May 27, 2025 • 51 mins
California’s fertility rate is near historic lows. Politicians keep proposing pro-family policies—but what if none of them actually work?
In this episode, I talk with policy researcher and fellow Californian Noah Johnson about the hard truths behind declining birthrates. Why aren’t paid family leave, baby bonuses, and daycare subsidies moving the needle? What can California learn from other countries—and where is our state uniquely falling short?
We also explore the cultural and economic reasons behind shrinking families, the rise of black-market daycare, and why California cities are losing their grip on the next generation of parents.
Topics include:
– Why family policy doesn’t increase fertility
– California’s broken daycare and licensing system
– How parenting shapes civic engagement
– Why implementation is as important as ideas
– The cultural costs of childless cities
– Paid Family Leave in California: what’s working, what’s broken
Chapters
00:00 – Intro
02:23 – The State of Global Fertility
07:21 – Implications of Low Fertility Rates
10:30 – California-Specific Challenges
15:51 – Cultural Norms and Their Impact on Family Size
19:11 – The Societal Implications of Fewer Children
23:00 – What Makes People Leave CA
27:45 – Paid Family Leave: Successes and Challenges
34:53 – Easy Fixes to California’s Policies
46:40 – Hope for California’s Future
Newsletter: https://californiafuturesociety.com
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVNumolJuKvqJScBEnhe8hQ
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0zzVSVdCUCTGuZUyl8qZXA
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/california-future-society/id1807612672
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/California-Future-Society/dp/B0F4B2LVGJ
Keywords: California fertility rate, fertility crisis, family policies, parenting, childcare, childcare regulation California, paid family leave California, California governance, population decline, declining birthrates, demographics, cost of living, urban policy podcast, black market daycare, why people aren’t having kids, societal implications, cultural collapse, Noah Johnson, California Future Society, YIMBY movement California, family policy USA, urban families, California politics, affordable housing, implementation challenges, community engagement
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
You rattle off everything on on your sort of pro family wish
list. It does not bring fertility back
to two. You don't want the person to be
like I'm an ex coal miner 7 yearold man with a felony record.
But being able to be good with kids is not actually necessarily
something you have to go to school for.
If people want kids, they have kids and they are willing to
(00:22):
overcome the difficulty. And then for people who can't
afford to comply with that, there is these unlicensed ones
that aren't following any of those rules anyways.
You've created this huge black market for daycare where people
are like, I don't have a license, but I'm really good
with kids. During COVID, you had Florida
and California get into this bigthing about, oh, Florida, we're
pro freedom and all that. California's fertiliaries 152,
(00:45):
Florida's 157. They're basically the same.
Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the California Future
Society podcast. This week I speak with Noah
Johnson, who's a friend of mine from grad school.
And Noah has spent years thinking about fertility issues
and the different policy measures that states, regions,
and countries can try to use to encourage and incentivize people
(01:06):
to have more kids. So why is this a big issue?
Well, because this conversation takes place against the backdrop
of rapidly dropping fertility rates in many developed
countries around the world. It's an issue that a lot of
States and countries are deeply worried about.
Because when your total fertility rate drops below what
we call replacement level, that's 2.1.
(01:27):
That's the number you need to sustain a population at its
current size. Population starts to shrink.
You have fewer and fewer children.
You have few more and more old people.
You have a shrinking society. And this will lead to all types
of negative side effects and secondary issues that countries
really haven't faced before in the history of the world.
In these conversations, I've talked a lot about housing.
(01:47):
We've talked a lot about different policy issues, but
really the future comes down to people.
And if we do not have a robust, vibrant society that will
dramatically reshape what California looks like in the
future. So Noah and I talk a lot about
this, what it takes to try and encourage people to have more
children, the unfortunate stories that there isn't really
a silver bullet from a policy perspective.
(02:07):
Then he and I also brought in the conversation to talk about
the future of the state governance challenges and what
he hopes for for the future of California.
So I had a lot of fun. I'm sure you will too.
As always, subscribe either herewherever you're hearing or
californiafuturesociety.com. With that, here's Noah.
Well, Noah, I'm excited for this.
Excited to have you on. You've been on my my list and
(02:28):
we've talked about this a million times.
It feels like in various forms. And now we're actually doing it
with mics in front of our face and, and recording it.
So excited to have you on. Tell us a bit about yourself and
and your connection to California.
Well, I'm born and raised in California, educated in part by
the state of California. I went to the University of
California for undergrad, got a masters of Georgetown.
(02:48):
They came back and got a pH D inCalifornia at the Rand Graduate
School. And I wrote my dissertation on
California's paid for and leave program because I had my first
and second child while living inCalifornia and reflected a lot
on the benefits of having it, not just financially, but
(03:10):
emotionally and mentally. And so I decided that that's
what I wanted to write my dissertation about.
And now I'm on the job market looking for something else to do
while finishing out my time working for Medicare.
And yeah, I was thinking back toour time in grad school
together. One of the things I was laughing
about was, I think it was in, like, the first month or so, you
(03:31):
made, like, a fake campaign poster about me.
It was like, I think my face on like a Mitt Romney circa 2012
type of body, you know, channelling that kind of, you
know, American, American ideals.So you have a, you know, a sense
of humor as well. You're not your average
statistician or data scientist. Right.
That's right. Well, tell me about let's talk
about this topic of like families and family leaving
(03:52):
children. I feel like there's multiple
angles to it. There's like a macro fear around
total fertility rates and everyone kind of freaking out
about it and what does this meanfor society?
And then there's these like verymore down to earth pragmatic,
like how the heck do I afford daycare?
What do I send my kid to school type of anxiety that maybe you
(04:13):
and I just feel that because we're in that cohort of parents,
you have your two kids. I have a second on the way.
But it also doesn't feel like questions my parents freaked out
about in the same way. It feels like there is a
fundamental shift, like parenting is just harder.
And so let's talk about those dynamics and like the state of
parenting today. Well, yeah, let's start with the
first one, which was about the crisis of fertility.
(04:34):
And you have this pronatalism movement and you're seeing it
around the world in places like Singapore, Taiwan, China, Japan,
South Korea. You have these ultra low
fertility rates, like close to 1.
And what got me sort of into what I ended up doing was I
thought, oh, you know, parental leave in part.
What interested me about it was not only had I just used it, but
(04:55):
I thought, oh, it's super relevant because it obviously
would induce people to have morekids if you make it easier when
someone has a kid. And what I found super
interesting was the literature doesn't really support that.
So in some of the places where fertility is the lowest, you
actually have some of the most generous policies because
they're so desperate to do anything to turn around the
(05:16):
fertility and you don't know what the counterfactual is like.
Maybe would be even worse in South Korea than .9 if they
didn't have those sorts of things.
But clearly, you know, parental leave for both mother and
father, subsidized daycare, babybonus check, all these sorts of
things you'd rattle off everything on on your sort of
pro family wish list. It does not bring fertility back
(05:39):
to two. So there's this sort of counter
follow up to that is this thing called the gender equity
dividend, which says it cannot be policy alone.
You also have to have culture. Women do not want to, once they
have tasted the freedom and independence of going to school
and having a job, they do not want to be a homemaker anymore.
And so you have to sort of reorient your society around
(06:01):
helping women succeed in the workplace.
Have more than just around the birth, but have daycare so that
kids can go to school and have that be affordable while women
work. You need to have men in their
lives. Also pick up some of the
housework. Like in a lot of these places
with ultra low fertility, if youlook at hours spent doing
domestic production, folding laundry, making, doing dishes,
(06:23):
the ones with low fertility often have the lowest male
contribution. One of the things that the
United States actually does relatively well is men's
participation at home. We actually are above the OECD
average on that, even though we're way below on a lot of this
year's standard policy interventions.
So there's sort of that which issort of interesting, which is,
(06:46):
you know, the only times they'vefound policy to affect fertility
was a couple of cases in the former Soviet Union where these
countries had such low fertilitythey're willing to do anything
to increase it. And it's like, sure, if you give
someone basically a subsidy of, let's call it $100,000 a year if
they have kids, like that's enough money that you're going
to move the needle because they're like, OK, my housing is
(07:08):
paid for, I don't have to work, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Sure, I'll have another kid. But that's just not a
sustainable way of boosting fertility.
So that's sort of I think at themacro level.
Well, and you were. Quick before jump in.
Yeah. Before we dive into some of
those more specifics on both thepolicy front and the cultural
front, maybe the question I should have asked as well to
start is like, why is fertility rate and children such a big
(07:31):
concern? You know, I'm thinking about the
future of California, But you know, you hear some of the
rhetoric around the pronatalism movement and people talk about
it like it's an existential threat to society.
Why is that? You know, why is it not just,
oh, the numbers are low, but maybe they're going to go back
up in the future to talk more about some of the big picture
implications before we get into some of the specifics.
Well, I think that the reason that some people get really
(07:53):
worried about it is there's a couple things.
One, growth, economic growth andpopulation growth are one of the
same, right? Like, I mean, that's an
oversimplification, but the morepeople you have working, the
more contribution you have the GDP, the more people you have
making things and providing services.
So there's a huge economic component to it.
And I think there's a cultural crisis.
(08:13):
I think that people at the cultural level are like, there
aren't enough of our people anymore.
And so I think that, you know, you see, there is also, I mean,
some of it I think is intertwined with religiosity.
I think you see some of it as like concern about, you know, in
certain communities, there's like a belief that, you know,
(08:35):
you have a moral responsibility to have more children and, and
you know, from their faith. And so there's a crisis in that
where it's like, you know, Catholics are a classic example.
You know, used to be that there was a stereotype that Catholics
had 12 kids because you are it'sa moral imperative and you just
don't anymore. And I think that that weighs on
some people from a cultural perspective.
So I think that's why. And then honestly, from a
(08:57):
geopolitical 1, you know, peoplethink, I think sometimes China
has a billion people. We only have 350 million.
How can we compete forever? You know, if they catch up on a
productivity basis, then their economy will be more powerful
than ours because they just havethree times so many people.
So I think there's that. I would just jump in and follow
up with what you were saying about like the ease of parenting
(09:17):
and like overcoming things. It's so expensive.
What I find super interesting about this conversation is like
people with Peaches like us, andI think in our educated, like
our level of education and income, there's a lot of this
thought that it's like, oh, well, it's too expensive to have
kids. Typically poor, poor people have
more kids than rich people. And so clearly it's not afford.
If you want to have kids, you find a way to make it work.
(09:39):
And so this is, I think the interesting thing about the
policy intervention too, which is that it's like if people want
kids, they have kids and they are willing to overcome the
difficulty. I mean, I was just talking to a
guy that was doing a termite inspection for me.
He has six kids, OK. My household income is way
higher than his, but he wanted to have a lot of kids.
(10:01):
So he and his wife had six kids,you know?
And so I think that there's thisbubble that certain people live
in that it's like, oh, cost is the problem, but it's not in
that people who maybe that's a philosophy, like maybe some
people who are wealthy were like, if I had more money and I
could continue living my lifestyle, I would have the
third kid. I would get a nanny.
You know, the schools would be good and I could get a bigger
(10:23):
house and a minivan. I would have another kid.
But that is not how the majorityof people look at their
fertility decisions. That's really interesting.
And, you know, I think that costof living factor and the money
factor, I want to dig into that and the psychology around that
because that's where I feel likesome of the challenges are
uniquely Californian, right? The phenomena we've been talking
(10:44):
about, if not completely global,it's it's pretty widespread.
There's a lot of countries grappling with this question.
And it's not just California as well.
It's other states in the United States are also grappling with
this question and this issue of lowered fertility rates.
