Clara Piano [00:00:00]:

Well, churches are absolutely crucial because government propaganda telling people to have more children comes across as extremely lame and insincere. It's really important as churches to have a lot of interaction between people of different ages at different stages in life. Right. Instead of like, maybe segregating by ages to really think about, well, how can the young adults be around these young families and see people like them who are starting families making sacrifices, but also the joy that's hard to see right. When you are maybe just passing in the street or at the grocery store. And then the second thing I think is providing matchmaking services. So that sounds funny, but we know that mechanically, a lot of the problem with falling births in the United States, this is not true in other countries. There's good evidence that it really has to do with delayed marriage.

Clara Piano [00:00:50]:

So once you're married, you do have like two to three kids on average, but people are getting married later, and a smaller share of the population is getting married.

Jim Spiegel [00:01:00]:

Welcome to the Kalos Center Podcast. Hello, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Kalos Center Podcast. Our guest today is Clara Piano. Dr. Piano is visiting professor of Economics at the University of Mississippi. She earned her bachelor's in Economics and Marketing at Creighton University and her MA and PhD in Economics at George Mason University. Before coming to Ole Miss, Clara held posts at Samford University and Austin Peay University.

Jim Spiegel [00:01:41]:

Her publications address a variety of economic issues, and one of her specialties is family economics, which we'll talk a little bit about today. Her work has appeared in a number of scholarly journals and popular periodicals. She's co authored some of her scholarly pieces with her husband, Ennio Piano, who is also an economics professor at Ole Miss. Clara and Ennio have a daughter and a son. Clara Piano, welcome to the Calo Center Podcast.

Clara Piano [00:02:14]:

Thanks so much for having me.

Jim Spiegel [00:02:16]:

So when and how did you start to take a strong interest in the study of economics?

Clara Piano [00:02:22]:

So I came to economics late in my undergraduate career at Creighton University. I had a wonderful set of professors who really changed my life. They ran a reading group where students could engage with Catholic social thought and other sorts of topics in an extracurricular setting and, you know, kind of more of a Socratic discussion. And then they also had some undergraduate research opportunities. And I like to tell my, my undergrad students my first research paper was actually about the craft beer industry in Nebraska that was expanding at the time. So it's, it's been a, an interest ever since then. And I was lucky to go straight to get my PhD at George Mason and have been, I think, having, enjoying the best job out there ever, teaching students, writing research, collaborating, as you mentioned, with my husband and with other great co authors and just overall enjoying being an economist and thinking especially about topics that are outside of maybe what most people think of as economics, which are the institutions that undergird markets. So the family, religion, the law, those types of things are my main interests today.

Jim Spiegel [00:03:40]:

Yeah, when, when people mention economics is an academic discipline, you know, some people's eyes can glaze over, particularly those who are math phobic. And without really recognizing that whether you like math or economics, difference curves or whatever it is, if you're a person in this world who's paying bills and making consumer choices, and particularly if you're raising a family, you are deeply involved in economics. There's just no getting around it. Right?

Clara Piano [00:04:10]:

It's. Yes, I totally agree. It's hard to teach at the high school level. I think I'm a big proponent of starting it in high school, but it's difficult and it needs to be done in a unique way. I would argue more of a classical way than at the, at the college level. Because you as a high school student wouldn't have the experience of having a paycheck. Right. Really knowing what taxes are, even driving yourself to a Walmart, picking up popsicles.

Clara Piano [00:04:37]:

You don't have a lot of that experience in the market yet. So some of the things that we introduce in college or in later only make sense once you, as you mentioned especially try to budget for a family and run a household. Of course, the original meaning of the term economics is, is management of the household from the Greek. So it's something that everyone is engaged in even if they don't know it. And it doesn't have to be, you know, just about math, I like to think of as a way of seeing the world where we think about what are the social laws of nature at play with supply and demand, helping us explain what we see in the real world in terms of prices or wages or even children being born.

