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- [00:00]
Katherine
Well, welcome to Spinning My Yarn About Texas. Or should we do our actual show? We should do our actual show.
- [00:08]
Robin
I think we should try to do an actual show.
- [00:15]
Katherine
Hello, and welcome to Optimist Economy. I'm Katherine.
- [00:18]
Robin
I'm Robin.
- [00:19]
Katherine
And on this show, we believe the US Economy can be better. And we talk about how to get there one problem and solution at a time. Starting today with an announcement that we have a newsletter. If you go to optimisteconomy.com optimistecon.com, you can subscribe. You can read letters that we get from listeners like you about the shows that we've produced. You can also go to buymeacoffee.com and find Optimist Economy and support us with your dollars, which we will. Absolutely. Except because, as we are learning, it costs money to produce a show.
- [00:59]
Robin
So turns out.
- [01:00]
Katherine
Turns out.
- [01:01]
Robin
Turns out in a capitalist economy.
- [01:02]
Katherine
Turns out. Bummer. I should have seen it coming.
- [01:05]
Robin
You should have seen.
- [01:06]
Katherine
Exactly.
- [01:07]
Robin
Also, if you like this podcast, and we would like to keep doing it, tell someone about it, maybe two people about it, and review us on Apple Podcasts.
- [01:15]
Katherine
And a reminder that if you become a paying subscriber to our newsletter, a way to support the production of this audio show, which is obviously very clear. If that wasn't clear originally, the email that's a written thing supports the talking thing. I don't know if that was clear.
- [01:32]
Robin
Think of it as supporting the optimist community.
- [01:35]
Katherine
The optimist community. A reminder that we do have a spiritual sponsor level. And should you contribute to the spiritual sponsor level, we will happily read a note from you on air. And we had one last week, but we don't have one this week. So this could be you. This could be your time.
- [01:52]
Robin
It could be right. Right here.
- [01:53]
Katherine
Right here.
- [01:54]
Robin
Right here.
- [01:54]
Katherine
Okay, let's go to Retcon.
- [01:56]
Robin
I think that we should invite our new readers into the lexicon of Optimist Economy and remind people that Retcon is for retroactive continuity. This is where we make additions or reflections on the previous episode.
- [02:09]
Katherine
Or corrections.
- [02:10]
Robin
Or. Okay. Or corrections.
- [02:11]
Katherine
Or corrections.
- [02:12]
Robin
Do you have a correction?
- [02:14]
Katherine
No.
- [02:14]
Robin
Okay.
- [02:15]
Katherine
I just want to make sure that they don't get surprised if they're like, what they're correcting. Do you have a Retcon from our last conversation about the long game?
- [02:22]
Robin
I do. So, yeah. We sort of called our last episode the long game about how long major changes take. And it afterward, it put me into the mind of gay marriage, which I think sometimes we think of as being a very. Something that Happened pretty quickly. And as somebody who lived it, and for all the good and bad of it, I can tell you that the first cases around gay marriage were in the 70s. The real fight starts at the state level in 1993. And that, of course, we don't get the marriages in Massachusetts, I think, until 2004, for those of us in California. We remember that same year, Gavin Newsom marrying people in the city of San Francisco. Anyway, it isn't until 2015 that the Supreme Court ruling comes down, and it was a much longer time, I think, than people remember. And it really requires a lot of groundwork.
- [03:18]
Katherine
And should the mercurial Supreme Court change its mind, the only places where gay marriage would still be legal is where it's on the books, on the state level. State level, which is not 50 states. The majority of states haven't passed it.
- [03:30]
Robin
You know, I don't know if I've told you this about all the various times and ways that Amy and I were married.
- [03:35]
Katherine
No. How many times were you married?
- [03:37]
Robin
Yeah, I mean, we don't entirely. I mean, there's sort of, you know, official legal times and then important ceremonial times. But we were supposed to get married in San Francisco in 2004.
- [03:49]
Katherine
Oh, during the Newsom.
- [03:50]
Robin
During the Newsom thing. And we. You had to make an appointment after the first kind of chaos of the day. So we had an appointment on a Monday. We were literally packed. Our car was packed, and our mothers were both in the air flying to San Francisco on Friday, and they stopped marrying people. Friday afternoon, the news went over the. The news wire, on the AP wire, and my colleague. I was off work, but my colle, Kevin called me at home and he goes, like, I really hate to tell you this. So it was like. But we still had to go because our mothers were there. And so we had. It was like the saddest trip to San Francisco in the history of vacations in San Francisco. But we were already, I think, registered as domestic partners. And then I think we had to upgrade our. To, like, a different kind of domestic partnership. Then we actually had a ceremony that was only, you know, official to us. And then in 2008, when it was legal, before Prop 8 passed, we actually got married in the family courtroom. It was like a children's court. It was very funny place to get married. But there was a gay judge, and he was marrying people before because we all knew that the vote was coming on Prop 8. He was marrying people. His name was Zach, and he did the bit from Princess Bride. Marriage is a dweem within a dweem, which was fabulous.
- [05:12]
Katherine
No, no notes.
- [05:16]
Robin
Yeah. So I've been, you know, in various ways, married maybe three, four times.
- [05:20]
Katherine
And you know what? I wasn't invited to any of those weddings. Just everybody knows four times and never got the invite four times.
- [05:26]
Robin
Yeah, it's true. Because you were still in college.
- [05:30]
Katherine
I appreciate your long. I appreciate your personal long game story. I love it. I can't really follow your retcon about getting married so many times with, like, whatever weird retcon thing I was gonna have.
- [05:40]
Robin
Robin, we don't need to put in my five marriage stories.
- [05:44]
Katherine
Have to put in that you get married so much. Yeah.
- [05:49]
Robin
To the same person.