But in high cost coastal areas, there's no more coastal
expensive place than California in the country.
Some of the psychology around money and affordability become
(11:06):
more prominent. And I want to throw out my my
first theory, but I want you to then to like respond to it and
tell me more. Part of it I feel like is
intergenerational, like a feeling of loss of relative
wealth to how you grew up. So, you know, people grew up,
let's say they're from California with a certain
standard of living. Now 30 years, 20 years later,
when it's their turn to start thinking about having kids or
(11:26):
having kids, the state has sky rocketed in prices.
And so the standard of living that they were accustomed to of
what a good childhood looks like, regardless of where they
were on the income spectrum is largely out of reach unless they
have surpassed their parents an income level.
And so therefore, it feels like,oh, it's really hard to raise a
kid well because it's harder to do what they experienced.
What do you think about that? And tell me any other theories
around California specific concerns.
(11:48):
What I would say is that I thinkthat if you want to look at a
California concern, I think it affects the population.
I think people would rather havekids here, but if they can't,
they want the things they they remember growing up with.
I mean, anecdotally, one of my friends from high school just
moved to Arizona. She had her second kid.
She's like, we cannot afford in the Bay Area the size of the
house with the yard and the quality of schools that we want
(12:09):
with two kids. We're going to Arizona.
So I do think that it affects the population growth and so on
and so forth. But I also think that people,
even within California move. I mean, for my dissertation, I
interviewed people in Sacramentowho like I moved from the Bay
Area because it was just cheaper.
There are places in California that are cheaper.
And I think that you see the those places have benefited from
(12:31):
coastal cities inability to govern themselves and build more
housing and lower prices. What I tell people about the
policy intervention is that it'snot that you make people have
more kids, is that you make themhaving kids more pleasant.
They're not as stressed about making the mortgage.
They're not as stressed about, you know, the quality of their
kids education. They're not, you know, getting
an ulcer because they're like, Ihave to send their my private
(12:54):
school because the schools are so bad.
So I do think that there's, you know, there's some of that, but,
you know, I think you make people's lives easier if they
could save money. I mean, and that's, I mean, I
actually know another couple that they moved to North
Carolina because it was just cheaper.
You know, they had two kids and the husband lost his job and he
was like, we basically can't paythe mortgage for four months on
(13:16):
our savings. We have to move and sell our
house immediately because we canlive with my family in North
Carolina while we get back on our feet.
And now they're like, look, we have a beautiful big house.
You know, like actually now thatwe pulled the, you know, pulled
the plug on living in California, as much as we miss
it, our kids are getting a greatexperience, you know, and so I
do think like the state by making things cheaper would make
(13:37):
it easier for parents. But neither of those parents I
just listed, I think one through33 kids.
So if you made California cheaper, I don't think that that
would affect it. You know, maybe maybe there's
some edge cases. I'm not saying that that's no
for everyone. The other thing, I mean, is that
a lot of policies bring forward a lot of the, the interventions
(14:00):
that they've looked at. It's like, oh, you didn't change
total fertility or fertility goals, but you brought forward
the age of first kit because youmade it more affordable, right?
Like I can now afford having a kid at 30 instead of 35, so I
don't have to be as far up in mycareer.
And So what you could say is like in some cases, and there's
some evidence for this, that like if someone starts having
kids at 30, if they at 40 decidethat they want to have a third
(14:23):
kid, they might, they might be like, look, we had one at 30, we
have one at 35, let's give it another go, who knows.
But if you have your first kid at 30 and your second kid or
sorry, your first kid at 35 and your second kid at 40, you just,
I mean, just the nature of fertility is that it just comes
way, way harder at 45. And so bringing it forward can
help, you know, the total fertility.
(14:46):
But again, it's typically, typically people go into having
kids already knowing how many kids they want.
The biggest correction typicallyis people actually going down
with the number when they see how hard it is.
Now expensive it is. They're like, I wanted three and
now I want two or one. And so usually what doesn't
happen is you're like, oh, we induce people to have kids
earlier and now they're like, oh, yeah, it's so easy.
(15:08):
I'm just going to have more. Because I know usually I think
what happens is for, I think youhave to like, make things
conditional. For someone who always wanted
three kids, they might not be able to make it happen if they
start late because life is so expensive, but you might
facilitate that for other people.
The thing is that culturally, this is where I culture matters
so much is that if everyone you know is having two kids, you end
(15:30):
up having two kids. It's just like sort of like in a
lot of other public policies, social determinants of health,
whatever, smoking, what you see around you is what you lean
towards. So like, I mean, hilariously,
like if you just bribed a bunch of people and having the third
kid, like if you got 1/3 of Americans to have a third kid,
maybe other people like, oh, so many blur.
I mean three now maybe I should try it like you know, but that's
(15:52):
not super feasible. So if I'm hearing you, it's like
oversimplification maybe, but overall there's no like policy
silver bullets to increasing total fertility rate or at least
not strong evidence for any total for, you know, increasing
that There are some cultural cohort elements.
If you're surrounded or in a subculture with a lot of people
having a lot of kids, you are therefore more likely.
(16:13):
And there are, you know, you cantweak things at the margins.
But you know, if the leaders of California were saying, hey, we
want to have more kids outside of making overall life more
affordable and things like that,that there's no silver bullet
that's going to just radically increase the total fertility
rate here or in any other US state.
There's basically no silver bullet whatsoever.
I mean, if you look at places that did successfully raise
(16:33):
their fertility rate, it was what I would call a, so that
it's like the term of the literature is ECEC, early
childhood education and care. You basically build out this
entire suite of policies from like pronatal or like prenatal
care quality there all the way up through like taking care of
the kids and having good public education through middle school,
(16:54):
right? If you can build this robust
policy framework that prioritizes having kids, you can
reverse fertility declines. But even then, even in places
that have considered some of themost successful implementations
of that and have pretty gender egalitarian norms, you still
like get to 2 and then it sort of tops out.
And even think Sweden, which is like held up as one of the most
(17:16):
gender egalitarian and one of the most, you know, public
policy friendly in terms of families countries, I think
they're really like 1.9. So you can, you know, you can
staunch the bleeding, but I think that you sort of hit a
cultural ceiling where, you know, you don't want to be the
only one having five kids. And I mean, you see this decline
(17:38):
happening all around the world in, in places, even with high
levels of things like religiosity, which are typically
correlated, like Saudi Arabia's fertility fell from like 12 to 3
/ 50 years, right? Even in a place where there's,
you know, even you have culturallike other people, people had
big families forever. That would never happen there,
right? But it turned out that even in
(18:00):
Saudi Arabia, women want to be apart of the workforce.
They want to go out, you know, if you encourage women to go to
school and to like see what lifeis like besides just basically
being pregnant for 20 years, youknow, nobody wants to do that
anymore. And so, you know, I think that
that's just a big part of it. The other thing I would say is
like in terms of fantasies in California, even making things
(18:22):
cheaper, if you saw me looking away for a second, I pulled up
just a chloropleth of fertility by state, just to remind myself
some numbers. I mean, states that are doing
wildly different things. Like, you know, during COVID,
you had Florida and California get into this big thing about,
oh, Florida, we're pro freedom and we do all this and we have
lower taxes and we have better weather and we support kids and
(18:45):
you can have vouchers and all that.
California's fertility is 152, Florida's 157.
They're basically the same. Vermont, an incredibly cheap
state, has 1.38. You know, you don't cost of
living alone, you know, there's no single factor that is, you
know, the driving thing behind it.
(19:06):
And that's, I think what makes it such an interesting topic, is
that there's no clear solution. Yeah, great use of chloroplath
there. That's like a, you know, it's an
SAT word. I don't know if I've ever heard
that one. Yeah.
You all. PhD Me.
Yeah, OK. So that's really helpful, like
an overview of the literature and what the policy solutions or
(19:27):
lack of policy solutions there are to this challenge.
I'm curious to just talk about like getting outside the
literature, thinking about the cultural impacts of fewer
children. You know, you and I are both
multi generation Californians and California, particularly in
that post war era was held up more or less is the best place
to raise kids that you had this really robust quality education
(19:50):
system. The suburban housing boom was
underway with freeways so you could afford a home but still
have access to these world classlabor markets.
It was more economically diverse.
It was, you know, ethnically diverse.
It was a place where anyone could come and raise a family.
And it was also had that post war boosterism, you know,
optimism towards the future. And you know, I hear people talk
(20:12):
about, and I think about it as well, where having kids invest
you in the future generation. Like a few episodes ago, I was
talking to the founders of Grow SF and one of the founders, his
founding story was I had kids. I cared about the city, I wanted
to see it improve. So I left my like tech job and
just went all in on fixing the city, right?
It was like for him, that was a pivotal life moment.
And you think, oh, in a counterfactual world where he
didn't have kids, maybe he didn't go down that path, right?
(20:36):
I'm curious, like, what do you think are the societal
implications of just kids being less and less of a norm and
being less common? And how does that shape our view
of the future? Well, I'm gonna not look at the
state level and I'm gonna go back to grow a stuff, right.
So there was a stat that people were showing for a while that
there were more dog parks in SanFrancisco than parks for kids.
(20:58):
And I think that you can get into a downward spiral in terms
of a place growing in that if nobody else has kids and there's
not robust infrastructure to enjoy having kids, there's not
other people that hang out with.You go to the park and it's for
dogs and you're like, where's the playground?
And increasingly you're like, well, if I want to go somewhere
where there are kids, so you move to the suburbs or you move
(21:19):
to a different state or whatever.
I think for cities it's been really bad.
One of my big issues. I mean, I would say I also like
used to care a lot more about federal politics.
And then I had kids and I'm like, actually what matters is
like the fact that my kid, there's no sidewalk on the
street near me and my kid get hit by a car or I care a lot
more about the school. I'm like way more invested in
(21:40):
the success of my daughter's charter school than about
federal education policy. So I think that when people have
kids, I don't know that they're as invested necessarily the
state level, but I think at the local level, they definitely get
more invested. And I think that that's good
because if everyone is invested in the cities, then the state
benefits, right? I think that a big issue is like
if you want people to stay in cities when they have kids, you
(22:03):
do need to make it more affordable.
You need to just build like a lot of the stuff that is built
today are one and two bedrooms because of, I don't know, the
incentives of housing and building for young people.
They just don't think families want to live in cities.
There's not a lot of three bed, 2 baths.
So it's just hard to find a place to live.
And honestly, one of the biggestthings that I think cities have
failed at is the schools are terrible.
I mean, like the big urban cities, not necessarily small
cities, but like, I mean, you care so much about your kids
(22:28):
education, right? And the idea that you can just
allow half the city, half of saySan Francisco's or Oakland
schools to just be at the bottomof state rankings.
Of course people are going to leave for the suburbs, right?
There's better schools. And they, I mean, people care so
desperately about their kids education.
I mean, my daughter goes to a charter school and you can see
it. People, people work hard to get
(22:48):
into the lottery because they are willing to like they're
like, I don't have the money to go to private, but there's an
opportunity to go to a much better school than the one
that's in my neighborhood. So I'm going to enter the
lottery, right? There's almost like a child
equivalent to the urban doom loop that people talk about,
right? The urban doom loop being this
concept that people are talking about during COVID where you
have businesses, people start tomove out.
(23:10):
Maybe people don't feel safe in the city.
And then add that decline begetsmore decline, right?
As as businesses leave, there's less foot traffic.
The urban core then goes furtherand further South, and what
you're describing is almost likea parallel with children, right?
