That was my reaction as well. They're probably referring to something along these lines: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3665046

Doesn't this study say that it had a very low impact?

> they led to a permanent reduction of approximately 8,000 births in the same year, and 145,000 fewer births since 1980

The paper also estimates the number of children saved at 57 per year, so the safety impact is even lower

Let's call it 80 and you get a rate of 1:100 children saved per children not conceived. What would be a reasonable rate in your mind?

Car seat design has improved you can readily fit three car seats in most vehicles these days

This is a weirdly funny thread. How many theoretical children would you trade for 1 real child? All over a car seat that perhaps prevented 4,000 additional births a year?

Historically, the jump from 2 kids to 3 kids requires purchasing a new car. The new car is more expensive to buy, operate, and maintain.

Today there are many narrow car seat options on the market, so 3 across seating is possible in full size sedans, but not compact cars. A European company makes a 3-across and 4-across car seat, but it's illegal in the US by accident.

> Historically, the jump from 2 kids to 3 kids requires purchasing a new car.

The cost of daycare and education is so immensely larger than the cost of a car, that I don't think cost of a car is a factor. The important consideration with having a child, or another, is how could you possibly afford the daycare and later school.

>Historically

The car seat related drop predates high daycare costs. In some places, high daycare costs aren't the primary concern: it's infant daycare waiting lists longer than 9 months.

Grandparents used to look after young children. Maybe we should incentivize that structure again? I'm open to other ideas.

As someone who doesn't have kids, and probably never will, it's super clear to me that we need to be subsidizing childcare costs with public funds.

Right now, childcare can't be affordable without the workers being paid exploitative low amounts. We should fix that, that's exactly the sort of problem that having a society is for.

Kinder eggs are illegal in the USA.

Lead in the drinking water is okay. Last resort human antibiotics in the farmed animals are OK.

Seems like school shootings are OK.

I wouldn't use "illegal in the US" as something necessarily negative.

It's only accidentally illegal. Nobody made it illegal on purpose. It just so happened that car seat regulations and car seat testing regulations were highly prescriptive, but also written at a time where nobody had thought to build a full bench, multi-child car seat.

The full bench car seat is significantly safer than single seats. But it cannot be tested on the testing sleds in North America, and the wording of the regulations implicitly forbids multi-child seats anyway in many ways. Unfortunately, fixing the regulations is probably ~10 years and ~20 million dollars in lobbying.

Its a joke. A few weeks ago JD Vance listed the reasons for birthrate decline. There wasn‘t any serious like one like the costs. But car seats…

The car seat phenomenon is real, well studied, and interesting. The explanation is not only logical, but is exactly what you called a "serious" reason: cost. Parents must often buy a new car with the 3rd child, because they cannot fit 3 car seats in their current vehicle.

> The car seat phenomenon is real, well studied, and interesting.

And miniscule, contributing a fraction of a percentage point reduction in the number of children born per year.

No one from the current childbearing generation can afford to buy a house near any major city. No… that can’t be it

It says an enormous amount that we simply accept the premise that we must live in or near a major city. We don't have to trap all the livable jobs and housing there, but getting them elsewhere requires bootstrapping with a long lead-in, and we actively attack attempts to do that.

Many highly skilled jobs automatically gravitate towards the population centres because of the pool of the workforce available.

We have a dev team in one of the big cities of New Zealand, we need people, and we interviewed everyone available (yes, this must be on site).

When you have jobs, childcare, education, entertainment, government, etc, all inside cities, people migrate towards cities.

I wish I could move further away from the big city but I'd get paid third of my salary, my SO didn't found any openings, and I'd have to buy a second car so my kid could attend their school.

I see what you're saying but not every job is available outside.

The idea is that you used to be able to throw five kids on a bench seat but now having a third kid requires a car with more interior space (ironic since cars are much bigger now than they used to be).

You can get car seats that do three across in a normal sedan though

>You can get car seats that do three across in a normal sedan though

Only in the last few years, and they require a full size sedan.

It is impossible to fit more than 2 car seats in a normal car. So having more than two kids complicates the logistics quite a bit.

Difficult, but not impossible. We fit 3 across the back seat of our Mitubishi Lancer for a few years. You do need to be selective in which car seats you get, and I wish it was easier.

It's still impossible for many vehicles. Plus, slim fit car seats are expensive. Here's the cheapest:

https://www.amazon.com/Graco-SlimFit3-Forward-Highback-Kunni...

That is the problem. Death of the birthrates is by a thousand cuts. The more friction you put in society to having children, less of them you will have. There are thousands of small inconveniences of having children that accumulate.

In my country we have had in the last decades the following - car seats, prohibition small children to roam free, prohibition for kids under 12 to be left alone at home, the size of the city apartments has shrunk substantially - from two bedroom to one. The impossibility of stay at home parent. You can add to the list.

Its only a problem if each child has a separate car seat. There are companies that produce seats for up to 4 children that fit in the back of the car.

Example from a Google search (don't know if they are good)

https://www.multimac.com/

1. Those are often semi-permanent installs

2. Those must be professionally installed

3. Those are pricey

4. Those are, quite by accident, illegal in North America

many friends I know mention stopping at two kids rather than three so they don't have to upgrade to more expensive cars that can carry more kids. Before the 80's you'd pack as many kids as you had in whatever car you had. My dad literally drove a two seater and had two kids.