- [05:51]
Katherine
Wild. I mean, mine was, like, not as uplifting or really as cute as your story. Mine was just that the long game keeps going. And I read in the Wall Street Journal this morning that Ron DeSantis is pushing back child labor law, even still in the state of Florida. And the. And the person behind it, it's all about parental rights. And if parents want to put their kids to work to teach them a lesson, like, the state shouldn't be able to say no, which was the exact argument they made in, like, 1920. But I wanted to also clarify for listeners, don't freak out too much. That the federal law for child labor is the floor. And after it passed, many states passed their own Fair Labor Standards act that goes ab. What the federal minimum requires. You know, this. Because some states have a higher minimum wage. Well, they also have higher child labor standards. So the movement that's happening on the state level is that states are walking back their own laws. They're not walking back the federal law. The federal law is still there. Somebody tried to go below it. And the federal government was like, no, you can tell employers that they're allowed to go below the federal law, but we will prosecute them. So that was meant to be a. The fight is ongoing. It's never one and done. But we take the victories where we have have them. And even when we walk backwards, there's still quivers in the. Arrows in the quiver. Did I get it? Quivers in the arrow, arrows in the quiver.
- [07:19]
Robin
I know. It's arrows in the quiver.
- [07:20]
Katherine
I don't know why I try to say stuff like this. Like, do you know my nickname in high school was W?
- [07:24]
Robin
As in.
- [07:25]
Katherine
As in George W. George W. Yes. Because in high school debate, I would get so excited and animated when I was talking, I would make the same type of, like, word mistakes and, like, portmanteau words that aren't actual portmanteaus. And I'd mash them up. I would do that all the time. So my nickname was. I mean, I'm a senior year of book. There's like, hey, dub. And I always dub you because I would make the same type of verbal errors that he did.
- [07:49]
Robin
Strategy.
- [07:51]
Katherine
Is it stupid to still flex that I made it to nationals?
- [07:54]
Robin
Or like, of course you did. I don't know how I wound up on a podcast playing straight man to an economist, but now I know. All right, did you look anything up for Terms and Conditions?
- [08:06]
Katherine
Terms and Conditions. I want to hear yours first.
- [08:09]
Robin
Okay. You notice that I wrote in how to pronounce it?
- [08:12]
Katherine
I. It doesn't. It still wouldn't be able to do it.
- [08:17]
Robin
Seigniorage. Seigniorage.
- [08:20]
Katherine
Seignior Ridge.
- [08:22]
Robin
It's the money that the mint makes on the coins that it produces.
- [08:26]
Katherine
Okay.
- [08:27]
Robin
So this came up because if you didn't read it, the story about the pennies from the New York Times, which ran in the. I don't know, before the election in the fall, about how much it cost to make pennies and the like, the spiral we're in about pennies. It's just a great read. It's just a really. It's a long, funny essay. And then, of course, the president has said that he would like to get rid of the penny. Congress has to do that. But there's also an interesting story, and I will put this in the show notes. The shownotes, by the way, are on optimisteconomy.com you can check them out there. That if you get rid of pennies, it creates this problem where we'll need more nickels, and that nickels are even more expensive to make than pennies.
- [09:11]
Katherine
World's strongest economy right here.
- [09:15]
Robin
So anyway, that's why I wind up looking up Seignior Ridge.
- [09:20]
Katherine
Seigniorage. All right, so I guess the only answer is for the US Mint to have more sheets of $2 bills that you buy in the gift shop. And I think they need to counterweight the penny nickel problem with sell more $2 bills. Okay, I. I don't have a term for term and condition for the week. Well, I guess I do, but it'll come up in the. The big piece where we talk about fertility. Maybe this is also folded into my retcon and my terming condition that. You know, last week when we were talking about the long game, we had this small part of the discussion was about the Great Depression and what's going on right now in the economy? And when do we have the type of upheaval that propels us to have big, bold policy? And I said that we kind of attribute the Great Depression was a shock to our economy. So every time we have a shock to the economy, we kind of expect something big to happen afterwards. Even though we've had 13 recessions since World War II, if we fall into a recession now, it would be number 14. And I said that the bigger upheaval is going to come from demographics. So we want to talk about fertility. What is this big demographic shift? What does it mean? Is it really coming? And why are people.
- [10:40]
Robin
Why are people worried? And what is it that they think that policy can do about it?
- [10:44]
Katherine
Yeah, can policy change fertility? And I, you know, this show, we always say it's about one problem and solution at a time. Fertility is a topic I don't know if I thought we would ever talk about because it's not clear the extent to which it's a problem or something that should be solved, given that it's the manifestation of individual choices of families and their millions of people. Millions of people, like, is that really a problem if they choose something that maybe the economy doesn't like? Is that something that we should solve? So I didn't, I didn't necessarily think that we were to talk about fertility.
- [11:15]
Robin
On the show, but so I read. I don't even know. I lost track of how many articles about the perceived problem of fertility and lower birth rates. The actual annual reporting from the CDC came out yesterday, which we have decided we're not going to do really newsy things. And then the news just follows us. We'd already planned this episode. CDC, okay, so birth rates were up 1% last year, but they are still near record lows. There are 3.6 million births in the United States last year that we're at a rate of 1.6 births per woman. And in general, the thought is a population needs to be at 2.1 births per woman on average to be a steady population. All of these articles say, not all of them, but many, that this is, quote, widely seen as a problem that could affect the number of workers. It is framed again and again as an economic problem. And I think that's why I felt like it was appropriate for us to maybe talk about a little bit on this show.
- [12:19]
Katherine
Because we need worker bots.
- [12:22]
Robin
Because we need worker bots.
- [12:23]
Katherine
We need little worker bots in their widgets.
- [12:25]
Robin
The irony of doing this, you know, a few weeks after talking about how AI is going to cause mass Joblessness like nobody knows anything, people, no one knows anything besides needing worker bots. Can you talk about what you think about why people are worried about the birth rate economically? And do you think these are good reasons or not good reasons?
