You can’t even pay people to have more kids

MicroWave@lemmy.world to News@lemmy.world – 491 points – You can’t even pay people to have more kids
vox.com

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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I assure you you can. The payment would have to cover all of the child's needs plus a bit more but you definitely can.

But the cost of that would far exceed anything remotely reasonable. I say fuck it, let the birthrate drop for a few decades. The planet could use the break.

It's only catastrophically low in traditionally "western" countries. the world's population is still growing. It appears immigration is now a requirement to grow the economy. How interesting.

Conservatives/fascists are just gonna LOVE these next few decades. Climate change is set to destroy countless homes, displacing millions if not billions of people. If they think the "border crisis" is bad now, they're gonna lose it then.

That's why they want to militarize the border and normalize the concept of the ethnostate now, so they can machine gun climate refugees in the near future.

But don't you dare call them fascists.

I think that's predicted to level off in 60 years then drop. Though I guess it was level before the industrial revolution, so a lot could still change.

This, it's not as though me and my partner don't want children, it's that we want children and we don't want to be the source of their suffering for failing to care for them as well as we should, due to financial hardship.

A lot of childless people feel real responsibility to non-existent children, and feel like the world keeps pushing them down, making life harder, and making it feel impossible to be one of the people to have their own children.

Of course. Me and my significant other will end up doing the same thing. Both of us are from heavily catholic families but due to many reasons.

Yes, and the total payment would have to be substantial. The cost of raising a child from infancy to age 18 (not including university, obviously) in Canada is $320,000.

https://www.moneysense.ca/columns/making-it/how-much-does-it-cost-to-raise-a-child-in-canada/

Yep, it sounds weird but some politicians are floating the idea. It will never pass, but it's the thought that counts(?). Of all people, Trump wanted to give a family 5k per child. So the idea exists in the us with some strong political people. ( because of lemmygrad I am saying this I don't like Trump I am only using his statement to show how much the belief exists)

$5K one-time payment? No way!

$5K per month? Sign me up.

Florida is giving $8k per year for private school costs, and apparently homeschool can count. As against that idea as I am, I do think that could have a positive impact on population growth.

I could definitely see someone fantasizing having 4-5 kids then "retiring" to homeschool them. For $8k per year each kid.

Indiana gives $6k, but even though my daughter is in online school, she doesn't get it because it's a state program (except it's run by Pearson). If she was in another online program, she'd get the $6k. Granted, we don't have to pay tuition, so we don't need the $6k, but it seems unfair to me.