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.

  • @Jarix
    link
    2810 months ago

    You absolutely can pay people to do just about anything including having kids.

    Give me a credit card that can pay ALL of my bills and i will both adopt a kid and find someone who wants to have one.

    The problem is kids are a huge burden when you can barely afford to live your own life let alone provide and be responsible for another human being

    Pay people to retire early and you will see a huge boom in population