Jim Spiegel [00:05:18]:

So one of my areas of interest as a, as a scholar and some of my popular writing is ethics. And one thing that's important to note about economics, particularly for family economics or really any consumer choices we're making is there's always a moral dimension there. Right. And some of the work that you've done really highlights that. And a number of your essays that caught my eye, you've, you've published in Public Discourse, which is a wonderful periodical, online web zine, and you address a number of Issues that really show a kind of unique perspective, maybe you even surprising perspective that I want to talk about concerning everything from donation programs to a family focused approach when it comes to purchases and pro family public policies. I want to address each of these things, but first I want to talk about what is a very kind of trendy thing these days and that is ethical consumerism, Fair trade, ethically sourced goods and services. People are often concerned with this and you know, encourage a thoughtful kind of assessment of the, you know, the purchases we make and with concern to not be kind of unwittingly endorsing or supporting unjust practices. So people are concerned about everything from factory farmed animals to oppressed factory workers in foreign countries.

Jim Spiegel [00:06:51]:

You suggest that production processes make those issues a lot more complex than people think. Can you talk about that?

Clara Piano [00:06:59]:

Right. So as an economist, one of the things that we consistently, or I should say is consistently pressed upon us is this understanding that human knowledge is so limited. So what I see in my individual day to day life is going to be different than what another person knows in terms of even, you know, things with the moral, moral aspects. And so we do now live in a world that's very interconnected and you can understand maybe what it's like in terms of the production processes all around the world. But very often those are going to be summarized by a brand or a label. So like you said, fair trade or non gmo, organic. Right. All of these types of labels that are not perfectly mapping onto moral.

Clara Piano [00:07:49]:

So as Christians, myself, as a Christian, I just wanted to make the case that not every time there's a label that a company is using to make a profit, by the way, it's not indicating necessarily that this thing is more ethical or less ethical. It's actually just checking about, checking some boxes. And so this idea that knowledge is limited and we actually don't know. Right. Whether you know, there was a fair and just wage paid to every worker in that production process. Because that's not exactly what you can measure. It would be extremely costly to try to estimate that. And so ultimately it's not an argument that we shouldn't be concerned about what goes on around the world.

Clara Piano [00:08:33]:

Absolutely, we should be. Absolutely. I believe that one day we'll have to answer to how we treated the people who we employed or the people who we interacted with in the market. Those are moral decisions, as you recognize. But it's about prioritization. And so what do we need to think about first? And I think we need to think about our family members first. Just because we know their needs the best we know how we can serve them the best they have been put under our care. Right.

Clara Piano [00:09:04]:

If we're talking about our children and so thinking about serving their needs and of course not being complicit in inherently unethical practices. But once you get out of that realm, I think when you're thinking about organic, not organic, right. Some of those other labels, putting your family's needs first and your family budget and taking that seriously, I think is, is a, is a better guide than using what come down to marketing tactics as a guide to ethical behavior in the market.

Jim Spiegel [00:09:36]:

So you also note that companies donation programs, which also are pretty popular, that those are actually sometimes actually counterproductive when it comes to helping developing economies. How is that the case? And then also what would be a better approach?

Clara Piano [00:09:57]:

So this is, there are a couple of books on this and it's a pretty well known thing within economics and economic development specifically that some interventions in markets can have unintended negative consequences. So a good example of this would be like Tom shoes. Not to, you know, call them out there. I think they've changed their strategy since. But initially they had this program where they were donating shoes to people in need all over the world and linked to how many shoes they were able to sell and in more high income parts of the world. And that was part of the product was you can buy shoes, but you can also do good. Right. So trying to sell more value in that way and differentiate themselves.

Clara Piano [00:10:38]:

The problem is that there are people in the local markets, in the lower income parts of the world already thinking about, already trying to serve those needs of people in terms of making shoes, repairing shoes. And so when you flood a market with donations, it puts those people out of a job, but it's also temporary. So flood the market with shoes. No one needs shoes for two years now. So the, the previous industry of shoe repair and shoe manufacturing kind of goes out of existence. It's run, run out. It, it probably loses a lot of money and will have to lay off its workers. But then in two years you need to reback, build back those skills.

