6 ms·

Yeah I'm sure you could find that missing £85bn down the back of a sofa in whitehall. Sorry, but the whole idea is laughable. Not to mention the fact that it's

by anticon 11y ago

Yeah I'm sure you could find that missing £85bn down the back of a sofa in whitehall. Sorry, but the whole idea is laughable. Not to mention the fact that it's another incentive to have more children and bigger families because the state will give you more money.

zimpenfish 11y ago
> it's another incentive to have more children and bigger families Should be easy to back that wild claim up with statistics. Can you?
- jackweirdy 11y ago
  My inner pessimist is expecting to see a "there was this Daily Mail article one time". Everywhere I look, I see the opposite. Families with a comfortable amount of disposable income have the 2.4 kids, but those in poverty (and particularly the working poor) have 3, or upwards. Anecdotal, but I'm yet to see evidence to the contrary
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    There's evidence on a national scale that birthrate is anticorrelated with wealth. The better off people are on average, the less kids they have.
    - Retric 11y ago
      This is not true; on average richer men have more children. If you try and slice it by family you find that the 'traditional' family makes up a fairly small percentage of the population.
      - TeMPOraL 11y ago
        This TED talk focuses on the anticorrelation I wrote about: http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_you_ve_ever_seen?language=en http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_y....
        Retric 11y ago
        Richer countries have lower birth rates. Richer men in the same country have more kids. PS: I think I just misread your comment. By "national scale" I thought you meant in the same country.
        TeMPOraL 11y ago
        Ok, I think I should have written "international scale", I apologize for the confusion. I don't know of any study on national level, i.e. of families in a single country. The only thing I know of are anecdotes and stories about very poor families having 5+ children.
        Retric 11y ago
        I have seen this stat from a few studies. EX: http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2011/06/kids_are_normal.html http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2011/06/kids_are_normal.... Higher income > more kids, Higher education > fewer children. This seems fairly obvious as people are less likely to have children and stay in school. But, as I understand it the effect is larger than that.
        MSM 11y ago
        I have heard the opposite from many studies as well. You linked a post that spawned many, many rebuttals by various organizations. http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/01/richer-people-want-fewer-children http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/01/richer-people-w... http://freakonomics.com/2011/06/10/the-rich-vs-poor-debate-are-kids-normal-or-inferior-goods/ http://freakonomics.com/2011/06/10/the-rich-vs-poor-debate-a...
        Retric 11y ago
        Both of those ignore the education factor. Basically if you have two groups of American born, collage educated men, with of the same age then income positively correlates with number of children. But, if you compare collage dropouts vs. people that have PHD's then the PHD population makes more money and has fewer kids. So, education is a huge confounding factor. We went from 14 being a reasonable age to start a family to 24 or even 34 being the 'reasonable age' that's a huge impact. But, ‘wealth’ as an independent factor aka adjusted for age, education, country etc becomes a positive factor. PS: Historically, starvation also limited family size.
    - knodi123 11y ago
      is it a smooth relationship, or is it more of a step function with 1 steps? I always suspected that the reality was more like "people who are able to afford children and able to make long-term plans tend to have only as many children as they want, when they feel they are ready, but people who aren't able to afford children or who don't make long-term plans will tend to take a more devil-may-care attitude towards procreation."
      - TeMPOraL 11y ago
        From what I heard, in very poor countries children are often treated as investment. A child can start paying itself off by working as soon as even 5 years after being born. As a parent, you want someone to take care of you when you're old, and given high children mortality, you're better off making more of them in hope at least one survives to adulthood. Basically, those people are too poor to afford not having many children.
        JoeAltmaier 11y ago
        This is rapidly becoming ancient history. There's a wonderful youtube video showing all the countries on earth, moving on a multimensional chart by infant mortality and standard of living. The origin is ideal. All countries but 1 or two have shot like arrows toward the origin over the last century.
        exch 11y ago
        This talk by Hans Rosling may be what you are referring to. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dymPP9RhPjw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dymPP9RhPjw
      - marcosdumay 11y ago
        Across countries this is a very noisy cloud of points where, if you go out and calculate a regression it's pointing down. Like every other social variable. Since population explosion has felt out of fashion, there's a long time that I didn't see such plot. But what I've seen has a much clearer tendency than most social correlations people use at real decisions. It's about as clear as most correlations of quality of life with GDP.
  - exch 11y ago
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dymPP9RhPjw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dymPP9RhPjw A talk by Hans Rosling[1] on the subject. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Rosling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Rosling
- zo1 11y ago
  Statistics have nothing to do with it. Either the incentive exists, or it doesn't. Ask for a citation/study/logical-argument on that, not statistics. But bear in mind: Statistics could indicate the extent that the incentive is having on the incentivized population group, if at all.