- [12:45]
Katherine
It's hard to say. I mean, it's hard to say what's a good reason versus what's an excuse. The straightforward answer is that most economy's growth is on some level tethered to population and that it's much more challenging to grow the size of your economy as the number of people in it are getting smaller. So a shrinking population typically does not support a growing economy. We mostly think that because a growing population supports a growing economy and because GDP is really well predicted by the number of workers in it, every worker you add to the economy adds to the economy itself. Certainly one problem is just this pure population. We'd like our population to keep going up because that's. It's a much.
- [13:25]
Robin
Because that's easy economic growth.
- [13:27]
Katherine
That's easy economic growth. The second reason is that is more of a balance issue of that if the relative number of young to old people, the relative number of workers to non workers, if that gets too far out of balance, you start to put a ton of pressure on social welfare systems like the one in the United States that we have. The vast majority of money that we spend on social welfare goes to old people. And prime age adults and children get comparatively much, much less. So one, we want to grow the economy that's easy to do with a growing population. Two, we want to have enough workers relative to non workers, especially with the way that we've currently structured our social welfare system. And then there's a third one that's a little bit more nuanced, which is there's a reason why fertility goes down in recessions. It is in some way, this is going to sound really bad. A performance measure of the US Economy, of any economy, is that people have more children when they feel more confident about their economic position. And so a decline in fertility is in some ways reflecting a decline in economic security of young people.
- [14:36]
Robin
I don't want to take this too far away from economics, but don't you think it's also that people just feel insecure about the world in general right now? I mean, the economy is not the only thing.
- [14:45]
Katherine
No, it's not.
- [14:45]
Robin
You know, I was reading this sort of in depth survey that the Pew Research center did on adults who don't have children. And so they divided the survey group into two groups of people over 50 who didn't have kids and people under 50 who didn't have kids and were also saying they were unlikely to have kids anyway. Affording kids was a concern for, like, 12% of that older group, but like 36% of that 49 and under group. You know, that the cost constraints on them was really top of mind. Of course, you know, much higher on the list of reasons is just their preference that they just don't want to have kids.
- [15:21]
Katherine
Yeah. So this gets into a, like, very hard to measure question of how many kids do people want? And does overall fertility in the US reflect a change in preferences or a change in circumstances or a combination? Both.
- [15:44]
Robin
It's definitely a combination, you know, and.
- [15:46]
Katherine
Of course, like, worth saying that every industrialized Western country and eastern country, for that matter, are seeing declining fertility, and some of it is much more dramatic than others.
- [15:59]
Robin
Yeah.
- [15:59]
Katherine
So I think one of the biggest falls in fertility is South Korea.
- [16:02]
Robin
It's Korea. Yeah.
- [16:03]
Katherine
Just fell off of a cliff. So I think there's two things we can talk about. We talk about preferences of U.S. women and then constraints on U.S. women, like, how much have we changed, how much we want to have kids in the US and versus, you know, what are the barriers to it? Because I think the short version is that we have really, really good evidence that there is almost no changing people's preferences. How many kids do they want to have versus how many kids can they have? Is want and can. There are two different kind of forces, and they have two different kind of avenues for policy intervention. The want side, you know, the preferences is a little nuanced because we have really good evidence that preferences are totally immune to policy. Like, I can't write you a check or give you a medal or somehow buy you or bribe you into having children if you don't want them. But we also know that preferences towards fertility aren't fixed. They're not fixed across women, they're not fixed within women. Generations can have different fertility preferences than the ones that came before or after. And women's own preferences can change over time in both directions as they get older. So all of this makes it hard to measure and hard to change on the preferences side. But all of that said, when it does come to preferences, like, the best assessment that I can make about the decline in fertility in the US is that it's occurring amongst millennial women. These are women that are not at the end of their childbearing years. They're more likely to say three is the ideal number of kids than your generation. They're also pretty. Like, yeah, I was born in 1985. I turned 40 this year. So I am at like, I'm the elder millennial, right?
- [17:45]
Robin
I'm middle. I'm middle of the pack, Gen Xers.
- [17:47]
Katherine
Middle of the pack Gen X. Er, so middle of the pack Gen Xers were more likely to say two kids. Millennials are more likely to say three.
- [17:53]
Robin
Oh, yeah. And my friends who had three, I'll use the fact that I didn't have kids as an excuse to have that extra one. We were their slack.
- [18:00]
Katherine
We picked up one of yours. Yeah, yeah, but, but that was like, that was much more of a cultural norm. Like, the preferences have shifted. But millennial women are marked by having what's called unmet fertility preferences, which is they are not having as many kids as they would like. That's a real market US Problem. Like Germany's, like, I just want one.
- [18:22]
Robin
And they have one and they have.
- [18:23]
Katherine
One and they don't want more than1. The US has a lot of what we call unmet fertility expectations, and it's particular amongst my generation of, of women. And there is some movement on the don't want kids, never going to want to have kids.
- [18:37]
Robin
What do you mean? What do you mean movement?
- [18:39]
Katherine
Like if you ask a 20 year old, how many kids do you want? And they say zero, and then you ask them 20 years later, same generation, how many kids do you want? Most of the time the zero goes down.
- [18:50]
Robin
I'm sorry, it goes down to negative zero.
- [18:51]
Katherine
Sorry. The shifts in preferences. Some people who start out wanting kids will shift to not wanting to have kids. And some people who don't want kids, they'll shift to having children. And like these, there's like some, there's something fixed about these expectations, but also something fluid. This is what it makes it so hard to measure because your circumstances changed and then you decide you don't want kids. It's very hard to change those preferences. I think for our show, which is about economic policy, there is very little the government can do to convince you to have children if you don't want them.
- [19:24]
Robin
Going back to that survey of people over 50 who don't have kids and why they didn't have kids. For a huge number of them who might have wanted children at some point, the answers are, it just didn't happen. I didn't meet the right person. So it seems to me that if family formation is the issue and I just didn't meet the right person is the problem. We need subsidized eharmony accounts. I Mean, and we need to make sure that their, their, their algorithms are actually not setting people up to meet people and break up and then come and use their service again. Yeah.
