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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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.
Just limit work to 35 hours (10-10-10-5) and have parents alternate schedules
Fuck that, have you worked 10 hour shifts? Pretty sure studies have shown you max out productivity at 6. I say 24 hour work week, 6 hours 4 days a week.
Yes, it is so much better
This is beyond out of touch with reality lol, you’ve been in your internet bubble for far too long
If you’re going to boil it down to bare economics, daycare should come out ahead. 2 people can take care of 9 babies versus a stay at home parent taking care of 1 or 2. And realistically today, advocating for a stay at home parent is telling women to go back to the kitchen. It’s regressive, unnecessary, and not actionable advice.
I would instead argue that modern life is not supportive of real-life, tight communities and lasting relationships. Online social lives are a starkly inferior substitute for real life but they’re easier to access and give the equivalent dopamine hit.
And realistically today, advocating for a stay at home parent is telling women to go back to the kitchen. It’s regressive, unnecessary, and not actionable advice.
No, what YOU said is regressive. The commenter never mentioned women; men can just as easily be house spouses, and that’s also without mentioning non-binary partners. You just assumed they meant women and ran with it
Edit: grammar
Also if more families could have a stay-at-home parent or could have the parents taking turns (for example, first parent A goes to work while parent B is with the kids for a week, and then do the opposite next week), then daycares would still have more resources to take of children whose families don’t want to or can’t have this kind of arrangement. And this would require bigger salaries so that families could afford to have only one working adult.
Are you seriously claiming that we’re done with equality in the workplace (positions, salary, respect)? No? Then stop misrepresenting what I said as some neanderthal spiel. We need daycare to give people options. Kids need to be able to see both parents represented and succeeding in the workplace.
Kids need to be able to see both parents represented and succeeding in the workplace.
Disagree with you there. Kids need to see their parents in person, and exploring humanities instead of prioritizing work over family and personal close relationships. Work isn’t the most important thing. I don’t care of it’s a gay couple, bi-couple, or a transgender couple with an adopted child. I think intrinsic to the support of LGBTQ communities should be every right afforded straight people, and I think income inequalities between genders needs to go away. At the same time, the value of the worker is what truly needs to change to help bolster all of the above. When we can get back to a much more regulated system (bringing back the regulations that make stock buybacks illegal), reducing the work week to just 32 hours but requiring that no TC concessions happen as a result, and forcing a more equitable share of prosperity from the corporate world to the workers, THAT will do more to help with many of the social issues we face.
Not to mention, the de-gentrification of communities, more rights for workers, affordable housing, and the tremendous benefits that would lead to in reducing our climate change risks, it’s asinine to split hairs over red herrings that distract us from who our true adversaries are: the rich. If you want to counter populism and win over Trump voters, you focus on the areas we have common ground with real life issues we’re facing.
Are you seriously claiming that we’re done with equality in the workplace
Can you make a point without a straw man? I said nothing of the sort.
And I don’t disagree with your point about daycare; I think people need options, but I disagree with your point about online relationships being dopamine-equivalent to “real” relationships, personally. I’d LOVE to have a family but I have neither the space nor the money to have kids.
Personally I think communal child raising should be more normalized; I think children experiencing many different and at times contradictory viewpoints is good for their development of critical thinking. But I don’t presume to fully know the solution to lose birth rates. I DO however claim that whatever financial incentives are being given, they aren’t enough.
You’re correct that my comment was not inclusive. That was not intentional on my part and I’m sorry if I offended anyone. However, this is a distraction from the main point.
It was not a strawman. I was making a statement about how society is right now, not how it should be. “men can be house spouses”, etc is true but until we have better workplace equality and in absence of daycare, the vast majority of prospective families are going to do some very simple budget math to figure out who can afford to be a stay-at-home parent. It is exactly the “kitchen” crap from years gone by but with some populist indirection to avoid calling it that.
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They don’t need a daycare, they need a parent/family
Kids need to be able to see both parents represented and succeeding in the workplace.
Why so they want to be some corporate slave for labor, fuck off
You raise another good point. Some people are simply not cut out for raising kids. Or interacting with normal people, for that matter.
