Reading this, I can't help but feel like there is a weird correlation here going on.
It seems less specifically about the school and more about the support system and the safe place that this program gave to the girls.
It sounds like this was a program specifically built to target the reasons they were not staying in school in the first place. Which obviously is a good thing but just simply stating "stayed in school" feels like an oversimplification of what was done here.
That is an important distinction since the question to me remains if the numbers would continue without the program specifically in place.
I think so. These girls still live with their family, it’s not like they’re in some cordoned off area where marriage if forbidden. It’s just a few hours of school every weekday.
Basically there is social pressure to marry early if you’re not occupied in some way or have less prospects for employment after education.
I get that its not like they were sent to a boarding school or something.
But it does mention accelerated catch up programs just for them, assisting financially, and vocational training.
Which is clearly more than just "stayed in school". Meaning it is something that can't just be replicated by encouraging being in school but actively needing a program like this. Which is not a bad thing obviously, but it is important that the right lesson is taken out of this.
Many traditional cultures have a communitarian approach to decision-making. What an individual wants is often a small part of the equation, especially for girls and women.
That doesn’t sit well for a western individualist mindset but… it happens there too. Parental pressure in particular is the conduit for broader social norms.
> simply stating "stayed in school" feels like an oversimplification of what was done here
> Am I misunderstanding something here?
"Stayed in school" is a clear, binary condition that's easily measured and has obvious benefits to everyone because everyone is at least a little educated.
If I ask you "is your house temperature livable?" and you say "the thermometer says 20", answered. You didn't say "well, I purchased and installed a heat pump and duct distribution system capable of forcing warmed air to be distributed to the remainder of the house, which keeps the temperature in a habitable range, then ensured power supply remains connected and kept it on" and say I didn't really explain the important part.
not familiar with nigera perse but in most places with child marriage, the marriage is the reason girls drop out of school.
other then that often its financial reasons. they will put boys to school because those are classically expected to take care of the family while girl will be married off to some guy. (ofc this is changing in a lot of places bits its the historical reasons afaik)
NO. I've seen quite a few things, across many cultures, pointing out that girls being any combination of low-value, low-status, and unsupported leads to them ending up as "cheap bodies".
That includes several American women friends, whose life stories include getting married at age 17-ish - because, with the situations in their own families, that really looked like their least-bad option.
Yes; it's currently legal in 34 US States. Here are the 16 that ban the practice: Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Rhode Island, New York, Massachusetts, Vermont, Connecticut, Michigan, Washington, Virginia, New Hampshire, Maine, Oregon, and Missouri.
I'd guess your pot/kettle comment is something nationalist/political? My prior comment was trying to say it's universal, not some "country X is good/bad" dig.
There is also a lot of evidence that shows the availability of factory jobs in developing countries (not just Africa but also India and Pakistan) is very good for young women. A young woman who gets a job outside of her poor family is much less likely to be forced to marry young.
I'm glad they have the option, but some evidence is needed that slaving away in a 3rd world factory actually makes you better off than having a man provide for you in exchange for child bearing. I suppose maybe it's better to be the slave of some random boss (who maybe also uses sexual assault and other coercion) than the slave of some man you or your family has picked, but who knows.
This kind of data was shown by late Hans Rosling and his foundation Gapminder¹. He gave a Ted talk² about similar subjects as well, and I find him an excellent lecturer.
I think that birth rates also drop when girls and women are educated. I would like to see such education AND lotsa child support programs and credits. I.e. I think a stable fertility rate AND educated girls are simultaneously possible all around the world
This subthread has people using "improve" to mean "increase" and "improve" to mean "decrease". Maybe you guys should stop talking past each other and converge on replacement rate?
Up until very recently, and especially in Africa, huge amounts of effort went into reducing birth rate to avoid locally-Malthusian situations with high child death rates and occasional famines.
I’m very passionate about birth rates and I think they’re worth improving. Unfortunately, child support programs don’t move the needle, it’s thoroughly researched. Nordic countries have tried them in various ways, and the birth rate is still extremely low. Ultimately, the benefits of female education AND lowered child mortality AND access to contraception feel inextricably linked to lower birth rates.
I wish I had a solution. As an educated woman, why should I spend time developing an employable skill just to raise >2.3 children and not thrive in my career? Most research indicates that child support programs tend to just support people that already planned to have children. As someone about to be a first time parent, I would love more support in the US. But it’s hard to imagine a world where you take on a lifelong responsibility for, say, an extra $2k (or even $20k) being handed to you by the government.
Why does low birth rates need solution? Low birth rates are already the solution to countless issue like ressources depletion, climate changes and real estate high cost.
