Among your areas of interest is the relationship between the labor market and fertility. What can explain differences in fertility between countries and between individuals within each country?
In economic theory, regarding couples’ decisions about having children, we talk about two effects. The income effect: if there is more income, people can theoretically have more children and spend more per child. And the substitution effect: if the mother works, she may think that as long as she stays out of the labor market to take care of children she will stop earning her salary, which can stop her from having children.
Is that so?
In theory, we would expect that mothers who don’t work outside the home would have more children, while those who do would have fewer. This is in theory. Yet when I started looking at the aggregate data of the OECD countries, I saw that, since the early nineties, this has no longer been the case. […] On the contrary, the countries in which there were more women working had more children. Something had happened. Especially in southern Europe.
What had happened?
There had been a very large increase in unemployment from the mid-eighties and later, the government had deregulated the market, which made work precarious especially for young people and women. Older men, on the other hand, continued to be protected by the previous, much more rigid labor legislation. This delayed the entry of young people into adult life: leaving home, buying an apartment, having children… Starting to have children later, in general, causes you to have fewer children. With such high unemployment and job insecurity, the idea that if you don’t work for a few months is a good time to have children no longer makes sense. There are increasingly educated women – in Europe, today, women on average have more education than men – and a market that punishes them: it delays entry into more or less stable jobs and motherhood. In advanced countries where young people have more work, and leave home earlier, they have more children.
Do countries with more favorable wages and work situations have more children?
Yes. Today, in places where women are more integrated into the labor market and with institutions that help them, they tend to have slightly more children. Not anything to get too excited about. But, they have more.
How can you encourage people to have more children?
First, we would have to ask ourselves why we would want them to have more. A first reason is to ensure the continuation of welfare policies, such as pensions. [Having more children] would help, but it would not solve the current situation. Another would be to make it possible for people to have the number of children they say they want. In any case, reducing job insecurity and unemployment would help increase fertility. People say in surveys that they would have more children if they had more economic resources and a stable situation. Within limits. Because they would no longer have five or six children. There has been a shift in preference towards smaller families. And, when preferences change, it’s hard to move backwards. It happened with the Chinese. They were forbidden to have more than one child, and now they have already gotten used to it. They continue to have one, even after that ban was lifted to re-stimulate the number of births.
In addition to labor market issues, what more can be done to help people have more children?
Changing gender imbalances. The labor market is bad, especially for women of childbearing age. Changing this requires long-term policies. And politicians think short term. The current situation is paradoxical, in a sense: you have societies with women with a lot of education, and a longer life expectancy, yet they will have fewer children than previous generations. You have very well prepared human capital, an investment made, many potential years of working life ahead, and at the same time women are having fewer children than they would like. It would be logical to try to increase their working life to the maximum. With this, you can improve their economic situation, possibly increase children, improve pensions, and help people achieve the goals they say they want to achieve – which, in the case we are talking about, seems to mean having more children than they get to have.
What happens elsewhere?
There are many variants. The Swedish model comes from a pair of demographers-economists, the Myrdals. It can be said that they are the inventors of Nordic social democracy. They wanted to solve the issue of women with job aspirations who wanted to have more children. Their solution was to use the public sector. Today, two-thirds of women work in the public sector in the Nordic countries. This has implications regarding whom men vote for and whom women vote for. Men work for Volvo and vote more to the right. Women work for the administration and vote more to the left. Women have stable, assured work. With permits and leave, with guarantees of returning. This helps them have children.
Another model?
The Anglo-Saxon model. You see it in the United States. There is not so much protection, but there is also no unemployment. Furthermore, the entry into and exit from the labor market is fluid. If you want to, you can have children, take care of them for a while, and go back to the market. You know you’ll find work. This, here [in southern Europe], does not happen. No model is perfect.
What’s going on here?
The worst situation. Minimal protection, compared to northern Europe, and much higher unemployment than in the United States.
Do people have the children they would like to have?
Women say they would like to have, on average, just over two children. In fact, they have, on average, 1.2 or 1.3, both in Catalonia and in Spain. Not just women have fewer children than they want. Men, too. In some countries, such as the Nordics, the number of men without children is very high. Interestingly, higher than that of women.
The average in Spain is 1.3 children. But, what is the most common figure? Most parents, how many children do they have?
Two. Of the women who are between 45 and 55 years old, in Spain, 19% do not have children. And 15% of those who would like to have two only have one.
Is the compulsory leave for the father positive for having children?
Yes. It is important that parents can enjoy children. And, yes, we have studies that indicate that when this practice has taken root, the effects have been positive. Now, the experience in Spain is still too new and we do not know what effects it has had. But I am in favor of it being done. […]
You’ve said: “That the world is heading for overpopulation is an ancient idea. It’s not true. We are moving towards a less populated world. And soon.”
The world’s population is no longer growing as fast as it once was. A peak rate of around 2% per year was achieved at the end of the Sixties, and it has been falling ever since. Most countries are already below the substitution rate: 2.1 children per woman. This rate makes it possible to replace the dead with the births. Below it, you lose population.
In China too?
Also in China, where births and deaths are already almost identical. China is no longer in the substitution rate but close to one child [per woman]. […] In India, most states are below the 2.1 substitution. Mexico has gone from 5 to 2.3 in a few years. In Morocco, and in North Africa, fertility is down as well, and is projected to fall further. I know that projections are difficult; I have made them for international organizations. You can still make projections as far as thirty years into the future. Beyond that, you have to infer.
So, the more the world works, the less populated it is. Are there any exceptions?
Sub-Saharan Africa. 4.6 children on average. Atypical data. According to current projections, the future is Africa. The world is Africa. The French can already be happy, as French will grow a lot thanks to the French-speaking countries of Africa. Today the most populated continent is Asia, at 60-66%. The future will be Africa, if it doesn’t change. But, as I said, the projections are reliable for the next thirty years. We’ll see what happens next. Africa has a share of stubbornness in its favor. They have children by preference. People like to have them.
When will the projected global decline arrive?
Projections say the world’s population will stabilize by 2080. And, later, it will decrease. But there are other projections that indicate that the population will begin to decline much sooner.
Is there no danger of overpopulation, then?
No. Clearly, though, it depends on what we mean by overpopulation and its effects. Today, concern about overpopulation is also linked to the environment. And, we don’t know whether or not we’ve passed the point of no return.
This interview has been adapted and translated from a longer version in Catalan from the digital newspaper Vilaweb.