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43 Comments
Maybe don’t saddle an entire generation with so much debt (government’s current debt and deficit paid for with student debt), then jack up the cost of buying a hone sooo high that the idea of starting a family is unattainable.
Millennials and after are a caretaker generation (taking care of our parents is probably the best we can hope to do).
>Politicians in Lestijärvi thought they had the answer to Finland’s demographic woes: each mother of a newborn baby would receive €1,000 a year for 10 years if they stayed in the Nordic country’s second-smallest municipality.
>“It wasn’t worth doing at all,” said Niko Aihio, the town’s former head of education. “The baby boom only lasted one year.”
>Policymakers around the world are grappling with the same problems as those in Lestijärvi: no matter what they seem to offer in the way of incentives, people are not having more babies. For the Finnish municipality it failed even to lure people from elsewhere: “It didn’t stop people moving away, and it didn’t attract new families,” Aihio said.
>China has offered free fertility treatments, Hungary big tax exemptions and cash, and Singapore grants for parents and grandparents. A Danish travel company even ran an ad campaign to “Do it for Denmark”. In Japan, the state funds AI-powered matchmaking, while Tokyo’s metropolitan government is offering a four-day working week to staff in an attempt to encourage people to become parents.
>Governments are still hunting for policy options to counter a looming economic crisis as older populations expand and the pool of workers shrinks. It is a shift that think-tank the Robert Schuman Foundation has called “demographic suicide”.
>The reasons for the trend have been fiercely debated, while some potential solutions, such as immigration and pushing people to retire later, have proved deeply politically unpalatable.
>The decline in birth rates is a peculiarly universal problem — no continent has been left unscathed by the trend. Two-thirds of the world’s population now lives in countries where people are having babies at a rate too low to replace their population.
“Stone said studies showed South Korean fertility rates could be even lower than they are now without baby bonus programmes, the expansion of state-funded childcare, subsidised fertility treatments and housing assistance.”
Bro, it sounds like they can, and need to do even more
This article is paywalled. However in response to the title, the clear answer is that they either haven’t tried or their efforts were akin to a pizza party.
make it affordable to be fucking alive. there. that’s it.
I think that substack of local governance being at a higher standard equalling better ability to raise kids is a telling point for how the government can get more people to have kids
Yeah, you couldn’t pay me enough to derail the lifestyle that I have and love. No financial worries, free to sleep in, no worries about some kid destroying shit the second they’re out of my sight or ending up hurting themselves, just less stress period. That’s priceless.
I mean here in the states we know our society and its safety nets are crumbling. Who in their right mind would bring kids into this clusterfuck?
In Europe, the countries with the most robust support for parents and children (France, the Nordics) have higher birth rates than those with the least support (Italy, Spain). It seems to me that spending money *efficiently and effectively* on children gets you more children.
Now, it’s not the whole story. The birth rate still declined in places where there is robust support for families. But the situation is much worse for societies who fail to support families.
when a government pays people the equivalent of 100 grand to have each kid and it doesn’t work i’ll buy this.
The current administration keeps giving us every reason not to bring a child into this world.
1000 bucks a year is nothing. The costs of all the ancillary requirements around a kid have gotten crazy. I can’t give a potential child the same life I had. Why would I do that to someone I love.
I mean, they **can**. It’s just that none of the options thus far put forward do more than scratch the economic cost of both child-bearing and child-rearing (including career impacts).
So governments are basically asking people to pretty please have children, we promise we’ll cover 1% of the cost (if administrations don’t change). Unless you’re already 99% of the way confident you can economically raise a child, that policy won’t change anything for you.
To be clear, the full cost of raising a child (beyond the absolute bare minimum of keeping the child alive) can easily run to little under half a million. This still doesn’t account for the career and opportunity cost, so this should be understood to still not be enough.
So assuming half a million per “subsidized human”, and assuming some inefficiency from the administration of all this, a nation like, say, South Korea could probably counter their estimated loss of ~15 million people by 2072 at a cost of 8-ish trillion, or 200 billion a year, or some 10% of the country’s GDP.
