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.
You were a kid, though. Adults aren’t just spawned, they grow from kids. Everyone seems to be talking about them (and old people, for that matter) as though they are a separate species of being. Kids are just immature people. Of course they suck. You did too, so did I.
But they are also awesome, and grow up to be adults. I had fun having kids. Taking them places, watching them grow and change, the funny things they say and the flashes of insight. Now most of them are adult people. I don’t care if they have kids, they should do whatever they want. But I did enjoy the parenting. Sure, it’s not convenient, it’s life.