Hmmm I’d like to stay at home and I’m the man. We both earn about the same, she earns more. I don’t trust daycare workers. You optimize for what you value, if you value economics you’re simply not going to optimize for what’s best for the child. Because at all the cross roads where the biological needs or psychological needs conflict the economical value you’ll not be making those choices.
At a coarse level, children from families with more money are better off so I disagree. Daycare is a small part of a child’s life. Really 3-4 years out of 18 and of those, only 9-5 at that. In exchange, you afford a nicer, safer town with better schools. If your family chooses a stay-at-home parent, you won’t afford those places when competing against dual income families.
At a coarse level, children from families with more money are better off so I disagree
And that seems like a correction that needs to happen.
I think of this daycare idea like public school, you ever notice the high income rich areas have a good public school system whereas the low income don’t?
If you’re on the whole okay with a certain percent of kids failing then on the coarse level it does seem like a good idea.
Sure, but people wanting families are facing these decisions right now. They don’t want to wait for society to get its head screwed on straight. The root comment was “stay at home parents! no more daycare!” but sailed right over all the macro and micro consequences of that.
I do believe that nobody “belongs in the kitchen” as far as gender roles go. What we’re up against is the weakness of the family unit in society and the breakdown of lasting friendships contributing to mental health issues. Online social lives are objectively bad for us, and I’d argue that the dopamine hit is just helping burn our dopamine receptors even more.
Regardless this reminds me of the classic argument that was had back in the 80’s about the kitchen itself, that it’s more “efficient” for people not to cook at home but to go to a place that prepares food en masse for a community. This was during the Soviet Communism era and there was a side debate going on. Western culture favored the family unit, while a communist concept favored social efficiency at the cost of liberties.
I don’t think it’s regressive to desire to have more time to be with your kids, whether it’s day care, school, etc. The real issue isn’t economics and progressive concepts, I think we’d all agree that a robust public education system is valuable, and that we should have economics that let us pick our kids up from school rather than send them to a day care. It’s not about sending anyone to the kitchen.
I like our kitchen, I like cooking food for the family, and I even enjoy it as a way to wind down after work. Modern life not supportive of tight knit communities and lasting relationships is complete bullshit. Modern life in that viewpoint is the continuous hustle culture and prioritization of work over a fulfilling life experience, and in my opinion your viewpoint is regressive for that reason alone. Kill hustle culture, eat the rich, and let’s have economics that give us a choice.
The food analogy is great. But I think there’s a quantitative difference in effort and long term commitment between what to have for dinner and how you’ll afford to raise your family.
Here’s a crazy idea, what if we end this second gilded age and return dignity to the working class? Instead of pushing for EV’s, how about we push for sustainable lifestyles and strengthen the family unit by returning much needed time back to workers? Instead of saying women belong in the workforce instead of the kitchen, how about we say nobody “belongs” in either and that we have the choices and freedom to make the decision? What if, thanks to an 8 hour workday four days a week, we drastically reduce the need for day care and allow parents to be more involved directly with their kids instead of setting a soulless worker drone example?
Lastly, how about you take a hint?
Aldous Huxley described your vision of Utopia in brave new world. I think it’s ridiculous, unobtainable, and overall a terrible approach to society. Life is all about lasting and meaningful relationships, so any approach that views these as optional or outdated is broken before it even starts. Your entire premise is flawed from the start.
I think you read my comment backwards. I guess to follow your analogy, social media is “soma” and is a problem today.
Plain raising of salaries would only drive hyperinflation.
Or the could offer free child care, but that’s socialism.
Assuming that additional income isn’t being wrestled back from the “profiteering rich” class: yes.
Even rightoid economists like Friedman disagree with this.
Most birds don’t lay eggs without a proper nest
Tried everything…except work life balance.
Also didn’t paying a livable wage
I sure as shit would have more kids if I had parental leave and child care options…
And money. And a place to live. And food prices that aren’t massively inflated.
Lot of folks can’t even afford to take care of themselves. Add a kid into that struggle? No thank you.
Look, if you didn’t want to be price gouged, you shouldn’t have paid those high prices! Vote with your wallet!
(For those who think I might be serious, I’m not. Voting with your wallet isn’t democratic, it’s literally plutocratic.)