by anticon 11y ago

zimpenfish 11y ago

> it's another incentive to have more children and bigger families Should be easy to back that wild claim up with statistics. Can you?

jackweirdy 11y ago
My inner pessimist is expecting to see a "there was this Daily Mail article one time". Everywhere I look, I see the opposite. Families with a comfortable amount of disposable income have the 2.4 kids, but those in poverty (and particularly the working poor) have 3, or upwards. Anecdotal, but I'm yet to see evidence to the contrary
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  There's evidence on a national scale that birthrate is anticorrelated with wealth. The better off people are on average, the less kids they have.
  - Retric 11y ago
    This is not true; on average richer men have more children. If you try and slice it by family you find that the 'traditional' family makes up a fairly small percentage of the population.
    - TeMPOraL 11y ago
      This TED talk focuses on the anticorrelation I wrote about: http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_you_ve_ever_seen?language=en http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_y....
      - Retric 11y ago
        Richer countries have lower birth rates. Richer men in the same country have more kids. PS: I think I just misread your comment. By "national scale" I thought you meant in the same country.
        TeMPOraL 11y ago
        Ok, I think I should have written "international scale", I apologize for the confusion. I don't know of any study on national level, i.e. of families in a single country. The only thing I know of are anecdotes and stories about very poor families having 5+ children.
        Retric 11y ago
        I have seen this stat from a few studies. EX: http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2011/06/kids_are_normal.html http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2011/06/kids_are_normal.... Higher income > more kids, Higher education > fewer children. This seems fairly obvious as people are less likely to have children and stay in school. But, as I understand it the effect is larger than that.
        MSM 11y ago
        I have heard the opposite from many studies as well. You linked a post that spawned many, many rebuttals by various organizations. http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/01/richer-people-want-fewer-children http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/01/richer-people-w... http://freakonomics.com/2011/06/10/the-rich-vs-poor-debate-are-kids-normal-or-inferior-goods/ http://freakonomics.com/2011/06/10/the-rich-vs-poor-debate-a...
        Retric 11y ago
        Both of those ignore the education factor. Basically if you have two groups of American born, collage educated men, with of the same age then income positively correlates with number of children. But, if you compare collage dropouts vs. people that have PHD's then the PHD population makes more money and has fewer kids. So, education is a huge confounding factor. We went from 14 being a reasonable age to start a family to 24 or even 34 being the 'reasonable age' that's a huge impact. But, ‘wealth’ as an independent factor aka adjusted for age, education, country etc becomes a positive factor. PS: Historically, starvation also limited family size.
  - knodi123 11y ago
    is it a smooth relationship, or is it more of a step function with 1 steps? I always suspected that the reality was more like "people who are able to afford children and able to make long-term plans tend to have only as many children as they want, when they feel they are ready, but people who aren't able to afford children or who don't make long-term plans will tend to take a more devil-may-care attitude towards procreation."
    - TeMPOraL 11y ago
      From what I heard, in very poor countries children are often treated as investment. A child can start paying itself off by working as soon as even 5 years after being born. As a parent, you want someone to take care of you when you're old, and given high children mortality, you're better off making more of them in hope at least one survives to adulthood. Basically, those people are too poor to afford not having many children.
      - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
        This is rapidly becoming ancient history. There's a wonderful youtube video showing all the countries on earth, moving on a multimensional chart by infant mortality and standard of living. The origin is ideal. All countries but 1 or two have shot like arrows toward the origin over the last century.
        exch 11y ago
        This talk by Hans Rosling may be what you are referring to. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dymPP9RhPjw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dymPP9RhPjw
    - marcosdumay 11y ago
      Across countries this is a very noisy cloud of points where, if you go out and calculate a regression it's pointing down. Like every other social variable. Since population explosion has felt out of fashion, there's a long time that I didn't see such plot. But what I've seen has a much clearer tendency than most social correlations people use at real decisions. It's about as clear as most correlations of quality of life with GDP.
- exch 11y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dymPP9RhPjw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dymPP9RhPjw A talk by Hans Rosling[1] on the subject. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Rosling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Rosling
zo1 11y ago
Statistics have nothing to do with it. Either the incentive exists, or it doesn't. Ask for a citation/study/logical-argument on that, not statistics. But bear in mind: Statistics could indicate the extent that the incentive is having on the incentivized population group, if at all.