Thankfully, Vance’s dystopian take on modern family preferences doesn’t seem to be obviously supported by the evidence. Let’s look at two economic factors: government indebtedness and infrastructure investment. Using them as markers for a forward-thinking society makes intuitive sense. Both fixing your roof while the sun is shining and curbing spending before the bill collector calls require foresight and a willingness to value “future you” over “current you.” If the broad linkage suggested by Vance exists — lower societal fertility encourages short-termism — one might expect nations with lower fertility rates than the U.S. to have higher indebtedness and invest less in roads and bridges. And you would need such a linkage to be super strong before even toying with the illiberal idea of changing one person, one vote.

But that doesn’t appear to be strongly or even obviously the case. Heading into the COVID-19 pandemic, plenty of rich countries with lower fertility rates than the U.S. also had a lower gross public debt-to-GDP ratio. Likewise, plenty of advanced economies with lower fertility rates spend a larger share of GDP on transportation infrastructure. Germany, for instance, has a lower fertility rate than the US (1.54 to 1.71), but also a lower debt ratio (68 percent to 134 percent) and spends a greater share of its economy on infrastructure (0.7 percent to 0.5 percent, as of 2019). Same goes for Great Britain and the Nordic countries.