Kidding aside, there’s a clip of some grocery store chain CEO talking about how they will raise their prices as high as the market will bear - it’s chilling, but, like, in the USA, it’s the law - it would literally be illegal if they didn’t.
Christ, it’s too expensive to be alive right now… fucking suffering.
That hasn’t stopped boomers
Kids are cheap to feed plus you eat their leftovers, so it’s a win win.
Don’t know if you know this, mate, but kids grow.
Not if you eat their food.
I know a fair chunk of my friends who have given up on the dream of kids. When both parents have to work full time at jobs their post secondary education qualified them for and court mental health issues because nothing they do for work feels meaningful just to scrape by with the bare minimum and accrue damn near nothing in savings… They don’t really want to have kids.
A lot of mammals when they don’t feel safe or secure in resources abandon or kill their young. Humans given control over their reproduction just seem to settle on raising dogs because they are cheaper.
It also kind of feels like society hates me for being ADHD and wants me to suffer so why would I want to bring another human into this world that has felt for 30+ years like a door slamming in my face.
I like when I tell boomers I don’t feel like I will be financially able to raise a kid until I am much older than I should be for having a kid and they smile and with a nostalgic look say “Oh, nobody is ever ready! You will figure it out trust me! We did!”. Makes me want to punch them in the face.
I’m with you on this. My family is, let’s just say, prone to melancholy and leave it at that.
My having children means there’s a significant likelihood that I’d be bringing even more misery into the world. I’m not sure I’m comfortable with that.
nods for me, my depression comes out of having an invisible disability that most people think is a joke excuse that arises out of being on too much tiktok or something. I don’t know if I would be sad if society actually valued me for the unique qualities of my brain…. but it doesn’t and there is no way I would want to give a kid the experience I have had trying to push through that. It has been awful honestly and I don’t understand what possible point there could be to it OTHER than to scream in my ear that I shouldn’t pass my mind on to another human.
Maybe I will get a dream job one day that accommodates me and lets my strengths come out…. but statistically it’s just not that likely. Why would I knowingly set a kid up with such a shitty diceroll?
Woman of childbearing age here. Lots of my friends took another child off the table when Roe fell. Being potentially forced to die and leave your existing children orphaned is a big deterrent, turns out
Plus it just fucking sucks to be a mother these days. Things are a lot more egalitarian than they used to be, but society still expects the uterus-having to take on more of the child caring tasks, and the emotional labor especially tends to still fall disproportionately on women. Our careers suffer, our bodies suffer if we bore (and possibly nursed) the baby/ies, our mental health suffers from the unrelenting societal pressure and neglect, plus all of the other shit that every other parent deals with as well. The women and mothers I know are fed up and so, so tired. (I’m not bitter… not at all… :D)
I love my children to pieces, but if I had seen an older sister go through this I might have opted out of having kids entirely. Two of my sisters have.
Yeah can’t blame the ladies for that one, if I were a woman I’d be mighty tempted to seal up my womb too.
Interestingly this is actually how a lot of men feel about their own procreation. You’re one broken condom away from being beholden to an unwanted child and a selfish mother. It can ruin your life before you’ve even had a chance to start. Hell teenage boys raped by older women have had to pay child support.
I’d love to see this lead into a useful conversation about the rights of both sexes but it has been pretty one-sided so far.
People don’t want to bring children into this capitalistic hellscape. Color me surprised.
It is more about too much centralization of power than any one economic system as this issue is a near global issue.
They might also recognize that shrinking family size isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Lower birth rates around the world could lessen environmental degradation, competition for resources, and even global conflict, Wang Feng, a sociology professor at UC Irvine, writes in the New York Times.
In every single one of these “depopulation crisis” articles the “maybe a shrinking population isn’t entirely a bad thing” perspective is always in a throwaway paragraph near the end, if it’s even mentioned at all.
Also consistently missing in these types of articles: an actual breakdown of the costs of raising a child (including the opportunity costs to one’s career as the result of parental leave) vs the benefits the government is offering.