When a city has fewer children, there's fewer parks, there's
fewer amenities, there's fewer families raising kids so that
(23:32):
you then feel more isolated raising kids and makes it even
more hostile to having kids in that city, which then just makes
it so much worse. Tell me more about your
involvement. I know you're talking about
like, caring more about streets and schools.
Didn't you do something with your local street sign to try
and increase safety? Industry, I mean, I got into it
(23:56):
with the city of Oakland, right?Because they, there's no, so
there's a street that goes into the local like business district
by me, right? And it's has a turn like this
and people whip around it reallyfast and there's no sidewalk.
And the city wouldn't do anything.
And I did everything I could theway you're supposed to.
I wrote my city Councilwoman, I contacted the Department of
(24:19):
Transportation, I filed 311 requests.
I organized other people to filetheir own requests.
I did everything that you're supposed to do.
And basically the city of Oakland said, sorry, we score
these issues with an equity scoring system.
And because you live in a high income neighborhood, your issue
is just not getting a good equity score so you'll never get
(24:41):
help. And I'm like, that's a
ridiculous way of doing things. But you know, you know, I get
it. You know, in other places the
situation is worse, but that doesn't mean my situation isn't
bad. And so I took it upon myself to
add some sort of pedestrian safety stuff.
And it's just frustrating because I'm like, I would love
for my daughter to be independent enough that she can
walk into the business district by herself, but I just, it's not
(25:05):
safe. It's not physically safe.
Or like, for example, there's a homeless and came in across the
street from my daughter's elementary school and I haven't
been at it with my city Councilwoman and the 311
complaint department. I'm like, this is unacceptable.
Like, it's one thing to have homeless encampments all over
Oakland, which they do, but across the street from a school,
(25:26):
like with little kids, like we have people doing drugs in the
open air. And so I, I think that those
frustrations like you're willingto tolerate in your 20s to live
in the city so you can go out and do fun stuff at night, but
when you're a parent, you're like, I don't want my kid
watching someone smoke PCP on the way to school.
I mean, it's just ridiculous. And so I think that if cities
(25:47):
want to retain families, they just have to do a better job
governing. And so I think that, you know,
the, the interesting thing aboutsort of what you're looking at,
which is the future of the stateis I actually don't know that
like, OK, my neighbors that are thinking about leaving Oakland
don't talk about leaving for another state.
They talk about moving to Marin or the South Bay or what have
you. And so the issue is not so much
(26:09):
I think for the state, but I think you want people to live in
the cities because those are theengines of economic growth,
right? That's that's where so much
opportunity is. And so you want people to live
in C's and you want C's to grow.And so they're not gonna grow if
you don't have that so. I almost wonder if the
conversation about leaving the state matters more in the less
(26:31):
expensive parts of the state. Right.
So for the Socal comparison, I live in West LA.
If that's too expensive, then maybe you move to where I grew
up in the Inland Empire because it's more affordable, right?
But for the families I know in my hometown from the Inland
Empire where they can't afford to make it there, there's not
much further down. Like you can go out to Barstow
or like deep into the desert or the Central Valley or something,
(26:52):
but it's a lifestyle shift. And for a lot of families there,
it's like if I'm doing that, I might as well go to like the
north Dallas suburbs or I might as well go to Texas.
So I wonder if it's like you go further down the ladder and then
in terms of price and to the more affordable areas, but once
you're in those already affordable more inland parts of
California, like at that point we jump in state lines.
There's, I mean, that's the interesting thing about what you
(27:13):
mentioned though, is that there's a difference between
affordability and opportunity orthere's a blend, right?
You want to go to a city like Dallas because there's jobs, but
it's cheaper, right? You could find cheaper in
California. You could move like you said to
Barstow and it'd be perfect, plenty cheap.
And so you want places that are both affordable and have
opportunity. And I think that there's just
(27:34):
been a huge missed opportunity in California to make California
cities those places. And so, you know, I think it's a
challenge. Well, on the topic of
governance, you talked about paid family leave in California.
California has been a pioneer, as they often are on certain
issues, and they've been one of the national leaders on paid
(27:54):
family leave. So has it been a success?
And tell me more about the way it's governed, the way it's
managed. Are there any issues with kind
of the day-to-day operations? How has it gone so far for
California? So California was the first
state to offer paid family leaveand in 2002 they passed the law.
And then it took two years to get the program up and running.
So it started actually paying out benefits in 2004 because the
(28:16):
United States does not have a federal paid family leave
program. It was the first one in the
entire United States. It was public on and if you ask
people who used it, which I did,I mean only 61 people, but
generally people like it becausewho wouldn't enjoy getting paid
to spend time with their kid? People support the program.
People who used it, people who didn't use it, we're like, it's
(28:36):
a good idea. The frustration that I came
across, and this is not just in my research, but as a parent who
hangs out with a lot of other parents who tried to use the
program or did use the program, the implementation has been
lacking. So there are all sorts of issues
with how the website works with getting a hold of someone on the
phone. You have a problem and you're
(28:58):
not getting your benefits issueswith employers being frustrated
that so much stuff is done by mail.
I mean, this is just a classic example of, I think to get on a
political soapbox. I think Democrats often times
have a great idea like, let's make people leave and then they
pass the bill and then they're like, OK, it's done.
(29:21):
Implementation matters, OK. And so like, you have to follow
up and be like, do people like how this is operated?
Is it well operated? Me.
Most people say, yeah, it was great.
I'm glad I got the money. But like, I really hated the
experience of having to go through the bureaucracy.
And that's not the brand you want.
You know, if your brand is government and people say, I
(29:41):
like the benefits I get from thegovernment, but I hate
interacting with the government.That's really not what you want.
I mean, for example, OK, so if you're a woman and you take
leave in California and you havea baby, you can you can take
disability and paid family leave.
You get disability to recover from the physical pregnancy and
(30:03):
then you get paid family leave for bonding.
Both programs state disability and paid family leave are run by
the employment Development department, EDD, and yet they
are completely they have different apps, they have
different applications, They do tracking systems.
And most of them were like the SDI 1 was great and the PFL one
(30:24):
was terrible. And not only did I not
understand why I had to transition from to the other, I
didn't understand why 1 was so good and 1 was so bad if they're
run by the same agency. And so I think that that's like
a frustration. You know, I think California has
been doing a bunch of things during COVID.
There was a as I think people were realizing how the impact on
(30:50):
children's development from having to be home.
There were some people sort of dreaming big about what to do.
And Newsome put out a road map for like all sorts of things
that would sort of create a holistic approach, like sort of
I mentioned is sort of like bestpractice towards early childhood
education and care. For example, making universal TK
(31:10):
is like a big one, right? So now in California public
schools you can start or you will soon it will be universal.
You can enroll your kids in school starting at 4 instead of
at 5. And the governor said that I
mean, one of their goals was to do it by three eventually, or at
least in some cases. And it's a huge help for
families because childcare is super expensive.
(31:32):
I mean, you know, often times daycare prices range from 1500
to $3500 depending on quality and how much time you use.
And so you know that that's really helpful.
But again, like implementation, right?
So I know where I live, a lot ofpeople move to my neighborhood
because as great elementary school and they ostensibly have
(31:52):
TK program. And yet so many people, I know
their kids when they're eligiblefor TK, we're like, oh, we don't
have room. You are guaranteed right to TK
by the state, but because our school doesn't have room, you
have to drive 45 minutes to a different school in Oakland
that's like way far from your house.
It's like, wait, excuse me, what?
(32:13):
I paid all this money to live inthis neighborhood for the
school. And so, you know, how was it
that they, they got so flat footed that they were like, oh,
you didn't notice that like all these young families were moving
to the neighborhood or like, or that increasingly you were
getting further and further behind or had larger and larger
weight lists for TK and you justdidn't build out any more, you
know, infrastructure. And I think this stuff gets
(32:34):
caught up in local politics. Like there's a huge fight right
now about closing down some. So in Oakland, where I live, the
OUSD enrollment has fallen precipitously in the last 20
years. I don't remember the exact
numbers, but let's say it's over10%, right?
And I know a lot of school districts are like that, like
LAUSD is going through a lot of similar issues down here.
(32:57):
And it's from fertility declineswhere there's just fewer kids,
right? And so the city has been trying
to close schools because in in theory, if you're in a
neighborhood where fertility hasbeen falling, but then if you're
in my neighborhood where fertility is, fertility is not
rising. People are having kids and then
moving there for the elementary school, But you have a higher
fertility rate, you have more kids in the pipeline.
You should be taking resources from the school where enrollment
(33:20):
is going down, down and down andputting the resources to where
it's going up to build more facilities and so forth.
The politics is too difficult because it looks like you're
taking money from a poorer district or, you know,
neighborhood, you're giving it to a rich neighborhood.
And just generally people like their schools.
They have an emotional attachment to them.
And so whenever they try and close the school, there's this
big, you know, brouhaha and thenit doesn't close.
(33:42):
And so yes, they made TK universal and I think that's a
great policy. And you know, in terms of making
some making having kids more affordable, if if that is the
thing that's hanging people up on not having their next kid,
that is a huge factor. Certainly bringing it forwards
right. But if you then are like, well,
(34:03):
we're gonna guarantee you TK, but we might make it so that
it's so inconvenient that you don't use the benefit.
What did you really accomplish? And so I think that that is.
Yeah, having to guarantee you TK, but then showing up and not
being able to access at your local school.
That's like making the rental car reservation and then showing
up and they don't have a car andyou're like, what?
What do you mean you don't have a car?
Like what? Or no, no, no.
(34:23):
It's like, it's like in LA it's like you show up at LAX and
they're like, no, we have your car, but it's at the Burbank
airport and you're like, wait a second.
What? Like they'll go.
We said we would get you a rental car.
We just didn't say it would be at the airport you're flying
into. What made you think that that
would be where you got your, youknow, your car?
Yeah. And so parents are frustrated.
(34:44):
And then I think it discredits, you know, the idea of policy.
When you influence it really, really poorly, then people lose
faith in the idea that policy can can have a positive impact.
Yeah, And I know that's such a bigger conversation happening
right now with abundance and these other things, but it's so
true, right? Like even just macro scale
people talking about Newsome's hopes to run for president.
Yeah, like. High speed rail in California.
(35:07):
It's easy to make fun of it and mock it, but like 30 billion
without any functional trains going anywhere like.
Train to nowhere. That's all people know.
So many people aren't following policy closely.
They don't know the intricacies of all their favorite programs.
All they know is like California, didn't you spend 10s
of billions of dollars on a project that doesn't work?
Don't use waste. You know, billions of dollars in
(35:27):
these different things. Like that project alone, I feel
like will set back the hopes andambitions of what people think
the government can achieve in the future because they just
think, oh, when we try big things, it goes really horribly
versus in previous eras. It's, you know, the successes
build on each other When you canbuild like the UC system or you
know, like California Aqueduct or these other large scale
(35:48):
infrastructure projects of various sorts.
You do that, you succeed and then people have more belief
that the next grand vision will actually translate into reality.
When you don't actually deliver on any of your promises, people
don't believe your promises downthe road.
Yeah. Or if you're trying to market
yourself, like I think back to the limitation thing, it's like
if you're like, well, we passed California paid family leave,
(36:08):
we're so great and progressive, you're going to find 100 people
who are like, this was my terrible experience with the
program. Yeah.
And then it's just from a marketing perspective, you have
a hard time, you know, getting support or building on that, you
know, and like I said, all of you who took it were like, I'm
so glad I got it. I just, why did you have to make
(36:28):
it so hard for me, right? Like, you know, there's just
such easy and obvious fixes likethe one I talk about that
they're thinking about changing.They haven't changed it yet.
There's consideration, but you can't apply for your parental
leave benefits until after you have the kid.
