this post was submitted on 28 Nov 2023
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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.

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[–] randombullet@feddit.de 0 points 1 year ago

I have a stable job and a good chunk of savings and I still feel wholly inadequate of raising a child. I know some of it is just me being selfish

[–] firewyre@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] nilloc@discuss.tchncs.de 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] Sodis@feddit.de 0 points 1 year ago

Europe got both, we are still below replacement rate.

[–] dipshit@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

(it’s the economy and political landscape)

[–] Sodis@feddit.de 0 points 1 year ago

It's also that people do not need a lot of children anymore, so that some survive to take care of them, when they're old.

[–] AquaTofana@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I've been terrified of pregnancy my entire life and I'm a selfish adult who wants to do what I want.

So yes, nothing the governments do can ever make me want to have kids.

Not even you, Greg Abbott, you dickhole pathetic excuse for a "person". I fucking hate you!

Edit: One of my sentences was exceptionally dark.

[–] ASeriesOfPoorChoices@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Not to address your fears specifically, but there's a lot a government (society) can do to make more women feel safer and more comfortable about becoming pregnant and giving birth.

From high quality free healthcare, to maternity (and paternity) leave, to daycare, to schooling - at just a start - there are ways society can look after itself.

That is, I can understand (in a limited, "I'm not you" fashion) your POV.

Oh, also, I do hope you meant to include "want", as is in, "can make you want to have kids". Because government mandated pregnancy is a pretty horrifying concept.

[–] Sodis@feddit.de 0 points 1 year ago

Countries in Europe got most of that and they are still struggling with getting to the replacement rate.

[–] skybreaker@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Reducing the world population is the obvious answer to slowing the detrimental effects humankind are having on the earth.

[–] MindSkipperBro12@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Who’s going to take care of the elderly like you in 40 years?

[–] idiomaddict@feddit.de 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] MindSkipperBro12@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] idiomaddict@feddit.de 0 points 1 year ago

But the solution is not to scam others.

[–] Szymon@lemmy.ca 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

But think of the capitalists! How will the stock market continue to make gains if there are less people?

[–] Pohl@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It’s worth noting that communists and socialists also depend on population growth to sustain their civilizations as do trees and rabbits and beetles. It’s possible that economic systems don’t really matter all that much here.

Population collapse isn’t the road to some sustainable future. It is how species go extinct. Perhaps we are on that road, so it goes. But whistling past the graveyard pretending that “Star Trek” is on the other side is silly.

[–] NeuronautML@lemmy.ml -1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

We're billions of people on the planet. Most jobs don't even pay enough to feed a couple of people. I believe that there is an oversaturation of people on the planet and this has caused a devaluation of their labor.

Europe would have remained feudal for quite a longer time if the population collapse caused by the black plague hadn't happened and caused the demographic changes that it did. Without the plague, peasant labor would be plentiful and the status quo would not have changed. However, with the population reduction, the class in power had to concede to enough changes that brought about the Reinassance and the Industrial era quickly after.

In the Bronze age, without the climate changes that brought about cold and dry conditions and triggered the fall of the city states ruled by an oppressive theocratic class, humans would have still been tied to those stifling conditions for longer and wouldn't have brought about the classical era.

With the onset of AI and advanced robotics, population collapse will allow people to see their labor valued adequately, instead of just more and more people in the workforce working more hours and getting paid less and less, doing meaningless busy work jobs to pay for things that they don't need or enjoy, like crypto, gambling or online cam girls. A controlled collapse by fertility is not only non threatening, it is also desirable and the most acceptable way to cull numbers a bit. We need this, otherwise, the base of the pyramid will only get wider while the top will only get slimmer. Tragedy breeds suffering, but also change and we NEED change. The problem is the transition, but after the transition, we'll be in a better place as a society and we will bring about change.

[–] Underwaterbob@lemm.ee 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Is a declining birth rate a bad thing? 50 million people live in a country (South Korea) the size of Indiana. Maybe, just maybe the economy should just take a hit for a change so there can be fewer people here. I know rich people don't want that, but I bet the country would be a better place for it.

[–] BigMacHole@lemm.ee -1 points 1 year ago

Ensuring families have access to Child Healthcare, parents have time to parent their kids, kids have capable and loving parents and communities have programs to ensure the wellbeing of the children is SOCIALISM!

-Pro Life Republicans trying to Save The Children