Either - Or: Big Government or Children

Big Government is often partly justified as necessary to provide services to children, but rarely do people think about the effect that Big Government has on whether people decide to have and raise children at all.  The USDA estimated in 2013 that a child born in 2011 to a US couple with a middle income will cost the parents $241,080 to raise to the age of 18.  This does not even include any costs for a college education or a failure to launch with 36% of 18 -31 year olds living in their parents homes in 2012.  Both of those costs have been increasing rapidly in recent years, while the median inflation-adjusted family income has fallen by $4,000 a year since 2000.

Now, we know that fertility rates are sensitive to a couples' economic security and their available resources.  Fertility rates dropped sharply in the US during the Great Depression.  Fertility rates dropped due to the back to back 1958 and 1960-1961 recessions.  They dropped substantially during the economic malaise of the late Nixon, the Ford, and the Carter years.  The fertility rate has dropped since 2008 as well.  We know that recent efforts of France and Sweden to decrease the cost of raising children have resulted in an increase in the fertility rates.  In December 2011, the Pew Research Center found that 22% of 18 -34 year olds said they were delaying having children for economic reasons.

So what do you think the effect of the great increase in government spending relative to the size of the economy has been on the fertility rate given that the increased spending came at the expense of transferring wealth from the private sector that pays child-raising expenses to the government sector?  The plot of the sum of federal, state, and local government spending from 1950 to 2013 as a percentage of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is shown below:

In 1950, the birthrate per 1000 people was 24.1, in 1970 it was 18.4/1000 people, in 1990 it was 16.7/ 1000 people, and in 2009 it was 13.8/1000 Americans.  Total government spending in 1970 was much higher than in 1950, then again increased greatly by 1990 and still more in 2009.  The fertility rate fell substantially with each of those jumps in total government spending.  Now, I am not claiming this is the only effect on fertility rates, but it is a very logical one and the evidence is that it is a substantial effect.

But, the median household income in 2012 according to the Bureau of the Census was $51,371 a year.  At a 38% total tax on this income, the governments are taking $351,378 from this household over the course of 18 years.  To be sure, the family with the median income is paying less in taxes than the average tax rate, but this is probably made up by increased costs they pay for goods and services as tax costs are transferred to them and inflation caused by the government deficits over the years.  Supporting Big Government is the equivalent of raising about 1.5 children for 18 years.  This has to affect the calculation on how many children to have.

Big Government also saps the ability of the private sector to increase worker productivity by reducing private investment in productive equipment, new facilities, and worker training.  It reduces the number of new start-up companies.  The result is an economy which instead of growing in real per capita terms of 4% per year, stagnates to zero growth in real per capita terms as we have seen for the last 5 years.  The governments largely caused the recession and have kept the private sector from growing us out of the recession.  It helps tremendously when a married couple can have confidence that their income will exceed an average per capita increase of 4% compounded over 20 years as they add their own increasing experience and skills by the time the child they might choose to have is in the middle of his college education.  It is much, much easier to undertake having a child with economic growth than if there is no growth due to government-induced stagnation.

In 2012, the average American woman was giving birth to 1.88 children in her lifetime.  This is well below the replacement rate of 2.1 children per woman.  This means that minus immigration into the US, the population would be decreasing over the long run at this birthrate.  That means a lowered number of future productive workers in the US and an increasing number of retired people and people on major entitlements per worker in the US.  This means very wrenching problems of sustainability for the many Big Government entitlement programs.

It also means that many people who otherwise would be enjoying raising children cannot do so because so much of their income is being diverted to Big Government.  That impact on families is not spread evenly across the country.  Couples earning more than $105,360 in the urban northeastern US will spend $446,100 per child.  This is also an area of the country with a particularly high cost of state and local governments.  Imagine the effect on the decision whether to have children or not?  On the other hand, families earning less than $61,590 per year in rural areas will spend less than $143,160 on the first 18 years of raising a child.  These rural areas usually have a lower tax expense.  All of these factors make for interesting calculations on whether to become parents.

Anna and I raised three children and sent one to college for 4.5 years, one to college for 4 years, and one to college for 1.5 years, while living in the Northeast.  It was a hugely expensive proposition which many people will not attempt.

Though many Malthusians are very happy to see low birthrates, the rising population of the world has been consistently combined with an increased standard of living around the world.  The USA is a particularly sparsely settled land, most of which has been reverting to wild lands as our agricultural prowess has increased so that less land was needed for farmland.  The foolish government mandate requiring ethanol additions to gasoline has recently interfered with that trend toward using less and less land for farming.  Of course, the trend of less and less land for food production has continued.  The innovations of the developed countries have also led to fewer and fewer problems with polluted air and water.  What we are losing with low birthrates is many keen, productive minds which would otherwise enrich our lives and advance civilization.

Miron: Government Needs to Divorce the Marriage Business

Jeffrey A. Miron, a senior lecturer and director of undergraduate studies at Harvard University and a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, has made an argument similar to the one I have been making for about 5 years on the issue of gay marriage and the role of government in marriages.  To summarize his argument:

• Government should exit the marriage business.
• Private contracts for raising children, for the division of property, inheritance, and other purposes should be available as components to a bundled contract open to all couples.
• Opposite-sex and same-sex couples would have the same opportunities and be treated equivalently.
• Government would still define the default rules of a contract.

The main limitation of his argument is that he limits domestic partnership contracts to a couple.  There is no more reason for doing this than there would be to limit a small business partnership to a couple.

