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.

  • 🦥󠀠󠀠󠀠󠀠󠀠󠀠
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    7 months ago

    You can actually by making the families cost of living and housing needs affordable on one parents income. One off baby bonus bribes and stuff that governments do will never actually work when both parents have to work themselves Into dust just to make ends meet.

    • @[email protected]
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      fedilink
      -77 months ago

      People just want fewer kids now, or they want them later. It’s not the money, it’s that kids are a drag.

      • Ataraxia
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        57 months ago

        Heck why would anyone want kids? You couldn’t ever pay me enough to ever get pregnant and deal with kids. I’m not a brood mare. Religious conservative breeding bs is going the way of the dodo.

        • @straypet
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          27 months ago

          Tell me you weren’t loved as a kid without telling me you weren’t loved as kid. xD