- [19:59]
Katherine
I mean, yeah. Not you don't meet the right person, you just don't get pregnant. But it's a journey for most people. And I think what policy can do to make a difference. So there are policies that will increase fertility, but it's kind of like conditions have to be right. Policy can change constraints and cost. It really can't change preferences. In some ways, that makes the US really lucky because not only are we just more of a little bit of a, like, large family kind of preferred country, we have tons of cost constraints. And the way that we measure the cost constraints is most effectively measured. If you ask people why they are not having another child.
- [20:37]
Robin
Oh, interesting.
- [20:38]
Katherine
So someone who has no kids. Talking about cost, it doesn't get at much of the actual barriers of asking someone who has a kid, why aren't you having number two? Or why aren't you having number three?
- [20:50]
Robin
Having number three.
- [20:51]
Katherine
And if you're not having number two and number three, you are very likely to say that it's cost. And the New York Times did a poll about this where it asked people who had at least one children, why are you not having another kid? And it let them write in whatever they want. And 64% of people said childcare.
- [21:06]
Robin
Really? Wow.
- [21:08]
Katherine
Yes. Because it's a crushing cost.
- [21:10]
Robin
Because it's so expensive.
- [21:11]
Katherine
It's a crushing cost.
- [21:12]
Robin
And even before it got crushing, I certainly have friends who did the math and said they dropped out of the workforce.
- [21:18]
Katherine
Yeah. And the childcare cost is 1. The cost to your job and your wages is another one. A lot of women see their earnings, I mean, statistically, about half, if not two thirds of the gender pay gap is in fact just the motherhood penalty. Once you have kids, you'll see a permanent reduction to your lifetime earnings of around 20%. Some of that comes from you pulling back from work. Some of that comes from your employer rewarding you less or you not being able to work to the same degree or being discriminated against.
- [21:48]
Robin
I'm not getting a promotion.
- [21:49]
Katherine
Not getting a promotion soon as you might have. Yeah. Or like you had a job that the promotion was you had to travel two days a week and you couldn't take it. You know, some one person in the household, someone has to take care of the kids. Like, even if you have daycare, someone has to pick up the kids from school and drop off the kids. From school. And that can be really constraining to the type of work that you can do because so much of especially high income work takes place with an after hours or weekends expectation. So yeah, I mean, a lot of women, like, they make this assessment that like the cost of another kid is just too high.
- [22:20]
Robin
And you know, before you have kids, you, nobody knows how much childcare.
- [22:24]
Katherine
Yeah, that's why you just, you should.
- [22:25]
Robin
Have to like sign, you know, something that says, I understand the cost of childcare, but you shouldn't. We wouldn't have any children.
- [22:32]
Katherine
Have any children. No. If people knew how much childcare cost. I'm like kind of tempted to tell you how much I pay for childcare, but I'm also like, but I don't want people out there to grow frustrated that they can't have kids. But I mean, it's also like we have a health insurance system that allows out of pocket cost for both all of your prenatal visits, where you have to pay what, 50 bucks a pop to go in for a prenatal visit. You also have labor and delivery out of pocket expenses. And it's more if it's a C section. Things you don't know, even for people who have large employer sponsored plans. Right. So this is supposed to be the gold standard of health insurance in the United States. The average out of pocket cost for labor and delivery is 3 to $5,000.
- [23:12]
Robin
Again, things that I think that we could do that are more serious than, you know, eharmony.gov, one of them is improving the number of obstetricians and gynecologists. I mean, the numbers of those doctors falling off the map. There are one in three counties in the United States has no hospital based obstetrics service. One in 10 mothers live in one of those counties. We're not taking care of mothers at all. You know, maternity death rates are high, higher in the United States than they possibly should be.
- [23:41]
Katherine
I mean, so okay, again, data matters. We measure maternal mortality different than other places though. So it is worth saying it's true.
- [23:49]
Robin
It's like a year and it's a.
- [23:51]
Katherine
Much more encompassing definition. We measure maternal mortality as basically, basically anything that kills a woman within a year of childbirth. And in other countries it's a tighter band and it's something directly related to either pregnancy or labor and delivery. So I would say our measure is much better. They, I'm not. This is gonna. Let's take this out of context. Their mortality should be higher. They they, our measure is better. It's Going up, but the big spike.
- [24:22]
Robin
But it'll stop going up because we're going to stop measuring it. We're going to stop counting.
- [24:25]
Katherine
They stopped it in Texas, they stopped it in Idaho. So it's. This is like, by far the most Orwellian part of the Trump agenda is like, you have a high maternal mortality rate, you have a high cost of birth, you don't have good labor and delivery care in the US and we don't have paid family leave, and we don't have child care. The good news is, again, the good news is we know exactly how to fix all of these problems. You can't make people have more kids, but you can reduce the cost of kids dramatically. Free child care and paid family leave for everyone. That's. Those are. That's easy. Of the policies that every country in the Western world has tested to try and increase fertility, childcare moves the needle the most.
- [25:13]
Robin
You know, that's fascinating because, of course, the people on the right say it doesn't make a difference.
- [25:17]
Katherine
No, it makes the biggest difference. It's the most effective policy for increasing the number of children is child care. Free child care.
- [25:23]
Robin
Interesting.
- [25:24]
Katherine
Yeah. It's more than paid family leave, but of course it lasts longer and it's a bigger cost. And it keeps women in their job so their family can have more income. And then when you don't have to pay for childcare, your family's a lot richer.
- [25:36]
Robin
Yeah. Again, we haven't spelled out how much childcare costs, but in the daycare that was in my building, I believe it was over $700 a month per child.
- [25:45]
Katherine
That's it. That's it. $700 a month. What do you have to do to get inside? Sleep with somebody? Come on.
