[p. henry]

A generation ago, when my wife and her parents and her eight siblings lived in Italy courtesy of the US Army, strangers would approach my mother-in-law on the street and bless her for having produced so many children

Italy sure has changed. Cradle to grave security tends to keep people in the cradle until they reach the grave. When there is little perceived need to individually produce the basics of life, the populace becomes infantilized and does not on the whole assume the responsibilities of adulthood - like a earning a living, producing children, and otherwise providing for their posterity.

Things decidedly do not work better if the wealth is spread around.

[Abin Sur]

...the populace becomes infantilized and does not on the whole assume the responsibilities of adulthood - like a earning a living, producing children, and otherwise providing for their posterity.

I would assert that someone who is a net tax payer rather than a net tax receiver while not producing children is assuming the responsibilities of adulthood. He or she is providing for themselves rather than relying on the largess of The State. Surely that is a quality of adulthood, rather than the ability to reproduce.