Benjamin Couillard is a PhD candidate at the University of Toronto whose research looks at things like residential choice and housing supply. And in this recently published paper, he studies the causal effects of rising housing costs on fertility. Here's what he found when examining US Census Bureau data:

...rising [housing] costs since 1990 are responsible for 11% fewer children, 51% of the total fertility rate decline between the 2000s and 2010s, and 7 percentage points fewer young families in the 2010s. Policy counterfactuals indicate that a supply shift for large units generates 2.3 times more births than an equal-cost shift for small units. This analysis concludes that the supply of housing suitable for families can meaningfully contribute to demographic sustainability.

Intuitively, it makes sense that rational adults might consider where they would put a child if they had one, or had one more, and consider the cost of this incremental space. Housing is expensive in major urban centers. Perhaps it's no surprise that Canada, which is known for its broadly unaffordable housing, has fallen into the "ultra-low fertility" category.

But I think this fertility-housing relationship is an important one to call out when considering appropriate public policies. Housing is often viewed through the lens of what bad things will happen if we build it. That's why we do shadow studies, force stepbacks, charge development charges (impact fees), and the list goes on.

What is harder to grasp is what happens when we don't build new housing. Most — or at least many — seem to agree that not building enough housing hurts overall affordability. But what this study also demonstrates is that not building enough family-sized housing is bad for making babies!

This has all sorts of socio-economic repercussions, one of which is that a country now has to rely more heavily on immigration in order to offset a shrinking population base. It becomes a larger economic problem. When framed this way, it makes me wonder: why do we tax new family-sized homes the way we do?

An alternative approach to encourage more infill family housing might be to eliminate development charges, building permit fees, parkland fees, and as many other government fees as possible on all three-bedroom or larger homes. And the reason you would do this is because the economic and demographic cost of not building is even greater.

Based on the work of Couillard, we know at least one of the outcomes: more babies.

Cover photo by Lotus Design N Print on Unsplash

Witold Rybczynski makes an interesting comparison between military and civilian (city) planning in a recent blog post called, "The Fog of Life." Here's an excerpt:

Good military planning, as I understand it, is based on preparing for “what if,” that is, developing different scenarios. What if this happens, or that happens? City planning is different, more like advocacy, that is, what should happen. This advocacy is based on certainties: open space is good, density is good—or bad, depending. The problem is that what planners think should happen—separation of pedestrians and cars, superblocks, megastructures—often runs into trouble when it hits the fog of life.

These are two very different perspectives. "What if" planning responses assume that a thing has already happened. You're not working to affect a particular outcome, you're responding to one that already exists. Does this necessarily make this approach more reactive than proactive?

Either way, what should happen implies that the thing isn't currently happening, but that it should -- presumably because the thing is nice and desirable. It could also imply that the thing is sort of happening, but just isn't happening quite enough.

Let's use the example of 3-bedroom condominiums and apartments, which is a topic of discussion that has been circling in Toronto for as long as I've been in the business. Developers here, are generally encouraged or mandated to build a certain number of larger family-sized suites in every new housing project. Oftentimes this number is 10% of the total unit count.

The reasoning behind this is sound. Cities should be inclusive and they should work for the young, the old, the single, and for families, among others. The problem is that, for a variety of reasons, the market, when left to do its own thing, tends to build more small units than large units. At least that's the case here in Toronto. (I've talked about some of the reasons why in previous posts.)

There is a view that if only developers built more large units that more families would choose to live in apartments. It's an issue of supply and availability, and also a question of design. You need to design for families too. This you could say is a "what if" approach. Families want to live in multi-family buildings; so let's build more and better family-sized housing.

But is this really the case or is there some advocacy going on here? All things being equal, does the market want low-rise or does it prefer higher density? It's a fascinating set of questions, but unfortunately all things aren't equal. It's not just a question of availability and design, it's also a question of economics. Large family-sized units cost money.

I suppose this is the fog of life.

