Quote of the Day - French Fertility (03/08/2023)
“Economic theory aims to explain the big contours of human behavior purely with reference to prices and incentives. No doubt these things are extraordinarily important. However, ignoring the effects of culture, and the fact that preferences and norms can change, is a mistake. The decline of Catholicism, and fertility, in eighteenth-century France turned it from a demographic powerhouse – the China of Europe – to merely a first-rank European power among several, but also allowed it to keep up with British living standards without an industrial revolution. Ideas have consequences.”
- Guillaume Blanc, “France’s baby bust”