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.
Two things:
Life sucks for a lot of people. Younger Gen X, Millenials, Gen Z all have had really hard times. Why would someone want to make their life harder?
The “declining” birth rates are actually returning to pre-Baby Boom levels. This is a fully natural thing.
It may or may not be natural, but it doesn’t change the economic reality - if there are more people who can’t work (the olds) than who can, the economy is fucked.
It seems like lots if boomers are retiring older - I have no data for that but that’s the vibe - but that’s not going to last forever, they can’t (shouldn’t) work until they literally die. The burden on the young (paired with pretty reckless tactics from the capitalists) - the olds are going to get left in the street.
Boomers won’t let go. I worked at a company that used to have upward movement when people retire. Then the boomers just stopped retiring, I left as no where to go. They now have executives 80 years old plus. Boomers got theirs and are so self involved they won’t stop.