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.
Yeah can’t blame the ladies for that one, if I were a woman I’d be mighty tempted to seal up my womb too.
Interestingly this is actually how a lot of men feel about their own procreation. You’re one broken condom away from being beholden to an unwanted child and a selfish mother. It can ruin your life before you’ve even had a chance to start. Hell teenage boys raped by older women have had to pay child support.
I’d love to see this lead into a useful conversation about the rights of both sexes but it has been pretty one-sided so far.