> why should I spend time developing an employable skill just to raise >2.3 children and not thrive in my career?
This contains the answer: we aren’t paying enough.
Kids used to confer private, excludable benefit through their labour. Without child labour, their economic value is no longer exclusive to their parents. This transforms children, economically, from a private good to a common resource. Our low birth rates are a tragedy of a commons. A known problem with a known solution.
If we want a higher birth rate, we should have a massive child tax credit. One that can rival the rising cost and opportunity cost of childrearing.
A better, cleaner solution is to remove old age benefits (Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid). A tax credit sufficient to incentivize attaining TFR would probably blow up the budget, and it would be hard to pin down the exact number, subject to tons of politics.
But since you mention the Nordic countries, it's worth driving home just how high the amounts are:
In Norway it's 100% of pay for up to 49 weeks or 61 weeks at 80% of pay, capped at ~$111k (based on a your salary, capped to "6G" - 6x the national insurance base rate)[1].
So not even up to $111k is enough to convince enough women to have more children to maintain replacement rates (and I don't blame them).
And this is in addition to e.g. legally mandated right to full-time nursery places with the fee cap dropped to a maximum of ~$130/month as of last year.
When people think money will be enough, they need to realise just how much money some countries have tried throwing at parents without getting back above replacement...
So basically they probably don't lose their wage for the duration of their absence but it's likely still a net negative to them (financially aside from the physical burdens) and in line with societal expectations created over decades?
I say crank up the numbers then. Give them a bigger tax credit too. Hold it long enough for societal expectations to slowly adjust.
People think money is enough because they look at their lives and think 'how could I afford kids? Clearly I need money to do that.' and they don't think 'if I had extra money, would I spend it on someone else or on myself?' and the majority of people choose spending it on themselves instead of that potential child someone else.
Those people often don't even consider the time cost either. Which makes sense, if reason A is sufficient to say 'no' then why continue dwelling on other reasons? But even if there was more money and they were willing to not spend it on themselves, they now need to accept giving up roughly 90% of their non sleep/work time to someone else as well. That's not giving away something new you didn't have, that's giving up something you've been using and are accustomed to having.
I thought there was a broad consensus among social scientists that sub-replacement birthrates in the West are linked to the expense of new household formation, especially wrt. real estate prices. Child support programs can help quite a bit at the margin, but not enough to make a dent in that particular issue. It makes no sense to conflate this situation with Nigeria's, they're polar opposites in many ways.
Everywhere except sub-Saharan Africa and parts of the Middle East have sub-replacement birthrates at this point. Including India and China. China has started seeing contraction, India will start seeing contradiction in ~20-30 years since the measures lag.
It is by no means an issue just in the West.
You're right the situation is different with respect to Nigeria, but the birth rates are also falling in all of the remaining countries. Nigeria's is still high but also falling.
Yeah but in poor/developing countries raising birth rates are not something they're looking for but the opposite, (the most important thing is reducing teenage pregnancy). I lived in Colombia and they had programs where they have free antibcoceptives, free antibcoceptives implants that last a few years, like a lot of effort is spent in preventing birth rates, since a lot of people without the resources have a lot of kids. I don't think the problem of birth rates is related to financial reasons when in poor countries you see people with multiple kids without being able to afford It. I know personally people that have 10kids.
>I think a stable fertility rate AND educated girls are simultaneously possible all around the world
i.e countries with a very high education attainment rate or high ranking in the human development index coupled with a high fertility rate? There was HackerNews discussion a while back that alluded to the fact the more developed a country becomes the lower the fertility rate.
Because its suggested that solutions like affordable housing, more free time, child care may help in a few situations but largely don't bump the fertility rates.
Developed countries are currently getting by on their immigration rates but as the rest of the world becomes more developed this isn't a lasting solution.
Birth rates would also improve when boys and men are educated. Both genders need education and child support programs. Men/Boys need to understand what responsibilities they have, if they choose to have a child. They also need to understand the effects that having a child has on a woman's body.
Governments around the world would benefit their society by investing in family planning, family support (esp. child care) to enable parents to work and provide for their family.
An educated and healthy populace (from infant to old age) benefits everyone.
This is misleading. Education is not the panacea. I am saying it's a "whole of family" approach. Governments need to also provide more support to families. This is clear to any parent.
"Men/Boys need to understand what responsibilities they have, if they choose to have a child. They also need to understand the effects that having a child has on a woman's body."
This will only reduce birth rates. I have two kids and it's hard. I would still have them if I knew just how hard it would be (especially during winter, when everyone is sick).