Also invariably missing: a description of the serious short- and long-term physical and mental risks of pregnancy and childbirth; at least this article mentions maternal mortality, but there’s so much more at risk even in a “healthy” pregnancy and birth, from post-partum depression to incontinence. Occasionally articles will muse about women’s fear of “frivolous” conditions like weight gain and stretch marks, but never life-altering ones like severe hemorrhaging, organ failure, and fistulas. How many women are postponing or forgoing pregnancy because they’re not willing to risk life and limb to procreate? We’ll never know as long as no one thinks to ask.
I have read a million of these “birth rates are dropping despite government efforts” articles, and they all echo the same pro-growth propaganda while conveniently neglecting these major, crucial points. JOURNALISTS, DO BETTER!
In every single one of these “depopulation crisis” articles the “maybe a shrinking population isn’t entirely a bad thing” perspective is always in a throwaway paragraph near the end, if it’s even mentioned at all.
That’s because people aren’t willing to leave the “babies are the super bestest things ever and if you are super happy then you’re a horrible person” narrative.
Is a declining birth rate a bad thing? 50 million people live in a country (South Korea) the size of Indiana. Maybe, just maybe the economy should just take a hit for a change so there can be fewer people here. I know rich people don’t want that, but I bet the country would be a better place for it.
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I’ve noticed some people here practically yearn for disasters because it might hurt the rich. The absolutely staggering collateral damage to everyone else is ignored or waved away. It’s very much a desperate “nothing left to lose” philosophy that’s both sad and scary.
Multiple generations have had all the doors slammed in their faces, and all the ladders pulled up before them. Instead of acting like crabs in a bucket, they’ve decided they would rather have nothing so long as the people who trapped them suffer too. It’s pure spite but can you blame them? I’d probably do the same thing.
You are ignoring the fact that there’s going to be several times the loss in human workers added to the workforce by way of virtual laborers within 20 years.
This is just one of the many recent instances of humans being unable to adequately forecast consequences due to anchoring biases. While we typically see it in the other direction (minimizing increasing risks because of lower historical risk) here it’s something that would have been concerning decades ago but won’t be nearly as risky decades from now.
Maybe the chaebols should stop constantly putting up new apartment blocks now.
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Maybe the evidence is anecdotal, but I’ve lived in Korea for 20 years, and there’s always a huge new, self-contained apartment complex going up nearby. If anything, they’ve ramped up production in that time. While older population centers are left to decline. Maybe not in Seoul which is shoulder-to-shoulder apartment complexes already, but the smaller cities are full of decaying apartment complexes since they put them up, then completely fail to maintain them as they know their market is full of people who will move into the next complex since “gotta have the latest and greatest” is a problem here.
There’s good evidence though. When you drive from Incheon Airport into Seoul, you see a ton of new apartment / condos going up. Every time I visit, I see more and more buildings put up.
I mean, in the short term (50-100 years), yes it is. Unless people start dying at a younger age, there’s going to be a lot of orphaned seniors, which isn’t good. We won’t really see the benefits of a declining birthrate in our lifetimes, but we will see numerous negatives.
In the long term, it’s probably more nessecary then “not bad,” but again, you don’t want to be the one of the people living during the population collapse.
We need ICE cars to remain available so we don’t have as many orphaned seniors
It’s bad for capitalism and the 1%. You can’t have infinite growth with falling population numbers.
Edit: A lot of people claiming it’s also bad for the young and old people. It depends on how you’re social services are structured. Where I live the system is set up so that everyone only gets back the money they put into the system. That’s what the EU recommendations are and where all the EU countries are moving. Yes, the retirements will be lower in the future but that’s the only way to make the system sustainable without major cuts to everything else. IMHO it’s better than the idea of infinite growth.
No, it’s actually bad for everyone, because few young people have to support loads of old people. Politics will cater to the old people, because they have more voting power in numbers and will cut budgets for young people (education, social security and so on).
As opposed to now? That’s literally what happens here, no one wants any of these old fucks’ laws. They were born when the first plane was taking off and haven’t kept to date with anything in the modern world. We have no choice because the only people who seem to have any time to do anything in this country are the old people. Therefore we get shit on for simply trying to exist.
Yeah, that’s getting even worse.
It’s bad for capitalism and the 1%.
It’s bad for the Old who will have their Pensions cut and bad for the young who have to pay for more Pensions.
