Parenting

Take Your Kids to the Movies

Zachary BartschLeave a comment

Economists talk about the ‘Covid Shock’ in 2020 because it was a mostly unpredictable event that had big, measurable effects. People spent a lot less time being in close quarters. Especially hit hard were movie theaters, and other events spaces.

In the several years prior to Covid, “Recreational Service” industry sales had been chugging along, growing at healthy annual rate of 3.4% (inflation adjusted). This category of services includes clubs, sports centers, theaters, and museums. In the blink of an eye, the covid shock drastically reduced spending in that category by more than 60%. See the graph below.

Unfortunately, we don’t have disaggregated series for the components of “Recreational Services”. But we do know that movie theaters were already well past their hay-day. Theaters had been closing and consolidating for more than a decade and ticket sales were down. Many give credit to the popularity of streaming video services and other digital media alternatives. Covid added insult to injury.

Now, going to a movie theater is exceptional. As a teenager in the early naughts, I’d go to the theater easily half a dozen times per year. Now, I don’t think that I’ve gone six times in the last five years. Real growth in the entire recreational service category has grown annually by an anemic 1.8% since 2019. It’s not dead, but that’s also the total industry. I’ve heard the news stories of sports events making a big comeback. I’ve not heard anything like that for movie theaters.

I went to the movies recently and it is not what you remember.

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A Rant about Long Run Problems and Passe Solutions

Zachary Bartsch5 Comments

If you listen to or read major economists discussing what they think are big-picture problems, then their list usually includes three topics: Fertility, Culture, & the Fiscal Health.  On the wonkier side, you’ll also hear that housing scarcity and affordability is a problem, but let’s stick with the first three.

Fertility

People are deciding to have fewer children for a variety of reasons. In no particular order, the reasons include greater access to financial institutions, more popular female education, higher female wages, lower infant mortality, and falling religiosity. Some also speculate that housing affordability, safety regulations, and social safety nets contribute too.

What’s wrong with lower fertility? In an objective sense, there is nothing wrong. But, in the sense that people value similar things, we are in somewhat uncharted territory. Realized fertility is dropping across the globe. We know that economies of scale increase productivity and real wages. We also know that technological innovation comes from having more minds engaged with economic problems. It’s possible that labor productivity rises faster than the productivity that we lose with smaller scale, but it’s an open question. What happens to the liberal societies and polities when the liberals fail to persist? These are big geopolitical concerns.

Culture

People seem to be more fragmented religiously and culturally. Social scientists used to discuss Judeo-Christian norms more often. Sometimes you’d hear about English or Roman legal tradition or enlightenment values. But now, there seems to be very little in terms of common social cohesion. In the USA, the general common culture seems to be ‘smile and be nice’. That’s not the worst common rule, but it’s not enough to hang our hat on for a capable liberal state.

The lack of cultural cohesion isn’t my own particular concern – public intellectuals in economics and elsewhere feel like there is a problem. There is a mix of reasoning behind the concern. Some people are worried about transmitting values to the next generation, some are worried about how people behave when no one’s watching, and still others are worried about simply lacking a Schelling  point that coordinates large scale economic cooperation.

Fiscal Health

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The Economic Story of Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel

Zachary Bartsch1 Comment

Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel, by Virginia Lee Burton, is a classic 1939 children’s book about a man, Mike Mulligan, and his beloved steam shovel, Mary Anne, who are replaced by modern machinery. They get one last chance to demonstrate their worth by digging the cellar for a new town hall in a single day.

This book is more than just a nostalgic children’s story with a happy ending. This is a tale about economic history, comparative advantage, non-pecuniary benefits, labor and capital heterogeneity, and, of course, transaction costs.

Here’s some background. Historically, excavating or earth-moving equipment was powered by steam. Much like a steam engine locomotive (train), a steam shovel burns coal to heat water in a boiler, creating steam that can drive pistons that operate the mechanics. The result is machinery that can move a greater volume of soil at a faster speed than humans with simple hand shovels. Advancements in oil extraction and refining and internal combustion made the steam methods obsolete. Diesel or gasoline made earth movers safer, faster, and larger all because there was no need to build high pressures from boiling water. Steam pressure in the field takes a lot of time and is dangerous. 

