NEW: Is the internet changing our personalities for the worse? Conscientiousness and extroversion are down, neuroticism up, with young adults leading the charge. This is a really consequential shift, and there’s a lot going on here, so let’s get into the weeds 🧵

Let me talk today about 🧽 sponge cities. When I discuss fertility decline, I often get the following comment: “As the population falls, housing prices will also fall, which will help with fertility and the system will self-correct.” Perhaps not. As the population falls, we are observing a phenomenon called sponge cities (see the map from Japan: do you know which city is the green spot?). There are even more incentives for the population to concentrate in large cities (e.g., Tokyo or Seoul) for three reasons: 1️⃣ Jobs. As the population shrinks in many regions, jobs disappear with it. Yes, you can telecommute for some jobs, but there are fewer of those than you’d think. A plumber cannot telecommute. 2️⃣ Services. As the population shrinks in many regions, services like grocery stores, hospitals, schools, etc., also disappear. I’ve seen this in many villages in Europe: population falls below a threshold, and the local supermarket closes. This creates a negative spiral that’s hard to break. 3️⃣ Amenities. As the population shrinks, amenities like bars, theaters, and restaurants vanish too. And it turns out people, especially younger cohorts, care more about amenities than about jobs. You might be telecommuting, but you cannot telebar. So it might well be the case that housing prices won’t fall in sponge cities, and that this won’t help fertility. Self-correcting mechanisms often don’t work.

One for the podcast enjoyers: I had a great time chatting with @_alice_evans last week about all things gender divide. • What it is / isn’t (it’s actually two things) • Which groups are shifting furthest/fastest • The most plausible driving factors And lots more!

This is brilliant - really fascinating

Amazing that this is US trade policy

A lot of people are blaming AI for grads’ poor outcomes, but I find the evidence for this claim is surprisingly thin. Excited to release a new analysis w/ @employamerica on the labor market performance of recent college grads. 🧵

NEW: There’s been a lot of discussion lately about rising graduate unemployment. I dug a little closer and a striking story emerged: Unemployment is climbing among young graduate *men*, but college-educated young women are generally doing okay.

Like many fans, I have found football radars to be really helpful, as they are visually very intuitive and easy to understand. Today we launch our own version to highlight the financial strengths and weaknesses of football clubs, comparing Premier League clubs with their peers.

New post: MAGA energy policy means raising electricity prices to own the libs Sacrificing material prosperity for post-material politics used to be what I thought the far right called "woke." But this is exactly what the Big Beautiful Bill does on energy policy. It singles out solar, storage, wind, etc for onerous punishment because these energy sources carry the whiff of Biden and climate change hippies, even as experts scream that BBB's policies will raise electricity prices at a time when electricity demand is surging. If anything screams "sacrificing material wellbeing for post-material weirdness" it's forcing Americans to pay more for electricity because you're so blinded by hatred of any technology that codes as progressive. (And solar isn't even progressive! The Texas energy grid is adding renewables like crazy, because it's economical!) I've seen @EricLevitz on this beat, as well, and I think it's remarkable. Some folks think about the GOP being too obsessed with economic efficiency and the Democratic Party as being too obsessed with identity. But on energy, GOP lawmakers have assigned solar the identity of "lib" and so they're willing to make our grids less efficient as long as they can own the libs.

Since Trump was elected, US support for international cooperation of all kinds has climbed sharply, from free trade to overseas assistance. Perhaps Trump’s real MAGA legacy will be Making Americans Globalists Again