Clara Piano [00:11:20]:

And so it can be disruptive when, when, when we take kind of grand plans and impose them on other markets without again understanding our limited human knowledge of what's actually going on. Is this a real need or is there a better way to help? Right. Or is this just the easiest way for me to help and sell my shoes? So taking all of those things into account, it's a little bit more complicated when we think about foreign aid and foreign development. I'm a big proponent of the idea that the human person is the ultimate resource, in the words of an economist who's a favorite of mine, Julian Simon. And once we unleash the potential of entrepreneurs, parents, to save and invest in their children, just the local talents in a lot of developing markets, they'll be able to find their way. But it's really about unleashing those local talents instead of maybe trying to consistently give donations because it seems like a good thing to do.

Jim Spiegel [00:12:25]:

So this is all a part of what you call a family focused approach. Would that describe the scholar that you just mentioned, your favorite economist? What's his name?

Clara Piano [00:12:35]:

So, Julian Simon. He is well known for his bet with Simon Ehrlich, who wrote the Population Bomb, where he argued against Ehrlich in saying that the problem wasn't overpopulation. So Simon said we don't have too many people. There's really no empirical evidence for that. So he has a massive book where he gets into that. But his main message was that people are the ultimate resource and that it's about unleashing those talents, making sure we have institutions and markets and political setups that allow people to provide for their families essentially. And once we kind of get out of the way a little bit more, then people will naturally, they naturally want to be creative, invest. Right.

Clara Piano [00:13:19]:

And save for their children again and to, to find their vocations. Right. And so that, that's really the problem is more institutional than it is this like overpopulation, this, this idea that we have too many people. And of course, I think Simon has been vindicated. There's a really nice resource. Listeners are more interested in this called the Simon Abundance Index, where it's the. The Cato Institute tracks the prices of raw materials and shows how human ingenuity has actually driven down the costs of a lot of things that we need. And so it's part of a general approach, I'd say within economics, we tend to see people not only as hands to work or mouths to eat, but brains and people who have ideas and talents.

Clara Piano [00:14:07]:

Right. To give to people, the world.

Jim Spiegel [00:14:09]:

So Julian Simon, what, what would be.

Clara Piano [00:14:12]:

His signature, the ultimate resource is this big book that he's best known for. He has some smaller books. Some of them were published after his death. I think one of them is like 100 greatest facts or something like that. But there's a website with a lot of free resources. It's just Julian Simon, I think dot com, if people are interested. He did pass away Relatively recently, but there are a lot of great young scholars trying to carry on his work today. I would consider myself in that tradition trying to carry on this message of people not being the problem.

Clara Piano [00:14:49]:

And economists know this. Economists usually weren't on the coming from the perspective of there being a problem of overpopulation. Again, like I said, we do tend to think that if people are having children, they know what they're doing, they're making a rational decision, they see the cost and benefits better than we do. But now with the recent actually birth dearth, the recent reports around the world that actually it looks like not overpopulation, but something like underpopulation, which I wouldn't even call it that to be picky, but people are not having a lot of children. And so the main problems we will probably be dealing with in the future is a lack of human ingenuity and human labor and human talents that we need, we need to solve our everyday problems. Right. I need, as a mom, I need someone to think about the best travel stroller that can fold up really nicely. And I can take it with me right when I visit, visit my own parents with the grandbabies.

Clara Piano [00:15:49]:

And so the idea of serving each other's needs in the market depends on a population, depends on population growth. And so this is a view that economists have had for a long time, but I think it needs to be more widely known.

Jim Spiegel [00:16:06]:

So for all of your support of this family focused approach, you're also skeptical of what are called pro family public policies. Some might see that as surprising. You're being a pro family person. In fact, you maintain that as you put it, the risks of reducing burdens through intervention as pro family policy are greater than any potential benefits. So why is that?

Clara Piano [00:16:37]:

Yes, so it is maybe surprising that I'm against, I'd say ostensibly pro family policy, where there's an idea that we can pay people to have more children and that this is one thing that would help us see population growth instead of population decline. And the reason for that is, or I should say there are a couple of reasons for that. And the first one is historical, which is that I've studied Soviet family policy deeply and looked into the history of family policy, which goes back to like to basically the Roman Empire rulers have been concerned about their populations for like security reasons, again for economic reasons for a long time. And they can be invasive, I think on the decisions of couples, which I believe is, is a really important decision, but it's one that like the government doesn't necessarily need to be engaged in I think religious organizations, absolutely. I think, you know, you and your spouse, obviously. But beyond that, I don't think that, um, historically we've seen population control policies go in a good direction. And just because it's in the opposite direction in terms of not trying to suppress the population. Right.