There are also many men that just don't care if they have a child, what it does to a woman's body. This won't change with more education.
So, the solution is to... not provide education? The logic doesn't make sense. You say this yourself: "I would still have them if I knew just how hard it would be"
If it reduces birth rates, that's not due to education alone. That's due to a lack of investment by governments to support those families.
You should know this with two kids. Any help is better than no help. Women want to work. Women want to go to school. That's what this topic is about.
Birthrates at or below replacement rate are ultimately a good thing as we improve automation and AI. Infinite population growth is not a realistic model. We can't even prove the current population level is sustainable.
> We can't even prove the current population level is sustainable.
Everyday we prove it slightly more. To exhaust the nutrients in all the mud in the world would take a lot more farming, but we thought that ip4 addresses would never run out either, so maybe it will happen.
Roger Freeman, then advisor to presidential candidate Ronald Reagan in 1970, said "We are in danger of producing an educated proletariat" [7], leading to Reagan unwinding the free college of the UC system and this was a progenitor to the current student debt crisis.
But beyond college education, there's also an attack on education at K-12 levels. Homeschooling and a lack of sex education contribute to perpetuating abuse and trapping children (primarily girls) in this cycle.
Reading this, I can't help but feel like there is a weird correlation here going on.
It seems less specifically about the school and more about the support system and the safe place that this program gave to the girls.
It sounds like this was a program specifically built to target the reasons they were not staying in school in the first place. Which obviously is a good thing but just simply stating "stayed in school" feels like an oversimplification of what was done here.
That is an important distinction since the question to me remains if the numbers would continue without the program specifically in place.
Am I misunderstanding something here?
I think so. These girls still live with their family, it’s not like they’re in some cordoned off area where marriage if forbidden. It’s just a few hours of school every weekday.
Basically there is social pressure to marry early if you’re not occupied in some way or have less prospects for employment after education.
I get that its not like they were sent to a boarding school or something.
But it does mention accelerated catch up programs just for them, assisting financially, and vocational training.
Which is clearly more than just "stayed in school". Meaning it is something that can't just be replicated by encouraging being in school but actively needing a program like this. Which is not a bad thing obviously, but it is important that the right lesson is taken out of this.
> Basically there is social pressure to marry early if you’re not occupied in some way or have less prospects for employment after education.
The way this is phrased makes it seem like the children are making the choice to marry.
Many traditional cultures have a communitarian approach to decision-making. What an individual wants is often a small part of the equation, especially for girls and women.
That doesn’t sit well for a western individualist mindset but… it happens there too. Parental pressure in particular is the conduit for broader social norms.
> simply stating "stayed in school" feels like an oversimplification of what was done here
> Am I misunderstanding something here?
"Stayed in school" is a clear, binary condition that's easily measured and has obvious benefits to everyone because everyone is at least a little educated.
If I ask you "is your house temperature livable?" and you say "the thermometer says 20", answered. You didn't say "well, I purchased and installed a heat pump and duct distribution system capable of forcing warmed air to be distributed to the remainder of the house, which keeps the temperature in a habitable range, then ensured power supply remains connected and kept it on" and say I didn't really explain the important part.
not familiar with nigera perse but in most places with child marriage, the marriage is the reason girls drop out of school.
other then that often its financial reasons. they will put boys to school because those are classically expected to take care of the family while girl will be married off to some guy. (ofc this is changing in a lot of places bits its the historical reasons afaik)
> Am I misunderstanding ...
NO. I've seen quite a few things, across many cultures, pointing out that girls being any combination of low-value, low-status, and unsupported leads to them ending up as "cheap bodies".
That includes several American women friends, whose life stories include getting married at age 17-ish - because, with the situations in their own families, that really looked like their least-bad option.
Cant you still marry a child in some american states? Isn't this a bit like the pot calling the kettle black?
Yes; it's currently legal in 34 US States. Here are the 16 that ban the practice: Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Rhode Island, New York, Massachusetts, Vermont, Connecticut, Michigan, Washington, Virginia, New Hampshire, Maine, Oregon, and Missouri.
In Nigeria, nearly 40% of all girls are wed by 18 between 2000 and 2019 (https://childmarriagedata.org/country-profiles/nigeria/#comp...), whereas there were a total of less than 300K American girls in child marriages between 2000 and 2018.
not if you also condemn the American states that allow that...
Pretty much "yes" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marriage_age_in_the_United_Sta...
I'd guess your pot/kettle comment is something nationalist/political? My prior comment was trying to say it's universal, not some "country X is good/bad" dig.
