Does More Gender Equality Lead to More Babies? And Other Interesting New Research.
In SubSaharan Africa, girlbosses have more kids; The racial gap in suspected child abuse; The case for not doing welfare through the tax system; Why single moms have such a tough time; + more.
Hello Everyone!
I hope you had a wonderful Christmas Day, regardless of whether or not you celebrate it. I probably ought to have given you all a heads up about this but, given that Tuesday was Christmas Eve, I decided to publish the newsletter today instead. I’ll be doing the same next week, since Tuesday is New Year’s Eve. I thought about skipping these weeks entirely, both on principle and out of respect for the family I am visiting over the holidays. But then: the whole point of the newsletter is to keep people up to date on family research in a timely manner—don’t want to let people down. Plus, skipping one week of perusing studies just leaves more to peruse the following week. So I’m still publishing the round-up, but late and in lower quality form. Given time and childcare constraints, there’s a higher chance than usual that I’m misinterpreting the findings in some manner. Just something to keep in mind as you read!
In SubSaharan Africa, Girlbosses Have More Kids
I mentioned in a previous newsletter that the inverse relationship between women’s socioeconomic status and fertility is flattening out or even reversing in a number of countries, complicating the narrative that the most well-off women have the fewest kids. This study similarly complicates that narrative, but in a different way. The authors tried to figure out what happens to a woman’s fertility when she earns more money—in Sub-Saharan Africa, where fertility remains quite high. Long story short, an increase in earnings caused women to have more, rather than fewer, kids in the years that followed. (Intriguingly, an increase in the husband’s income had no impact on childrearing.)
A couple of interesting details suggest that the effect is economically motivated: it’s driven by women without a son, and stronger for those whose husbands have sons with other women, making them “rivals for inheritance.” The authors conclude that women are using childbearing as a strategy to safeguard their longterm economic security. In a setting where women can’t own or inherit property, and formal pensions aren’t really a thing, “having a son who is entitled to inherit from his father can mitigate a woman’s risk of housing and land dispossession upon her husband’s death.” What are we to do with this information? Well, I certainly wouldn’t endorse peeling back women’s rights in order to boost the birth rate. But the study does suggest that fertility decisions are context-dependent. In places where it serves a woman to have more kids, she will use a bump in earnings to have more kids.
The Racial Gap in Suspected Child Abuse
When kids are admitted to the hospital after getting hurt, it’s typical for their parents to be screened as possible suspects of child abuse. This study explored the possibility that some parents might be less likely to be given the benefit of the doubt under such circumstances than others. And indeed, even after controlling for socioeconomic factors and hospital characteristics, black children and adolescents were suspected of child abuse at higher rates than children and adolescents of other racial and ethnic backgrounds. This finding is unfortunately not surprising to me given that 1 in 2 black kids in America will be reported to or investigated by Child Protective Services at some point in their childhood (compared to 1 in 3 kids overall, which is frankly insane in its own right).
Raising the Drinking Age Improves Academic Performance (Also, Why Do American, European, and Australian Teens Drink So Much??)
One major difference between America and Europe is that the drinking age is lower. Apparently, however, quite a few European countries have raised their minimum legal drinking ages from 16 to 18 in recent years. Investigating the impacts of this change in Spain, the authors of this study found that it has not only successfully reduced teen alcohol consumption (and tranquiliser/sleeping pill use!), but improved their performance on exams. So maybe America is onto something! (Also, see Figure 1 below but it’s kinda nuts how low teenage alcohol consumption is in Africa and Asia, compared to America, Europe and Australia).
Why Single Moms Have Such a Tough Time
Single moms have worse mental health than their partnered peers—but why? This Ireland-based study investigates the possibility that the single-mom-mental-health-disadvantage might be driven by their increased exposure to various stressors (financial strain, caregiving strain, work-related strain, and parental conflict). And indeed it is, to an extent. The authors found that the majority (59%) of lone mothers' heightened risk of depression can be explained by their vulnerability to these challenges—primarily caregiving and financial strain, as well as the cumulative toll of parental conflict.