Something tells me they aren’t gonna do that.
Outside of being an interesting case to look at the maths (because it’s particularly bad) South Korea is one of few nations where this won’t work, because the desired number of children per woman is also below replacement level. Only a cultural or socioeconomic change can get that polity out of a death spiral, these policies can only slow it down.
Until women are treated as humans instead of incubators – I say lmao
Throw billionaire lunatics in our face that makes vaporware and Nazism while completely screwing us out of basic food shelter and medical.
You know the solution. Grow some balls.
Capitalism: “You are an individual”, “Treat yourself”, “It is all about you”
Also Capitalism: Profits over people, raise the price of everything while squeezing the work force, “Yes the planet got destroyed. But for a beautiful moment in time we created a lot of value for shareholders.”
Also Capitalism: We need more consumers, why won’t anyone have babies???
My sister in-law is an elementary school teacher. She quit her job to raise their two kids because her entire salary was going to daycare.
“The reason is probably late stage capitalism!”
“Yes, but no, that’s not allowed to be the reason!”
“But… but… that’s the reason!”
“Okay, look, we just want to complain, we don’t actually want things to improve, OKAY??”
Society has become fully commodified. Even our free time is controlled, groomed, packaged, sold. I always struggle to suggest activities to people that don’t cost money- there are few, and we’re losing our ability to enjoy them.
This existence has become precarious, when we are more productive than ever, yet have little free time to pursue interests or hobbies. Disposable income is drying up, leaving less money available to court, date, have privacy to fornicate, and procreate. While social media divides us by espousing platonic ideals as reality to seek in a partner.
We’re so fucking cooked and that’s probably a good thing. This world sustained humans in balance with nature for a long time with population levels much lower than they currently are.
The only reason birthrate is a topic of conversation is because the powers that be want to exploit more people, not less, and the knock-on effects of lower population might topple their house of cards. Humans will endure, humanity, possibly not.
Answer is simple as a society we have chosen not to value caretakers and parents. We need both parents to work full time oh and child care yeah you have to pay for that which just the CHILD care for my kids daycare cost me more than my 15 year home loan. It is the single most expensive thing on my monthly bills by a very healthy margin.
Lets not get into the fact that work often time does not understand hey I have to take care of my kid or have leave to have a newborn is not a thing. It is saw as burden.
YOu know what would help is putting higher value on parents and schools and not treat that as a burden.
For the record I love my kids and say they are totally worth it but good god they are expensive and never mind the fact that I might have to help take care of some boomer parents as well which just adds more to this crap. The Boomers and early Xer did nothing to help themselves later in life and are expecting their kids to take care of it. It sucks.
Until people can return to single income households having large families doesn’t even begin to make sense.
Finland paying €1,000/yr for 10yrs for a woman to have a child is a spit in the bucket relative to the expense of having children. Because the majority of families require 2 incomes you’re having children for other people to care for them, at great expense.
For birth rates to go up we need.
Single income affordable shelter
Single income affordable transportation
accessible, reliable, healthcare
robust education and childcare availability
abundant 3rd spaces for people to congregate
If people are relaxed they’ll have more sex, they’ll be willing to take on the challenges of being a parent, and their kids will have things to do to allow for more sex.
If only the government would just pull itself up by the bootstraps and fix decades of bad policy and even worse decision making, we could come up with places for those new families to live, work, and go to school – without asking them to have 3-4 jobs, and for this kids to get jobs to afford lunches while making a handful of nazi-fuckups into super-billionaires.
The governments have **completely and utterly failed at their most important job**, but yes…it’s millennials that are the reason for declining birth rates.
For me (a late-20s male who still wants to have kids someday) it comes down to: not being able to maintain stable gainful employment, mortgages costing 3k-4k/month (on the low end), impending climate catastrophe, government corruption/disfunction/erasure of basic rights. I want to have kids, but I am scared that I won’t be able to protect them and give them a good life. How the hell am I supposed to fill them with optimism and hope for their own future when I am trying, struggling, and generally failing to do the same for myself?