It’s not bad because we’re such a capitalist Society but exactly because we’re not. Because we expect to pay Welfare to older People to retire. And that whole Concept lies on the Assumption, that there will always be more People paying for the Welfare than People receiving it.
Lol. What pensions?
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The US doesnt have pensions. We are simply expected to birth more drones, by force if necessary
Sounds nice for SK. But lol pensions don’t exist for most of the US anymore
It’s bad for humanity too. You can’t replace all the old people that cannot create what we desire for living without having kids.
Raising a kid in America starts around $200k, conservatively. A 2-3k incentive or even 6 months of paid leave worth around 25k aren’t gonna make a dent.
Give me 2-3k per month for 18 years plus cost of living increase at 5%+ per year and I’ll consider it.
Otherwise, nah. Im good. I enjoy my free time and all the extra money I have due to no kids.
That’s still too cheap.
There’s probably a price that could be paid to encourage a higher birth rate, but I doubt the governments who have attempted such programs were willing to aim high enough.
People are generally depressed and struggling with little help, barely making ends meet, and then they get bitched at for not creating more people to thrust into this thankless meatgrinder. If people felt better about the world that they were bringing people into then maybe they would be more inclined.
We live in a world with an aging population that is happy to reap the benefits of short term thinking, leave it up to the next generation, then get pissed when people aren’t giving them a next generation to pay the tab.
(it’s the economy and political landscape)
It’s also that people do not need a lot of children anymore, so that some survive to take care of them, when they’re old.
Free fucking childcare…
And healthcare
Europe got both, we are still below replacement rate.
Because it’s a natural consequence of high education, lack of benefit for having a lot of kids, and our overall population having gotten too high.
I agree with this except for the bit about the size of the overall population. I can say with a great deal of certainty that most Americans (for example) are not giving a single thought to how many people live in China and India when deciding to have kids or not.
There is a third thing that people often miss in this discussion: legacy. If you own nothing then you have nothing to give to a child. The people who had the most children owned things, particularly land and business. The suburban nuclear families being as large as they were was a cultural artifact from their own parents’ way-of-life, single-income households, and religious beliefs. It will not repeat itself.
With nothing to inherit, little individual hope for the future, a plurality of world leaders intent on pushing us into a world where “you will own nothing and you will be happy”… what did people expect would happen?
Sure you can. We could limit the work week to 32 hours, pay higher salaries such that homes and goods are affordable again.
That’s great for the short term needs, but I’d rather not bring life into the world that will be faced with a dying planet and the extreme geopolitical unrest that comes with that coupled with the likely major but unpredictable disruptions of tech advancing at compounding rates.
We might be heading towards a utopia or a dystopia - but in one direction or another it’s going to be getting more extreme.
I take great comfort in the idea that I’ll be leaving this world without worrying about a child left behind in a collapsing society nor if that happens earlier on that I’ll need to watch their suffering or demise.
There’s no amount of money or shortened workweek that would make me give up that comfort given what lies ahead.
Same here and I’m fortunate enough that my fiancee, non of my brothers or their partners are interested in kids either. Won’t be leaving any kids or nephews in this hellscape.
Yeah here is my counter offer:
- universal free childcare, education, and healthcare.
- 3 day work week
- double annual salaries
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Best regards,
The US of A
muh wealthiest nation, you should be proud to be American, etc…
It’s not much, but it’s a start.
Kids are not affordable or cute or have fur, plus they take time l, a lot of time. For me there’s no reason to have kids.
The problem with dogs and cats as a child replacement is you usually outlive them.
I can live with that, atleast I can take care of them until the end. And it’s not like life is certain, I can die before them.
I can live with it too. I have twice now. But it is a very difficult heartbreak. I haven’t had one of them for 13 years and I got her when I first moved out of my parents’ house, so she was with me my entire adult life until she died. I still miss her.
That can happen with kids too, and it’s far worse. At least with pets you know they’re only going to live around ___ years.
True. Outliving my daughter is my greatest fear.
And your daughters I guess would be extatic to know you’ll one day ditch them to be on their own after making them?
Most children outlive their parents and I’m not sure why you think I don’t care what she will feel.
That’s not a con… why would you make someone exist so they can experience your old age and death. That’s fucked.
I said nothing about a con.
