Posted on 05/23/2024 8:44:26 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
As birth rates plunge, many politicians want to pour money into policies that might lead women to have more babies. Donald Trump has vowed to dish out bonuses if he returns to the White House. In France, where the state already spends 3.5-4% of gdp on family policies each year, Emmanuel Macron wants to “demographically rearm” his country. South Korea is contemplating handouts worth a staggering $70,000 for each baby. Yet all these attempts are likely to fail, because they are built on a misapprehension.
Governments’ concern is understandable. Fertility rates are falling nearly everywhere and the rich world faces a severe shortage of babies. At prevailing birth rates, the average woman in a high-income country today will have just 1.6 children over her lifetime. Every rich country except Israel has a fertility rate beneath the replacement level of 2.1, at which a population is stable without immigration. The decline over the past decade has been faster than demographers expected.
Doomsayers such as Elon Musk warn that these shifts threaten civilisation itself. That is ridiculous, but they will bring profound social and economic changes. A fertility rate of 1.6 means that, without immigration, each generation will be a quarter smaller than the one before it. In 2000 rich countries had 26 over-65-year-olds for every 100 people aged 25-64. By 2050 that is likely to have doubled. The worst-affected places will see even more dramatic change. In South Korea, where the fertility rate is 0.7, the population is projected to fall by 60% by the end of the century.
The decision to have children is a personal one and should stay that way. But governments need to pay heed to rapid demographic shifts. Ageing and shrinking societies will probably lose dynamism and military might. They will certainly face a budgetary nightmare, as taxpayers struggle to finance the pensions and health care of legions of oldies.
Many pro-natalist policies come with effects that are valuable in themselves. Handouts for poor parents reduce child poverty, for instance, and mothers who can afford child care are more likely to work. However, governments are wrong to think it is within their power to boost fertility rates. For one thing, such policies are founded on a false diagnosis of what has so far caused demographic decline. For another, they could cost more than the problems they are designed to solve.
One common assumption is that falling fertility rates stem from professional women putting off having children. The notion that they run out of time to have as many babies as they wish before their childbearing years draw to a close explains why policies tend to focus on offering tax breaks and subsidised child care. That way, it is argued, women do not have to choose between their family and their career.
That is not the main story. University-educated women are indeed having children later in life, but only a little. In America their average age at the birth of their first child has risen from 28 in 2000 to 30 now. These women are having roughly the same number of children as their peers did a generation ago. This is a little below what they say is their ideal family size, but the gap is no different from what it used to be.
Instead, the bulk of the decline in the fertility rate in rich countries is among younger, poorer women who are delaying when they start to have children, and who therefore have fewer overall. More than half the drop in America’s total fertility rate since 1990 is caused by a collapse in births among women under 19. That is partly because more of them are going to college. But even those who leave education after high school are having children later. In 1994 the average age of a first-time mother without a university degree was 20. Today, about two-thirds of women without degrees in their 20s are yet to have their first child.
Some politicians may seize on this to aim baby-boosting policies at very young women. They may be tempted, too, by evidence that poorer women respond more to financial incentives. But focusing on young and poor women as a group would be bad for them and for society. Teenage pregnancies are linked to poverty and ill health for both mother and child. Targeted incentives would roll back decades of efforts to curb unwanted teenage pregnancy and encourage women into study and work. Those efforts, along with programmes to enhance gender equality, rank among the greatest public-policy triumphs of the postwar era.
Some illiberal governments, such as those of Hungary and Russia, may choose to ignore this progress. Yet they face a practical problem, because government incentives do not seem to bring lots of extra babies even as spending mounts. Sweden offers an extraordinarily generous child-care programme, but its total fertility rate is still only 1.7. Vast amounts of money are needed to encourage each extra baby. And handouts tend to go to all babies, including those who would have been born anyway. As a result, schemes in Poland and France cost $1m-2m per extra birth. Only a tiny number of citizens are productive enough to generate fiscal benefits to offset that kind of money. Due to low social mobility only 8% of American children born to parents without bachelor’s degrees end up getting such a degree themselves.
“So that will resolve the issue of demographics in France.”
Demographics yes. But economic prosperity no. Otherwise Algeria should be paradise.
Some cultures produce poverty.
Simply importing poverty doesn’t help the economy.
Immigration is really about busting up the political power of populations of Western democratic populations. It makes them more prone to subjugation by the ruling class.
That’s all.
It took decades to dig this hole.
When Murphy Brown aired in 1988, this anti-child and anti-marriage culture was already in full swing. Madonna, Cindy Lauper.... Materialism, consumerism, having fun, me, me, me...