Here is how the story goes. Mike enjoys his earth-moving work with his steam-shovel and is proud to be more productive than hand-shovels. One day, diesel, electric, and gasoline-powered shovels arrive. They’re bigger and better than Mary Anne. She is now obsolete. It’s unclear whether Mike’s skills are transferable to the newer equipment, but he implicitly prefers working with Mary Anne.  Together, they can’t compete in the urban areas where the value placed on quick excavation is high. So, they flee to the countryside.

The text doesn’t say why the newer shovels aren’t in the countryside. Let’s address that first. The new shovels haven’t spread to the rural areas because the opportunity cost is too high. Diesel Shovels are expensive and the owners/operators need revenue from many jobs in order to pay for their equipment in a reasonable amount of time and earn a positive return. Rural areas don’t have the same willingness to pay for as many projects, so less specialized capital is limited by the smaller extent of the market. Clearly, a higher cost of capital – the cost of the loan that pays for the diesel shovels or the alternative uses of the resources – accentuate the necessity for project volume.

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Vaccine Variety

Zachary Bartsch4 Comments

The flu and covid-19 vaccines don’t work super well. Both vaccines permit infection and transmission at quite high rates. The benefit from these vaccines come largely from reductions in mortality or severe symptoms conditional on infection. The covid-19 vaccine is itself especially risky or ineffective depending on the age and health of the individual. Plenty of people eschew vaccines.

I live in Collier County, Florida where there have been 61 confirmed cases of measles so far this year. I have since learned that Measles is EXTREMELY contagious. It floats around the air and on items and just sort of hangs out and waits for a place to replicate. I’ve also learned that symptoms include a fever, eye irritation, possible brain swelling, severe dehydration, and a characteristic rash. The severe dehydration easily puts people in the hospital, the eye irritation can lead to permanent vision loss, and the brain swelling can be acute, or a symptom delayed by 5-6 years, which can also be fatal. I’ve also learned that having the vaccine, which is usually administered in two doses, provides about 97% immunity. The vaccine works so well, that the department of health recommends no behavioral change among the vaccinated population when there is a measles outbreak. Barring unique circumstances, measles immunity can persist for a lifetime.

Unfortunately, a large segment of the anti-vaccine mood affiliation retains the salience of the covid-19 vaccine characteristics. Other vaccines and diseases in the typical pediatric schedule are not similar. Most of these prevent infection >90% of the time (TDAP is low at 73%), prevent transmission, reduce mortality when there are breakthrough infections, are effective for years or decades, and are extremely safe for all age groups.

The risks of disease versus the corresponding vaccine are orders of magnitude away from each other. The tables below summarize the data (with sources). I did not double check the source on every single figure. If you glance below, then you’ll see why: Even if the numbers are closer by 10 or 100 times, vaccines still look really good.

First, mortality: The data is divided by disease and age group, and provides mortality rates for both the disease and for the vaccine. The numbers are proportions, conditional on infection or vaccination. There are a lot of zeros in the vaccine mortality rates and certainly more than for the diseases. For example, a measles infection is 10,000 more lethal than the MMR vaccine which prevents it. In fact, all of those zeros in the vaccine rates reflect mortality that is so uncommon, that the estimated one out of every 10 million is just rounded up because researchers don’t think that the risk is zero.

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Update on School Valentines

Joy BuchananLeave a comment

I have principles. One of them is that school Valentines are indulgent and bad for the environment.

I have written Markets in Everything for school Valentine’s

And here are some quotes from Do Less for Preschool

Just fail, people. Don’t even put “crazy sock day” on your work Outlook calendar…

Oh no. If AI lifts the constraint of time, then what we are going to get is more crazy sock days. To stay ahead in the status competition, families will have to do Bluey-Crazy Sock Day every week. The ocean will become a thick soup of polyester Bluey-crazy-socks, size 3T, worn only once.