Clara Piano [00:17:54]:

Like the one child policy, for instance, in China, which is now ended just because today our problem is in the opposite direction, I don't think warrants the assumption that we know more than couples about what would be the best family size for them. That being said, I think there is good evidence that couples are not having the number of children that they would like to have. Have that they're not able to welcome just for. For really reasons that that could be changed through policy. They're not able to welcome the number of children that they would ideally or be happiest with. Ideally like to have or be happiest with. And so I think there are problems with maybe housing, housing regulation, things like childcare, childcare regulation, things concerning marriage, or the decline in religiosity. There are a bunch of other things that could be addressed by government policy, but I don't consider those pro family.

Clara Piano [00:18:47]:

Even though they are in practice pro family, they're not usually called pro family. So what I'm trying to say is I don't think paying people to have more children is a good route for a principled reason. And then there are some empirical reasons as well. There's not a lot of evidence that these programs are able to generate a lot of additional births and they cost a lot of money in the United States is not in a position of having budget surpluses where we can look for fun things to spend money on at this point. And it could also hurt the tax situation of our future children if we don't spend prudently. So instead of doing that, instead of saying, okay, how can we spend our way out of this? I want us to think critically, like, what are the actual barriers facing people? Is it a money issue or is it a, I need to find, you know, a starter house issue? Or is it a, well, I want flexibility where, you know, I can have my mom watch my kids for a couple days of the week and then maybe have a nanny one day of the week. Right. More flexibility built in.

Clara Piano [00:19:48]:

Remote work is another good example, labor force policies. So I hope that answers your question. I'm trying to say that there are certainly things we can do to be pro family, but they usually don't look.

Jim Spiegel [00:19:59]:

Like, so what could the church do? Is there anything that Christian Organizations or local churches can do to address that issue, say in terms of theological teaching or otherwise. I know, I know that's not, maybe that's delving into some non economic sorts of practical theological issues. But I'm wondering what your thoughts are there.

Clara Piano [00:20:26]:

Well, churches are absolutely crucial because government propaganda telling people to have more children comes across as extremely lame and insincere and doesn't work historically. But the example of, I'll just use my case of women like me who are having large families and who are thriving and who enjoy their children and their husband, that speaks volumes. And, and so on the initial level, I think it's really important as churches to have a lot of interaction between people of different ages at different stages in life. Right. Instead of like maybe segregating by ages to really think about, well, how can the young adults be around these young families and see people like them who are starting families making sacrifices, but also the joy that's hard to see right when you are maybe just passing in the street or at the grocery store. And this is, is I, I should say kind of founded in research as well. There are a couple of interesting studies that show that babies are contagious, so, so to speak. So when your sister or your friend conceives, you are more likely to also think about a child and conceive.

Clara Piano [00:21:39]:

And so at a very practical level, I think that there are a lot of things that could be done by really holding up the, the young families or the, the growing families in a church community as examples and doing what is possible to support them, right, by getting babysitters for when they need it, or baby boxes, coordinating, you know, those meals when, when the baby first arrives. Those types of things are absolutely fundamental. And if I were like thinking about, you know, leading those types of programs that are at a church, I would dive deeply into that. And then the second thing I think is providing matchmaking services. So that sounds funny, but we know that mechanically a lot of the problem with falling births in the United States, this is not true in other countries, I think, but in the United States there's good evidence that it really has to do with delayed marriage. So once you're married, you do have like two to three kids on average, but people are getting married later and a smaller share of the population is getting married. And so this matters because not only is marriage great, but it's great for kids. And so if churches can find ways, and I found in my own experience, I help with some young adult groups, that calling them matchmaking is not usually the best way to go, it can be a little high pressure, but finding ways to get single year young adults with similar values to make friends first and then really establish those relationships and know that they have a lot of support is really important as well.