And if it's your first kid, there's like nothing more
disorienting than like entering parenthood and being like, Oh my
(36:49):
God, I'm responsible for anotherlife.
If you're a woman, you just gavebirth, you've got postpartum
depression, you have physical recovery of all these things
going on. And you like are supposed to be
filling out some paperwork online and jumping through like
a bunch of bureaucratic of hoops.
Like, why would you do that? Why don't you let people fill
out the paperwork 14 day, like within a window beforehand?
Like, I don't know, like I always say, I'm like, maybe
(37:12):
they're worried that you won't have the kid, the kid won't like
survive childbirth and then you would get benefits for nothing.
I'm like, fine, if someone lost their child during childbirth,
just give them the money as as athat.
I'm so sorry that happened to you.
Also, infant mortality is incredibly low.
So that's a ridiculous reason tohave that as a burden, right?
(37:33):
And how much harder would it be to allow people to send in the
application earlier, like come on, state of California.
And so, you know, it's just, I think easy stuff that that
there's whatever the bureaucratic holdup.
Sorry, I don't really understand.
And no one would ever design theprogram that way intentionally.
It's always like this downstreameffect of like a bunch of small
(37:55):
decisions made by different legal departments.
No one's sitting there like, youknow, it'd be perfect.
What if we take, you know, womenwho are in the most like,
fragile physically and emotionalstate after giving birth and
force them to go through the DMVtwice, right?
No one's sitting there concocting that as a brilliant
policy scheme for how to how to help mothers in a very
progressive fashion. No, probably what happened was
they were like, well to be eligible for the program you
(38:16):
have to have had a kid. So we will just make you have to
have had the kid before you can apply.
And like, that seems straightforward in that meeting.
And then. But then what's frustrating
about I think public policy in general, too, is this like,
right now, they're researching whether to change it, right.
This is like, you know, you mentioned abundance.
It was it the fetish for fetish for proceduralism?
It's like, why just change it? Yeah, it's really stupid.
(38:40):
Like it's really hard to understand why there's just less
action on things. And, you know, and that's what's
frustrating. So I pulled up this list that
they made of things that they care about on this California
for all kids, you know, great start for their future.
And, you know, it says we want to provide comprehensive early
(39:01):
learning for and care for infants and toddlers.
Every family should be able to access those.
We want to promote readiness forlike academics for everyone,
grow the quality size, ability of the workforce, right?
So this is actually been a big problem with implementing the TK
everywhere is also just not enough qualified teachers.
(39:22):
So you know, they have these goals, but then when you see how
they implemented other things, it's like, do I trust you to do
that, right? Like, OK, for example, right,
this is, I mean, if you want to go to a classic economic policy
argument is build a competency based licensure and workforce
development system, OK, look, you need more people desperately
(39:44):
to work in taking care of kids. And I get that there should be a
threshold of competency for doing this, but also
occupational licensing throws upall of these burdens, right?
And, you know, I just don't really believe that that you're
helping like maybe to a certain degree, like you don't want the
(40:04):
person to be like, I'm an ex coal miner, 7 year old man with
a felony record. Yeah, obviously that's a no,
but. Being able to be good with kids
is not actually necessarily something you have to go to
school for. And also occupational licensing
as an infrastructure, it costs money to run the infrastructure
(40:24):
to make sure that that happens, but also cost money for people
to get all that stuff and that gets passed on to the consumer.
I mean, this just kills me. OK, so in terms of the cost of
child care, right? What happens is like, I pay a
ton of money for child care because my kid goes to a
licensed daycare where everyone complies all the rules doing so,
(40:44):
which is insured and so on and so forth.
And they've probably got all sorts of liability issues
they're worried about. And a lot of places won't even
rent to a daycare because of theworried about lawsuits.
And so they have to pay a bunch,OK.
The ratios Teachers, students. Etcetera, which are all laws
that were passed in good faith. Every single one of the like
(41:06):
rules that when you stack them all up, each one was passed in
good faith. But because like, let's, I'm
just gonna make up an example. This is what I always do.
I say, look, let's say a kid choked on a marble at a daycare.
Then the news gets out and someone in Sacramento says we
need a law that says that there cannot be marbles at daycares.
And then someone have the daycare has to spend their time
(41:26):
making sure nobody accidentally brings in marbles.
They have to like have a marble inspector come and make sure.
That. You end up blaring all the stuff
up and then it becomes really expensive and difficult to
comply. People like, I just don't want
to open a daycare and deal with the hassle, right?
So then you have a really expensive tier for the people to
comply. And then for people who can't
(41:48):
afford to comply with that, there's these unlicensed ones
that aren't following any of those rules anyways.
You've created this huge black market for daycare where people
are like, I don't have a license, but I'm really good
with kids and through word of mouth, people just trust me with
their kids and I run out of my backyard.
And there's none of those rules being of course, OK, so.
(42:08):
Who did you like? Black market daycare is such a
funny phrase, but no, it's totally true.
Who did you help? Who did you help California with
all these rules? And again, I'm not saying there
should be no regulation, but theamount of regulation that you've
put on daycares has created A2 tiered system that is not
working for anyone. You have the one group that is
paying a ton of money and it's barely affordable for them and
they're unhappy with the cost, which is almost if not more than
(42:31):
their mortgage in some cases, especially if you have two kids.
And then for the other people, none of they're not getting any
of the benefits of all of the regulations that you think are
important because it's too costly to implement though.
So it's a lose lose. And so, I don't know, it's
frustrating that everything, I think a lot of these things are
done in good faith. Yeah.
I mean, who wouldn't want to help kids?
(42:52):
Who wouldn't want to protect kids?
For the children, Noah. For the children.
Yes, for the children. And so I understand the politics
of passing these laws looks goodbecause it looks like you're
helping kids and nobody wants tovote no.
And then what you end up is hurting kids because you've made
their parents life financially stressful or you've put them in
these completely unlicensed places where, I mean, it's
(43:12):
probably fine, you know, but if you believe those those things
matter, then you've driven them out of if you believe that
licensed day cares are important, you've driven people
away by making them too costly. There's a parallel here to
cannabis, you know, children in cannabis, the two canonical
policy case. Studies and all, yeah.
I. Mean they gummies, you know,
(43:32):
gummies. Yeah, there's some there's some
overlap in the Venn diagram, butyou know, California had a black
market pot market like every other state that had where
cannabis was legal. They legalized it.
And as part of legalization, it wasn't just, hey, we're going to
legalize it and bring it out, but we're also going to add on
all these requirements, all these.
(43:52):
A lot of municipalities looked at it as a way to generate
revenue. So they're going to pass fees
someplace. It made it like an equity thing.
We're going to have special programs so that people who are
harmed by the war on. Only if you're a queer ex felon
of color can you open a cannabisdispensary.
So New York did. And you know what?
Yeah. Anyways, I'll let you finish the
story because you know where this is going.
No, but yeah. And then even like just the
additional licensing and testingrequirements, all these extra
(44:14):
fees made it so much more expensive.
The consumers were like, well, I'm not going to stop going to
my local weed guy previously wasgoing to when it's, you know, 3X
the price or whatever for the legalized stuff.
And so that you can have a similar dynamic where the people
who are playing by the rules arepaying enormous costs and are
struggling with consumers and the black market that you were
supposedly flushing out is continuing to thrive.
(44:36):
And so then, you know, the people who are playing by the
rules are pissed off. They're like, hey, there's the
unlicensed weed shop down the street that you're cracking down
on. Yeah.
So anyways, kids and weed. Yeah.
You know that's. AI mean the the parallel is apt.
I mean it is true like what's happened here happened in a lot
of states that that legalized New York.
They had this really equity based program for who was going
(44:57):
to get licenses and then what ended up happening it took so
long that a bunch of unlicensed ones just opened up and
basically established their brands and you know so and so
forth. By the time the ones that got
open by going through the process were there, they
couldn't compete with the unlicensed stores that were just
thriving. Or you mean, not to say they all
went under, but this has happened in Oakland.
Some of some of the dispensariesthat were like touted for, you
(45:18):
know, being owned a small business, black-owned, small
business owns over. They're like, I went out of
business because I'm competing against the unlicensed people.
And you don't do anything to enforce those.
So you don't end up helping anyone.
And so I just, I think that I remind policy makers that
sometimes simpler is better. Yeah, I mean, I joke people all
(45:39):
the time about the California paid family leave one again,
like for example, there's like afour tiered benefit system
that's based on your average quarterly earnings of the first
four of the last five quarters, huh?
Like, and your pay band, your renumeration rate is a
reflection of the proportion your income is of the statewide
(46:03):
and average quarterly earning inthat quarter.
People are trying to like figureout if they can pay the rent
while they are on leave. And you've given them this
absurdly complicated systems andnavigate.
And the state says, well, there's a calculator.
And then people I talked to, we're like, yeah, there's a
calculator. And they're like, how much do
you make? You type it in?
And they're like, this is what we think, but there's no
guarantee that's actually what you're going to get.
(46:25):
And by the way, there's like a bunch of questions they ask
them. They might not even know the
answer to the questions. So it's just frustrating.
I think you can be well meeting and want to help kids, but I
don't know that you are actuallyhelping kids.
Yeah, well, I don't want to end on a sour note.
What, Yeah, are some of the things that give you hope about
(46:46):
the future of California and things that you hope we see
improve during our lifetime by the time our kids are old enough
to complain about policy when they're our age?
Well, the weather here is probably going to be good for
long times by climate change. So I think we will still have
that relative to other places. I mean, you mentioned the grow
is up thing. Yeah, I think people are
(47:08):
increasingly frustrated and it has taken surprisingly long for
the feedback loop to catch up with policymakers.
But I mean, if you look at what happened in San Francisco with
the most recent election, I mean, you can even go back to
the special election before thaton the, you know, when Chesa
Boudin got ousted for his super overly progressive, progressive,
(47:31):
progressive prosecutor sort of ideas.
And like, for example, back to the schools, you know, the board
of the supervisors for schools, their superintendents or
whatever. You know, three people got
ousted because of two big things.
One, they spent a bunch of time during COVID debating whether to
rename the schools and not like reopening the schools.
(47:51):
And they wanted to remove the merit exam for getting into
Lowell, which is a really excellent public charter that
you have to get in via a merit exam.
And I think like there was that and then the most recent
election where basically anyone left the center just got ousted
in like some of the most anti growth people, the biggest sort
of NIMD people on the Board of Supervisors all lost their jobs
(48:13):
and Laurie won. And as I mean, people are tired
of it. People are like, I want my city
and the place I live in to like do better.
And like, for example, my city Councilwoman, who I've sent a
lot of emails to, like, you know, there's stuff that like
she's mentioning now, like a public safety is her number one
issue now, you know, and we needto save the streets.
Like, I think people are gettingthe message.
(48:33):
But even stuff like permitting reform, I was looking at her her
she's running for re election and one of her top issues is
permitting reform. Some of the nuts and bolts of
what I think is making things hard that are not the sexy parts
of policy are getting more attention.
And I'm hopeful that the more City Council people are like,
oh, actually we need to make it reform permitting so that people
(48:55):
can it's profitable to build housing for people.
You know, I think that's good. I think the YIMBY movement has
like woken a lot of people up tosome of the esoterica of of what
we need to do. So I think I'm optimistic that
policy makers are starting to get frustrated.
And I think Gordon Newsome, you mentioned his political
aspirations. I think that he knows that you
(49:15):
can't run for president and havelike, you know, 100,000 unhoused
people on the major metro areas.Yeah.
And so I think that I'm optimistic that things are
trending in the right direction.I think people are frustrated.