- [25:53]
Robin
You have to move to Spokane.
- [25:54]
Katherine
Okay, yeah, I will say that. I pay two grand a month per kid. This was not our first daycare. Our first daycare was $2,600 a month. And it was like, we were like, oh, God. Okay, we'll stay here as short amount of time as possible until the cheaper up. And we were. And then Covid hit. So then we had. We didn't have care for a year. But yeah, so we. We are $2,000 per month per kid.
- [26:24]
Robin
Ouch.
- [26:24]
Katherine
And I have two kids. Yeah. So you're. You're doing the math in your head and you're like, wow, that's $24,000 a year per kid, and you have to pay for that for four and a half years.
- [26:35]
Robin
Yeah.
- [26:36]
Katherine
So over a hundred grand for childcare per kid.
- [26:38]
Robin
I mean, you do always hear those things about preschool costing more than college.
- [26:43]
Katherine
So if you want to put two kids in childcare that costs more than the average mortgage in 49 states and it costs more than public school college tuition, like 43 or 44 states, childcare is more expensive than housing or college. It's worth knowing that, like, policy can make a difference for American families who feel like the economy is not supportive for their family goals and we are slowly turning family into a luxury. And you hear this casually the way that people will say, don't have kids you can't afford.
- [27:18]
Robin
Oh yeah, you hear it all the time.
- [27:19]
Katherine
All the time. Don't have kids you can't afford. It's not my job.
- [27:21]
Robin
And you hear it on both, I just want to say it's. And you hear it both on the left and the right. That's a common dismissal of it's not.
- [27:28]
Katherine
My job to pay for somebody else's kids. Don't have kids you can't afford.
- [27:31]
Robin
And it's also used to be, you know, I shouldn't have to pay for their school. You know, I shouldn't have to pay for, you know.
- [27:36]
Katherine
Yeah, I mean, I would.
- [27:38]
Robin
Do you want your, do you want your little worker bots for your.
- [27:40]
Katherine
Yeah. Do you want your little. I mean, I've talked about this before that I, you know, the idea that you shouldn't pay for someone else's kids is the most short sighted thing. Someone paid for you.
- [27:52]
Robin
You can't see, you can't hear me roll my eyes. But if you could, it went, I.
- [27:56]
Katherine
Mean, yeah, I mean, somebody paid for you and you're not paying for someone else's kids. I mean, you could look at it a couple ways. You could say like, okay, you know, where do you think your doctor came from? That's somebody else's kid right there. You know, what about your, your lawyer, your accountant, your, your, you know, your. Anybody like their employer? These are all somebody else's kids. And like you put in your dollar or your. How much money to, to pay for somebody else's children because children are the future. Sorry. And then I'll say like, well, you know, someone paid for you. And then this one, this is actually my favorite.
- [28:27]
Robin
That's.
- [28:28]
Katherine
I said this to someone and I was like, you know, someone paid for you. You know, isn't this kind of giving it back? It's just paying for somebody else. And he's like, well, they get more today. And I'm like, well, God forbid we evolve.
- [28:39]
Robin
And probably actually not.
- [28:41]
Katherine
Yeah, you Know, God forbid we evolve as a country and give children the best possible. Let's give them only what you got. Guy who's 55 years old, like, you set the limit. Nobody gets to have more than you ever in the United States of America.
- [28:54]
Robin
Hey, I turned out okay. I'm 55. I. I turn out all right.
- [28:58]
Katherine
Yeah, but I mean, like, children are a privilege. That's a choice. We have made children a privilege. We have demonized people who can't afford children. That is also a choice. So if we wanted to choose differently, we could, and we could really help people.
- [29:10]
Robin
But we can all. We also demonize people who don't have children.
- [29:13]
Katherine
I mean, like, no win.
- [29:14]
Robin
Like, there's no winning.
- [29:15]
Katherine
Just be rich and hetero and have lots of children. And that is the policy solution here on Optimist Economy. So I will say just like, very quickly, on the maternal side of health, there's also really good solutions for that that we don't have in place. And one of them is that the US should have more birthing centers, which are community health clinics that are just for labor delivery, prenatal and postnatal coverage. So they're not hospitals, they're community health clinics for labor and delivery.
- [29:48]
Robin
Specifically for.
- [29:49]
Katherine
Yeah, and they would be really popular. A lot of women don't like going into hospitals for labor and delivery. And a lot of hospitals aren't good at labor and delivery. Even if they're a good hospital. Like, they don't. Believe it or not, a lot of hospitals can be good at some things and bad at others. And it's, you know, you would just be perfectly focused on labor and delivery. That would help a lot. No, out of pocket cost would help a lot. And then there's things that have, like, innovations that we do on a small scale for some poor people that would really help. So one of them is a visiting nurse program. You know, basically you go home with the kid. A nurse comes by once or twice a week for three or four weeks, checks on you, checks on the baby, takes your blood pressure, makes sure you're healthy. Like, that can help a lot.
- [30:28]
Robin
Basic stuff.
- [30:29]
Katherine
Basic stuff. You know, someone in the room who's not, like, frighteningly sleep deprived, doing a wellness check. Great idea.
- [30:35]
Robin
Good idea.
- [30:36]
Katherine
You know, so we have really good solutions for some of the tangible problems with, you know, fertility, motherhood, childbirth in the US they just need leadership. And I guess this is. Oh, man. This is what makes that article in the New York Times so frustrating because, like, it burned its way across the Internet. And I Think burned is the right word.
- [31:01]
Robin
Trump wants a baby boom.
- [31:02]
Katherine
Trump wants a baby boom. I mean, like, I wanted to burn. I wanted to go out and buy a copy of the New York Times to burn it after I read the article.
- [31:10]
Robin
Yeah, I read a bunch of copies of different stories, and they were all just equally horrifying on every platform.
- [31:17]
Katherine
Every platform. But I think what was so. Just infuriating and even offensive about it was that it was full of the most ridiculous policy. Like medals for moms who have lots of kids or Fulbrights for only married people. Cause it's like there's 5 million of those.
