Breitbart Business Digest: Richard Easterlin, the Economist Who Proved That Jobs Make Babies, Dies at 98

RIP Richard Easterlin

Richard A. Easterlin, a trailblazing economist whose insights reshaped our postwar baby boom, died at his home in Pasadena, California, on December 16. He was 98. The University of Southern California, where he was an emeritus professor, confirmed his death.

Though best known for the Easterlin paradox—the provocative argument that rising income levels don’t necessarily lead to greater happiness—his lesser-known but perhaps more consequential work tackled a far weightier question: why societies boom and bust in matters of birth. Easterlin’s baby boom hypothesis wasn’t a polite academic theory; it was a bold assertion that jobs for young men—good, stable jobs—are the essential fuel for fertility. In an age obsessed with GDP and growth-at-any-cost economics, Easterlin had the audacity to challenge

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