Good. Theres no logic that more bodies always means “good”. Especially in areas where people are racked and stacked on top of each other and it artificially makes living there a lot more expensive for the average person.
Let the market decide? Actually, I would be in favor of that. But the market has been hijacked by the spirit of fascism. So it takes gumption and foresight and some other qualities to overcome the ways of the world.
If couples are not having children, nobody is going to stop them.
It’s called taxes. Raise the costs of children and people respond by not having them.
Printed, fiat money, controlled by central governments always leads to bloated debt, which benefits for governments and a few cronies, paid for by society as a whole.
Its created a system of economic serfdom. No serfs want to re-produce.
SubSaharan Africa is still growing with a robust fertility rate. Not like it was 30 years ago, but well above the rest of the world. The future looks black.
So I guess money really can’t buy love. And self-sacrificing love is what making and raising babies is all about.
("Abkindern" = separable transitive verb meaning "to diminish a debt by having children" - it was commonly practiced in East Germany.)
Regards,
Hungary has been able to modestly increase its fertility rate from 1.2 in 2010 to 1.6 in 2022. The increase is not enough and Hungary will need to raise it that much again to reach a level that is roughly sustainable, but there has been undeniable progress made.
Well, yeah, if they have parents like you, they WILL grow up to hate them, Daoust.
Millennial women are having babies at a slower rate than any previous generation of women in American history. Between the year 2007 and 2012, the rate at which African American women in their 20s had children dropped by 14 percent. The rate at which Caucasian American women in their 20s had children dropped by 11 percent. The rate at which Hispanic American women in their 20s had children dropped by an astounding 26 percent. - https://defendernetwork.com/lead-story/intelligent-reasons-millennials-arent-kids/
Since 1950, the worldwide fertility rate dropped from an average of 4.7 children to 2.4 children. he US birth rate fell by 4% from 2019 to 2020, the sharpest single-year decline in almost 50 years, As Christine Percheski, associate professor of sociology at Northwestern University, told Insider, the declining birth rate is "about women having access to education and employment opportunities. It's about the rise in individualism. It's about the rise in women's autonomy and a change in values." - https://www.businessinsider.com/why-millennials-birth-fertility-rate-declining-fewer-babies-2022-1#its-a-new-world-of-opportunities-for-women-which-has-prompted-them-to-seek-other-paths-to-fulfillment-1According to a new report that raises the possibility that a major shift in the ages when women tend to have kids is on the horizon. ..Until the 1980s, for as long as records were kept, the highest fertility rates worldwide were among women ages 20 to 24, Astone said.
That shifted in the United States and Europe sometime in the 1980s, when women ages 25 to 29 became the most fertile, she said.... We calculate that in 2012, women in their twenties had births at a pace that would lead to 948 births per 1,000 women, by far the slowest pace of any generation of young women in U.S. history,”... “If these low birth rates to women in their twenties continue, the U.S. might eventually face the type of generational imbalance that currently characterizes Japan and some European countries, but it is too early to predict or worry about that eventuality.” - https://www.cnbc.com/2015/04/27/baby-bust-millenials-birth-rate-drop-may-signal-historic-shift.html
But there was a time—1850 to be precise—when huge households, chock full of tykes, were common and considered “right.” US Census data from 1850 show that families with six to nine kids were common.... the culture dictated that a woman’s place was in the home, and her fulfillment was found there, where she served her husband and raised her children. In his 1983 book Family and Divorce in California, 1850-1890, University of Oklahoma historian Robert Griswold cited an article published in the San Mateo Gazette in the mid-19th century that states, “Woman is set in the household and man is sent out into the world.”..Family size in the US peaked between 1860 and 1920 because infant mortality rates were declining while large families were still valued, according to Northern Kentucky University sociologist Joan Ferrante’s 1992 book Sociology: A Global Perspective. Even a woman of modest means could “be happy in the love of her husband, her home, and its beautiful duties without asking the world for its smiles and favors,” the article argued...
Women, Ferrante writes, “The mother’s median age at the time of her last child’s birth was 40 in 1850; by 1940 it had fallen to 27.3.” .. In 1980, less than 0.5% of all households had eight or more children; - https://qz.com/reparations-slavery-uk-trevelyan-grenada-1850156017
1890 (June) Avg. pop. per house-hold 4.93
1930 (Apr.) 4.11
1960 (Mar.) 3.35 - https://www.infoplease.com/us/family-statistics/us-households-size-1790-2006
By Robert Pear, Special To the New York Times April 15, 1987 The average number of people per household in the United States declined last year to 2.67, the least ever recorded, the Census Bureau reported today. - https://www.nytimes.com/1987/04/15/us/average-size-of-household-in-us-declines-to-lowest-ever-recorded.html
The average household was 5.79 people in 1790, which has significantly decreased to 2.58 in 2010. - https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/average-household-size-by-state
Dec 12, 2022 — The average American household consisted of 2.5 people in 2022. - https://www.statista.com/statistics/183648/average-size-of-households-in-the-us/
A basic solution as far as government is concerned would be simple insofar as possible: ban abortion (except for saving the actual physical life of the mother) and contraceptives, or at least treat the latter like cigarettes, unless needed for a medical condition. And reward married households while not rewarding single parents having additional children thru fornication (which very often perpetuates a cycle), partly by being diligent to find out if there is a man living with the mother while she lists herself as a single to collect more benefits thereby.
And promote adoption.
My two cents.