- [31:33]
Robin
I mean, no, there's like, what, 2,800 of those. That's totally nuts.
- [31:38]
Katherine
Yeah, yeah.
- [31:38]
Robin
That's gonna solve our fertility crisis.
- [31:40]
Katherine
Or the, the $5,000 when you have a kid, which I did hear someone call cash on delivery, which that was really good, you know, but it's. I guess, I guess, yeah, it's laughable. But that's the thing. It's laughable.
- [31:56]
Robin
Like, like $5,000.
- [31:58]
Katherine
Like 5,000. But this is what grasping at straws looks like. It would be a genuinely depressing situation if this in fact, represented some kind of fertility brain trust. Like if they were genuinely, like, this is all we know how to do. And it's like, it's, you know, last gasp. But. But they're grasping at straws because they are avoiding the reality and the evidence and the policy that we, that we know will work. I think my comment last week about the long game is that we will get there because fertility is not where people want it to be. Although, can I. Some people would say fertility is fine, but you.
- [32:33]
Robin
I'm sorry, do you think fertility is fine?
- [32:36]
Katherine
Well, well, well, well. So there's lots of ways that we measure fertility, specifically the age specific fertility rate, the total fertility rate, the general fertility rate, and the completed fertility rate. And they all measure different things and they have relative weaknesses. What we've learned, for example, from the age specific fertility rate, which is the number of births per 1,000 of, like, cohorts of women, you know, what we've learned from that is that the biggest decline in fertility that the US saw was 30, was 40 or 50 years ago. And it was because the teen birth rate collapsed, which most people would regard, we regard as a really good thing that we, we, we actually, like, had a very successful reduction in teen pregnancy that we saw after that was in the, like this, spanning the 60s to the 80s. And now we're seeing, but we're seeing.
- [33:31]
Robin
Now in the 20s in their 20s that those numbers have, that really dropped.
- [33:34]
Katherine
20 to 24 has dropped. 25 to 29 has dropped, though not as much. 30 to 34 is stable. 35 to 39 and 40 to 44 are both rising.
- [33:45]
Robin
Yeah.
- [33:46]
Katherine
So it's delayed.
- [33:47]
Robin
Yeah. I'm just going to put these because I wrote these numbers down because I thought they were pretty. I mean, the 20 to 24 year old cohort in 2007 was having 1, 106.3 births per 1,000 women.
- [34:00]
Katherine
It's per thousand.
- [34:01]
Robin
Per 1,001 population.
- [34:03]
Katherine
Right.
- [34:04]
Robin
But by 2024, that number was 56.7. And the next group up, 25 to 29, it was 117.5 and now it's 91.4. So part of one of the reasons I think that people are talking about IVF so much in the context of this question is that the feel is the feeling that women in their 30s and 40s, when fertility gets harder, are going to have to, if they really do want to have two, let alone three, children, they're going to have to make it up. And a lot of them are going to need fertility help and fertility treatment.
- [34:32]
Katherine
Yeah. So let's have better birthing centers. Don't tax labor and delivery with health insurance costs. If women need IVF to get pregnant, you should make it required to be covered by health insurance at the very least. And then on top of all of that, let's all make sure we have paid family leave and childcare. I mean, you can't really say that the US has a fertility crisis until it's done those five things.
- [34:52]
Robin
Right. Right now it's got, it's actually got deliberate constraints on fertility.
- [34:55]
Katherine
It has a birth tax, it has a infertility tax, it has a risk to labor and delivery, and it has a huge toddler tax through childcare. I will say that the rate that you look at when people say it's 1.6 or 1.4, that's called the total fertility rate. And what it does is that it takes every age group. It's a composite projection, like it's taking 20 years. Women can have children from basically 15 to 45 to some degree. And it's taking the fertility rates of each of those groups within and kind of like collapsing them into a single number. So what it misses is changes in the timing of fertility. So the total fertility rate would collapse if you did not take into account that women were having babies at later ages. And so a lot of demographers will tell you that this 1.6 number 1.5. It's too low because it hasn't taken into account that some of these women will continue to have children. And it's imposing like the past onto the present, when really fertility will be known in the future. The completed fertility rate is the number of kids women have basically by the time they turn 44. And so once you get to the 40 to 44 age group, you take every woman who's 40 to 44 and the total number of kids that all those women have, and you put it in terms of a per 1,000 rate, that number hasn't fallen. It actually, it hasn't fallen really. No, it hasn't fallen in. Let's see. So it started to fall from like 3000 to 2000 and it got to 2000 by like 1992 and it has been at about 2000 ever since. So we have this like fertility crisis. But the fertility crisis is coming off of the total fertility rate, which is a composite projection. There's been declines in the general fertility rate of the births, which is the fourth way to measure it, which is the births of just like everybody who's 15 to 45. The number of kids they had last year. That has also fallen, but we have not seen it in completed fertility. So I actually, we should have some kind of drinking game related to the number of times I bring up that I testified in front of Congress, I testified in front of Congress, in front of the Joint Economic Committee about this and it was called Demographic drivers of the deficit. And I pointed out to them that, that there hasn't been a decline in the number of kids that women want to have. There's been a decline in the number of kids that they are successful in having. And we still have a completed fertility rate that is stable, which means you have the conditions to boost fertility if you wanted to. You just would need to focus on the 30 to 40 year old population. Mid career women, they don't want to lose their jobs, they can't afford childcare and they might need help with ivf. Like that is how you would want to target them. And I said that to Congress and then we talked for almost two hours about Social Security. So I was, I want to tell you guys right now, I was unsuccessful in telling this to Congress and given this conversation. I mean, I hope I've been successful with you. I guess it's not over.
- [38:03]
Robin
Yeah, we should have gotten to that an hour ago though.
- [38:04]
Katherine
I feel like, I mean that's because.
