These countries tried everything from cash to patriotic calls to duty to reverse drastically declining birth rates. It didn’t work.

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.

  • SmoothIsFast@citizensgaming.com
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    3
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    11 months ago

    Kids need to be able to see both parents represented and succeeding in the workplace.

    Why so they want to be some corporate slave for labor, fuck off

    • steltek@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      11 months ago

      You raise another good point. Some people are simply not cut out for raising kids. Or interacting with normal people, for that matter.