Posted on 12/25/2006 11:37:23 PM PST by MinorityRepublican
German Family Affairs Minister Ursula von der Leyen hopes that the launch of new state-funded parents' support scheme will result in Germans having more children and as result help to reverse the steep decline in the nation's birth rate.
"Germany is a country, which has the longest and sharpest decline in the birth rate," von der Leyen told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.
"I would be extremely pleased, if it succeeded in stopping this dramatic decrease of the birth rate," she said.
Analysts predict that Germany's current population of 82 million could drop to 50 million by 2050.
But in bid to encourage people to have more children, the German government is to introduce a new so-called parent's money benefit on January 1.
Under the new child welfare support, parents - either the mother or father - would be entitled to 67 per cent of their previous income, up to a maximum of 1,800 euros a month (2,363 dollars) while staying at home.
Von der Leyen, who has seven children. said the new parents money benefit represented the "first, but, key component" in helping Germany to address the greying of its population.
But she conceded that it will take some time "before people have the confidence to bring more children into the world again."
I disagree. I think it would be deadly.
Now if you want to talk "forty acres and a mule" per family, I think that has potential!
Education has little to do with childbearing per se. As societies become wealthier the birthrate drops and this is what is being observed here. Of course, with greater access to jobs and education the willingness of women to marry and bear children becomes much more costly to the woman in financial terms. Socializing that cost is a rational response whether it will work is the question.
There is no problem with raising the birthrate: reduce womens' economic choices, outlaw most abortion, impose strict religious upbringing (moslem, fundamentalist Christianity, etc.) and the birthrate skyrockets. This, of course, will NOT be the course taken in the West.
I doubt it. People don't have children and bring them up because of rational cost-benefit calculations.
As I said, ultimately the cultures that reproduce will win (barring a nuclear attack).
Then that is saying that the cultures which are most repressive towards women will win since those are the one's with the highest birth rates.
Maybe that is what will happen, at least in the medium term (100 years or so). History is the record of the expansion and contraction of different populations. The defeat of a state with a falling population by one with an increasing population is a major feature.
Keep an eye on what happens with China and Russia in the next 20 years.
On the other hand, the United States and Western/Central Europe once had healthy birthrates, without being significantly "repressive." There are many factors.
Compared to today women in American history had far fewer choices and were much more repressed. Western Europe was dominated by the Catholic church far more repressive at that time than now.
It wasn't Saudi Arabia, by any stretch of the imagination.
Nope. But Christianity, unlike Islam, is not predicated upon the oppression women. Christian warriors were writing love poetry to the feminine ideals while the Moslem hordes were rampaging, looting and abducting women throughout the world. Had Mohammed not been able to pay of his boys with loot and babes his "religion" would have quickly disappeared joining the countless other heresies on the dustheap.
Money for children started in Germany in the 70's to boost birth rates.
It hasn't worked.
That's pretty much what I was trying to say. To compare 19th Century America or Europe to Saudi Arabia or Pakistan is (in my opinion) profoundly fallacious.
It's true that women's economic and social options were more limited 150 years ago - but so were men's. In a country where 85% of the population was involved in agriculture, people didn't have time for repression: they had to get up and milk the cows and get food cooked on a wood or coal stove, and then do the wash by hand, or haul hay bales by hand, or hand-pick tobacco, and so on.
Modern economic success has changed many things, for better or worse. There's no reason that it has to lead to population decline, however. I have a college degree and live in the suburbs with a husband who's an electrical engineer - and the homeowners' association doesn't allow livestock :-) - and eight children.
In the old days of farming, no antibiotics or anesthesia, childbearing was high-risk, low-return proposition. Check out all the little children's grave markers in any cemetery. Nowadays, giving birth is safer than driving to the Wal-mart, and almost all the babies live to adulthood. It seems to me that those factors could fuel a trend toward more children, rather than none.
Muslims should be excluded. We also don't need a bunch of children born out of wedlock with parents receiving welfare. This could encourage the wrong people to reproduce.
Do they have the NEA there, too?
Our friends started homeschooling because they knew they were going to be moving 3 times in 2 years. Now they're stuck with it as they're now in a permanent home and their kids are many grade levels ahead of the public schools. They can't possibly put their kids in public schools.
Germany is highly unionized, so I assume they have an equivalent of the NEA.
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