These countries tried everything from cash to patriotic calls to duty to reverse drastically declining birth rates. It didn’t work.
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If history is any guide, none of this will work: No matter what governments do to convince them to procreate, people around the world are having fewer and fewer kids.
In the US, the birth rate has been falling since the Great Recession, dropping almost 23 percent between 2007 and 2022. Today, the average American woman has about 1.6 children, down from three in 1950, and significantly below the “replacement rate” of 2.1 children needed to sustain a stable population. In Italy, 12 people now die for every seven babies born. In South Korea, the birth rate is down to 0.81 children per woman. In China, after decades of a strictly enforced one-child policy, the population is shrinking for the first time since the 1960s. In Taiwan, the birth rate stands at 0.87.
Okay, so your solution for people who don’t want children is to give them “children lite”?
Even if you think adopting a pet is a reasonable thing to do at the same time you adopt a child, that’s just an insulting small incentive. May as well just offer a free cup of coffee.
There’s no fucking way I can take care of a coffee and a child at the same time. They’ll both be cold in minutes.
A “free” cup of coffee that you need to buy food and pay medical bills for.
You sonnova bitch, I’m in.