On principle, I did low-effort Valentine’s last year. I spent as little of my own time and money as I could. My kids wrote their friends’ names on the paper things.  Smugly, I imagined that I’d saved the dolphins in the tuna nets and helped some other mom feel like she was doing okay.

Who do you imagine is upset? Not the other moms. My kids. The older one especially feels in his body that failing this test in February of 2026 will result in expulsion from the tribe and death in the outer darkness beyond the reach of the campfire.

Guess what I care about more than dolphins? We will do more this year.

Preschool kids do not care and should not be asked to care. I still believe that parents and daycare directors should do less for preschool. Truly, I see no reason, at all, for a preschool dress up day or Valentine’s Day party. Can someone think of the dolphins before it’s too late and the kid grows up and starts caring about the status wars?

The US Has One of the Highest Fertility Rates Among Peer Countries

Jeremy Horpedahl8 Comments

Declining fertility rates have been in the news a lot lately, and with good reason. Some countries, such as South Korea, have seen massive declines in fertility rates, and they face huge social problems and population decline resulting from these declining rates. But does the United States face the same problem?

To be clear, fertility rates are down in the US. Using the most common measure, the total fertility rate, births per woman in the US fell from a peak of over 3.5 births at the peak of the Baby Boom in the late 1950s and early 1960s, to around 2 births per woman in the 1990s and 2000s, and fell further to 1.6 births in 2023 (note: it had been around 2 births in the 1930s as well — the Baby Boom was a very real).

But the total fertility rate, or the number of births per woman of child-bearing age (usually 15-49) in a particular year is not a perfect measure. As Saloni Dattani clearly explains, if the timing of births is changing, this can make the TFR temporarily fluctuate. If women on average are delaying births to a later age, the TFR will fall initially even if women end up having the exact same number of children.

An alternative measure suggested by Dattani is the completed cohort fertility rate. This measure looks at the total number of children that women from a particular birth year in a country have throughout their child-bearing years. This rate also shows a decline for the US, but it is much more gradual: for women born in the 1930s (who would eventually become mothers during the Baby Boom), they peaked at about 3.25 births per woman, which declined to right at about 2.0 births in the 1950s (the Baby Boomers themselves), and has gradually risen since then to about 2.20 for women born in the early 1970s.

How does the US completed cohort fertility rate compare with other countries?

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Bright Mornings Help Parents

Joy Buchanan2 Comments

In the United States, most people just turned their clocks back one hour for the end of Daylight Saving Time. This annual ritual happens in fall when we “gain” an extra hour of sleep but also notice that the sun starts setting earlier in the evening.

For many of us, we get, once again, bright daylight at least 30 minutes before the kids are due at school. In most parts of the country, that means sunrise is now somewhere between 6:30 and 7:00 a.m. This helps families who are trying to get moving, find shoes, and make breakfast before the first bell rings. The morning light makes it feel to kids like the day is starting as opposed to Mom trying to “make them get up.”

Although every child and schedule is different, sunlight helps parents navigate the morning with their dependents.

I hear people complain every year that they can’t hang out with friends in the daylight after work once the clocks change. I understand that. It’s not easy to balance all these competing needs. If I were only in charge of myself, I could imagine getting up in total darkness and finishing work with a couple of hours of daylight left to enjoy. I think I could handle that just fine. But as a society, with kids, parents, teachers, bus drivers, and caregivers all trying to operate on a shared schedule, it seems reasonable to prioritize morning light. That’s when the essential stuff happens. If it helps parents, consider keeping it.

A last note for parents: If this system is going to work, turn off devices and screens at some reasonable time such as before 8:30pm. Otherwise, the world practically turning on its axis to help you (okay, I’m exaggerating) won’t do much good. The blue light from phones, tablets, and televisions suppresses melatonin, the hormone that helps us fall asleep, and tricks the brain into thinking it’s still daytime. As a bonus, if you were hoping your kid would read more, they might read before bed if it’s the only thing they are allowed to do. Reading a paper book with a normal light does not mess up the sleep schedule so much.

The brilliant thing about reading to kids who are in bed is that, if they aren’t paying attention, you can turn out the light and tell them they are going to sleep 5 minutes early.  This works best if it’s pitch-black dark outside at bedtime. Stop scrolling and go to sleep (if you are reading this after dark).

