[fancifalmanima]

I'm not going to say that the larger number of women entering the work force has had no effect on home prices, however even if it did it's not necessarily a net negative. A larger workforce leads to more economic output, more innovation (there are countless innovations that have probably failed to be made over the generations due to the impact of women not working) that leads to quality of life improvements, productivity improvements, price drops, and other improvements. Food as a percentage of income has dropped dramatically over the years. Same with technologies like computers and home appliances. Houses are also way bigger than they were decades ago.

I live in a 2 income house with a kid, I'm not sure that the alternative (considering the economy as a whole and not just home prices) is actually preferable.

It's also probably pretty difficult to disentangle the effect on home prices from more women working from the effect on home prices from other things like low interest rates. There's likely not a single cause for this, but rather an outcome of some aggregate of causes. It's entirely possible that more women working does increase home prices some, but that it's only some fraction of the overall increase we've seen, and that families come out ahead on this economically by a wide margin. Especially taking into account the aggregate effect a larger labor force has on output and productivity.

[FooBarBizBazz]

> A larger workforce leads to more economic output, more innovation (there are countless innovations that have probably failed to be made over the generations due to the impact of women not working) that leads to quality of life improvements, productivity improvements, price drops, and other improvements.

You're thinking too short term. This logic does not work for more than one human generation.

Say you're playing Civilization. I give you a button in the "change civics" category. You click it, and two things happen:

1. You double the number of professionals in all cities, as a factor of your total population.

2. Your population growth rate goes from strongly positive to slightly negative.

Do you click the button?

Let's make the numbers easier: If you don't click the button, you have a 2x growth rate per generation, and if you do click the button you have a 1x growth rate, i.e. perfectly balanced replacement. Well when happens if you click the button? You get ahead for one generation. But your opponent catches up in the next generation. And in the generation after that, they have 4x the population and therefore 2x the professionals. Before long they're outproducing you on every dimension.

[shados]

It's definitely not a negative and I'd pick a fight if I met someone face to face who said it was. I 100% agree with all of the benefits you outlined, and totally believe it's worth it.

I'd also not focus too much on the "women entering the work force", because that's only one part of it, and not even the biggest part. More families not having kids, fewer families supporting their parents, more complex family structures in general, etc all impact it.

I also don't think it has a significant impact on home price. After all, when accounting for inflation and interest rates, home price is not up by that much. Depending which periods you compare it to, it may even have gone down.

What it changes, is the dynamics of bidding wars in low supply areas, which is a lot more specific, and is generally what people talk about on social medias. The whole "Omg this home went 100k over asking!" shock factor. Again, adjusted home prices didn't go up that much at the median. It's specific homes in specific areas that are skyrocketing.

There's not many alternatives beyond increasing supply. I always like to contrast it with raising the level cap in an MMORPG. Everyone who quickly maxes their level after an update is back to square 1, all being the same. But the person who just started playing is at a huge disadvantage. It may be specific, but for readers familiar with Final Fantasy 14, if you start the game fresh today, you're in for hundreds of hours of catching up...It's very similar to the economic situation we're discussing.