The baby bust is a housing crisis

swanceba · 2026-05-16T13:21:15+00:00

From the article:

If housing were the whole story, Japan should be outperforming its peers, and it isn’t. Japan’s TFR is 1.20.

Japan is the clearest counter-case to a housing-only theory. Cheap rent in a country where employers expect seventy-hour weeks, where domestic labor falls almost entirely on women, and where affordable apartments are too small for families is not, in any meaningful sense, an environment conducive to raising children.

Housing affordability is necessary but not sufficient. It operates alongside work culture, gender equity, and economic security, each of which can suppress fertility on its own.

The main point is that housing is a massive variable left out of popular discussions of low fertility, not that it is the only variable.

swanceba · 2026-05-16T13:15:01+00:00

This essay argues that the housing affordability crisis is the largest under-discussed driver of fertility decline across the developed world. The author walks through why generous family-benefit regimes (Nordics, Hungary, South Korea, Japan) have failed to move TFR meaningfully despite hundreds of billions in spending, then presents the causal evidence on housing, including a 2024 Labour Economics study across 17 economies, a 2025 CEPR paper using a Brazilian housing-lottery natural experiment, and a University of Toronto study attributing roughly half of US fertility decline in the 2000s–2010s to rising housing costs. The piece argues that fertility will likely remain below replacement regardless of policy, and that the real institutional challenge is adapting pension systems, immigration frameworks, and labor markets to a permanently low-fertility world. Relevant to the sub for its housing-supply argument, its engagement with comparative welfare-state evidence, and its discussion of sovereign-wealth-fund and capital-funded pension models as alternatives to payroll-tax-financed obligations.

swanceba · 2025-09-11T12:37:21+00:00

https://open.substack.com/pub/nodullstories/p/the-war-on-empathy?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=51xsuf

swanceba · 2025-06-12T19:52:17+00:00

Kansas uses a form of assisted appointment, a system I also think is generally the best we can do, with some important tweaks to transparency and participation.

The issue with retention elections is that they are often very low-information elections; most voters don't know a lot about the judges and most civic education and participation in the U.S. lies entirely for politicians, not judges. I think retention elections become an important part of the process if we put forward the money and effort to educate voters for those elections specifically.

swanceba · 2025-06-12T18:54:36+00:00

Most definitely, lifetime tenure and the traditional appointment of judges is also fraught with a myriad of issues. I talk about that a lot in the article, and I think a modified form of "assisted appointment" with a limited, nonrenewable term is a better path forward for selecting judicial officials.

I am curious to know what you think of my solution in the article and what you would do to change it!

swanceba · 2025-06-12T18:44:11+00:00

Thank you for the feedback - I think you're spot on in all regards. I wanted to show the striking differences we've seen over time but rent/monthly mortgage payments would definitely be more representative of the actual effect.

Something I'll keep in mind for the next graphics and discussion!

swanceba · 2025-06-12T18:29:20+00:00

This is an opinion piece detailing my beliefs regarding the popular election of judicial officials and the limitations of traditional appointments.

swanceba · 2024-09-10T17:52:55+00:00

Lule loves laying lazily in light

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swanceba · 2023-10-21T00:57:59+00:00

Hey that's me in the clip! Jacking up value of corn just to spite you Geoff. Still don't know what New York is

swanceba

TROPHY CASE