Topic: Politics
Mark Steyn is doing a live question and answer session to promote his new book, America Alone. Despite being a Steyn junkie I've not read it yet, but I know that demographics play a key part and asked a question about family formation. He responded within half an hourL
The whole Q and A is here:
http://www.steynonline.com/index2.cfm?edit_id=64
But in case that link is broken before you read it, I'll quote our correspondence:
QUESTION: Do you think the birth rate of indigenous Britons would increase if there were more new property being built in England? I'm in my late 30s living in London and like a lot of my friends I missed out on the great house price boom of the 90s onwards. Many of us live like adolescents because the one thing that's worth saving up for isn't available -so what's the point? Almost none of us have children.
In my case, I can't see how I could ever afford to own a home unless their prices fell by about 60 per cent. A three bedroom house, which I would want in order to have a two-child family (needed to keep the population stable) is hopelessly out of reach.
Will there ever be the politcal will to build more in the South-East, where I live? I'm encouraged that the Tories have at last seen what the Green Belt has done to people like me, but will they permit enough building to make family formation affordable or will the votes of the older generation who don't want new houses spoiling the view from their windows win out?
I feel like Britain is turning into a big retirement home.
David Young
England
MARK: That's a very interesting point. When I was in Australia, I said that I thought one of the biggest threats to their relatively healthy birth rates was the fact that Aussie cities are among the most expensive housing markets in the world. Obviously London and most of southern England fall into that category, too. Conversely, one of the reasons why America has the healthiest fertility rates in the western world is that it's the country in which it's easiest to get a four-bedroom house with a big yard in a nice neighborhood. Nobody wants to raise three kids in a small apartment. I happen to think that also explains the difference between the US and Canadian birth rates. Canada is, paradoxically, more urban than America, mainly because 99% of it's too bloody cold so the population huddles in cities strung along the border. Londoners earning what by most standards are huge salaries claim not to be able to "afford" children, in part because they've paid half-a-million quid for a bedsit in Hackney. It's not the money, it's that they're paying family-estate-sized money for a bachelor pad.