I'm, I'm overall bullish on on California cities.
I think that people are are frustrated and things are moving
(49:36):
in the right direction. Yeah, well, I hope that you're
right. And I similarly it's good to
hear that permanent reform's on the menu.
It's putting butts in seats in the Oakland local elections,
right? People excited about the nuts
and bolts as. We're both nuts and.
Bolts kind of guys, yeah. I have been to City Council
meetings now to advocate for my various issues and it's
(49:58):
impressive. Anything gets done.
But you have to do, you have to do the minutia of being like you
are thinking about passing this permit rule that will actually
make it harder to build things. And you just, I mean, so much as
it can be frustrating to have toget involved.
You know, you got to get involved.
You have to go to these meetingsbecause those people listen.
(50:18):
Yeah. Well, Noah, appreciate your
time. Appreciate you talking about all
this. And of course, glad they were
able to stay in touch. Yeah, me too.
Thanks man, it's been good.
You rattle off everything on on your sort of pro family wish
list. It does not bring fertility back
to two. You don't want the person to be
like I'm an ex coal miner 7 yearold man with a felony record.
But being able to be good with kids is not actually necessarily
something you have to go to school for.
If people want kids, they have kids and they are willing to
(00:22):
overcome the difficulty. And then for people who can't
afford to comply with that, there is these unlicensed ones
that aren't following any of those rules anyways.
You've created this huge black market for daycare where people
are like, I don't have a license, but I'm really good
with kids. During COVID, you had Florida
and California get into this bigthing about, oh, Florida, we're
pro freedom and all that. California's fertiliaries 152,
(00:45):
Florida's 157. They're basically the same.
Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the California Future
Society podcast. This week I speak with Noah
Johnson, who's a friend of mine from grad school.
And Noah has spent years thinking about fertility issues
and the different policy measures that states, regions,
and countries can try to use to encourage and incentivize people
(01:06):
to have more kids. So why is this a big issue?
Well, because this conversation takes place against the backdrop
of rapidly dropping fertility rates in many developed
countries around the world. It's an issue that a lot of
States and countries are deeply worried about.
Because when your total fertility rate drops below what
we call replacement level, that's 2.1.
(01:27):
That's the number you need to sustain a population at its
current size. Population starts to shrink.
You have fewer and fewer children.
You have few more and more old people.
You have a shrinking society. And this will lead to all types
of negative side effects and secondary issues that countries
really haven't faced before in the history of the world.
In these conversations, I've talked a lot about housing.
(01:47):
We've talked a lot about different policy issues, but
really the future comes down to people.
And if we do not have a robust, vibrant society that will
dramatically reshape what California looks like in the
future. So Noah and I talk a lot about
this, what it takes to try and encourage people to have more
children, the unfortunate stories that there isn't really
a silver bullet from a policy perspective.
(02:07):
Then he and I also brought in the conversation to talk about
the future of the state governance challenges and what
he hopes for for the future of California.
So I had a lot of fun. I'm sure you will too.
As always, subscribe either herewherever you're hearing or
californiafuturesociety.com. With that, here's Noah.
Well, Noah, I'm excited for this.
Excited to have you on. You've been on my my list and
(02:28):
we've talked about this a million times.
It feels like in various forms. And now we're actually doing it
with mics in front of our face and, and recording it.
So excited to have you on. Tell us a bit about yourself and
and your connection to California.
Well, I'm born and raised in California, educated in part by
the state of California. I went to the University of
California for undergrad, got a masters of Georgetown.
(02:48):
They came back and got a pH D inCalifornia at the Rand Graduate
School. And I wrote my dissertation on
California's paid for and leave program because I had my first
and second child while living inCalifornia and reflected a lot
on the benefits of having it, not just financially, but
(03:10):
emotionally and mentally. And so I decided that that's
what I wanted to write my dissertation about.
And now I'm on the job market looking for something else to do
while finishing out my time working for Medicare.
And yeah, I was thinking back toour time in grad school
together. One of the things I was laughing
about was, I think it was in, like, the first month or so, you
(03:31):
made, like, a fake campaign poster about me.
It was like, I think my face on like a Mitt Romney circa 2012
type of body, you know, channelling that kind of, you
know, American, American ideals.So you have a, you know, a sense
of humor as well. You're not your average
statistician or data scientist. Right.
That's right. Well, tell me about let's talk
about this topic of like families and family leaving
(03:52):
children. I feel like there's multiple
angles to it. There's like a macro fear around
total fertility rates and everyone kind of freaking out
about it and what does this meanfor society?
And then there's these like verymore down to earth pragmatic,
like how the heck do I afford daycare?
What do I send my kid to school type of anxiety that maybe you
(04:13):
and I just feel that because we're in that cohort of parents,
you have your two kids. I have a second on the way.
But it also doesn't feel like questions my parents freaked out
about in the same way. It feels like there is a
fundamental shift, like parenting is just harder.
And so let's talk about those dynamics and like the state of
parenting today. Well, yeah, let's start with the
first one, which was about the crisis of fertility.
(04:34):
And you have this pronatalism movement and you're seeing it
around the world in places like Singapore, Taiwan, China, Japan,
South Korea. You have these ultra low
fertility rates, like close to 1.
And what got me sort of into what I ended up doing was I
thought, oh, you know, parental leave in part.
What interested me about it was not only had I just used it, but
(04:55):
I thought, oh, it's super relevant because it obviously
would induce people to have morekids if you make it easier when
someone has a kid. And what I found super
interesting was the literature doesn't really support that.
So in some of the places where fertility is the lowest, you
actually have some of the most generous policies because
they're so desperate to do anything to turn around the
(05:16):
fertility and you don't know what the counterfactual is like.
Maybe would be even worse in South Korea than .9 if they
didn't have those sorts of things.
But clearly, you know, parental leave for both mother and
father, subsidized daycare, babybonus check, all these sorts of
things you'd rattle off everything on on your sort of
pro family wish list. It does not bring fertility back
(05:39):
to two. So there's this sort of counter
follow up to that is this thing called the gender equity
dividend, which says it cannot be policy alone.
You also have to have culture. Women do not want to, once they
have tasted the freedom and independence of going to school
and having a job, they do not want to be a homemaker anymore.
And so you have to sort of reorient your society around
(06:01):
helping women succeed in the workplace.
Have more than just around the birth, but have daycare so that
kids can go to school and have that be affordable while women
work. You need to have men in their
lives. Also pick up some of the
housework. Like in a lot of these places
with ultra low fertility, if youlook at hours spent doing
domestic production, folding laundry, making, doing dishes,
(06:23):
the ones with low fertility often have the lowest male
contribution. One of the things that the
United States actually does relatively well is men's
participation at home. We actually are above the OECD
average on that, even though we're way below on a lot of this
year's standard policy interventions.
So there's sort of that which issort of interesting, which is,
(06:46):
you know, the only times they'vefound policy to affect fertility
was a couple of cases in the former Soviet Union where these
countries had such low fertilitythey're willing to do anything
to increase it. And it's like, sure, if you give
someone basically a subsidy of, let's call it $100,000 a year if
they have kids, like that's enough money that you're going
to move the needle because they're like, OK, my housing is
(07:08):
paid for, I don't have to work, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Sure, I'll have another kid. But that's just not a
sustainable way of boosting fertility.
So that's sort of I think at themacro level.
Well, and you were. Quick before jump in.
Yeah. Before we dive into some of
those more specifics on both thepolicy front and the cultural
front, maybe the question I should have asked as well to
start is like, why is fertility rate and children such a big
(07:31):
concern? You know, I'm thinking about the
future of California, But you know, you hear some of the
rhetoric around the pronatalism movement and people talk about
it like it's an existential threat to society.
Why is that? You know, why is it not just,
oh, the numbers are low, but maybe they're going to go back
up in the future to talk more about some of the big picture
implications before we get into some of the specifics.
Well, I think that the reason that some people get really
(07:53):
worried about it is there's a couple things.
One, growth, economic growth andpopulation growth are one of the
same, right? Like, I mean, that's an
oversimplification, but the morepeople you have working, the
more contribution you have the GDP, the more people you have
making things and providing services.
So there's a huge economic component to it.
And I think there's a cultural crisis.
(08:13):
I think that people at the cultural level are like, there
aren't enough of our people anymore.
And so I think that, you know, you see, there is also, I mean,
some of it I think is intertwined with religiosity.
I think you see some of it as like concern about, you know, in
certain communities, there's like a belief that, you know,
(08:35):
you have a moral responsibility to have more children and, and
you know, from their faith. And so there's a crisis in that
where it's like, you know, Catholics are a classic example.
You know, used to be that there was a stereotype that Catholics
had 12 kids because you are it'sa moral imperative and you just
don't anymore. And I think that that weighs on
some people from a cultural perspective.
So I think that's why. And then honestly, from a
(08:57):
geopolitical 1, you know, peoplethink, I think sometimes China
has a billion people. We only have 350 million.
How can we compete forever? You know, if they catch up on a
productivity basis, then their economy will be more powerful
than ours because they just havethree times so many people.
So I think there's that. I would just jump in and follow
up with what you were saying about like the ease of parenting
(09:17):
and like overcoming things. It's so expensive.
What I find super interesting about this conversation is like
people with Peaches like us, andI think in our educated, like
our level of education and income, there's a lot of this
thought that it's like, oh, well, it's too expensive to have
kids. Typically poor, poor people have
more kids than rich people. And so clearly it's not afford.
If you want to have kids, you find a way to make it work.
(09:39):
And so this is, I think the interesting thing about the
policy intervention too, which is that it's like if people want
kids, they have kids and they are willing to overcome the
difficulty. I mean, I was just talking to a
guy that was doing a termite inspection for me.
He has six kids, OK. My household income is way
higher than his, but he wanted to have a lot of kids.
(10:01):
So he and his wife had six kids,you know?
And so I think that there's thisbubble that certain people live
in that it's like, oh, cost is the problem, but it's not in
that people who maybe that's a philosophy, like maybe some
people who are wealthy were like, if I had more money and I
could continue living my lifestyle, I would have the
third kid. I would get a nanny.
You know, the schools would be good and I could get a bigger
(10:23):
house and a minivan. I would have another kid.
But that is not how the majorityof people look at their
fertility decisions. That's really interesting.
And, you know, I think that costof living factor and the money
factor, I want to dig into that and the psychology around that
because that's where I feel likesome of the challenges are
uniquely Californian, right? The phenomena we've been talking
(10:44):
about, if not completely global,it's it's pretty widespread.
There's a lot of countries grappling with this question.
And it's not just California as well.
It's other states in the United States are also grappling with
this question and this issue of lowered fertility rates.
But in high cost coastal areas, there's no more coastal
expensive place than California in the country.
Some of the psychology around money and affordability become
(11:06):
more prominent. And I want to throw out my my
first theory, but I want you to then to like respond to it and
tell me more. Part of it I feel like is
intergenerational, like a feeling of loss of relative
wealth to how you grew up. So, you know, people grew up,
let's say they're from California with a certain
standard of living. Now 30 years, 20 years later,
when it's their turn to start thinking about having kids or
(11:26):
having kids, the state has sky rocketed in prices.
And so the standard of living that they were accustomed to of
what a good childhood looks like, regardless of where they
were on the income spectrum is largely out of reach unless they
have surpassed their parents an income level.
And so therefore, it feels like,oh, it's really hard to raise a
kid well because it's harder to do what they experienced.
What do you think about that? And tell me any other theories
around California specific concerns.
(11:48):
What I would say is that I thinkthat if you want to look at a
California concern, I think it affects the population.
