Why is fertility falling? Largely because marriage is falling. But why? Lyman Stone: "The biggest reason marriage is failing is male economic underperformance. While we try to find solutions for that issue, in the meantime, marriage subsidies work very well." This is the outline of a recent post his Substack.

But there's more.

First, men. "If you talk to young women today, they will almost uniformly tell you the same reason: dudes suck. The men are not good. Pickings are slim." Women are attracted to successful men, and men are less and less successful. And, Stone notes, "men's incomes predict marriage." Meanwhile, young men are getting poorer. The fact that men are slipping socioeconomically, educationally, and in other ways is well-known at this point.

The next step of Stone's argument is what piqued even more of our interest. Namely: yes, we should figure out ways to fix this, but in the meantime, marriage subsidies help getting more people married.

Stone cites "two nice studies, one in Austria and the other in Sweden," and the upshot is that marriage incentives really boost marriage rates. "In Austria and Sweden, marriage subsidies boosted marriage and, probably, fertility with it, though fertility effects were spaced out over many years after the marriage bumps, so harder to observe," he writes.

Stone also studies the case of Hungary. And while everyone talks about Hungary, we did not know this: "the thing you need to know about Hungary’s pronatalism is, to some degree, it’s a bait-and-switch. They cancelled a bunch of family welfare programs, and re-allocated the funding to new pronatal programs. What Hungary actually did was, consistent with the new constitution written 2011-2012, massively shift the costs and benefits of marriage. Almost 100% of the new Hungarian housing and fertility benefits are limited to married couples, whereas a lot of the old policies they replaced were not limited to married couples. So this subsidized fertility, yes, but largely at the expense of other fertility subsidies: but the big action happened in a change in the benefits to being married." So this provides a quasi-natural experiment on the impact of marriage subsidies on marriage. "And what happened to Hungarian marriage? It rocketed upwards."

SEE ALSO: We had a fascinating conversation about this and related issues with Stone on the Sphere Podcast. Listen (Spotify, YouTube, Apple Podcasts) and subscribe (Spotify, YouTube, Apple Podcasts)

Policy News You Need To Know

#NewMagazine — Does the right need a new magazine? Apparently, yes! "Commonplace", from the folks who gave you American Compass, is now out. One thing is sure—as Oren Cass writes, "Our assembled contributors already represent an unparalleled roster of talent." This is true and we look forward to reading their work and encourage you to subscribe.

#TheKidsAreAllRight — Friend of PolicySphere and EPPC Fellow Patrick Brown has a good X thread with some corrections to our article yesterday on whether people are worse off today than they were decades ago.

#TheEconomy — Interesting new study from the Hamilton Project at Brookings: "To assess the compensation of workers, it matters not only how much money they earn, but also the manner in which their pay is earned. That is to say, to earn $25,000, one worker may have reliable and consistent earnings and hours from a single employer, while another may have multiple employers, inconsistent work hours, and variable wages. While workers may desire some amount of flexibility in their work schedule and earnings, volatility itself can also be troublesome." The bottomline: low-income workers experience "by far" the most earnings and work hours instability. That may sound a bit obvious, but the point that it's not just income level that matters, but also volatility, if you're trying to get a picture of what's going on with people who are struggling, is a good one to keep in mind.

#TheEconomy — Gotta get them out before the inauguration! But this may actually come in handy for the new team… HHS just released a report criticizing private equity and consolidation in health care markets. Conservatives may want to care about this because health care is a highly regulated market (and will stay highly regulated for the foreseeable future) so that monopolistic rent-seeking behavior by firms, especially financial firms, is a distinct possibility, in which case some sort of action is just correcting preexisting regulation and not an attack on the free market.

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#Immigration — One of the most frustrating things about the recent Great Christmas X Debate is that there is high-skill immigration in the abstract (highly desirable) and the H-1B program as it currently exists (deeply broken). A new report by Luke Rosiak in the Daily Wire shows that "H1-B visas were approved for interior designers, hotel clerks, and an assistant professor of leisure studies." CIS has proposed very sensible and pragmatic reforms to make sure the H-1B program is useful: set a salary floor by industry, and not an overall salary floor (note that the current statutory floor was set when the law was passed in 1990 and then never updated for inflation), and give priority to job offers with the highest salaries.

#Manufacturing — Important new report from AEI's Chris Miller on China's leadership in electronics component, why the US must retake the lead, and how.

#FirstAmendment — Today is Religious Liberty Day! You could do worse to commemorate this important concept than to peruse FRC's booklet on religious freedom.

#TheWretchedOfTheEarth — As Josh Barro comments: "Everyone owes Amy Klobuchar an apology." Headline: "Progressive Hill staff are asking for a 32-hour workweek."