"High housing prices are the best birth control pill." Big data finally has the answer.

The segment is obviously just a joke, but do high house prices really affect young couples' desire to have children? Is the fear of having children really just because you can't afford a house?

People often have their own subjective perceptions of such claims, but there has been a lack of a sufficiently large sample size to statistically verify them.

A recent study by Zillow, the largest real estate platform in the United States, confirms: there is a strong negative correlation between home prices and fertility rates!

This report states:In a sample of women aged 25-29 across the U.S., for every 10% increase in home prices, on average, the fertility rate declined by 1.5%. And the effect of high home prices on fertility is even more pronounced in big cities like Los Angeles, Seattle, and New York.

In big cities, where the cost of living is already high, the incentives for young couples to have children are more likely to be affected by housing prices.

According to a Chicago Tribune questionnaire, 82 percent of respondents attributed the decline in fertility to "financial factors. The cost of switching to a larger home to raise children has become "prohibitive" for many young families in the United States.

Fertility rate falls 1.5% for every 10% increase in home prices

Tarco, an analyst at Zillow Research, based his analysis on the company's 2017 U.S. Housing Market Report and county-by-county demographic data from the CDC.

In terms of home price trends, the Northwest and Southwest of the U.S. have seen home prices rise much more than the Midwest and East:

Seattle's home prices rose about 12.5 percent last year;

San Francisco, California, rose about 9.5 percent;

Dallas, Texas, rose 9.3 percent;

Las Vegas rose even more, at 14.3 percent.

In terms of birth data, areas where home prices have risen more have seen fertility rates fall faster.

When examining the fertility rates of young women (ages 25-29) using the 2010 to 2016 timeframe, the two most populous states in the southwestern U.S., California and Texas, also saw the largest declines in fertility:

Fertility rates in counties under the jurisdiction of the Texas state capital of Austin fell by 22 percent, and fertility rates in California's Los Angeles and San Diego generally fell by more than 16 percent.

Additionally, births in counties in Seattle in the northwestern U.S. plunged 18 percent.

Taken together across the U.S., the statistical correlation between home prices (represented by the horizontal axis) and fertility rates (represented by the vertical axis) is extremely strong: for every 10 percentage point increase in home prices in a county, on average, the local fertility rate fell by 1.5 percentage points.

The report also found that in large cities such as New York, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Chicago, the willingness of young women to have children declined more than in rural areas for a given increase in house prices.

Childbearing intentions may be linked to a variety of factors

Zillow reported that the average age of first-time home buyers in the U.S. was 32.5 years old between 2010 and 2013; as home prices have risen, the average age of first-time buyers has increased to 35.7 years old in 2017.

At the same time, women are choosing to have children later: in 2010, the average age of first-time mothers in the U.S. was 27.7 years old; by 2017, the average age at which young American women chose to become mothers had been pushed back to 28.7 years old.

So what's the correlation between not being able to afford a home and being afraid to have kids?

A Chicago Tribune questionnaire showed that the most common reason respondents were afraid to have children was financial: 82 percent were worried about having a baby, compared with 80 percent who were worried about making a hasty decision to have a baby before their relationship was fully established.

The Zillow report noted that the costs of having a child include absenteeism outside of maternity leave, childcare costs, and the cost of switching homes if the family needs more space. Of these, housing needs are the biggest chunk of the expense.

Of course, a strong statistical correlation is not the same as an inevitable causal link, and some experts are looking for explanations other than housing prices for the dismal U.S. fertility rate.

American demographer Clark argues that career considerations and income levels are key to young couples' willingness to have children.

Clark argues that young people who are more enterprising in their careers are more likely to congregate in big cities with high housing prices, job opportunities and well-developed business networks. These young people live in crowded rented spaces in big cities, where their time and energy are taken up by the workplace, and are naturally less inclined to have children.

A study by the University of Maryland shows that people's choices to "vote with their feet" also contribute to the urban-rural divide in fertility rates: affluent young people in big cities generally have higher educational backgrounds, social status, and lower fertility intentions, while young couples who plan to have children may choose to move to a more natural environment, Cheaper housing and larger living space in the suburbs or the countryside, which increases the fertility rate in these places.

Americans worry: Fertility not recovering

It is well known that a fertility rate of 2.1 is the ideal natural replacement rate, i.e., an average of 2.1 children per woman, for a society as a whole to maintain a smooth demographic transition (regardless of immigration).

According to the General Social Survey (GSC), when asked about the ideal size of a family, the average response given by Americans was to have 2.6 children.

But the ideal is rich and the reality is bony. Americans who want to have more babies and raise more children have seen their fertility rates plummet in the wake of the financial crisis, and what's even more worrisome is that the momentum of the U.S. economic recovery in recent years hasn't been able to lift fertility rates further and further down the road.

In 2007, the U.S. fertility figure was 2.12, which was ideal. But as the economy slumped, the fertility rate for U.S. women dropped to 1.93 in 2010.

Since 2015, the U.S. economy has begun to show a strong recovery trend, but the fertility rate has still gone all the way down: in 2015, the U.S. women's fertility rate was 1.84; in 2016, the figure was 1.82; and the U.S. fertility rate in 2017 has dropped to 1.76, far below the ideal replacement rate.

According to the latest statistics from May 2018, the U.S. fertility rate has fallen to a 30-year low of slightly less than 1.76, according to U.S. public ****casting station NPR.

U.S. economist Lynn Lynn said the continued decline in the fertility rate will also, in turn, hurt the long-term prospects of the U.S. economy, as social policies have not adequately supported American women's fertility programs.

Source: netease news