I think people would rather havekids here, but if they can't,
they want the things they they remember growing up with.
I mean, anecdotally, one of my friends from high school just
moved to Arizona. She had her second kid.
She's like, we cannot afford in the Bay Area the size of the
house with the yard and the quality of schools that we want
(12:09):
with two kids. We're going to Arizona.
So I do think that it affects the population growth and so on
and so forth. But I also think that people,
even within California move. I mean, for my dissertation, I
interviewed people in Sacramentowho like I moved from the Bay
Area because it was just cheaper.
There are places in California that are cheaper.
And I think that you see the those places have benefited from
(12:31):
coastal cities inability to govern themselves and build more
housing and lower prices. What I tell people about the
policy intervention is that it'snot that you make people have
more kids, is that you make themhaving kids more pleasant.
They're not as stressed about making the mortgage.
They're not as stressed about, you know, the quality of their
kids education. They're not, you know, getting
an ulcer because they're like, Ihave to send their my private
(12:54):
school because the schools are so bad.
So I do think that there's, you know, there's some of that, but,
you know, I think you make people's lives easier if they
could save money. I mean, and that's, I mean, I
actually know another couple that they moved to North
Carolina because it was just cheaper.
You know, they had two kids and the husband lost his job and he
was like, we basically can't paythe mortgage for four months on
(13:16):
our savings. We have to move and sell our
house immediately because we canlive with my family in North
Carolina while we get back on our feet.
And now they're like, look, we have a beautiful big house.
You know, like actually now thatwe pulled the, you know, pulled
the plug on living in California, as much as we miss
it, our kids are getting a greatexperience, you know, and so I
do think like the state by making things cheaper would make
(13:37):
it easier for parents. But neither of those parents I
just listed, I think one through33 kids.
So if you made California cheaper, I don't think that that
would affect it. You know, maybe maybe there's
some edge cases. I'm not saying that that's no
for everyone. The other thing, I mean, is that
a lot of policies bring forward a lot of the, the interventions
(14:00):
that they've looked at. It's like, oh, you didn't change
total fertility or fertility goals, but you brought forward
the age of first kit because youmade it more affordable, right?
Like I can now afford having a kid at 30 instead of 35, so I
don't have to be as far up in mycareer.
And So what you could say is like in some cases, and there's
some evidence for this, that like if someone starts having
kids at 30, if they at 40 decidethat they want to have a third
(14:23):
kid, they might, they might be like, look, we had one at 30, we
have one at 35, let's give it another go, who knows.
But if you have your first kid at 30 and your second kid or
sorry, your first kid at 35 and your second kid at 40, you just,
I mean, just the nature of fertility is that it just comes
way, way harder at 45. And so bringing it forward can
help, you know, the total fertility.
(14:46):
But again, it's typically, typically people go into having
kids already knowing how many kids they want.
The biggest correction typicallyis people actually going down
with the number when they see how hard it is.
Now expensive it is. They're like, I wanted three and
now I want two or one. And so usually what doesn't
happen is you're like, oh, we induce people to have kids
earlier and now they're like, oh, yeah, it's so easy.
(15:08):
I'm just going to have more. Because I know usually I think
what happens is for, I think youhave to like, make things
conditional. For someone who always wanted
three kids, they might not be able to make it happen if they
start late because life is so expensive, but you might
facilitate that for other people.
The thing is that culturally, this is where I culture matters
so much is that if everyone you know is having two kids, you end
(15:30):
up having two kids. It's just like sort of like in a
lot of other public policies, social determinants of health,
whatever, smoking, what you see around you is what you lean
towards. So like, I mean, hilariously,
like if you just bribed a bunch of people and having the third
kid, like if you got 1/3 of Americans to have a third kid,
maybe other people like, oh, so many blur.
I mean three now maybe I should try it like you know, but that's
(15:52):
not super feasible. So if I'm hearing you, it's like
oversimplification maybe, but overall there's no like policy
silver bullets to increasing total fertility rate or at least
not strong evidence for any total for, you know, increasing
that There are some cultural cohort elements.
If you're surrounded or in a subculture with a lot of people
having a lot of kids, you are therefore more likely.
(16:13):
And there are, you know, you cantweak things at the margins.
But you know, if the leaders of California were saying, hey, we
want to have more kids outside of making overall life more
affordable and things like that,that there's no silver bullet
that's going to just radically increase the total fertility
rate here or in any other US state.
There's basically no silver bullet whatsoever.
I mean, if you look at places that did successfully raise
(16:33):
their fertility rate, it was what I would call a, so that
it's like the term of the literature is ECEC, early
childhood education and care. You basically build out this
entire suite of policies from like pronatal or like prenatal
care quality there all the way up through like taking care of
the kids and having good public education through middle school,
(16:54):
right? If you can build this robust
policy framework that prioritizes having kids, you can
reverse fertility declines. But even then, even in places
that have considered some of themost successful implementations
of that and have pretty gender egalitarian norms, you still
like get to 2 and then it sort of tops out.
And even think Sweden, which is like held up as one of the most
(17:16):
gender egalitarian and one of the most, you know, public
policy friendly in terms of families countries, I think
they're really like 1.9. So you can, you know, you can
staunch the bleeding, but I think that you sort of hit a
cultural ceiling where, you know, you don't want to be the
only one having five kids. And I mean, you see this decline
(17:38):
happening all around the world in, in places, even with high
levels of things like religiosity, which are typically
correlated, like Saudi Arabia's fertility fell from like 12 to 3
/ 50 years, right? Even in a place where there's,
you know, even you have culturallike other people, people had
big families forever. That would never happen there,
right? But it turned out that even in
(18:00):
Saudi Arabia, women want to be apart of the workforce.
They want to go out, you know, if you encourage women to go to
school and to like see what lifeis like besides just basically
being pregnant for 20 years, youknow, nobody wants to do that
anymore. And so, you know, I think that
that's just a big part of it. The other thing I would say is
like in terms of fantasies in California, even making things
(18:22):
cheaper, if you saw me looking away for a second, I pulled up
just a chloropleth of fertility by state, just to remind myself
some numbers. I mean, states that are doing
wildly different things. Like, you know, during COVID,
you had Florida and California get into this big thing about,
oh, Florida, we're pro freedom and we do all this and we have
lower taxes and we have better weather and we support kids and
(18:45):
you can have vouchers and all that.
California's fertility is 152, Florida's 157.
They're basically the same. Vermont, an incredibly cheap
state, has 1.38. You know, you don't cost of
living alone, you know, there's no single factor that is, you
know, the driving thing behind it.
(19:06):
And that's, I think what makes it such an interesting topic, is
that there's no clear solution. Yeah, great use of chloroplath
there. That's like a, you know, it's an
SAT word. I don't know if I've ever heard
that one. Yeah.
You all. PhD Me.
Yeah, OK. So that's really helpful, like
an overview of the literature and what the policy solutions or
(19:27):
lack of policy solutions there are to this challenge.
I'm curious to just talk about like getting outside the
literature, thinking about the cultural impacts of fewer
children. You know, you and I are both
multi generation Californians and California, particularly in
that post war era was held up more or less is the best place
to raise kids that you had this really robust quality education
(19:50):
system. The suburban housing boom was
underway with freeways so you could afford a home but still
have access to these world classlabor markets.
It was more economically diverse.
It was, you know, ethnically diverse.
It was a place where anyone could come and raise a family.
And it was also had that post war boosterism, you know,
optimism towards the future. And you know, I hear people talk
(20:12):
about, and I think about it as well, where having kids invest
you in the future generation. Like a few episodes ago, I was
talking to the founders of Grow SF and one of the founders, his
founding story was I had kids. I cared about the city, I wanted
to see it improve. So I left my like tech job and
just went all in on fixing the city, right?
It was like for him, that was a pivotal life moment.
And you think, oh, in a counterfactual world where he
didn't have kids, maybe he didn't go down that path, right?
(20:36):
I'm curious, like, what do you think are the societal
implications of just kids being less and less of a norm and
being less common? And how does that shape our view
of the future? Well, I'm gonna not look at the
state level and I'm gonna go back to grow a stuff, right.
So there was a stat that people were showing for a while that
there were more dog parks in SanFrancisco than parks for kids.
(20:58):
And I think that you can get into a downward spiral in terms
of a place growing in that if nobody else has kids and there's
not robust infrastructure to enjoy having kids, there's not
other people that hang out with.You go to the park and it's for
dogs and you're like, where's the playground?
And increasingly you're like, well, if I want to go somewhere
where there are kids, so you move to the suburbs or you move
(21:19):
to a different state or whatever.
I think for cities it's been really bad.
One of my big issues. I mean, I would say I also like
used to care a lot more about federal politics.
And then I had kids and I'm like, actually what matters is
like the fact that my kid, there's no sidewalk on the
street near me and my kid get hit by a car or I care a lot
more about the school. I'm like way more invested in
(21:40):
the success of my daughter's charter school than about
federal education policy. So I think that when people have
kids, I don't know that they're as invested necessarily the
state level, but I think at the local level, they definitely get
more invested. And I think that that's good
because if everyone is invested in the cities, then the state
benefits, right? I think that a big issue is like
if you want people to stay in cities when they have kids, you
(22:03):
do need to make it more affordable.
You need to just build like a lot of the stuff that is built
today are one and two bedrooms because of, I don't know, the
incentives of housing and building for young people.
They just don't think families want to live in cities.
There's not a lot of three bed, 2 baths.
So it's just hard to find a place to live.
And honestly, one of the biggestthings that I think cities have
failed at is the schools are terrible.
I mean, like the big urban cities, not necessarily small
cities, but like, I mean, you care so much about your kids
(22:28):
education, right? And the idea that you can just
allow half the city, half of saySan Francisco's or Oakland
schools to just be at the bottomof state rankings.
Of course people are going to leave for the suburbs, right?
There's better schools. And they, I mean, people care so
desperately about their kids education.
I mean, my daughter goes to a charter school and you can see
it. People, people work hard to get
(22:48):
into the lottery because they are willing to like they're
like, I don't have the money to go to private, but there's an
opportunity to go to a much better school than the one
that's in my neighborhood. So I'm going to enter the
lottery, right? There's almost like a child
equivalent to the urban doom loop that people talk about,
right? The urban doom loop being this
concept that people are talking about during COVID where you
have businesses, people start tomove out.
(23:10):
Maybe people don't feel safe in the city.
And then add that decline begetsmore decline, right?
As as businesses leave, there's less foot traffic.
The urban core then goes furtherand further South, and what
you're describing is almost likea parallel with children, right?
When a city has fewer children, there's fewer parks, there's
fewer amenities, there's fewer families raising kids so that
(23:32):
you then feel more isolated raising kids and makes it even
more hostile to having kids in that city, which then just makes
it so much worse. Tell me more about your
involvement. I know you're talking about
like, caring more about streets and schools.
Didn't you do something with your local street sign to try
and increase safety? Industry, I mean, I got into it
(23:56):
with the city of Oakland, right?Because they, there's no, so
there's a street that goes into the local like business district
by me, right? And it's has a turn like this
and people whip around it reallyfast and there's no sidewalk.
And the city wouldn't do anything.
And I did everything I could theway you're supposed to.
I wrote my city Councilwoman, I contacted the Department of
(24:19):
Transportation, I filed 311 requests.
I organized other people to filetheir own requests.
I did everything that you're supposed to do.
And basically the city of Oakland said, sorry, we score
these issues with an equity scoring system.