Equal Rights in Domestic Partnerships

Robert A. Levy, Chairman of the Cato Institute, and John D. Podesta, President of the Center for American Progress, wrote an interesting article for the 8 June 2010 Washington Post called Marriage Equality for All Couples.  They noted that the 1967 case of Loving v. Virginia, ended the ban on interracial marriage in the 16 states with laws banning it at the time.  The Supreme Court unanimously ruled that "marriage is one of the 'basic civil rights of man.'"  This decision was based on the 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868.  Sadly, it took 99 years for this ruling to finally be made.  At the time of that decision, 74% of Americans disapproved of interracial marriages.  Twenty years ago, only 6.8% of newly married couples said they married outside their race or ethnicity.  That number is now 14.6% according to a recent Pew Research Center study.  Clearly, the earlier prejudice against interracial marriages has subsided and more and more Americans are claiming their equal right to marry, whatever their racial mix may be.

The right of people to marry who are not heterosexual has not yet been given a basis in the federal courts.  In 2003, the American opinion was that only 37% supported same-sex marriages.  A February Washington Post poll found that 47% of Americans now support same-sex marriages.  65% of those ages 18 to 29 support same-sex marriages, so the trend will continue in the direction of increasing support.  Robert Levy and John Podesta are the chairmen of the advisory board of the American Foundation for Equal Rights, which is supporting the case of Perry v. Schwarzenegger.  This case is aiming to have California's Proposition 8 outlawing same-sex marriages declared a violation of the 14th Amendment and is now before the federal district court in California.  The case is likely to be appealed to the Supreme Court.  It ought to win the freedom for all couples to enter into equal marriages.

I have long made it clear that government should not be claiming to play a role in marriage at all.  For many, marriage is a spiritual union and I fully understand that concept even though it is not the case that I believe in a god.  There is good reason to reserve the term marriage to meaning a spiritual union and allowing people to control that spiritual content in their marriages without any presumption on the part of government that it has anything to say about that spiritual content.  Those who are religious or who have spiritual values which are not religious are best served by adopting a more appropriate term for the contract that government offers to couples.  It would be better if this were universally called a domestic partnership contract or agreement.  All of the issues which involve government are better described as contractual in nature.  Recognizing this, provides a separation of church and state in marriages/domestic partnerships which would help to diminish the passion of the argument from religious quarters against equal rights in domestic partnership contracts.

As I have written many times also, domestic partnership agreements ought to be a parallel to small business partnerships in that government does not dictate the sex or number of partners.  Two men, or two women, or two men and two women, or any other combination of several people ought to be free to enter into a legal domestic partnership contract.  Joint property, joint responsibility for raising children, the sharing of income, and critical medical decisions and support could readily all be incorporated into such domestic partnership agreements.

Very likely, most families would still be built around one father and one mother, but the huge number of divorces and resulting serial marriages are clear evidence that one-man-one-woman marriages do not work for large numbers of people.  Sometimes the failure is largely the result of two people becoming bored with one another or of one simply yearning for some change of pace.  Sometimes, the couple simply do not always share the same cycle of need for sex.  Sometimes, the strains of earning income, cleaning house, purchasing food and clothes, maintaining the house and cars, agreeing on a common vacation, and raising the children are simply too much for two people.  Some people would do better in larger domestic partnerships in which tasks are spread over more specialists or where they can be varied over time.  With most public schools having severe shortcomings, many such extended family groups would be able to have a member or two specialize in home-schooling the children, while a sufficient number of others remain to bring home the bacon.  One member might be particularly good in managing the family investments, while another is great in playing with the kids and caring for the yard.  One may love to cook, while another loves to work on the cars and keep them running.  Another may like purchasing the groceries, the furniture, and the clothes for the children.

Of course, in many such cases, family members may have the option for having a sexual life enriched by more than one sexual partner.  Sex is one of man's greatest pleasures in life.  It is very important to many people that they are able to optimally enjoy this pleasure.  There is no valid ethical principle that says that it is immoral for a man or a woman to have more than one sexual partner in any period of his or her life.  The ethical issue is whether the person one chooses to have sex with is a person of good character who is of great interest to and highly valued by the chooser.  If someone is fortunate enough to find more than one such person with whom they can form a more intimate bond with shared life-affirming sexual pleasures, people of good will ought to be ready to simply wish them the best.  This is true whether the individuals in the serious and sincere sexual relationship are of different sexes or the same sex.

A knowledge of history makes it very clear that while some people may be entirely heterosexual, very many people are bisexual or homosexual.  When societies are not burdened by severe heterosexual bigotry, it is clear that many people are happy to give outlet to their bisexual or homosexual desires and choose to pursue their happiness in that way.  In our present time, the video market in erotic movies and the rich offering of sexual images and discussions offered on the Internet, make it clear that sex is both of great interest to many people and that their interests are highly varied.  These interests, when given anonymous expression, do not conform to the publicly affirmed principles dominant in our society.  It is clear that many sexual interests are being suppressed, some for good reason, but many for no more reason than traditional prejudice.  It is no one's right to interfere with the exploration, development, and expression of another's optimal sexuality, so long as only consenting adults are involved.

We are all complex and highly differentiated individuals and one of the great expressions of that is in our sexuality.  To suppress the sexual development and expression of others is to attack the rights of the individual in a very basic and fundamental way.  This is an attempt to deny the nature of man and as such it is not consistent with a rational understanding of man and reality.  Let us hope that a step in the direction of our sexual liberation will be made with a Supreme Court decision that same-sex marriage must be allowed because all people have an equal right to pursue their happiness in domestic partnerships.