Clara Piano [00:23:14]:

So those would be the two things that I would focus on. And then I guess the last thing that I would say is in general promoting the message that, that people are good. That's something that you won't get outside of religion. That's something that religion, that Christianity in particular is, is famous for and needs to become more famous for. This message that whether you're young, old, healthy, sick, you know, whatever your contribution to society, we value your life and we're here to, to, to celebrate your life as a gift. And so I think that that's also a really important consideration is we want to be shaping that narrative over the value of human life.

Jim Spiegel [00:24:00]:

Right. Sanctity of human life based in our being divine image bearers and this inestimable value of each human life, regardless of its quality, that is such a Christian distinctive that really is shared by all orthodox Christians and across the spectrum. It's a, it's a wonderfully unifying theme and unfortunately, you know, increasingly countercultural, which is sad to see. But just one more way where, you know, we can be a light in the midst of a cultural darkness. And to your first point, yeah, my wife and I have been very evangelistic over the years just in terms of encouraging young couples not to wait. You know, you can, you can wait until it's too late doing all the calculations and can we afford to have a child and et cetera. And we have, we've had several come back to us and say we're so glad we didn't wait, including the pastor I've been working under here at Creek Christian Community Church where the Kalos center is housed. He and his wife were dating when I was teaching at Taylor University.

Jim Spiegel [00:25:05]:

And we'd have them babysit for us, it was a kind of one hand washes. The other thing, you know, they'd babysit and then we would kind of mentor them. And one of the things that we would tell them as we saw their marriage, you know, their wedding approaching, was don't wait. In fact, have a lot of kids, which they ended up doing. We have four kids. It's, you know, family of six is a lot. They ended up beating that by 50%. They got six, just great kids and they're great parents and who knows how many kids they'll have.

Jim Spiegel [00:25:34]:

And it's just neat to think that maybe we had some sort of influence in that direction, you know, because it's just as really maybe the most redemptive thing you can do in this world is to have kids and to raise them in the Christian way. It's, it's just wonderful. So that's certainly something all of us can do as Christians is just promote this, the procreative practice. It's the ultimate gift from God. So I want you to talk a little bit more about why declining birth rates really is such a problem. You know, a lot of people are and have been for generations now worried about global overpopulation. And there are some well known multibillionaires who have been very active in trying to stall this and bring down the global population. But hold on, this is problematic.

Jim Spiegel [00:26:25]:

Can you talk about why declining birth rates really is a big deal?

Clara Piano [00:26:30]:

Absolutely. So let me first just say that concerns about overpopulation from the beginning were quite unscientific. And what I mean by that is they were missing a fundamental reality that additional human beings grow the pie of resources. So as our population has grown exponentially in the last couple hundred years, our standards of living have grown even more exponentially. And that's not a coincidence. And that's not what a lot of scientists who weren't seeing that connection, that important understanding that human beings create would have predicted. And so I want to say, like, we know now, but like, really any economist worth his or her salt knows now and that population growth is really important for growing the pie of economic resources. And there are a couple of ways that this happens.

Clara Piano [00:27:28]:

Just so every human being is unique and unrepeatable, which means that they're going to have unique ideas and they're going to have unique talents and different ways that they can serve the community, right? So one might be Steve Jobs, but one also might just be really good at, you know, quilting. And one also might just be really good at, you know, knowing how to build something that will fix this tiny engineering problem. So we need all of the skills, right, and all of the different perspectives and ideas. And then the second thing is that more people mean a bigger market, so there's more payoff for each idea. So I mentioned, like, I'm, I'm a mom, like I travel with my kids. I get this feedback sometimes when I, when I have them in like a baby carrier or in their, in the stroller. And a lot of moms will say, oh man, I wish I would have had that. You know, like, it's such a Cool technology.

Clara Piano [00:28:24]:

And well, the reason for that is, is there are, there's a big market for. If you can come up with the technology that moms want and they want to buy, you could make money. You can make money from that. It's a great way of serving people and we reward you for it. And so that's another way that population growth helps, is both not only producing ideas, but we would say also demanding that, that production. And then at a couple of different levels, there's going to be an importance of population just from a national security perspective. So I think that this is why a lot of countries are starting to pay attention to. And let me just say for the listeners as well, I'm not only talking about high income countries here.