There is also a lot of evidence that shows the availability of factory jobs in developing countries (not just Africa but also India and Pakistan) is very good for young women. A young woman who gets a job outside of her poor family is much less likely to be forced to marry young.
I'm glad they have the option, but some evidence is needed that slaving away in a 3rd world factory actually makes you better off than having a man provide for you in exchange for child bearing. I suppose maybe it's better to be the slave of some random boss (who maybe also uses sexual assault and other coercion) than the slave of some man you or your family has picked, but who knows.
Don't be obtuse. You can quit a boss and never see them again.
As a child factory slave?
This kind of data was shown by late Hans Rosling and his foundation Gapminder¹. He gave a Ted talk² about similar subjects as well, and I find him an excellent lecturer.
¹ https://www.gapminder.org/
² https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVimVzgtD6w
I think that birth rates also drop when girls and women are educated. I would like to see such education AND lotsa child support programs and credits. I.e. I think a stable fertility rate AND educated girls are simultaneously possible all around the world
This subthread has people using "improve" to mean "increase" and "improve" to mean "decrease". Maybe you guys should stop talking past each other and converge on replacement rate?
Up until very recently, and especially in Africa, huge amounts of effort went into reducing birth rate to avoid locally-Malthusian situations with high child death rates and occasional famines.
I’m very passionate about birth rates and I think they’re worth improving. Unfortunately, child support programs don’t move the needle, it’s thoroughly researched. Nordic countries have tried them in various ways, and the birth rate is still extremely low. Ultimately, the benefits of female education AND lowered child mortality AND access to contraception feel inextricably linked to lower birth rates.
I wish I had a solution. As an educated woman, why should I spend time developing an employable skill just to raise >2.3 children and not thrive in my career? Most research indicates that child support programs tend to just support people that already planned to have children. As someone about to be a first time parent, I would love more support in the US. But it’s hard to imagine a world where you take on a lifelong responsibility for, say, an extra $2k (or even $20k) being handed to you by the government.
Why does low birth rates need solution? Low birth rates are already the solution to countless issue like ressources depletion, climate changes and real estate high cost.
> why should I spend time developing an employable skill just to raise >2.3 children and not thrive in my career?
This contains the answer: we aren’t paying enough.
Kids used to confer private, excludable benefit through their labour. Without child labour, their economic value is no longer exclusive to their parents. This transforms children, economically, from a private good to a common resource. Our low birth rates are a tragedy of a commons. A known problem with a known solution.
If we want a higher birth rate, we should have a massive child tax credit. One that can rival the rising cost and opportunity cost of childrearing.
A better, cleaner solution is to remove old age benefits (Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid). A tax credit sufficient to incentivize attaining TFR would probably blow up the budget, and it would be hard to pin down the exact number, subject to tons of politics.
I agree with everything you've written.
But since you mention the Nordic countries, it's worth driving home just how high the amounts are:
In Norway it's 100% of pay for up to 49 weeks or 61 weeks at 80% of pay, capped at ~$111k (based on a your salary, capped to "6G" - 6x the national insurance base rate)[1].
So not even up to $111k is enough to convince enough women to have more children to maintain replacement rates (and I don't blame them).
And this is in addition to e.g. legally mandated right to full-time nursery places with the fee cap dropped to a maximum of ~$130/month as of last year.
When people think money will be enough, they need to realise just how much money some countries have tried throwing at parents without getting back above replacement...
[1] in Norwegian: https://www.nav.no/foreldrepenger
So basically they probably don't lose their wage for the duration of their absence but it's likely still a net negative to them (financially aside from the physical burdens) and in line with societal expectations created over decades?
I say crank up the numbers then. Give them a bigger tax credit too. Hold it long enough for societal expectations to slowly adjust.
People think money is enough because they look at their lives and think 'how could I afford kids? Clearly I need money to do that.' and they don't think 'if I had extra money, would I spend it on someone else or on myself?' and the majority of people choose spending it on themselves instead of that potential child someone else.
Those people often don't even consider the time cost either. Which makes sense, if reason A is sufficient to say 'no' then why continue dwelling on other reasons? But even if there was more money and they were willing to not spend it on themselves, they now need to accept giving up roughly 90% of their non sleep/work time to someone else as well. That's not giving away something new you didn't have, that's giving up something you've been using and are accustomed to having.
I thought there was a broad consensus among social scientists that sub-replacement birthrates in the West are linked to the expense of new household formation, especially wrt. real estate prices. Child support programs can help quite a bit at the margin, but not enough to make a dent in that particular issue. It makes no sense to conflate this situation with Nigeria's, they're polar opposites in many ways.
