YES: Want More Kids? Make Cheaper Minivans.

Moms in minivans are a running joke. My husband and I bought a used one back when we were hoping for our third kid. (We now have four… kids, that is, not minivans). Around the same time, a viral music video called “Never Thought I’d Do It” was making the rounds and illustrating the appeal for parents of the admittedly unappealing-looking car type. “I sold out to all the leg room,” sings one of the moms early in the song.

Our previous car — a Toyota Corolla — could not easily fit three car seats, and it wasn’t up to us how many we needed to carry. These days, car seat regulations are onerous. Where I live, the absolute earliest you can ditch a booster is age eight. (My second son is turning eight this summer, but he’s a skinny kid. Based on the weight requirements he’s not getting out of a booster any time soon). As academic research has shown, there is a very plausible argument that car seats have depressed national fertility rates. Parents unable to fit more car seats into their too-small vehicles have opted not to have that third baby. By the same logic, minivan prices must also play a part in the current “birth dearth.” At our local car dealership the going rate for a new minivan is well over $40,000! By contrast, a new commuter car is $25,000.

The consequences of car costs on families who want more kids should be obvious.

Indeed.

Previously: Car Seats as Contraception. “Since 1977, U.S. states have passed laws steadily raising the age for which a child must ride in a car safety seat. These laws significantly raise the cost of having a third child, as many regular-sized cars cannot fit three child seats in the back. Using census data and state-year variation in laws, we estimate that when women have two children of ages requiring mandated car seats, they have a lower annual probability of giving birth by 0.73 percentage points. Consistent with a causal channel, this effect is limited to third child births, is concentrated in households with access to a car, and is larger when a male is present (when both front seats are likely to be occupied). We estimate that these laws prevented only 57 car crash fatalities of children nationwide in 2017. Simultaneously, they led to a permanent reduction of approximately 8,000 births in the same year, and 145,000 fewer births since 1980, with 90% of this decline being since 2000.”