- [38:07]
Robin
Everything takes an hour.
- [38:08]
Katherine
Takes an hour. But I guess it's just there are really good things that we can do, and it's less about juicing fertility and more about helping people who are not able to achieve something that they want.
- [38:21]
Robin
Yeah. It's not about trying to get people who don't want to have kids. It's not trying to make them want to have kids by parading cute toddlers around in the Oval Office.
- [38:31]
Katherine
Right. It's not about that. No. Honestly, if I, if I was on the fence about having kids and that happened, I'd be like, hey, out of spite none, don't try to play those games on me. But, you know, I'm one of those people who can tell you that because I have the privilege of being rich, that I was able to have a family. Even though I waited until I was 30 to try to start getting pregnant, I was completely unsuccessful. I have two beautiful IVF children. They cost me a fortune. I had to.
- [39:06]
Robin
Before. Before you even got into childcare.
- [39:08]
Katherine
I had to buy those children infertility treatment and then I had to pay for their child care. And I, you know, this is something I get to do because I'm a rich woman. And I think it just breaks my heart and makes me so mad to think about the women who don't have the income that I do, who didn't have the privilege that I do, who don't get to have the same ending of the story. And, you know, and then you're like maternity medals. And I'm like, how fucking dare you treat people in this country like that? I just, it makes me like. I think, I just. This is a good time to confess as any that I'm not always a cold blooded economist and that I am sometimes a human woman and in this case, mother. And it just, it. If you don't want kids, you don't want kids. But if you want them and can't have them, man, should your government do better by you than to treat you with such insult as to say you need a $5,000 check?
- [40:10]
Robin
Yeah.
- [40:11]
Katherine
So I'm just now reading in my show notes that the name of the show is Optimist Economy. So we've got to really turn it around here, Robin. We got to really turn it around, actually.
- [40:22]
Robin
Okay, there are a couple of things that I think, actually I find optimistic in this conversation the country might be having, even if it's not not always at the level we wish they were having it. But one is that I do think that this is a place where Americans can find some common ground. And I also think that you make good points that we know where in fact, the crux of this problem is the cohort of women. And if we act now to do some of the things that we need to, to make it easier for them, then we could make it easier for those women to have families.
- [40:56]
Katherine
And I think that this is why it's going to be the demographics that force Congress's hand, right? Like, we're running out of little worker bo. We're running out of worker bots in training. And if you were to line up what Americans need to no longer make having a child a privilege, it's a pretty damn good new deal. I mean, because if you were like, all right, let's do the family bill. Let's call it the family bill. The family bill of like, what we need to make sure that people have children and parents aren't punished in the economy, the family bill is strictly controlled out of pocket cost for labor and delivery, meaning that they're zero more support for soon to be in new moms and birthing centers across the U.S. it would mean paid sick days, it would mean paid family leave, it would mean free childcare, and it would mean free food at school. That would be the largest investment in children the United States has ever made. And it would take the next largest investment and just knock it out of the water by a factor of 10. We've never made it. And I think that this is the big change that's coming. And I say this every time I talk about childcare. We are going to have childcare within the decade because they can't fight it any longer because of these other economic forces. And you're seeing them go through this little dance of how do we get people to have kids? And they can't even talk about the evidence that is right in front of them if we know exactly how to support this. So this is why I think the demographics are going to be the Great Depression of our era. Not that it's something that's so horrible. It's the big factor that forces their hand, that makes them do things that they were really dragging ass on. And like, the long game of all the work we've done in every state that had sick days and every state that has family leave and every country that passed childcare, every free preschool in the United States. We have been building the evidence for decades about how to do better by children and families. Congress has not gotten there yet, but they cannot hold back the tide. So this is coming. Like, this is coming, and it's going to be good. And I'm in full faith, faith that that is going to happen. And if I need to go burn the New York Times in effigy a few times before that to happen, y' all, that's just part of the process. Y' all, Burning newspaper articles that make you angry, like, that's how we do it. That is the long game. But the long game is the long game breaks our way. It absolutely breaks our way this time. So that is why I'm very confident.
- [43:21]
Robin
The arc of the moral universe is long. It breaks towards Catherine. Burning newspaper article.
- [43:29]
Katherine
Oh, man. All right.
- [43:30]
Robin
I think that was a good conversation. And you know, and I know you've written pieces of this over the time, but I, you know, I think there's a lot of really good material there.
- [43:38]
Katherine
Don't forget the Cha Ching. I testified in front of Congress about it, Robin.
- [43:44]
Robin
I know. I was trying to figure out if there's something I can mention every time. You know, I think it's. I think it's. You testified in front of Congress and I used to work in newspapers. Actual print newspapers.
- [43:53]
Katherine
Actual print. I mean, that's a great T shirt. Actual print newspaper. I mean, can you imagine how impossible I'm gonna be to talk to in like 20 years? Like, what if I testify again? I won't have a single friend left in this world like you. We get it, Catherine. We're ready to move on. She is not. This is a high water mark and she's just living in it. So we can have some kind of like. Or like some kind of rationing. Like if I start to say when I testified, you just have a buzzer that's like, sorry, gotta pull my ear.
- [44:22]
Robin
Tug my ear. Give you a little sign, I think.
- [44:25]
Katherine
I think with, with that.
- [44:27]
Robin
Oh, good. By the way, the leaf blower is outside my window.
- [44:32]
Katherine
I mean, I think that's time for executive orders.
- [44:35]
Robin
I think it is.
- [44:37]
Katherine
What are your executive orders for the week?
- [44:39]
Robin
I only have one, but actually, and I'm feeling pretty good about it. While I am in general a free speech and freedom of the press person. So this is really more of like a style guide issue. Like if I had the style guide, if I got to dictate the style guide for the United States, I would say we have to stop referring to states as red states and blue states. I think it's bad. I think it's bad for our democracy. I think it's bad for pretty much everything.
