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.

  • @ShadywackEnglish
    10•1 year ago

    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.