Clara Piano [00:29:03]:

Birth rates are falling in virtually every country around the world. A lot of low income countries have lower birth rates than in the United States, for instance. So a classic example is the birth rate in Mexico is actually lower than the birth rate, the fertility rate in the United States right now. So this is a problem for, for almost every country. But like I said, yeah, there's going to be some national security elements to it in terms of like, do you have enough people for a military, you know, or do you have enough people to do the, those basic jobs, enough talent, right. For your administrations and things like that. And then lastly, I always like to emphasize that there is a human cost to the fact that birth rates are declining. And we know this because we know that from survey data people are not having as many children as they would like to have.

Clara Piano [00:30:00]:

So on average in the United States, a woman of reproductive age says she would like to have two to three kids and she's projected to have only one to two. And this means that people are feeling at their life goals and like one of the most important areas. And it would be very cool if we could just click close that gap, right? So as an economist, I don't even need to be in the business of convincing people to have more kids. I need to be in the business of like, oh, well, you would like to have these children. Like what are preventing, right, what are the things preventing you from, from achieving that goal that you already have? So I see it that way and I think that that's an important piece of the conversation as well is we've done a really good job with like education of helping people achieve their educational dreams of going to college, right. Or something like that. But I, I think that having children is, is a much bigger component of your lifetime satisfaction. And so if we can Help people achieve those dreams.

Clara Piano [00:30:56]:

I'd really like to do so.

Jim Spiegel [00:30:58]:

That's good. In one of your essays, you talk about Soviet family policy. You. You've mentioned that just briefly a few minutes ago. And you know how some of those ideas are actually still with us in, in 21st century America. What are the similarities?

Clara Piano [00:31:15]:

Yes. So Soviet family policy was a really unique experience initially after, after the Bolshevik Revolution, they decided to dismantle the family. So, and if anyone is familiar with the writings of Engels, right, And just Marxist thought in general, you know, that the big things that they were against were religion, private property in the family. So definitely against religion. Banned religious marriages. Right. Really tried to crush religious practice. But then also they instituted unilateral divorce and really encourage women to.

Clara Piano [00:31:54]:

To work in the factories and not have so many children. And, oh, they banned inheritance and I think adoption and a couple of other things, you know, so really drastic changes right after the revolution and, and a lot of those policies, like unilateral divorce and they legalized abortion as well. Those two are big ones that have been influencing American culture and American life now for decades as well. But less than a generation after the Soviet Union, I say, experimented with those policies, they saw their effects, which were essentially, there's a lot of. Lot of dysfunction just socially. There were a lot of orphan children. There were really huge sex ratios. So a lot of women, not a lot of men from the purges, the war.

Clara Piano [00:32:38]:

But also there are rampant problems with women being abandoned by the fathers of their children. So they stepped in and they said, well, we really, for national security reasons, would like to increase our population and have a little bit more stability. Right. We can't have dysfunction and try to also, you know, conquer all this territory as the Soviet Union. So what they decided to do is add divorce restrictions. They started restricting access to abortion. They started paying women to have kids with. And they also had awards.

Clara Piano [00:33:08]:

So it's this idea of heroin mother. And then they would also financially support single mothers. So if you were married, it was harder to get divorced and, like, get out. So there's maybe more stability there. But there was a big push to subsidize basically single mothers and who wouldn't even have to put the name of the father and the birth certificate. The one thing they did not change, though, was they still kept the ban on religious marriage. You could not get married within the Russian Orthodox Church or any, any church. And this didn't.

Clara Piano [00:33:38]:

We don't know the counterfactual. Right. If they hadn't changed the policy but we know for, for a fact that it did not increase the birth rate at all. And the social dysfunction remained. So people continued to get abortions at an extremely high rate. There continued to be extremely high levels of infidelity and child poverty, poor mothers, basically single mothers. And it was, I think, one of the things that certainly led to the fall of the Soviet Union as well, in addition to their atrocious economic policies. So what I also see now is this conversation between government officials thinking about how do we raise birth rates? And they're making the same mistakes.

Clara Piano [00:34:23]:

They're not thinking about religion as an important force. Right. They're ignoring it, ignoring religious marriage. And they're thinking that we can, you know, pay women to have more kids, when in reality it's, it's a much bigger decision than something that a couple thousand dollars could change. And for good reason, because your, your child is with you for life and you should take that really, or well, especially if you believe in an internal soul, right? They're, they're going to be with you forever. And so you got to take that decision, decision very seriously. And, and I don't think it would solve the problems. It would just cause fiscal pressure.

