Sofia Vergara’s Night Reading
April 12th, 2012


As promised: JVL in The Three Stooges. (Click for the big version click here.)

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Demography. Fertility. Marriage.
September 29th, 2011


If you’re in DC next Tuesday, I’ll be sitting on a panel about fertility, marriage, and the economy at AEI. Which isn’t exciting in and of itself, but Nick Eberstadt will also be there and Brad Wilcox will be headlining, and those two are stone-cold studs. You can register with AEI here if you want to swing by.

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Is Social Security a “Ponzi Scheme”?
September 8th, 2011


I’d argue that it is (I’ve got a whole section of the America’s One-Child book on this). But reasonable people can certainly debate the sentiment. What has amazed me over the last week or so is the silliness of those who treat the argument as if it’s somehow out of bounds just because Rick Perry is making it. Believe it or not, Rick Perry is not the first person to view Social Security as a “Ponzi scheme.”

The first person I’ve found drawing the parallel is economist Paul A. Samuelson. In the November 13, 1967 Newsweek Samuelson defended Social Security by pointing out that it was linked to population growth and that “A growing nation is the greatest Ponzi scheme ever devised. And that is a fact, not a paradox.” (I found this quote in Phillip Longman’s excellent essay “Missing Children,” in the latest issue of the journal The Family in America. I can’t find the original Newsweek cite to provide full context, but Longman says that Samuelson was defending Social Security and I’m happy to trust him because Phillip Longman is stone-cold awesome.)

Now, Samuelson is not a crank. He won the Nobel Prize for economics in 1970. The New York Times calls him “the foremost academic economist of the 20th century.” If you majored in econ during the last 30 years, there’s a good chance that you used his textbook, Economics.

Nor is Samuelson a conservative. Remember, his likening of the underpinnings of Social Security to a Ponzi scheme were meant as a defense of the institution. And in 2003 he was one of a group of economists to sign a letter inveighing against the Bush tax cuts.

You might argue that the Samuelson/Perry view of Social Security is ultimately incorrect–but you cannot argue that it is troglodytic and beyond the pale. Anyone who does so either misunderstands economics and demography, or is playing an angle.

Update: Ed Driscoll pulls the full original Samuelson quote. As expected, Longman’s characterization was completely accurate:

The beauty of social insurance is that it is actuarially unsound. [italics in original] Everyone who reaches retirement age is given benefit privileges that far exceed anything he has paid in. And exceed his payments by more than ten times (or five times counting employer payments)!

How is it possible? It stems from the fact that the national product is growing at a compound interest rate and can be expected to do so for as far ahead as the eye cannot see. Always there are more youths than old folks in a growing population. More important, with real income going up at 3% per year, the taxable base on which benefits rest is always much greater than the taxes paid historically by the generation now retired…

Social Security is squarely based on what has been called the eight wonder of the world — compound interest. A growing nation is the greatest Ponzi game ever contrived. And that is a fact, not a paradox.

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The U.N.’s Imaginary Babies
August 4th, 2011


I’ve got a piece in the Wall Street Journal on the U.N.’s 2010 revision of their global population projections.

Short version: Suddenly the U.N. thinks fertility decline isn’t such a big deal and that most population contraction won’t happen. That’s because they assume the fertility trends of all nations will follow the pattern of Scandinavia.

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Numbers of Childless Women
August 3rd, 2011


The New York Post finds a fertility expert who thinks that 47 percent of women under 44 are childless. Statistics can be misleading.

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“Demeny” Voting
July 7th, 2011


More demographics obsessing here.

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Twiblings. New York Times. One-Child?
April 25th, 2011


In researching the fertility industry, I came across this old piece by Melanie Thernstrom in the New York Times Magazine. In it,Thernstrom details her long struggle with infertility–the medical regimes, the IVF routines, her attempts at adoption. Finally Thernstrom and her husband decide to employ an egg donor, secure two eggs, have them fertilized through IVF, and then implanted in two separate gestational carriers. It’s quite an ordeal, spanning years and costing at what the author hints at are astronomical sums. (You get the sense the the final tab is somewhere in the scores of thousands of dollars.)

Thernstrom’s journey results in two happy, healthy babies. Which is wonderful, of course.

Throughout her essay, Thernstrom expresses her unhappiness with people who do not both (1) fully approve of her expedition and (2) use all of the terminology that she, herself, prefers. For instance, “surrogate mothers” are “gestational carriers”; the children are “twiblings.” She seems particularly displeased with people who use the term “biological mother” in discussing her children. She insists that her babies have no “biological mother.” Parents can be finicky.

The kicker comes about three quarters of the way through the piece, when she details some unhappiness she with the improper reaction of her nanny.

Nothing wrong with that, of course. Lots of wonderful parents use wonderful nannies and surely there’s nothing wrong with farming out portions of child care.

But it does put the rest of the piece in a slightly different color.

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America’s One-Child Policy
January 24th, 2011


Quick update on my numerology-like obsession continuing interest in demographics, fertility rates, and population. I’m writing a book-length version of America’s One-Child Policy for Encounter, so I’ll probably be sprinkling in some demography posts among the Dark Knight Rises stuff during the next year. I mention this only as a way of soliciting string from you. If you see interesting news/books/journal articles on the subject, please send them along.

Thanks in advance.

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