Links in Progress: Should we give babies the vote?
And births rise in South Korea
‘Links in Progress’ newsletters are semi-regular roundups of interesting stuff that's happening in topics that we care about. In this one, Boom’s Phoebe Arslanagić-Little reviews the most important things happening in the world of pronatalism and family policy. You can follow Boom’s substack here.
1. The global relationship recession: a rise in the number of single people is becoming a key driver of falling birth rates. Policymakers who want to see birth rates rise should consider how they can help people form relationships.
2. More evidence that access to housing is a fertility bottleneck. A new paper has found that receiving money through a lottery can boost the probability of having a child by 32 percent among Brazilians aged 20-25, and by 10 percent for those aged 25-35. But Lyman Stone, on his new substack, explains that these housing lotteries are not lotteries as we traditionally understand them but instead usually a way of extending credit to people who cannot get mortgages. Not only are the participants demographically unusual, they are also stuck paying in for years before they ever receive one. There’s a good chance that participants merely delay their fertility until they win a house.
3. For the first time since 2015, South Korea has recorded an increase in annual births – up by 3.1 percent between 2023 and 2024. The government’s pro-parent policy push might have contributed to this rebound, but it could just be a ‘dead cat bounce’: the result of a mini-boom of babies born in the 1990s reaching their early 30s.

4. Falling birth rates mean advanced economies could see per capita economic growth slow by 0.4 percent per year from 2030 to 2050. Consultancy giant McKinsey publishes new analysis on how the global birth rate challenge will pressure public finances and depress living standards all over the world.
5. Should we give children the vote? The authors of this working paper suggest that enfranchising children would increase the birth rate. They assume that children, “as perfectly informed and rational utility-maximising voters” will vote to redistribute state spending away from pensions and towards families with children, thus reducing the costs of having children.
6. Married Chinese women are being cold-called by local government officials asking about their plans to have children. The FT reports on China’s escalating efforts to raise birth rates.
7. Building your own ‘village’: you can control exactly how your kids are raised, or ask for community help with child care – but you can’t have both. In The Atlantic, Stephanie H. Murray writes about the benefits and compromises she discovered in creating an informal childcare network, or 'baby swap', with four other families.
8. India is getting old before it gets rich. Many parts of India have birth rates on par with western countries, and are rapidly aging and dealing with shrinking workforces. States including Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh are considering policies to incentivize citizens to have more children

9. Biotech company Gameto has developed a process to mature eggs outside the body and announced the birth of the first baby born via the technology. Gameto’s new process reduces by 80 percent the number of hormone injections women undergoing IVF are required to take and makes the treatment shorter

10. Superstar economist Claudia Goldin argues that the rapid economic growth experienced by countries like South Korea and Japan has led to a clash between traditional expectations upon women and their new economic opportunities that means they then have fewer children. Goldin does not empirically test her theory.
11. Listen to Ezra Klein respond to a question about choosing parenthood. Klein encourages people not to think about becoming a parent only in personal pro and con terms:
It’s amazing that my children get to experience life, not because it makes my life better in every respect, but because their lives are precious things…the joy of parenting is not the joy of parenting but the joy of your child’s existence.
Klein also cites Gilead by Marilynne Robinson (perhaps the best novel I read in 2024) for its portrayal of parent joy. This short book is about an Iowan preacher who unexpectedly becomes a father in later life.
12. Each cohort of young Europeans is delaying the major life events of early adulthood – like getting their first job, leaving home, moving in with a partner, and having their first child – by more and more each generation. Those with highly educated parents are most likely to postpone all these life events more.
13. Don’t turn birth rates into a culture war issue. In an article published in the summer, Addison Del Mastro argues that attempts to subsume the birth rate challenge into culture war discourse distract from policies that can actually help more people start families and will never convince anyone unsure about parenthood to take the plunge.
14. The Ancient Greek historian Polybius (c.200-118BC) blamed falling births in his own time on young men becoming distracted by the 'pleasures of an idle life' and the desire to bring children up in 'extravagant luxury'.
