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.
Just like the socalled “work shortage”, the problem is they aren’t offering nearly enough. That’s it.
Currently in Taiwan, citizens receive 2500 NT per month (i.e. $80 USD) per birth until the child is five years old. That’s a fucking joke.
Yeah there’s no way these programs are coming anywhere near the cost of having kids. Childcare alone is insanely expensive these days.
snort