Well, the article certainly has the wrong prescription. More government spending will neither help the economy nor encourage people to have more children. Why have kids just to stick them in government day care centers?
Also, Europe is dying, too. I don’t know what the NYT writers are smoking that they call Sweden a success story. Have you noticed that most of the people having children these days are people with a religious faith? I’m sure the writers at the Times wouldn’t even consider that to be a factor.
“Well, the article certainly has the wrong prescription. More government spending will neither help the economy nor encourage people to have more children. Why have kids just to stick them in government day care centers?”
I agree that more daycare won’t cut it. The writer probably has a couple of kids herself and the NYT doesn’t pay much unless you’re at the very top.
But to rule out government action means to sanction the demographic collapse of the society - since there’s nothing to stop it. That’s the problem...doing nothing doesn’t work in this case, because the forces that are causing women to not have babies has tipped the balance.
So what to do? In my opinion you make child-raising a career-choice for married women. In other words you pay them a decent amount of money, maybe something like $10k for the first, $20k for the second, $30k for the third, $20k each for the fourth through 8th (maybe a bit less, who knows). These women make up for the ones that don’t want to be bothered by kids. Oh yea, and you only apply to the type of women that you want having kids (that’s the hard part to implement). As to what I mean by that - it’s an exercise for the reader.