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.
That’s great for the short term needs, but I’d rather not bring life into the world that will be faced with a dying planet and the extreme geopolitical unrest that comes with that coupled with the likely major but unpredictable disruptions of tech advancing at compounding rates.
We might be heading towards a utopia or a dystopia - but in one direction or another it’s going to be getting more extreme.
I take great comfort in the idea that I’ll be leaving this world without worrying about a child left behind in a collapsing society nor if that happens earlier on that I’ll need to watch their suffering or demise.
There’s no amount of money or shortened workweek that would make me give up that comfort given what lies ahead.
Same here and I’m fortunate enough that my fiancee, non of my brothers or their partners are interested in kids either. Won’t be leaving any kids or nephews in this hellscape.