And because you live in a high income neighborhood, your issue
is just not getting a good equity score so you'll never get
(24:41):
help. And I'm like, that's a
ridiculous way of doing things. But you know, you know, I get
it. You know, in other places the
situation is worse, but that doesn't mean my situation isn't
bad. And so I took it upon myself to
add some sort of pedestrian safety stuff.
And it's just frustrating because I'm like, I would love
for my daughter to be independent enough that she can
walk into the business district by herself, but I just, it's not
(25:05):
safe. It's not physically safe.
Or like, for example, there's a homeless and came in across the
street from my daughter's elementary school and I haven't
been at it with my city Councilwoman and the 311
complaint department. I'm like, this is unacceptable.
Like, it's one thing to have homeless encampments all over
Oakland, which they do, but across the street from a school,
(25:26):
like with little kids, like we have people doing drugs in the
open air. And so I, I think that those
frustrations like you're willingto tolerate in your 20s to live
in the city so you can go out and do fun stuff at night, but
when you're a parent, you're like, I don't want my kid
watching someone smoke PCP on the way to school.
I mean, it's just ridiculous. And so I think that if cities
(25:47):
want to retain families, they just have to do a better job
governing. And so I think that, you know,
the, the interesting thing aboutsort of what you're looking at,
which is the future of the stateis I actually don't know that
like, OK, my neighbors that are thinking about leaving Oakland
don't talk about leaving for another state.
They talk about moving to Marin or the South Bay or what have
you. And so the issue is not so much
(26:09):
I think for the state, but I think you want people to live in
the cities because those are theengines of economic growth,
right? That's that's where so much
opportunity is. And so you want people to live
in C's and you want C's to grow.And so they're not gonna grow if
you don't have that so. I almost wonder if the
conversation about leaving the state matters more in the less
(26:31):
expensive parts of the state. Right.
So for the Socal comparison, I live in West LA.
If that's too expensive, then maybe you move to where I grew
up in the Inland Empire because it's more affordable, right?
But for the families I know in my hometown from the Inland
Empire where they can't afford to make it there, there's not
much further down. Like you can go out to Barstow
or like deep into the desert or the Central Valley or something,
(26:52):
but it's a lifestyle shift. And for a lot of families there,
it's like if I'm doing that, I might as well go to like the
north Dallas suburbs or I might as well go to Texas.
So I wonder if it's like you go further down the ladder and then
in terms of price and to the more affordable areas, but once
you're in those already affordable more inland parts of
California, like at that point we jump in state lines.
There's, I mean, that's the interesting thing about what you
(27:13):
mentioned though, is that there's a difference between
affordability and opportunity orthere's a blend, right?
You want to go to a city like Dallas because there's jobs, but
it's cheaper, right? You could find cheaper in
California. You could move like you said to
Barstow and it'd be perfect, plenty cheap.
And so you want places that are both affordable and have
opportunity. And I think that there's just
(27:34):
been a huge missed opportunity in California to make California
cities those places. And so, you know, I think it's a
challenge. Well, on the topic of
governance, you talked about paid family leave in California.
California has been a pioneer, as they often are on certain
issues, and they've been one of the national leaders on paid
(27:54):
family leave. So has it been a success?
And tell me more about the way it's governed, the way it's
managed. Are there any issues with kind
of the day-to-day operations? How has it gone so far for
California? So California was the first
state to offer paid family leaveand in 2002 they passed the law.
And then it took two years to get the program up and running.
So it started actually paying out benefits in 2004 because the
(28:16):
United States does not have a federal paid family leave
program. It was the first one in the
entire United States. It was public on and if you ask
people who used it, which I did,I mean only 61 people, but
generally people like it becausewho wouldn't enjoy getting paid
to spend time with their kid? People support the program.
People who used it, people who didn't use it, we're like, it's
(28:36):
a good idea. The frustration that I came
across, and this is not just in my research, but as a parent who
hangs out with a lot of other parents who tried to use the
program or did use the program, the implementation has been
lacking. So there are all sorts of issues
with how the website works with getting a hold of someone on the
phone. You have a problem and you're
(28:58):
not getting your benefits issueswith employers being frustrated
that so much stuff is done by mail.
I mean, this is just a classic example of, I think to get on a
political soapbox. I think Democrats often times
have a great idea like, let's make people leave and then they
pass the bill and then they're like, OK, it's done.
(29:21):
Implementation matters, OK. And so like, you have to follow
up and be like, do people like how this is operated?
Is it well operated? Me.
Most people say, yeah, it was great.
I'm glad I got the money. But like, I really hated the
experience of having to go through the bureaucracy.
And that's not the brand you want.
You know, if your brand is government and people say, I
(29:41):
like the benefits I get from thegovernment, but I hate
interacting with the government.That's really not what you want.
I mean, for example, OK, so if you're a woman and you take
leave in California and you havea baby, you can you can take
disability and paid family leave.
You get disability to recover from the physical pregnancy and
(30:03):
then you get paid family leave for bonding.
Both programs state disability and paid family leave are run by
the employment Development department, EDD, and yet they
are completely they have different apps, they have
different applications, They do tracking systems.
And most of them were like the SDI 1 was great and the PFL one
(30:24):
was terrible. And not only did I not
understand why I had to transition from to the other, I
didn't understand why 1 was so good and 1 was so bad if they're
run by the same agency. And so I think that that's like
a frustration. You know, I think California has
been doing a bunch of things during COVID.
There was a as I think people were realizing how the impact on
(30:50):
children's development from having to be home.
There were some people sort of dreaming big about what to do.
And Newsome put out a road map for like all sorts of things
that would sort of create a holistic approach, like sort of
I mentioned is sort of like bestpractice towards early childhood
education and care. For example, making universal TK
(31:10):
is like a big one, right? So now in California public
schools you can start or you will soon it will be universal.
You can enroll your kids in school starting at 4 instead of
at 5. And the governor said that I
mean, one of their goals was to do it by three eventually, or at
least in some cases. And it's a huge help for
families because childcare is super expensive.
(31:32):
I mean, you know, often times daycare prices range from 1500
to $3500 depending on quality and how much time you use.
And so you know that that's really helpful.
But again, like implementation, right?
So I know where I live, a lot ofpeople move to my neighborhood
because as great elementary school and they ostensibly have
(31:52):
TK program. And yet so many people, I know
their kids when they're eligiblefor TK, we're like, oh, we don't
have room. You are guaranteed right to TK
by the state, but because our school doesn't have room, you
have to drive 45 minutes to a different school in Oakland
that's like way far from your house.
It's like, wait, excuse me, what?
(32:13):
I paid all this money to live inthis neighborhood for the
school. And so, you know, how was it
that they, they got so flat footed that they were like, oh,
you didn't notice that like all these young families were moving
to the neighborhood or like, or that increasingly you were
getting further and further behind or had larger and larger
weight lists for TK and you justdidn't build out any more, you
know, infrastructure. And I think this stuff gets
(32:34):
caught up in local politics. Like there's a huge fight right
now about closing down some. So in Oakland, where I live, the
OUSD enrollment has fallen precipitously in the last 20
years. I don't remember the exact
numbers, but let's say it's over10%, right?
And I know a lot of school districts are like that, like
LAUSD is going through a lot of similar issues down here.
(32:57):
And it's from fertility declineswhere there's just fewer kids,
right? And so the city has been trying
to close schools because in in theory, if you're in a
neighborhood where fertility hasbeen falling, but then if you're
in my neighborhood where fertility is, fertility is not
rising. People are having kids and then
moving there for the elementary school, But you have a higher
fertility rate, you have more kids in the pipeline.
You should be taking resources from the school where enrollment
(33:20):
is going down, down and down andputting the resources to where
it's going up to build more facilities and so forth.
The politics is too difficult because it looks like you're
taking money from a poorer district or, you know,
neighborhood, you're giving it to a rich neighborhood.
And just generally people like their schools.
They have an emotional attachment to them.
And so whenever they try and close the school, there's this
big, you know, brouhaha and thenit doesn't close.
(33:42):
And so yes, they made TK universal and I think that's a
great policy. And you know, in terms of making
some making having kids more affordable, if if that is the
thing that's hanging people up on not having their next kid,
that is a huge factor. Certainly bringing it forwards
right. But if you then are like, well,
(34:03):
we're gonna guarantee you TK, but we might make it so that
it's so inconvenient that you don't use the benefit.
What did you really accomplish? And so I think that that is.
Yeah, having to guarantee you TK, but then showing up and not
being able to access at your local school.
That's like making the rental car reservation and then showing
up and they don't have a car andyou're like, what?
What do you mean you don't have a car?
Like what? Or no, no, no.
(34:23):
It's like, it's like in LA it's like you show up at LAX and
they're like, no, we have your car, but it's at the Burbank
airport and you're like, wait a second.
What? Like they'll go.
We said we would get you a rental car.
We just didn't say it would be at the airport you're flying
into. What made you think that that
would be where you got your, youknow, your car?
Yeah. And so parents are frustrated.
(34:44):
And then I think it discredits, you know, the idea of policy.
When you influence it really, really poorly, then people lose
faith in the idea that policy can can have a positive impact.
Yeah, And I know that's such a bigger conversation happening
right now with abundance and these other things, but it's so
true, right? Like even just macro scale
people talking about Newsome's hopes to run for president.
Yeah, like. High speed rail in California.
(35:07):
It's easy to make fun of it and mock it, but like 30 billion
without any functional trains going anywhere like.
Train to nowhere. That's all people know.
So many people aren't following policy closely.
They don't know the intricacies of all their favorite programs.
All they know is like California, didn't you spend 10s
of billions of dollars on a project that doesn't work?
Don't use waste. You know, billions of dollars in
(35:27):
these different things. Like that project alone, I feel
like will set back the hopes andambitions of what people think
the government can achieve in the future because they just
think, oh, when we try big things, it goes really horribly
versus in previous eras. It's, you know, the successes
build on each other When you canbuild like the UC system or you
know, like California Aqueduct or these other large scale
(35:48):
infrastructure projects of various sorts.
You do that, you succeed and then people have more belief
that the next grand vision will actually translate into reality.
When you don't actually deliver on any of your promises, people
don't believe your promises downthe road.
Yeah. Or if you're trying to market
yourself, like I think back to the limitation thing, it's like
if you're like, well, we passed California paid family leave,
(36:08):
we're so great and progressive, you're going to find 100 people
who are like, this was my terrible experience with the
program. Yeah.
And then it's just from a marketing perspective, you have
a hard time, you know, getting support or building on that, you
know, and like I said, all of you who took it were like, I'm
so glad I got it. I just, why did you have to make
(36:28):
it so hard for me, right? Like, you know, there's just
such easy and obvious fixes likethe one I talk about that
they're thinking about changing.They haven't changed it yet.
There's consideration, but you can't apply for your parental
leave benefits until after you have the kid.
And if it's your first kid, there's like nothing more
disorienting than like entering parenthood and being like, Oh my
(36:49):
God, I'm responsible for anotherlife.
If you're a woman, you just gavebirth, you've got postpartum
depression, you have physical recovery of all these things
going on. And you like are supposed to be
filling out some paperwork online and jumping through like
a bunch of bureaucratic of hoops.
Like, why would you do that? Why don't you let people fill
out the paperwork 14 day, like within a window beforehand?
Like, I don't know, like I always say, I'm like, maybe
(37:12):
they're worried that you won't have the kid, the kid won't like
survive childbirth and then you would get benefits for nothing.
I'm like, fine, if someone lost their child during childbirth,
just give them the money as as athat.
I'm so sorry that happened to you.
Also, infant mortality is incredibly low.
So that's a ridiculous reason tohave that as a burden, right?
(37:33):
And how much harder would it be to allow people to send in the
application earlier, like come on, state of California.