Clara Piano [00:34:57]:

So it's an interesting example to look back to historically. And I would say there's some strong correlations between the Soviet Union and their experience and then what has been tried in China already and the direction I think that they will be moving.

Jim Spiegel [00:35:11]:

Wow. As a race, as a human race, we seem to be making the same mistake over and over and over again. These are all cautionary tales, aren't they? The. Trying to think of the name of that female communist scholar you mentioned, one of your essays, who was very much a champion of these ideas, said that we need to get our views on sex such that it's just comparable to drinking a glass of water, which is. That's the attitude of a lot of people today. You know, it's the most casual view of sexual possible and just how devastating. But one thing that comes to my mind when I think about that is how really intuitively everybody recognizes that is wrong. You know, if, if I force you to take a drink of water, you're not going to charge me with, you know, some sort of crime or you wouldn't advocate, you know, having a law against that.

Jim Spiegel [00:36:06]:

You just say, that's very rude. There, there must be something sacred about sexuality such that if one person forces it on another, another, even if there's no physical damage, it's, it's such a deep violation psychologically. And emotionally that there must be something more to it than just the, the physical act. And it is not analogous to drinking a glass of water. In fact, it's not analogous to really anything. It's so special. And yes, there should be rape laws in place such that if you do that to someone when you serve, say, 20 years in prison, and in the Old Testament, it was even punishable by death, you know, as was adultery. I mean, there are good biblical reasons for that.

Jim Spiegel [00:36:50]:

So I wish more people who were that kind of sold out for this very casual view of sex. It's just. Oh, it's just another thing that people do with their bodies. I wish they would pay more attention to their own intuitions when it comes to sex crimes. Right. Because they would almost always be advocates of severe penalties for sex crimes anyway. So what would you say? You've touched on this a little bit, but I want to hear you talk a little bit more about the biggest threats to the family in the US Today and how we as Christians can, can meet those threats.

Clara Piano [00:37:26]:

Yep. So in the United States, the biggest, I think, and the, the biggest problem is going to come down to marriage. And so that connects to, to the falling birth rates, but it also connects to, I think, a failure to establish good civic friendships, to establish like a pro family culture. Right. A lot of these other pieces. And so it's going to come down to marriage. I think it's important to recognize that. And there's.

Clara Piano [00:37:54]:

There's actually been some, some economic studies on this as well, that people use marriage as a commitment device, which means that it allows me to have certainty that even when something is not going to be convenient for you or even when maybe I don't feel like it, we're still going to be cooperating. We're still going to be working together to invest in our family. And so this is super important for children. Right. Because children have a very long time horizon. We would say, you know, you, you can't just think about them in the next year. It's a, it's a big commitment throughout your life. And then this is also going to be important just for simple things like how do we handle our careers and how do we handle whose job we move for, how do we handle, you know, investing in our home? And so there's a really interesting line of research that's shown that actually marriage rates amongst homeowners has received as remained, excuse me, relatively stable.

Clara Piano [00:38:49]:

And part of the explanation for that is while the marriage contract in a secular sense doesn't provide that commitment device that people need. Having a home acts as like collateral. So if you have a big resource that, you know, man, I really wouldn't like to, to, you know, have to sell it and divide it up and all of this kind of stuff that can help people have that certainty, have the stability that they need to then invest in the relationship. And so then you see, couples are more likely to have more kids, maybe have a stay at home mom for part of it, right? She's able to sacrifice part, part of her earnings, right, for the good of the family in that way because she has the stability of knowing she won't be then, you know, cut off on the other end. And so there are a lot of pieces that go into it. Marriage is a big one. How to get marriage to function better as a commitment device would be my number one thing. But there's definitely some regulatory issues in housing and in labor markets in general are two things that I've been starting to think a lot about.