Some people deal with different circumstances close to the poles like seasonal depression. I have no advice about that, although the technology of sun-mimicking lamps is available. Maybe that’s why Americans are moving to the sun belt with air conditioning.

Interesting discussion and map on Twitter/X here https://x.com/benryanwriter/status/1985382840167457110?s=46

Is AI learning just MOOCs again?

Joy Buchanan2 Comments

I created a provocative title for fun. Tyler pointed me to this podcast:

Joe Liemandt  – Building Alpha School, and The Future of Education (Apple podcast link)

I suppose I’m sold on their claim that most kids can learn basic facts and some academic skills from an iPad app. Listen all the way through if you are going to listen at all, because even some cracks in the tech product are revealed after the big pitch in the beginning.

I have been using Duolingo to review my high school French and Spanish. I think the few minutes a day I spend have helped drag some vocabulary back out of long-term storage. Although, as I recently heard a comedian say, “All my friends who have Duolingo are still speaking English to me.”

Folks should consider whether AI learning apps is just MOOCs again. Essentially, they need to get kids to watch (short, this time) videos of lecture content. MOOCs were longer lecture content videos. Maybe shorter is the key, combined with personalized feedback. Maybe not, for getting cheap effective comprehensive education that scales.

Last year I wrote Why Podcasts Succeeded in Gaining Influence Where MOOCs Failed

About half an hour in, Liemandt asserts that anyone in America would agree that kids learn life skills through “sports” not school. That’s an oversimplification, but I agree that sports ranks higher than “math class” for developing leadership ability.

Since they at Alpha School believe that have solved quickly learning facts, it’s interesting to hear how they do the rest of “education.” The school must fill enough time that the parents don’t have to see their kids half the day and also teach leadership/ communication/character. Alpha school is expensive ($40,000 a year) and there are many paid adults involved who are called “guides and coaches.”

The extracurriculars that Alpha school offers sounds a lot like what most kids can do in some form at a good public middle school or high school in America.  I wrote about the value of outside-class activities in college here: The Value of Student Organizations and On-Campus Education: Anecdotal Evidence from Tim Keller

My students at Samford are especially good at taking on leadership roles and creating a thriving community. Residential college provides a good testing ground for leadership and there are real “market tests” of success for things like sorority events, as the Alpha school encourages for older kids.

I applaud people trying to innovate. I think we’ll see more educational apps in schools, and that will be great. I’m not trying to dump on Alpha School. I just think the underperformance arc of MOOCs should temper our enthusiasm.

Podcast to understand modern coupling challenges

Joy Buchanan1 Comment

As marriage rates decline nationally, Esther Perel’s “Where Should We Begin?” offers more than dating advice. These episodes are recordings of real couples or single people today who explain why they are struggling to find relationship success. It provides an anthropological study of why coupling is challenging in the 21st century.

Each couple’s struggle with intimacy and commitment reflects broader questions about what it means to build a life together in an age of individualism. “Where Should We Begin?” doesn’t offer easy solutions to the coupling crisis, but it does helps us understand the deeper currents shaping modern love. Especially now that she has branched out to non-romantic friendship topics this year, almost anyone can find an episode here that might help them navigate one of their own personal problems as if they had the world’s leading relationship therapist on hand.

One of Perel’s points is that modern couples are drowning under expectations that previous generations never faced. Partners are expected to be best friends, passionate lovers, co-parents, financial partners, emotional support systems, and personal growth catalysts all at once. Perel points out that they’re asking their relationship to fulfill needs that used to be met by entire communities.

One episode I listened to is “I Can’t Love You the Way You Want Me To” Description: Their relationship is on the edge. They’re grappling with communication issues and the emotional scars from their past. And they’re trapped. Trapped in an endless cycle of blame, defensiveness, and attack.

As someone who grew up on the periphery of Philadelphia, I was interested in their specific fight. The man said that Philly sports fans are trash. The woman defended the honor of Philly with specific examples, and now they hate each other. Honestly sounds like my high school.