Reasons for Having Fewer Children
Oct. 10th, 2025 11:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ndrosenReason magazine’s Liz Wolfe writes, inter alia, about families having fewer children, quoting the New York Times as saying “The number of New York households with three or more children has dropped by nearly 17 percent over the past decade, according to an analysis of census data by the Center for an Urban Future, a think tank.”
Ms. Wolfe then writes (I have added emphasis): “Reading the piece, there appears to be two almost entirely separate issues: New Yorkers’ unreasonable expectations (one mom bemoans how she hosts birthday parties with homemade cakes at the local playground, contrasting that with lavish vacations taken by other parents in the neighborhood) and the fact that there are real cost-of-living issues, primarily of the real estate variety (‘43 percent of units with three or more bedrooms have been occupied by the same tenants for more than ten years’ with median asking price of $1.8 million for three-bedroom and three-bedroom-plus homes). These are two totally separate problems that too frequently get bundled together.”
Those three bedroom homes probably do not involve over a million and a half dollars worth of bricks, plumbing fixtures, and labor; the high prices are chiefly for the land. Naturally, occupying much space in NYC will cost more than having the same space in a small town in Tennessee, but prices are higher than they need to be. Taxing the value of the land would keep the selling price from being so high, and enable other taxes to be cut. Then, among other things, at least some families could afford an additional child.
Ms. Wolfe then writes (I have added emphasis): “Reading the piece, there appears to be two almost entirely separate issues: New Yorkers’ unreasonable expectations (one mom bemoans how she hosts birthday parties with homemade cakes at the local playground, contrasting that with lavish vacations taken by other parents in the neighborhood) and the fact that there are real cost-of-living issues, primarily of the real estate variety (‘43 percent of units with three or more bedrooms have been occupied by the same tenants for more than ten years’ with median asking price of $1.8 million for three-bedroom and three-bedroom-plus homes). These are two totally separate problems that too frequently get bundled together.”
Those three bedroom homes probably do not involve over a million and a half dollars worth of bricks, plumbing fixtures, and labor; the high prices are chiefly for the land. Naturally, occupying much space in NYC will cost more than having the same space in a small town in Tennessee, but prices are higher than they need to be. Taxing the value of the land would keep the selling price from being so high, and enable other taxes to be cut. Then, among other things, at least some families could afford an additional child.