Clara Piano [00:39:53]:

And there's been a little bit of work on showing the importance of a house, right. For, for young families, access to a small doesn't have to be nice, right? Just access to like a small house and then having that own space, right. So you've. I've had babies, I've had two babies in an apartment before. And it's just not as nice when you think that you're keeping the neighbors up at night as well when they're crying. It's better to, to contain that within your four walls. And so there are a lot of just, you know, sort of practical reasons why people tend to really favor houses for children, especially in the United States. And then labor market is a big one.

Clara Piano [00:40:32]:

I have a paper with a demographer, Lyman Stone. We talk about specifically like labor market flexibility across the 50 states. And we show that in states where work is more flexible, families are able to customize their work schedules to their family needs. Right. Maybe it's part time sometimes, maybe it's full time, maybe it's travel, maybe it's not remote, whatever. Every family is different. But if you're able to customize, you have a lot of options in the labor force. You are more likely to have the number of kids that you desire.

Clara Piano [00:41:03]:

So I think that that's an important component as well. Probably focusing on that flexibility of benefits, remote work angle too.

Jim Spiegel [00:41:12]:

So how would you say your work as an economist is an outworking of your personal faith?

Clara Piano [00:41:18]:

It is strongly influenced by my faith and I'm trying to think about how to describe it. Simply, I think My interest in the family as an institution in society grew out of what I saw as an emphasis growing up on family and the importance, just spiritually, of being a good. And the responsibility. Right. Of first obeying your parents and then know, being a good parent and being a good, good church member and all of those things. And so it clued me in to the importance of the family and how it underlies so many of the institutions that we have in society. But then just so it shapes my research, but just day to day, it gives me a real interest in students, a desire to form them as people, a desire to be a really good teacher, and also to communicate these ideas more broadly. I think my role in my vocation has to do a lot with trying to make sure there's truth in our conversations or trying to share more of the truth when I hear something that I think is an error to speak up and say something about it.

Clara Piano [00:42:24]:

Right. So I do get a lot of students or a lot of people who've heard the narrative of overpopulation. And I think it's so important to correct that because it's just an error in our thinking about what reality is like. And so those types of things. I think that that's kind of the. The general vocation of academics is searching for the truth. Right. And helping communicate that to broader audiences.

Jim Spiegel [00:42:51]:

Yeah, that's good. Yeah. There's certainly a strong biblical emphasis on truth, isn't there? You know, you think about early chapters of Genesis, the fall was catalyzed by a lie and a departure from truth. Jesus even defines himself accordingly, calling himself the. The way, the truth and the life. When God defines himself or he names himself to Moses, he calls himself the Great I am, which is, at least in, you know, the broader Christian philosophical tradition. You know, we would. We would understand a true statement is one that corresponds with the way things are, are.

Jim Spiegel [00:43:35]:

And so if that's the case, then when God calls himself I am, it's another way of God saying, I am the truth. So, yeah, that's a deeply Christian emphasis, even if that isn't recognized immediately by a lot of people, that as Christians, we need to be pursuers of truth and declarers of truth. Arguing, defending truth in whatever domain we're working, whether it's economics or some other field. So you are. You have a clear sense of vocation and calling in your life as an, as a Christian economist. To broaden the question, I like to end all of our conversations with this question. What would you say is the meaning of life?

Clara Piano [00:44:14]:

That's a good question. Let me go back super quickly to your previous question because I did forget a component and this relates to my answer to this question. So there's a nice little book called the Intellectual Life, but it's written for people who want to pursue an intellectual career to some extent. But I, I, it's really written for everyone. And I do see part of my vocation as reaching out to everyone, no matter what their day to day job is. And I'm helping them recognize that they have an intellectual life and can cultivate that and can cultivate that interior life a little bit more. And so to answer the question about the meaning of life, the main thing that came to mind was that line from the Baltimore Catechism, which is to know, love and serve God in this life and the next. So that's a simple, truthful, I think, touchstone, a nice encapsulation of a lot of what we've been saying.

Clara Piano [00:45:10]:

To know, love and serve, serve God. And the recognition that there is not just life here, but there's a life after as well.

Jim Spiegel [00:45:21]:

Very good. Yeah. Everlasting life, in fact. That's wonderful. Well, Clara, thank you so much for spending this time with us. I've enjoyed it a lot. Thank you.

Clara Piano [00:45:30]:

Thank you so much for having me.

Jim Spiegel [00:45:32]:

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