- [45:03]
Katherine
I cannot agree with you more. I am from. As we talked about at length before we started recording the Great state of Texas. And I'm moving back to the great state of Texas. And I think the most liberal people would tell you that they have an open mind and that they're not judgmental and that they're accepting of other people. But I've been in professional settings. We're in suits. It's a meeting. And I'll say, I'm moving to Texas, and someone will be like, oh, God, why? And I think that most people who are very satisfied with how good and liberal they are do not realize how criminally judgmental they are from people who come from states that they decide don't agree with them politically. And I actually did snap. I mentioned this at a work thing. I mean, I'm in a professional setting, so I don't think I should be held accountable for this. But this woman was like. I was like, yeah, I'm moving to Houston. And she was like, oh, my God. So is it like. Like, what's happening? Like, how, like, why are you going? And I was like, I think I'm going because I just want to mention my home city without someone reacting like that. And she looked at me cold, and I was like, it's just like, I've lived abroad for a long time, and I just, you know, people hate Texas, and they love judging people from Texas, and they love judging places that don't agree with them politically. And so I just don't want to do it anymore. I just want to go home. And she was like, oh, I know. It's so horrible when people do that. And I'm like, yeah, yeah. It's one of the, like, low key, nastiest. You will see me in conversation is if you come down really judgmental on a place and I'll be like, like, well, let's make quick work of you, because you do not insult a part of America in front of me and get away with it.
- [46:45]
Robin
Okay. I do want to get back to the actual. The other aspect of my executive order, though, which is I think that painting swaths of the country in colors. I mean, this isn't college sports. This isn't intramural football. This is, you know, this is our country, and we should not be writing off entire states and simplifying the politics and the culture and the needs of the people in those states by just going, well, that's. That's a blue state and that's their problem. Or a red state, and that's their problem. And also, you know, it's. Anyway, Jesus.
- [47:23]
Katherine
The difference between red states and blue states are Cities. That is the only difference between a red state and a blue state is if it has a large city, and if it has a large enough city, it's a blue state. Looking at you, Illinois versus Indiana, they're so close. But one's a blue state because it has Chicago. And, you know, the south is more red because it doesn't have large enough populous cities. And I hate characterizing people like that. I hate that broad brush. So I'm. I'm in full endorsement of your executive order. Mine's going to look very petty. Mine's going to look very petty in comparison, but probably would get people angrier, which is. I don't think we should have lawns anymore.
- [47:58]
Robin
Oh, no, I don't have a lawn. I'm totally, totally down.
- [48:01]
Katherine
Yeah. But people feel very proprietary over having a lawn. And there's such a waste of space and we could do so much better for the Earth. And so I, I would have this. Like, it is unconstitutional to have in an HOA that you're required to have a lawn. And you're not. You're just. You're not allowed to have grass. You can put other green stuff down, but it can't be imported grass. And you have to have, like, I would put nativity requirements on every brown space that, like, at least half to two thirds has to be native. Has to be a native plant. You know, you've got people who have.
- [48:31]
Robin
The birds of paradise that took over Los Angeles for decades and decades.
- [48:34]
Katherine
Yeah, yeah, Just water hogs. I'm like a true lady bird Johnson girly at heart, you know, no grass. You can put in a native grass, but you can't mow it. And you gotta have native plants and some wildflowers, and y' all are gonna see a bunch of creatures in your yard. It's gonna be great. So that is my executive order. No grass, just flowers.
- [48:54]
Robin
Speaking of which, who's your spiritual sponsor this week?
- [48:57]
Katherine
Well, related. My spiritual sponsor this week is mulch. And if. If you are anyone who's played around in the dirt or have a garden, it is just like, there is nothing to compare to the pre mulch, post mulch garden view of like, I'm. I'm. It's like. It's like the kicking off of the spring season. The yard is kind of gray. Like, it's. It's kind of messed up, and I'm gonna just like, it is a lipstick.
- [49:22]
Robin
There's some mulch on that.
- [49:23]
Katherine
I'm throwing some mulch on that. It's gonna look so good. And then I just get excited about being in the garden for the rest of the year. And, like, it looks amazing and it feels so good being in the dirt, like working with the earth. So my spiritual sponsor is Mulch.
- [49:38]
Robin
Love it. My spiritual sponsor this week is the avocados that we grow in our backyard. It's one of the reasons that I'm still in my starter home, because I cannot leave the avocado tree. We're getting a bumper crop this year. We pulled down about 50 avocados yesterday. We make friends all over the city because we can just hand them 10 avocados.
- [49:58]
Katherine
Oh, my God.
- [49:59]
Robin
They are, by the way, also the best avocados you've ever had. Kind of the way homegrown tomatoes are better than any store bought tomatoes. They're just amazing.
- [50:06]
Katherine
Anyway, so I think we need to award a prize for the most California thing you've said in any episode is the bumper crop of avocados from your backyard. That is like, that is truly the most California, California thing you've ever done.
- [50:19]
Robin
And this tree, by the way, just grew from an avocado that fell from my neighbor's tree. It's a hybrid Mexican, Guatemalan. And it is unbelievable. The avocados. We have the fattest squirrels in the city. I sometimes see. I mean, they look like healthy. They're huge. Because they eat nothing but acorns and avocados. Crazy.
- [50:39]
Katherine
Well, they're on that high protein diet. I mean, they're just getting huge. They go to the gym. Gym. Avocado, acorn, maybe. I want to thank everybody for listening and tuning in for this episode of Optimist Texas Economy. And we need to thank two people before we leave. The first is our producer, Sophie, who makes us sound smart and keeps us calm and that.
- [51:07]
Robin
Who's going to have to cut this thing in half?
- [51:09]
Katherine
Who's going to have to cut this? Jesus. And our second is our video editor and producer, Andy, who helps us broadcast what we do to the world beyond our current listeners. Without either of them, we would not be able to make or broadcast or advertise the show. And so we want to snap them both out.