[7e]

The problem isn’t a lack of housing, it’s a lot of breeding. US population has doubled since 1950. It quadrupled since 1900.

As long as people keep having babies in excess of the replacement rate, housing will always be good investment. They don’t make any more land, and the earth is, frankly, full.

[darth_avocado]

Problem is absolutely lack of housing and population growth has nothing to do with it.

Average house size was about 1000 sqft in the 1900 and average household size was 5. This remained relatively the same in 1950 where the average household size was 4. These days, the average size of a house is 2600sqft and household size is 3. We have created a system where we build fewer larger houses. This is because policy (often dictated by people who already own houses) makes it impossible to build small high density housing or even if it is possible to build it, it’s not profitable.

[derektank]

The US birth rate hasn't exceeded the replacement rate since the 1970s

[lazide]

With immigration though, it definitely has.

[Supermancho]

> The problem isn’t a lack of housing, it’s a lot of breeding.

> As long as people keep having babies in excess of the replacement rate

To reiterate, the thread was about "breeding". The birth rate has fallen behind.

You are referring to the overall population growth being due to immigration. This may be true, but is unrelated. Respond to the post about why overpop is driving the housing pricing, not to the factual corrections.

[lazide]

So immigrants don’t count as people, or have babies?

The birth rate for immigrants in america is still quite positive, and has more than offset the low birth rate from ‘non-immigrants’.

[Supermancho]

> So immigrants don’t count as people, or have babies?

Births for immigrants are not counted separately. Again, the birth rate is the topic (which includes immigrant births). Granted, all kinds of residents have births outside of hospitals, but that's a tiny minority that is not counted.

This focus on immigrant vs non-immigrant is more noise in the wrong thread.

[derektank]

No it hasn't. Even among immigrants the birth rate reached replacement in the late 00's and has since fallen below 1.8 births per woman.

[lazide]

Cite? Data I saw shows 2.19

[sorcerer-mar]

You should consider getting in an airplane and meandering around and reporting back on how full the earth is.

[appreciatorBus]

People don’t live in land, they live in floorspace, and we can make plenty of that if we choose.

[jfengel]

Much of the news lately has been about how we're going below the replacement rate, and somehow that's also a crisis.

[AnimalMuppet]

The US is nowhere near full.

[msgodel]

If that were the case housing would be cheap.

It may very well also be that the way we're organizing people means they can't live densely and that's why it's full. Regardless it's full enough that there's almost no place for young people in the US economy.

[AnimalMuppet]

7e specifically said "land". He (?) said that "the earth is full", even though the issue was the US housing supply. Well, the US has plenty of land for houses - even if people can't or won't live densely.

And whether there's a place for young people in the economy is not what's under discussion here.