This show simply echoed the prevailing cultural values: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murphy_Brown
—Abortion
—Sterilization
—Contraception
—The Dual income childless couple
—Careerism by women and waiting to have children
In typical fashion, the writer of this article is looking for a quick fix. A magic pill. A single simple solution which will fix everything when we wake up tomorrow.
The simplest, cheapest, and fastest solution is the one championed.
There is a quick, easy and wrong way, and there is a longer term approach, that is more difficult, but the right way.
Politicians, business, and bureaucrats tend to opt for the wrong way in such cases. They are driven by short time horizons, the need to show immediate results, the path of least resistance, and to keep things as cheap as possible.
If we want to fix this, and frankly all Western nations are in the exact same boat (North America and Europe, even South Korea, Japan, and Australia), we need to ask ourselves some very hard questions that fly in the face of feminism, LGBTQIA, our concept of equity, even some environmental ideas...
The real culprit is a perverted value system (socially dysfunctional, unnatural, immoral, historically culturally unacceptable), a way of thinking which has been inculcated in government policies, education, and the arts and media. We as a society have been proselytizing values which are destructive for years because somehow some often inconsistent, non-doctrinal, and irrational arguments were created which sound good and were adopted by the masses/society.
If society were to preach that folks should play Russia roulette (1 in 6 chance), that would make more sense than what we’re doing regards LGBTQIA+ and HIV/AIDS (1 in 5 chance): https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE68M3H2/ https://www.salon.com/2010/09/23/us_med_aids_urban_gays/ But somewhere, somehow it became taboo to even ask the question if advertising for a behavior that is self destructive is smart. Society has adopted a laundry list of these dysfunctional ideas and the results are now becoming apparent. Is it really smart to wait to have children if genetic illnesses rise with age? Is it really smart for a society that isn’t even replenishing its own population to pay for abortions, sterilizations, and contraception?
Is it smart to have a tax code and benefits/entitlements in a society that is below a birthrate of 2.1 and falling, to incentivize having a child with $500 a year, but pay $1,650 a month for HIV preventing medication per individual? https://www.hiv.gov/federal-response/ending-the-hiv-epidemic/prep-program
It took YEARS to get here. It will take years to fix this, and the resistance will be high, since you’re talking about making changes that involve what people today see as noble and ethical values, personal rights..
So we are to have more babies to benefit government coffers and pay for turd world immigrants? The days of needed 10 kids to work the farm are long gone.
The article should have begun with: "With the exception of impoverished Africa, the world is facing demographic collapse. The following are the hard but necessary steps we must take to stem the tide."
Regards,
They have to pay modern women to do the one thing unique to them they no longer want to do.
I’d favor surrogate young mothers being richly funded to have children.
A young couple next door just adopted a little one. They are delighted and, as often happens, may birth others with time.
(That is, if under-populating at 1.6 children per couple is really a problem).
Surrogate motherhood is a business. And many of the customers are gay men, who can often afford to pay more than hetero couples.
And getting rid of welfare would bigly reduce government spending, which would bigly reduce inflation. So it’d be easier to have a one income family.
Unfortunately a stupid article with nothing useful in it.
If we’re really honest all the big problems facing our world can be laid at the feet of government. Governments always act to benefit themselves first with their answer to every challenge being more spending, more laws, more regulations, more restrictions on individual liberty, etc. The reals answer to our problems is LESS government, a lot less.
Amen!
BS. End H-B and make life easier for our best and brightist.
“Full disclosure; My mother had 4 husbands. I’ve seen how women break homes.”
Full disclosure: My father and uncles were ministers, and we kids were privy to hearing about domestic issues in the churches. I’ve seen how abusive and cheating men break homes.
Agree!
“Doomsayers such as Elon Musk warn that these shifts threaten civilization itself. That is ridiculous,”
It is not ridiculous unless you think we can have civilization without humans.
Another anonymous op-ed writer who has all the answers— hypothetically of course— and no idea how to implement them.
Biblical Religion is the only real answer, not Quranic Islam, which results in a civilization that promotes death.
The problem in our society is that abusive, cheating men are punished. Abusive, cheating women are rewarded.
In a divorce, abusive and cheating men lose the house and the children.
In a divorce, kind and faithful men lose the house and the children.
Women always get the house and the children, whether they're abusive or kind, cheating or faithful.
That's why so many men are angry.
In a divorce, abusive and cheating men lose the house and the children.
In a divorce, kind and faithful men lose the house and the children.
......
In my state the first to file abuse allegations wins.
Always.
I see. Maybe some states‘ legislatures have recoiled from the extremely pro-woman legislation which Angelino97 has been describing.
Or am I wrong?
Over here, it‘s the same process going on.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.