Benjamin Couillard is a PhD candidate at the University of Toronto whose research looks at things like residential choice and housing supply. And in this recently published paper, he studies the causal effects of rising housing costs on fertility. Here's what he found when examining US Census Bureau data:

...rising [housing] costs since 1990 are responsible for 11% fewer children, 51% of the total fertility rate decline between the 2000s and 2010s, and 7 percentage points fewer young families in the 2010s. Policy counterfactuals indicate that a supply shift for large units generates 2.3 times more births than an equal-cost shift for small units. This analysis concludes that the supply of housing suitable for families can meaningfully contribute to demographic sustainability.

Intuitively, it makes sense that rational adults might consider where they would put a child if they had one, or had one more, and consider the cost of this incremental space. Housing is expensive in major urban centers. Perhaps it's no surprise that Canada, which is known for its broadly unaffordable housing, has fallen into the "ultra-low fertility" category.

But I think this fertility-housing relationship is an important one to call out when considering appropriate public policies. Housing is often viewed through the lens of what bad things will happen if we build it. That's why we do shadow studies, force stepbacks, charge development charges (impact fees), and the list goes on.

What is harder to grasp is what happens when we don't build new housing. Most — or at least many — seem to agree that not building enough housing hurts overall affordability. But what this study also demonstrates is that not building enough family-sized housing is bad for making babies!

This has all sorts of socio-economic repercussions, one of which is that a country now has to rely more heavily on immigration in order to offset a shrinking population base. It becomes a larger economic problem. When framed this way, it makes me wonder: why do we tax new family-sized homes the way we do?

An alternative approach to encourage more infill family housing might be to eliminate development charges, building permit fees, parkland fees, and as many other government fees as possible on all three-bedroom or larger homes. And the reason you would do this is because the economic and demographic cost of not building is even greater.

Based on the work of Couillard, we know at least one of the outcomes: more babies.

Cover photo by Lotus Design N Print on Unsplash

Witold Rybczynski makes an interesting comparison between military and civilian (city) planning in a recent blog post called, "The Fog of Life." Here's an excerpt:

Good military planning, as I understand it, is based on preparing for “what if,” that is, developing different scenarios. What if this happens, or that happens? City planning is different, more like advocacy, that is, what should happen. This advocacy is based on certainties: open space is good, density is good—or bad, depending. The problem is that what planners think should happen—separation of pedestrians and cars, superblocks, megastructures—often runs into trouble when it hits the fog of life.

These are two very different perspectives. "What if" planning responses assume that a thing has already happened. You're not working to affect a particular outcome, you're responding to one that already exists. Does this necessarily make this approach more reactive than proactive?

Either way, what should happen implies that the thing isn't currently happening, but that it should -- presumably because the thing is nice and desirable. It could also imply that the thing is sort of happening, but just isn't happening quite enough.

Let's use the example of 3-bedroom condominiums and apartments, which is a topic of discussion that has been circling in Toronto for as long as I've been in the business. Developers here, are generally encouraged or mandated to build a certain number of larger family-sized suites in every new housing project. Oftentimes this number is 10% of the total unit count.

The reasoning behind this is sound. Cities should be inclusive and they should work for the young, the old, the single, and for families, among others. The problem is that, for a variety of reasons, the market, when left to do its own thing, tends to build more small units than large units. At least that's the case here in Toronto. (I've talked about some of the reasons why in previous posts.)

There is a view that if only developers built more large units that more families would choose to live in apartments. It's an issue of supply and availability, and also a question of design. You need to design for families too. This you could say is a "what if" approach. Families want to live in multi-family buildings; so let's build more and better family-sized housing.

But is this really the case or is there some advocacy going on here? All things being equal, does the market want low-rise or does it prefer higher density? It's a fascinating set of questions, but unfortunately all things aren't equal. It's not just a question of availability and design, it's also a question of economics. Large family-sized units cost money.

I suppose this is the fog of life.