Car Seats as Contraception
Fertility rates in Western countries are near historic lows. Last year, not a single Western country was above the replacement level of 2.1 children per women.
Various factors have been proposed as potential causes of low fertility in the West, including female emancipation, the decline of religiosity and post-materialist values. One that has received little attention until recently is car seat laws.
In a fascinating preprint, Jordan Nickerson and David Solomon argue that car seat laws have prevented more than 130,000 births in the US since 2000. How have they done this? The proposed mechanism is simple. Since most cars cannot fit more than two child seats, if a couple with two children wants to have a third, they have to buy a much larger car. Yet doing so is impractical or unaffordable for many families, so they stop at two.
The authors begin by noting that car seat laws have become much more stringent over time. Between 1980 and 2020, the average age (depending on the state) when a child can ride without a car seat has increased from zero to eight, with most of most of the increase having occurred since the mid 1990s.
Note that in Europe, car seat laws are even more stringent: children must ride in a car seat until they are 1.5m – which corresponds to an age of about 12!
Nickerson and Solomon then report their main findings. Using data from the US census, they ran a model of the probability that a woman gives birth in a given year. The predictor of interest was an indicator for whether the woman had two children below the age mandate in the relevant year and state.
They found that compared to women who had at least one child above the age mandate, those who had two below were significantly less likely to give birth in a given year. Moreover, they effect was limited to households with a car – as you’d expect based on the proposed mechanism.
How large was the effect? Women with two children below the age mandate were 0.73 percentage points less likely to give birth in a given year, which represents a 7.8% drop relative to all women with two children. While this might not sound like much, it’s similar to other effects in the literature. For example, one study found that compulsory schooling reduces teen births by 8.8%.
Car seats clearly aren’t a major contributor to low fertility in the West, but it’s likely that fertility would be in their absence. Interestingly, the authors also examined their impact on car crash fatalities and found that it was small, amounting to only 57 in the year 2017. This means that for each life saved, 140 third births were prevented.
This comparison would suggest that stringent car seat laws may well fail a cost-benefit test. Like many policies, they sound good – but you always have to think about unintended consequences.
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A great idea, with good intentions, what could possibly go wrong?
The car seats are of course just one example of how our lives are micro managed by state bureaucrats.
We’re slowly being turned into farm animals managed by keepers in an ever more limited enclosure. We are here to produce and consume.
Not to worry, no doubt those in charge of the farm are monitoring things. If they need more farm animals they’ll cone up with sone fertility scheme to breed us.
At the moment it seems as if they want less consumption and don’t need so much human production so declining population suits them fine.
They just need work out how to deal with all the unproductive old farm animals without a rebellion kicking off
Haha, what a random but interesting article! Something that’s definitely never occurred to me before. What I would say though is that 2 kids is the norm and is plenty for most parents so I think the problem is more the fact that we need more people even reaching the 2 kid mark, which evidently is not happening, then we wouldn’t need to worry about replacement levels. Fertility and births declining has been an issue for many years and cannot exclusively be blamed on the death jabs, of course, so that’s another justification for European countries to keep on with the relentless immigration. Here’s Germany’s situation, which sees their birth rate at the lowest in 10 years; ”The birth deficit has been a considerable longstanding issue in Germany, which has experienced fewer births than deaths for 50 consecutive years. Rather than focusing on policies to promote the family unit, like countries such as Hungary, which provides fiscal incentives for mothers and large families, Germany’s federal government has sought to solve the problem with mass immigration. Despite the birth deficit, Germany’s population has continued to soar due to large numbers of new arrivals. Its population increased by 1 percent in the… Read more »
When I read the headline, I wondered if the decline in birthrate was due to the baby seat in the back of the car making it impossible to have a romantic “quickie” there. 🙂
That would be a study worth reading… what percentage of the population was conceived in the back of a car…
Maybe have a look at how many people are called Fiesta or Nova.
Mercedes & Lexus, possible, depending on social standing – which might have an effect too…
You’re one of those people who enjoys the simple pleasures which don’t involve a device and government oversight. You need to be wiped out. You’re bad for the system, you see.
A decent car should have leg room in the front and legover room in the back. I’ll get my coat….
😀😀
Excellent. I must remember that one.
When our third child was born we had a small hatchback and we used to take her around in a carry cot in the boot, the older children would lean over the back seat and make sure she was OK. If anyone was to do that today it would be a heinous crime. Our elder daughter has just had a baby and they have a small hatchback, if we visit them by train, there is no way we can go out with them in the car, the mandatory car seat is so big my wife and I could not both fit in the back seat. Ironically I seem to recall our elder daughter, when she was born, being driven home with me driving and my wife in the back seat with our new born daughter in her arms, possibly a hanging offence in the modern world!
And so whilst at first glance this may seem a trivial issue, yes indeed all these matters, all these big brother, keep you safe measures do indeed have a practical and noticeable impact.
I still remember when I was a kid and there being no seatbelts in the back, so everybody used to just pile in, sardine-style! 🙂
A rugby club chum still has a car with no seatbelts at all …. he restored a 1961 mini that had never had them fitted.
Happy days, mum and dad in the front, both smoked, but only dad drove, and five loosely packed sprogs in the back. The only restraint was knowing how far to push your luck with your parents.
When we were young Mum and Dad bought a Citroën Ami. There were six of us. Dad driving, Mum alongside and me, my brother and sister on the back seat. My youngest sister travelled behind the back seat, in the boot space. We had a two week holiday in France. 😀
It also has an effect on family dynamics. The days of 3 kids and 3 grandparents plus parents all travelling together somewhere, singing and playing games, are over. All arriving somewhere in separate cars isn’t quite as bonding.
No more fighting to see who gets to travel in the boot either!
“stringent car seat laws may well fail a cost-benefit test. Like many policies, they sound good – but you always have to think about unintended consequences.”
To suggest that car seat laws have had unintended consequences is naiive in the extreme. No question the Davos Deviants will have been well aware of the impact of their laws.
Anything which supports depopulation is permissible. A reading of Dr Mercola’s article posted earlier by Mogwai confirms this.
It’s been apparent for years that having a 4th child meant opting for a 7 seater, undoubtedly this restricted many families to 3 kids. The size & duration of child seats in cars pushes that 3 – 4 cliff edge back to the 2 – 3 decision.
My eldest daughter has just had her 3rd child. She and her husband opted for a massive SsangYong 7-seater. At least there’s now room for a further two children…
‘Car seats clearly aren’t a major contributor to low fertility in the West, but it’s likely that fertility would be in their absence.’
Interesting article, but I don’t think I understand that particular sentence.
I have near neighbours with 4 children, 0 cars.
They’re not Amish, but you can see the cause and effect cycle in action
Also, there’s no evidence that car seats have reduced auto accident mortality among children. It’s a losing proposition all the way around.
I am in my sixties, in England, and I am barely 1.5 meters tall. Should I be in a car seat? I have wondered often what would happen if we rolled back all the health and safety legislation to a point in time, 1985 or 2000, what the economic benefits would be vs loss of life and limb.