Chuck Schumer has made an intriguing comment.
It’s great that Schumer has noted falling birthrates and said that it’s a problem serious enough to warrant a policy response. This isn’t a popular view, especially on his side of the aisle. Paul Krugman says worries about low birthrates are just racist or dominionist or something.
The other ubiquitous response whenever one mentions falling birthrates is why are you trying to oppress women and control their bodies?!
Schumer is sticking his neck out by acknowledging the downsides to a falling birthrate, but he’s correct. Demographics are already shrinking the workforce as baby boomers enter retirement. Our current baby bust began in 2008, and so each year, starting next year, the cohort entering “working age” will be smaller than the year before.
ARE MILLENNIALS FINALLY READY TO HAVE BABIES?
In trying to address this problem, though, I hope Schumer, who is returning as the Senate majority leader, will consider all sorts of policies. Immigrants are great for America, but some policies to “welcome immigrants” probably reduce birthrates by driving down wages and reducing the number of men who appear capable of raising families.
Schumer hopefully will broaden the range of policy solutions he is considering to address our demographic problems. He certainly starts off with a handicap, which is that his party holds dearly to many anti-natal positions.
Democrats are dedicated to subsidizing abortion, for instance, which is not pro-natal. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), for instance, wants to shut down crisis pregnancy centers that help at-risk mothers keep their babies and feed and care for them or else to put them up for adoption. President Joe Biden goes around telling women not even to date seriously until age 30.
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So Schumer took a bold stance, but I want to suggest some possible cross-partisan common ground — even though this will involve an about-face for Schumer.
Concerned about his voter base in New York, wealthy white suburbanites, Schumer has long advocated tax preferences for expensive homes, such as the full deductibility of mortgage interest and property taxes. These policies, though, act as a barrier to family formation. Creating tax deductions for homeowners makes homes more expensive to buy, results in people buying bigger homes, and probably reduces the stock of starter homes. Increasing the entry fee of family discourages babymaking.
There are plenty of other pro-babymaking policies Schumer could pass, but not all of them are popular with the Democratic elite. Daycare subsidies do help families, but in the end, they subsidize work more than family, and so they don’t address our demographic problems. If you have money to give to families, a large child allowance is by far the best way to spend it. (Though it’s a pretty expensive way to increase birthrates.)
Subsidizing high-quality K-12 education is probably worth a lot more, and so Congress should consider greater school-choice tax credits of all sorts.
Workforce issues, immigration issues, and family policy are all complicated, and so this will be a long debate. But we welcome Schumer to the table to discuss what to do about our falling birthrates.
