this post was submitted on 28 Nov 2023

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You can’t even pay people to have more kids (www.vox.com)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

371 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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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[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (10 children)

At least in the USA and I presume other places, having a child is not only an increasingly insurmountable financial burden, but also society and school are actively anti-discipline to the point you can't even stop a kid from running wild and dominating the household. I am constantly amazed at parents who seem completely unable to keep their children from running amok and bothering people or destroying things in public, skipping school, eschewing homework, and disrupting class, yelling, punching, and kicking their own parents, etc.

Why anyone should want to subject themselves to a lifetime of hassle and heartache is the question. I have one kid and he is pretty awesome, but he was raised before the Internet and smartphones became the world's nannies. If I were of childbearing age, I would get my tubes tied if I could get somebody to do it.

Not to mention climate change is probably going to doom any child born now to life in a physical and political hellscape.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Here's the core problem: people can't afford to have kids. Until economies are restructured so that a family can reasonably and rationally survive on a single income, you aren't going to see birthrates rise.

Alternatively, you could ban any and all forms of birth control, and institute a state-religion that tied into your economic system, so that people had huge economic incentives to appear outwardly devout. Handmaid's Tale, et al.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago

It worked when Australia did this back in the mid 2000. But it probably wouldn't today, with today's cost of living, job and childcare shortages.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (5 children)

i think to maintain the population, a couple needs to have to have 2.4 kids or something. there's no way im doing that it sounds like it sucks. fuck the future of humanity I don't give a shit

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

Yeah that is bull. There is a number you can pay me to have another kid I assure you. If you got money for a plane that can't fly in the rain and a border fence that fell down you got money to pay for babies.

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