These countries tried everything from cash to patriotic calls to duty to reverse drastically declining birth rates. It didn’t work.
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If history is any guide, none of this will work: No matter what governments do to convince them to procreate, people around the world are having fewer and fewer kids.
In the US, the birth rate has been falling since the Great Recession, dropping almost 23 percent between 2007 and 2022. Today, the average American woman has about 1.6 children, down from three in 1950, and significantly below the “replacement rate” of 2.1 children needed to sustain a stable population. In Italy, 12 people now die for every seven babies born. In South Korea, the birth rate is down to 0.81 children per woman. In China, after decades of a strictly enforced one-child policy, the population is shrinking for the first time since the 1960s. In Taiwan, the birth rate stands at 0.87.
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In 1968, when Richard Nixon was first elected, “middle class” was defined as one Union type job paying for a family of four in a private house with a few luxuries. In those days, $1 million was a vast fortune. Nixon ramped up inflation with his Vietnam War buildup, and the Oil Crisis really increased it. Ronald Reagan got elected and by the time Bush Sr. finished the job, “middle class” was two incomes to keep the household going, and $1 million was what a rich guy paid for a party.
How much cash? Is it drastically less than the increase in the cost of living since birth rates started to drop? I’ll bet that it’s as little as possible while still technically not being zero, and I’ll bet it’s taxed as earned income.
Sure you can. We could limit the work week to 32 hours, pay higher salaries such that homes and goods are affordable again.
I’ve been terrified of pregnancy my entire life and I’m a selfish adult who wants to do what I want.
So yes, nothing the governments do can ever make me want to have kids.
Not even you, Greg Abbott, you dickhole pathetic excuse for a “person”. I fucking hate you!
Edit: One of my sentences was exceptionally dark.
Not to address your fears specifically, but there’s a lot a government (society) can do to make more women feel safer and more comfortable about becoming pregnant and giving birth.
From high quality free healthcare, to maternity (and paternity) leave, to daycare, to schooling - at just a start - there are ways society can look after itself.
That is, I can understand (in a limited, “I’m not you” fashion) your POV.
Oh, also, I do hope you meant to include “want”, as is in, “can make you want to have kids”. Because government mandated pregnancy is a pretty horrifying concept.
Truth, I’ll go back and edit it to say “want”. It does seem extra dark with the way its written.
But also, yes, there are a lot more things that society can do to make women feel safer and cared for when having children. And women who do want and choose to have a child should do so with comfort and support, because their body is literally making a human being - which is awesome, even if it’s not for me.
It’s just, here in the US, and red states specifically, maternity and infant mortality rates are fucking abysmal considering the level of Healthcare were supposed to be provided. It’s unfortunately even worse if you’re a WOC. I’m not sure what maternal care looks like in your neck of the woods, but hopefully better then here.
But I’ve been just…not materially inclined ever since I was a kid. I’ve never really felt the draw for it, and luckily found my husband whose cool with that.
Countries in Europe got most of that and they are still struggling with getting to the replacement rate.
Most isn’t good enough. All of it might be enough to make me think about having a kid.
If that’s selfish, we should all be selfish. Fuck it we don’t owe the world shit. What’s it ever done for us?
I don’t think it’s selfish to not want kids. With how fucked the world is, maybe we should be thinking about if it’s instead selfish to have kids.
I determined from about age 12 that I didn’t want kids. 10 years later and I still don’t want them, so I removed the possibility of accidentally having them. The government can’t make me have kids - seeing as I yeeted my uterus.
Stop saying that. Not having kids is not selfish. Having kids is selfish. You create a human just because you want to own one.
Man anti-natalists are a special breed of crazy.
Or you know… You like children, want to continue the species, and have the biological drive to procreate.
You might have a drive to procreate but not using contraception is a choice for most people.
God forbid you do something crazy like intend for humanity to have a future. Fucking wild man, who does that?
So you’re a mouse.
You think having kids because you like them isn’t a selfish reason? Or that having them to continue the species isn’t a supremely arrogant reason?
I can’t speak to the biological drive, because I have no idea what it feels like.
We want kids, but we can’t biologically conceive, as much as we’ve tried. Surrogacy starts at like, $30k. Start paying for that, a year of paid parental leave for both parents, and real universal Healthcare, and we have a solid start.
Or perhaps fund adoptions? Those are just as expensive!
We’re also in a same sex relationship, so that strikes a lot of adoptions right off… Even so, just for legal reasons, I’d prefer surrogacy. I just want a happy little family someday :)
I meant as a generality rather than for you specifically
Have they tried raising the salaries so that one parent can stay at home and actually take care of the children, instead of sending them to way too expensive daycares. Having children is a “luxury” nowadays.
