These countries tried everything from cash to patriotic calls to duty to reverse drastically declining birth rates. It didn’t work.

These countries tried everything from cash to patriotic calls to duty to reverse drastically declining birth rates. It didn’t work.

…

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.

    • Praise IdlenessEnglish
      6•6 months ago

      Just like national health insurance, every workers in SK is mandated to pay for the pension insurance. You give x% of your earnings and 국민연금공단(National Pension Service) gives you back(with x more amount, in consideration of interest rate and everything) as pensions after you retire(from 65, that is). Problem is steep decline in taxpayers and increasing number of pensioners have resulted in NPS not having enough money to pay everyone who already paid for their pensions.

      Nice of you to just go lol what pensions when you don’t seem to know anything about the system.