I do suspect that as societies age more, the effective cost of childcare might drop drastically. “It takes a village” is really difficult during a population explosion. However, old people are usually not only experienced at childcare, but often even provide it as a free service to family because they enjoy it! Two grandparents just can’t take care of all of the kids of their own 4 children, if they all produce 2 more. I was partially (~40%) brought up by my grandparents; this is somewhat of an anomaly because my grandparents’ family was tiny for the baby boom era, but this is rapidly becoming possible again as the number of retirees increase and the number of children decrease. However, these days, I am anecdotally seeing more grandparent babysitters, as many of my friends have zero or one siblings, meaning their children don’t have to share grandparent time with many other branches of the family. Many of us grew up in a time where we have more cousins and siblings than grandparents; I think this will change, and when this changes, that will confer a boost to fertility.
There’s a second effect I hypothesise too. We can see that many of the very low fertility countries are also countries with a strong focus on education and human capital. (Japan, Korea, Singapore, Finland, for example). I posit that a strong focus on human capital decreases fertility by raising the marginal cost per child. In both above and here, I use cost to refer to not just monetary cost, but also all other costs (career opportunity costs because you need to help your child with education, etc.). In my experience in Singapore, parents are highly involved in children’s education, and among the Koreans I know this seems to be the norm too. I think having a highly populous society increases this push for human capital. This is because there are less resources (natural resources, actual capital, etc.) per capita. One thus needs more human capital to attain affluence. However, with a sufficiently aged population, while productivity and hence living standards might drop (or otherwise grow less slowly than technology would allow for in the absence of demographic changes), labour becomes more valuable.
In short, I think the fertility decrease is due to two factors: a “shadow” from our population boom making childcare more expensive and in-family childcare less common than would be expected in a steady-state system, and population growth outstripping growth in accumulated capital and resources making the labour market more competitive. Both of these should be self correcting.
I do suspect that as societies age more, the effective cost of childcare might drop drastically. “It takes a village” is really difficult during a population explosion. However, old people are usually not only experienced at childcare, but often even provide it as a free service to family because they enjoy it! Two grandparents just can’t take care of all of the kids of their own 4 children, if they all produce 2 more. I was partially (~40%) brought up by my grandparents; this is somewhat of an anomaly because my grandparents’ family was tiny for the baby boom era, but this is rapidly becoming possible again as the number of retirees increase and the number of children decrease. However, these days, I am anecdotally seeing more grandparent babysitters, as many of my friends have zero or one siblings, meaning their children don’t have to share grandparent time with many other branches of the family. Many of us grew up in a time where we have more cousins and siblings than grandparents; I think this will change, and when this changes, that will confer a boost to fertility.
There’s a second effect I hypothesise too. We can see that many of the very low fertility countries are also countries with a strong focus on education and human capital. (Japan, Korea, Singapore, Finland, for example). I posit that a strong focus on human capital decreases fertility by raising the marginal cost per child. In both above and here, I use cost to refer to not just monetary cost, but also all other costs (career opportunity costs because you need to help your child with education, etc.). In my experience in Singapore, parents are highly involved in children’s education, and among the Koreans I know this seems to be the norm too. I think having a highly populous society increases this push for human capital. This is because there are less resources (natural resources, actual capital, etc.) per capita. One thus needs more human capital to attain affluence. However, with a sufficiently aged population, while productivity and hence living standards might drop (or otherwise grow less slowly than technology would allow for in the absence of demographic changes), labour becomes more valuable.
In short, I think the fertility decrease is due to two factors: a “shadow” from our population boom making childcare more expensive and in-family childcare less common than would be expected in a steady-state system, and population growth outstripping growth in accumulated capital and resources making the labour market more competitive. Both of these should be self correcting.