At least in the USA and I presume other places, having a child is not only an increasingly insurmountable financial burden, but also society and school are actively anti-discipline to the point you can’t even stop a kid from running wild and dominating the household. I am constantly amazed at parents who seem completely unable to keep their children from running amok and bothering people or destroying things in public, skipping school, eschewing homework, and disrupting class, yelling, punching, and kicking their own parents, etc.
Why anyone should want to subject themselves to a lifetime of hassle and heartache is the question. I have one kid and he is pretty awesome, but he was raised before the Internet and smartphones became the world’s nannies. If I were of childbearing age, I would get my tubes tied if I could get somebody to do it.
Not to mention climate change is probably going to doom any child born now to life in a physical and political hellscape.
I would honestly need twice my salary and a free home to consider it with my girlfriend.
Not even on the table.
Good. Lowering the birth rate at the global scale = more resources per person.
People don’t want to bring children into this capitalistic hellscape. Color me surprised.
And even if they want to, they can’t afford to
Except that is the whole point of the article, money isn’t why.
From the article (that you didn’t read):
“In a 2018 US poll, about a quarter of respondents said they had or were planning to have fewer kids than they would ideally like to have. Of those, 64 percent cited the cost of child care as a reason. Ballooning costs — of child care, housing, college, and more — are an issue around the world”
In 2009, after decades of falling birth rates, it began offering six months of paid parental leave, reimbursed at 60 percent of a new parent’s salary — then recently increased that share to 80 percent. The government has introduced a cash benefit and a tax break for parents of young children, and has invested in child care centers.
They’re giving money but you’re taking a 20% pay cut with massive increases in cost. Math doesn’t really work that way. You’d probably need an extra $50k/year to even consider it.
Costs keep going up and income keeps going down.
At the end of the day it’s a good thing. Less humans = less consumption = slowing the trashing of our planet.
Less billionaires would be better than less humans in general.
Exactly, Elon Musk has 11 kids and they’l contribute more to climate change than 1000 kids in China.
8 months pay isn’t going to pay for 18 years
But they’re being paid!!!
It is more about too much centralization of power than any one economic system as this issue is a near global issue.
When it takes two people’s income to live in the middle class, there is no time for children until much later. The trend is to have children at 30, when you are starting to make a decent income.
having kids is immoral in this time period i believe.
we are vastly over populated act like it.
I’d be happy to have kids if you paid me! In fact, not having enough money is literally the whole fucking reason behind many of us not having kids! Businesses have lost the ideal that if you make your workers prosperous, they will make your company prosper. People can’t even afford rent, let alone children now!
I have 4 friends in their mid to late 30s who have had to move back in with their parents this year because they can no longer afford to live on their own. Meanwhile, I’ve got relatives asking all the time, so when are you and the Mrs going to have a kid? I’m having to decide between my own medical bills, food, utilities and you want me to add a child to that? Go ahead and start paying me. Cause right now, in this economic climate, that’s the only way it’s gonna work!
Pay me. If you want me to raise your future workers. Pay me enough to live and raise them. It used to be possible to support a family of 7 on one income with a house and two cars in the driveway. People can barely keep their heads above water nowadays on two incomes. Since it requires two incomes, there is no time for child raising. The government doesn’t provide guarantees of time off to have them, doesn’t provide daycare so you can keep your job, and doesn’t provide healthcare. No, instead we write blank checks to the Pentagon and give the rich tax cuts.
if the main argument to have a kid is so they can enter the workforce why the hell would i want to have one?
I agree with most the points others in this thread make about the economy having gotten worse such that it discourages more kids… I have a decent job and if I had a second child I think I would never have a chance at retirement.
I am also curious about rising infertility… My wife and I had go through ivf to even have one child… This after 7 years of trying…
Several of our peers and friends have struggled with this as well… It could just be a coincidence but we only know around 20 other couples outside of work and at least 6 of them have not been able to produce children naturally.
It could be due to microplastics/pollution affecting sperm counts.
First thing I found: https://news.sky.com/story/human-penises-are-shrinking-because-of-pollution-warns-scientist-12255106
Yeah I started suspecting something like find could be impacting younger generations fertility rates as well but most the people I have known had issues on the woman’s end… Like endomitriosis causing blockages etc. I haven’t spent a lot of time researching it myself but I wouldn’t be surprised that not only are we economically disadvantaged but the rampant pollution is also driving lower birth rates for those who even try