Everywhere except sub-Saharan Africa and parts of the Middle East have sub-replacement birthrates at this point. Including India and China. China has started seeing contraction, India will start seeing contradiction in ~20-30 years since the measures lag.
It is by no means an issue just in the West.
You're right the situation is different with respect to Nigeria, but the birth rates are also falling in all of the remaining countries. Nigeria's is still high but also falling.
Yeah but in poor/developing countries raising birth rates are not something they're looking for but the opposite, (the most important thing is reducing teenage pregnancy). I lived in Colombia and they had programs where they have free antibcoceptives, free antibcoceptives implants that last a few years, like a lot of effort is spent in preventing birth rates, since a lot of people without the resources have a lot of kids. I don't think the problem of birth rates is related to financial reasons when in poor countries you see people with multiple kids without being able to afford It. I know personally people that have 10kids.
Can you point to any examples of this:
>I think a stable fertility rate AND educated girls are simultaneously possible all around the world
i.e countries with a very high education attainment rate or high ranking in the human development index coupled with a high fertility rate? There was HackerNews discussion a while back that alluded to the fact the more developed a country becomes the lower the fertility rate.
Because its suggested that solutions like affordable housing, more free time, child care may help in a few situations but largely don't bump the fertility rates.
Developed countries are currently getting by on their immigration rates but as the rest of the world becomes more developed this isn't a lasting solution.
Birth rates would also improve when boys and men are educated. Both genders need education and child support programs. Men/Boys need to understand what responsibilities they have, if they choose to have a child. They also need to understand the effects that having a child has on a woman's body.
Governments around the world would benefit their society by investing in family planning, family support (esp. child care) to enable parents to work and provide for their family.
An educated and healthy populace (from infant to old age) benefits everyone.
This is almost the opposite of what happens.
The more educated/developed a nation, the lesser their birth rate is going to be.
I understand the "shoulds" but that's not what the data suggests.
In essence, we can't have the pie and at the same time eat it.
The most useful thing education does for children is reduce child-mortality rate.[1]
Sources: https://raphael-godefroy.github.io/pdfs/mali_final.pdf
[1] https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED503923
This is misleading. Education is not the panacea. I am saying it's a "whole of family" approach. Governments need to also provide more support to families. This is clear to any parent.
"Men/Boys need to understand what responsibilities they have, if they choose to have a child. They also need to understand the effects that having a child has on a woman's body."
This will only reduce birth rates. I have two kids and it's hard. I would still have them if I knew just how hard it would be (especially during winter, when everyone is sick).
There are also many men that just don't care if they have a child, what it does to a woman's body. This won't change with more education.
So, the solution is to... not provide education? The logic doesn't make sense. You say this yourself: "I would still have them if I knew just how hard it would be"
If it reduces birth rates, that's not due to education alone. That's due to a lack of investment by governments to support those families.
You should know this with two kids. Any help is better than no help. Women want to work. Women want to go to school. That's what this topic is about.
"That's due to a lack of investment by governments to support those families."
Please show the evidence for this being true. Birthrates are low even in countries that provide a lot of support.
Birthrates at or below replacement rate are ultimately a good thing as we improve automation and AI. Infinite population growth is not a realistic model. We can't even prove the current population level is sustainable.
> We can't even prove the current population level is sustainable.
Everyday we prove it slightly more. To exhaust the nutrients in all the mud in the world would take a lot more farming, but we thought that ip4 addresses would never run out either, so maybe it will happen.
Meanwhile in America [1][2][3][4][5][6].
Roger Freeman, then advisor to presidential candidate Ronald Reagan in 1970, said "We are in danger of producing an educated proletariat" [7], leading to Reagan unwinding the free college of the UC system and this was a progenitor to the current student debt crisis.
But beyond college education, there's also an attack on education at K-12 levels. Homeschooling and a lack of sex education contribute to perpetuating abuse and trapping children (primarily girls) in this cycle.
[1]: https://calmatters.org/politics/2023/06/child-marriage-calif...
[2]: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/married-young-the...
[3]: https://www.theguardian.com/society/article/2024/jul/09/chil...
[4]: https://www.freedomunited.org/u-s-child-mariage-laws-individ...
[5]: https://www.unchainedatlast.org/united-states-child-marriage...
[6]: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/interactive/child-marriag...
[7]: https://www.bestcolleges.com/news/analysis/threat-of-educate...
This shouldn't be a surprise, lots of evidence in other countries to support this
Sounds like a net positive. Go team!
They should ban home schools in the US to achieve the same.