And so, you know, it's just, I think easy stuff that that
there's whatever the bureaucratic holdup.
Sorry, I don't really understand.
And no one would ever design theprogram that way intentionally.
It's always like this downstreameffect of like a bunch of small
(37:55):
decisions made by different legal departments.
No one's sitting there like, youknow, it'd be perfect.
What if we take, you know, womenwho are in the most like,
fragile physically and emotionalstate after giving birth and
force them to go through the DMVtwice, right?
No one's sitting there concocting that as a brilliant
policy scheme for how to how to help mothers in a very
progressive fashion. No, probably what happened was
they were like, well to be eligible for the program you
(38:16):
have to have had a kid. So we will just make you have to
have had the kid before you can apply.
And like, that seems straightforward in that meeting.
And then. But then what's frustrating
about I think public policy in general, too, is this like,
right now, they're researching whether to change it, right.
This is like, you know, you mentioned abundance.
It was it the fetish for fetish for proceduralism?
It's like, why just change it? Yeah, it's really stupid.
(38:40):
Like it's really hard to understand why there's just less
action on things. And, you know, and that's what's
frustrating. So I pulled up this list that
they made of things that they care about on this California
for all kids, you know, great start for their future.
And, you know, it says we want to provide comprehensive early
(39:01):
learning for and care for infants and toddlers.
Every family should be able to access those.
We want to promote readiness forlike academics for everyone,
grow the quality size, ability of the workforce, right?
So this is actually been a big problem with implementing the TK
everywhere is also just not enough qualified teachers.
(39:22):
So you know, they have these goals, but then when you see how
they implemented other things, it's like, do I trust you to do
that, right? Like, OK, for example, right,
this is, I mean, if you want to go to a classic economic policy
argument is build a competency based licensure and workforce
development system, OK, look, you need more people desperately
(39:44):
to work in taking care of kids. And I get that there should be a
threshold of competency for doing this, but also
occupational licensing throws upall of these burdens, right?
And, you know, I just don't really believe that that you're
helping like maybe to a certain degree, like you don't want the
(40:04):
person to be like, I'm an ex coal miner, 7 year old man with
a felony record. Yeah, obviously that's a no,
but. Being able to be good with kids
is not actually necessarily something you have to go to
school for. And also occupational licensing
as an infrastructure, it costs money to run the infrastructure
(40:24):
to make sure that that happens, but also cost money for people
to get all that stuff and that gets passed on to the consumer.
I mean, this just kills me. OK, so in terms of the cost of
child care, right? What happens is like, I pay a
ton of money for child care because my kid goes to a
licensed daycare where everyone complies all the rules doing so,
(40:44):
which is insured and so on and so forth.
And they've probably got all sorts of liability issues
they're worried about. And a lot of places won't even
rent to a daycare because of theworried about lawsuits.
And so they have to pay a bunch,OK.
The ratios Teachers, students. Etcetera, which are all laws
that were passed in good faith. Every single one of the like
(41:06):
rules that when you stack them all up, each one was passed in
good faith. But because like, let's, I'm
just gonna make up an example. This is what I always do.
I say, look, let's say a kid choked on a marble at a daycare.
Then the news gets out and someone in Sacramento says we
need a law that says that there cannot be marbles at daycares.
And then someone have the daycare has to spend their time
(41:26):
making sure nobody accidentally brings in marbles.
They have to like have a marble inspector come and make sure.
That. You end up blaring all the stuff
up and then it becomes really expensive and difficult to
comply. People like, I just don't want
to open a daycare and deal with the hassle, right?
So then you have a really expensive tier for the people to
comply. And then for people who can't
(41:48):
afford to comply with that, there's these unlicensed ones
that aren't following any of those rules anyways.
You've created this huge black market for daycare where people
are like, I don't have a license, but I'm really good
with kids and through word of mouth, people just trust me with
their kids and I run out of my backyard.
And there's none of those rules being of course, OK, so.
(42:08):
Who did you like? Black market daycare is such a
funny phrase, but no, it's totally true.
Who did you help? Who did you help California with
all these rules? And again, I'm not saying there
should be no regulation, but theamount of regulation that you've
put on daycares has created A2 tiered system that is not
working for anyone. You have the one group that is
paying a ton of money and it's barely affordable for them and
they're unhappy with the cost, which is almost if not more than
(42:31):
their mortgage in some cases, especially if you have two kids.
And then for the other people, none of they're not getting any
of the benefits of all of the regulations that you think are
important because it's too costly to implement though.
So it's a lose lose. And so, I don't know, it's
frustrating that everything, I think a lot of these things are
done in good faith. Yeah.
I mean, who wouldn't want to help kids?
(42:52):
Who wouldn't want to protect kids?
For the children, Noah. For the children.
Yes, for the children. And so I understand the politics
of passing these laws looks goodbecause it looks like you're
helping kids and nobody wants tovote no.
And then what you end up is hurting kids because you've made
their parents life financially stressful or you've put them in
these completely unlicensed places where, I mean, it's
(43:12):
probably fine, you know, but if you believe those those things
matter, then you've driven them out of if you believe that
licensed day cares are important, you've driven people
away by making them too costly. There's a parallel here to
cannabis, you know, children in cannabis, the two canonical
policy case. Studies and all, yeah.
I. Mean they gummies, you know,
(43:32):
gummies. Yeah, there's some there's some
overlap in the Venn diagram, butyou know, California had a black
market pot market like every other state that had where
cannabis was legal. They legalized it.
And as part of legalization, it wasn't just, hey, we're going to
legalize it and bring it out, but we're also going to add on
all these requirements, all these.
(43:52):
A lot of municipalities looked at it as a way to generate
revenue. So they're going to pass fees
someplace. It made it like an equity thing.
We're going to have special programs so that people who are
harmed by the war on. Only if you're a queer ex felon
of color can you open a cannabisdispensary.
So New York did. And you know what?
Yeah. Anyways, I'll let you finish the
story because you know where this is going.
No, but yeah. And then even like just the
additional licensing and testingrequirements, all these extra
(44:14):
fees made it so much more expensive.
The consumers were like, well, I'm not going to stop going to
my local weed guy previously wasgoing to when it's, you know, 3X
the price or whatever for the legalized stuff.
And so that you can have a similar dynamic where the people
who are playing by the rules arepaying enormous costs and are
struggling with consumers and the black market that you were
supposedly flushing out is continuing to thrive.
(44:36):
And so then, you know, the people who are playing by the
rules are pissed off. They're like, hey, there's the
unlicensed weed shop down the street that you're cracking down
on. Yeah.
So anyways, kids and weed. Yeah.
You know that's. AI mean the the parallel is apt.
I mean it is true like what's happened here happened in a lot
of states that that legalized New York.
They had this really equity based program for who was going
(44:57):
to get licenses and then what ended up happening it took so
long that a bunch of unlicensed ones just opened up and
basically established their brands and you know so and so
forth. By the time the ones that got
open by going through the process were there, they
couldn't compete with the unlicensed stores that were just
thriving. Or you mean, not to say they all
went under, but this has happened in Oakland.
Some of some of the dispensariesthat were like touted for, you
(45:18):
know, being owned a small business, black-owned, small
business owns over. They're like, I went out of
business because I'm competing against the unlicensed people.
And you don't do anything to enforce those.
So you don't end up helping anyone.
And so I just, I think that I remind policy makers that
sometimes simpler is better. Yeah, I mean, I joke people all
(45:39):
the time about the California paid family leave one again,
like for example, there's like afour tiered benefit system
that's based on your average quarterly earnings of the first
four of the last five quarters, huh?
Like, and your pay band, your renumeration rate is a
reflection of the proportion your income is of the statewide
(46:03):
and average quarterly earning inthat quarter.
People are trying to like figureout if they can pay the rent
while they are on leave. And you've given them this
absurdly complicated systems andnavigate.
And the state says, well, there's a calculator.
And then people I talked to, we're like, yeah, there's a
calculator. And they're like, how much do
you make? You type it in?
And they're like, this is what we think, but there's no
guarantee that's actually what you're going to get.
(46:25):
And by the way, there's like a bunch of questions they ask
them. They might not even know the
answer to the questions. So it's just frustrating.
I think you can be well meeting and want to help kids, but I
don't know that you are actuallyhelping kids.
Yeah, well, I don't want to end on a sour note.
What, Yeah, are some of the things that give you hope about
(46:46):
the future of California and things that you hope we see
improve during our lifetime by the time our kids are old enough
to complain about policy when they're our age?
Well, the weather here is probably going to be good for
long times by climate change. So I think we will still have
that relative to other places. I mean, you mentioned the grow
is up thing. Yeah, I think people are
(47:08):
increasingly frustrated and it has taken surprisingly long for
the feedback loop to catch up with policymakers.
But I mean, if you look at what happened in San Francisco with
the most recent election, I mean, you can even go back to
the special election before thaton the, you know, when Chesa
Boudin got ousted for his super overly progressive, progressive,
(47:31):
progressive prosecutor sort of ideas.
And like, for example, back to the schools, you know, the board
of the supervisors for schools, their superintendents or
whatever. You know, three people got
ousted because of two big things.
One, they spent a bunch of time during COVID debating whether to
rename the schools and not like reopening the schools.
(47:51):
And they wanted to remove the merit exam for getting into
Lowell, which is a really excellent public charter that
you have to get in via a merit exam.
And I think like there was that and then the most recent
election where basically anyone left the center just got ousted
in like some of the most anti growth people, the biggest sort
of NIMD people on the Board of Supervisors all lost their jobs
(48:13):
and Laurie won. And as I mean, people are tired
of it. People are like, I want my city
and the place I live in to like do better.
And like, for example, my city Councilwoman, who I've sent a
lot of emails to, like, you know, there's stuff that like
she's mentioning now, like a public safety is her number one
issue now, you know, and we needto save the streets.
Like, I think people are gettingthe message.
(48:33):
But even stuff like permitting reform, I was looking at her her
she's running for re election and one of her top issues is
permitting reform. Some of the nuts and bolts of
what I think is making things hard that are not the sexy parts
of policy are getting more attention.
And I'm hopeful that the more City Council people are like,
oh, actually we need to make it reform permitting so that people
(48:55):
can it's profitable to build housing for people.
You know, I think that's good. I think the YIMBY movement has
like woken a lot of people up tosome of the esoterica of of what
we need to do. So I think I'm optimistic that
policy makers are starting to get frustrated.
And I think Gordon Newsome, you mentioned his political
aspirations. I think that he knows that you
(49:15):
can't run for president and havelike, you know, 100,000 unhoused
people on the major metro areas.Yeah.
And so I think that I'm optimistic that things are
trending in the right direction.I think people are frustrated.
I'm, I'm overall bullish on on California cities.
I think that people are are frustrated and things are moving
(49:36):
in the right direction. Yeah, well, I hope that you're
right. And I similarly it's good to
hear that permanent reform's on the menu.
It's putting butts in seats in the Oakland local elections,
right? People excited about the nuts
and bolts as. We're both nuts and.
Bolts kind of guys, yeah. I have been to City Council
meetings now to advocate for my various issues and it's
(49:58):
impressive. Anything gets done.
But you have to do, you have to do the minutia of being like you
are thinking about passing this permit rule that will actually
make it harder to build things. And you just, I mean, so much as
it can be frustrating to have toget involved.
You know, you got to get involved.
You have to go to these meetingsbecause those people listen.
(50:18):
Yeah. Well, Noah, appreciate your
time. Appreciate you talking about all
this. And of course, glad they were
able to stay in touch. Yeah, me too.
Thanks man, it's been good.
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