| Ugh, it's considerably simpler. Blame capitalism, but the real estate part. Real estate: there's not enough of it, new construction targets young unmarried people and successively makes smaller units while gradually raising the price per unit. Young people without families optimize for themselves and continually are willing to compromise for less space for the same money but minimum_space(single) << minimum_space(family+kids) So new construction, particularly large apartment building have few to no units that anyone could actually raise a family in and trend towards "studio" concrete cylinders. Places with more space are zoned for exclusive residential and are thus tremendously boring. Mixed use places are full of vacant commercial space because lowering the rent would trigger property revaluation and the places that aren't vacant are tremendously expensive because of the large amount that has to go to paying the rent ... or paying their low-to-middle income employees who spent half their income on rent. All of this money is getting sucked out of the economy into A) people who want real estate income without working and B) the financial system giving them loans. Nobody wants kids because they have to chose between expensive housing where it's boring and extremely expensive housing where it's not. Just furthering the generation on generation the young paying for the previous generations real estate "investment" growth. |
Housing is absolutely a large reason for the fertility decline, but the main issue is governments forbidding housing from being built which is pretty much the opposite of capitalism.
new construction targets young unmarried people and successively makes smaller units while gradually raising the price per unit
Developers don't get to unilaterally set prices, they're determined by supply and demand. When supply is heavily restricted, prices predictably rise.