I think this is one of those Rorschach test findings, from a political perspective. The role of parental conflict in explaining the plight of the single mother suggests she has problems that marriage is unlikely to solve. Additionally, a lot of the difficulty of single motherhood seems to stem not from single motherhood itself but from the fact that single moms have too much caregiving responsibility, not enough money, and a hard time balancing work and family life. Those are things we (that is, policy makers, communities, us!) could help to alleviate. Then again, a sizable portion (41%) appears to be “direct,” which seems like a point in favor of the “marriage is good, actually” crowd.
Will More Gender Equality Lead to More Babies?
In the vast realm of research on declining birth rates, there is one school of thought that holds that we’re in the middle of an unfinished gender revolution of sorts. There’s been a big increase in women’s involvement in work outside the home, but there hasn’t been a corresponding increase in men’s involvement in the home. As such, it shouldn’t really surprise us that fertility has fallen. The hope is that as men get more involved in the home, fertility will rise again.
It follows from this view that a more equitable division of domestic labor will lead to more babies, which is the premise that this study investigated. Basically, the authors examined the association between the division of labor in both housework and childcare and fertility intentions among couples in ten European countries (Germany, Belgium, Austria, France, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Russia, Bulgaria, and Georgia). In keeping with the incomplete gender revolution theory, the authors hypothesized that a more equitable division of both childcare and housework would be associated with a greater likelihood of a couple intending to have a second child. But it turns out that they were only half right. Broadly speaking, a more equitable division of housework was associated with an increased likelihood of intending to have a second child. But the opposite pattern was found for childcare, with a more equitable division associated with a lower likelihood of intending to have another kid. The relationship wasn’t significant in all countries, but the basic pattern held even after introducing controls. You can see in the figure below that in most of the countries included in the analysis, couples that had a more equitable division of housework and less equitable division of childcare (the green bar) were most likely to be planning for another child. Only in Russia did more gender equality on both parameters lead to more babies.
The authors point to some research suggesting that childcare is generally perceived as more enjoyable and rewarding than housework, in which case, women may not be as motivated to part with their share of it. This is interesting! It reminds me a bit of a piece I wrote a while back about the European push to get moms and dads to take parental leave in equal measure—something many women do not perceive as “fair”!
The Case for Not Doing Welfare Through the Tax System
America provides a lot of its social benefits through the tax system. Most of the cash support available to American parents, for example, is funneled through tax credits. Matt Bruenig, of People's Policy Project, has long argued that doing welfare in this manner has some shortcomings. Two new studies suggest he’s onto something. First, a new NBER working paper estimates somewhere between 3 and 12% of children are never claimed on a U.S. tax return—and that unclaimed children “are disproportionately concentrated in lower income households and are more likely to live in Black and Hispanic neighborhoods.” In other words, the kids who would stand to benefit most from tax credits are claimed least.
Another study assessed caregiver perceptions of the expanded child tax credit. (In case you didn’t know, the child tax credit was expanded for a year during the pandemic. It was made larger and fully refundable, so that even kids whose parents didn’t owe anything in taxes could receive the credit in its entirety. And half of it was paid in advance on a monthly basis, rather than all at once at tax time.) The authors found that while caregivers of all income levels found the payments helpful, many were pretty confused by it, and worried about how it would impact their 2022 tax returns. Particularly among low and middle-income caregivers, the credit amplified feelings of “mistrust toward the government.” Providing benefits outside the tax system might help avoid this sort of financial anxiety.
The Wellbeing Advantage of a Lifelong Partnership
Ordinarily, if I can’t get past the paywall on a study, I’ll reach out to the author to see if they’ll let me read it. Out of respect for the holidays, I decided not to do that this week, which means I wasn’t able to actually read the entirety of this study, which investigated the long-term impact of partnership history on wellbeing (in Finland). The upshot is that “continuous relationships lead to the highest life satisfaction, while unstable histories are linked to lower wellbeing.” Relationship quality helps to explain the negative impact of unstable partnerships on wellbeing, but doesn’t explain why those with continuous relationships are better off. So, there really does seem to be something beneficial about sticking it out with someone. (I’ll request to read the study in the New Year, and circle back if I’ve missed/mischaracterized anything).
Very interesting stuff. So happy to see someone taking a data driven approach to questions about modern motherhood!