despite reading countless essays on this topic. I live (as a parent of a young child) in Sweden, where private tutoring of this type is almost unheard of. Preschool/daycare here is essentially free. University is famously tuition free (with even living costs subsidized by no-interest loans). And other costs of parenting are subsidized to the level that they're much less salient.
In my own experience, my toddler-age son basically costs me less than owning a Golden Retriever! When my son was born, the birthrate here had for the first time averaged higher than in my native United States, and I could certainly understand why: given how we didn't face thousands in out-of-pocket hospital delivery costs, weren't staring down the barrel at five-figures-worth of annual childcare, and basically didn't even really have to factor finances into this reproductive decision at all. What a relief!
However, *even so,* Swedes are still sensitive enough to economic conditions that the birthrate has fluctuated according to how the economy's going (most recently dipping noticeably this year along with Sweden's poor immediate economic prospects to 1.6/woman). Which suggests to me that either there's some factor that overshadows this "status externality" or else parents are *extremely sensitive* to the modest costs that even highly-subsidized Swedish parents face living in a much more egalitarian society than South Korea's (or the United States').
This result confounds my priors and also, it must be said, undercuts my own policy preferences for fixing this issue in the United States. Because Sweden's family-support is basically as good as it gets. The stuff of the wildest dreams of Progressives in the United States (and even many heterodox Conservatives emulating the example of a Poland or a Hungary with far-right "welfare chauvinism" to support fertility). But if the ho-hum result of all that spending is... 1.6 children per woman, on average, that's a bit underwhelming. This is still one of the highest rates in the EU, but that's more a measure of how arguably catastrophic the demographic collapse on the continent is.
1.6 children per woman on average? In China this number is 1.1, while in South Korea it is 0.78. For large cities in China, the number of children per woman in her lifetime is only a pitiful 0.5
Yes, those are disastrous rates, but 1.6 is still not replacement rate.
Yes, economics/finances matter! But to the same or even greater degree, culture matters more. Society has to become more children-friendly and accord parents higher social status/benefits if you want to have replacement rate fertility.
But I wouldn't ignore financials either. The size of families is indeed constrained by the cost of housing. Build a ton of housing cheaply with a lot of space and we'd have more children. It's not a coincidence that rural areas have more kids pretty much consistently across the world.
If Korean parents are too obsessed about their children's future social status, one way to discourage that would be to compress the country's income distribution, so it matters less which decile the kids end up in.
And one way to do that would be to pay very generous flat-rate child benefits funded by progressive or even proportional taxation... which is also the most straightforward way to incentivize fertility directly.
Wouldn't that likely be more effective than taxing or outlawing private tutoring?
I agree totally.
On the subject of East Asian, specifically Korean parents, doing everything for their kids, a Korean couple, with 3 pre-teen kids, decided to move to Kolkata, India about 7 years back.
I met him when they had just opened up a Cafe and Bakery near my house. Peter is a trained barista and his wife an excellent baker. After we got to talking and became friendly, I eventually asked him why they had moved to India.
He said it was because he wanted his kids to know good English and be able to converse fluently. He felt this was going to be a necessity in the future and would give them a competitive edge. He considered the US, but it was too expensive. So he invested his savings to move to Kolkata and open up the cafe and sent his 3 kids to an international school here.
Beautiful tables. I gotta step my game up.
India is also putting a lot of regulations on private education. Do you see this as fruitful in India where education spending is low to begin with?
Parents want the best for their kids, especially in India, where families heavily rely on sons for financial support in old age. Meanwhile, local government capacity is weak. So my bet is that rich families will just dodge the rules, pay bribes, and the educational arms race will continue...
I'm not sure. I was looking at some logistics indexes for emerging markets and India placed #2 next to China. State capacity there is definitely increasing. Perhaps that now the state's enforcement has increased they're less likely to have such garbage laws that are clearly meant for virtue signalling.