Crazy idea: Have a society people want to live in, and the rest sorts itself out
I’d love to have kids but between the cost of everything, stagnant salaries, unattainable housing, and how their future would look it’s just not responsible. Not to mention online dating has made dating very unenjoyable.
Support the middle class so that people feel like they can succeed, own a home and raise a family with only one parent working like they could in the 50s?
They are willing to do everything except something that matters: regulation of corporatw greed and empowering workers with better work lofe balance and spending power.
Politicians don’t know how to handle this problem because the solutions are making the cost of living cheaper and also restructuring our work/life balance (especially for women). Don’t want to do that? Fine, you get no babies.,
Life’s tough enough as it is without having to worry about feeding another mouth and teaching that mouth between right and wrong and trigonometry. I don’t want a kid, but if I was rich I would consider it.
If life was easier, more people would have kids, simple as that.
In the US, the average cost of raising a child from birth to 18 is between $233k-$375k, but that’s just the monetary cost. Add in lost opportunity cost and other incidentals, and you’re probably looking at $500k. Any expensive schools? Potentially double that.
The incentives the government tends to offer to offset this and encourage higher birth rates tend to be… a couple thousand dollars, and usually as things like tax offsets rather than direct payments. And maybe a Walmart gift card. That expired.
Why would I create a life only to subject into these horrible fascists running my country? Why would I make a child in order to toil in their factories?
Having a child in this economy is basically setting yourself and their future up for failure, poverty, and struggles. DON’T HAVE KIDS. Let the rich suffer.
Falling birth rates are going to show capitalism all along was one big ponzi scheme – when less fresh meat shows up, the whole thing is going to up and die. And they know it – which is why they’re all freaking out about birth rates.
PEOPLE CAN’T AFFORD TO HAVE CHILDREN! The oligarchs have all the money. It’s that simple.
I’m surprised a country with control of media hasn’t just saturated young girls social media feeds with “trad wife” type content. Have all the soap opera stars have like 3 kids etc.
Not a tactic that would work in the West but surprised I haven’t seen it elsewhere yet
As a woman who has elected NOT to have kids for many reasons, I would consider it if I was paid a salary for it. A good salary like $100,000 a year. I ain’t putting up with shit without a really good paycheque.
In the US we just want basic human rights and decent living wages
I like the decay tax example. Everybaby a woman has her income tax goes down 25%. At 4 babies no more income tax for her, forever. I think thats the best way for the government to support having kids
Aside from the affordability problem, the fact of the matter is, there are simply people (such as myself) who simply don’t want kids and no amount of money is going to change our minds.
I am from germany where 1. more babies are needed and 2. Fertility clinics are massively overbooked.
why are the birth rates still so low though?
IVF is not a guarantee. Some people need donor eggs or a surrogate.
both of which is ILLEGAL here.
It costs roughly a quarter million dollars to bring up a child from age 0 to age 18. Not taking in account costs of pregnancy, childbirth and post secondary studies.
Not only do we need money to afford that (and their incentives pale in comparison to the money actually needed) but we also need societies conductive of having children.
* Having to lie to employers for as long as possible about household status because they are reluctant to hire childbearing age women, pregnant women or mothers?
* Being barred from rentals because landlords don’t like families with children?
* Choosing between living on one income in a society that requires two incomes to live so you can be a present parent or living on two incomes but having little time, energy and emotional resources for your kids?
* Everything gets more and more expensive but the added mouths to feed do not pay for themselves? Why not choose the DINK lifestyle then?
* The best biological time to have kids is also the time we’re supposed to spend in post secondary studies and building careers so we can afford an household and children?
Society is not build right now to encourage having children. Everything pushes us to delay parenthood and then choose to have fewer children than originally wanted, even when “fewer” means “zero”.
But addressing that means ruffling the feathers of the wealthy and the corporations, and we can’t have that. So the only solution is to offer meager amounts of money and whine about declining birth rates.
yay!
To improve birth rates just make it viable for most single income households that have children to live a life that someone would actually want to live. Government incentives that give people a minor discount or refund aren’t going to work because the problem is so much larger than that.
The majority of the working class can’t survive off of a single income