Patrick Stillman

Liberal Democrat Councillor for West Hampstead🔸

Published and promoted by Eva Steinhardt on behalf of Patrick Stillman, both at 242 Webheath, NW6 2JX.

[Liberal Democrats @LibDems]

Patrick Stillman is the Liberal Democrat candidate for Holborn & St Pancras.

The people of Holborn & St Pancras deserve better than politicians using the constituency as a personal platform.

Patrick will focus on what matters: the cost of living and housing.

[Hannah Camilleri @hann_jvc]

Are Westminster's boys okay?

Tony had Gordon. David had George. Boris had Dom. Keir had Morgan.

Why do Westminster’s most powerful men keep finding political soulmates, and why do these relationships so often end like catastrophic divorces?

[Jesús Fernández-Villaverde @JesusFerna7026]

Last week I posted a new paper with Patrick Norrick: “Terra Incognita: The Economics of a Shrinking World.”

We chose the title deliberately. No society in history has experienced the fertility levels now seen in South Korea, China, Thailand, Colombia, Chile, and many other countries. Our knowledge of the causes (and of the economic consequences) remains far more limited than most public discussion acknowledges. Much of what we write is, at best, educated conjecture.

The paper also struggles against a space limit. We wrote 20,000 words, far from the 250,000 or so we would need to address some issues in more detail (if I had the time and resources to hide away for a year, I could do that, but not now). That means some ideas are only sketched.

Nonetheless, we emphasize several important points.

First, fertility has fallen very fast everywhere: rich and poor countries, east and west, north and south, conservative and liberal societies, religious and non-religious societies (with the exception of the Jewish population of Israel; fertility has also collapsed among the Muslim population within the pre-1967 borders), you name it. Even in sub-Saharan Africa we see fast and unprecedented drops in fertility (alas, from a high initial level).

Second, and this is really interesting, the fertility collapse has been concentrated in poor and lower-middle-income countries much more than in rich countries. By now, income per capita and fertility are positively correlated within OECD countries. We conjecture this will hold globally in a few decades.

Third, and related to the second point, the fertility collapse has been concentrated among poor and lower-middle-income women within countries. In countries such as the U.S., the rich and highly educated now have more children than the poor and less educated.

Fourth, we document why we do not understand the data from the U.N. World Population Prospects. See, for example, Tables A.1 and A.2.

Fifth, we explain why some proposed mechanisms struggle when confronted with the data.

A more subtle point is at work here. Many commentators do not seem to understand the difference between proximate causes and ultimate causes. Yes, births might have gone down because fewer women are in long-run relationships. That is the proximate cause. But you need to explain why fewer women are in long-run relationships (the ultimate cause), and saying that they spend more years in school, to take one example, does not get us very far. Why do they spend more years in school? Once you start down the whole chain of reasoning, things become much harder than they seem.

The paper can be found here:

https://t.co/VrCHr0lBPa

Comments always welcome!

[Patrick Stillman @StillmanPat1]

Full thoughts here💭

https://t.co/4ushBWeS1H

[Patrick Stillman @StillmanPat1]

When the @LibDems speak of the cure for political division being found in fixing potholes and repairing church roofs, they are on the right track.

The paralysis that impacts our ability to do the simple things is felt by all of us as a loss of agency, but it’s also a loss of…

[Patrick Stillman @StillmanPat1]

Authorship. Britain increasingly feels like a country which history happens to, rather than one which writes history.

The politics of nostalgia recognises this and offers its solution. Liberalism needs to respond with confidence, Britain can once again find its pen on the page.