> The fact that merely giving birth to a child in SF is $15k is mind-boggling. The "Government" needs to fix that or risk population decline catastrophe which will have many knock-on effects!
The fertility and associated problems of local population can be completely ignored by the government of country like US - country with low population density, predictable steady population growth, and always a large group of people around the world willing to immigrate into the country. If not you, it's going to be someone else.
> addressing the issues causing fertility rates below the replacement level
Myself and many of my friends who have decided to have zero children or only one child rather late in life, cite the burden of having to take care of children, when one is already tired after work, one would like to pursue leisure activities that do not involve children present, etc. Even in countries where the state provides abundant infrastructure to minimize the financial expense of childrearing, birthrates are still low because of the time and effort expense that remains. So, how do you address that issue? Telling people to just suck it up and accept childbearing as their duty isn’t going to work.
Immigrants are often coming from countries where religious and cultural pressures in favor of childbearing are maintaining the birthrate higher than in the West, but even in those regions birthrates are gradually falling as their countries become more developed.
So much? Singapore's GDP per capita is $60k per year so $5k per month. If $2 month's worth of GDP for 1 baby so an entire lifetime of a new citizen is a lot, then I don't even know what to say.
> for something that used to come naturally through cultural forces, then it’s probably not sustainable
Having kids sucks (your mileage may vary, but before ~2-3 years the investment >>> benefits for all but the most dedicated people out there). Kids used to be cheap labor, which is now illegal for good reasons and they could be abused at will for various things, which is also illegal for good reasons. They were also frequently born because women didn't have a say in the matter, which is also becoming illegal for good reasons.
It is sustainable, it just needs to be done properly and respectfully.
Not by treating women like broodmares and kids as slaves to be worked to death and beaten up by adults who don't have any other way to relieve stress.
> Families with multiple children are subsidized by government
Yeah, that's not how any of this works. Parents spend on average $10k-$20k cash per year on their children in the US.
> 2..3..19 and counting..
You should be aware that fertility rates have plummeted to below replacement rate in almost every developed country. The fertility rate in the US is currently 1.8 children per woman, meaning that if not for previously higher fertility rates in the past and immigration, the population in the US would be decreasing over time.
> There are less black and white positions: that would incentivize people settling for relationships they have doubts about or to stay in failing ones (being a single parent is not easy),
And if it does that, so what? Is perfectionism really that important?
And honestly, my proposal isn't so much about increasing the birthrate, but preventing a certain kind of freeloading ("The pensions...they can all burn"). Totally make the conscious choice to go child-free, just understand if you do you may not be able to retire.
> and it’d be especially cruel to anyone with fertility issues.
And if that's really an issue, which I'm not convinced of, because policies are invariably "cruel" like that in innumerable ways, you could always carve out an exception for people who've attempted fertility treatments.
> As social policies go it’d be much easier to simply allow more immigration.
Except that probably would be even more cruel, since it falsely hand-waves that there's enough high fertility elsewhere to sustain a low fertility rich country. It turns out there isn't, so what you proposal requires is either: 1) export the labor shortage to poorer countries that are less equipped to handle it, or 2) maintain crushing poverty in many countries to turn them into baby factories for the immigration solution.
> falling birth rates are generally seen as a problem. Why is that?
Anyone who's ever lived in a place (at a city, province, or national level) whose population is dwindling knows exactly why. Opportunities are fewer and people are generally less wealthy[0].
[0]: I mean real wealth, like living in a comfortable home and being able to afford hobbies. Not your 401k balance.
> Isn't the correct response to high costs of living to have fewer or no children?
The rational response for an individual or a couple is to not have kids. That's why we're seeing so many articles about "omg the birthrate!". People aren't having kids, it's too hard.
From a nation perspective, however, you will die out as a people if you have negative population growth. Immigration can boost the numbers for a while, but not forever. Especially not if you're also trying to keep the immigrants out as many conservative policies are.
So what is there to do? Governments need to make having children easier, if they want more children. If they do not in fact want more children, then all is good.
However the current economic policy is based on infinite growth. How are you going to infinitely grow an economy if you aren't producing more consumers?
> It's been amazing to me that developed countries have bemoaned birth rates... and then done nothing effective about it.
A lot of developed countries have done a lot of things about it. A long time ago. It's mostly just the US that doesn't really seem to care about families, as far as I can tell. It's one of only 3 countries in the world that doesn't even guarantee paid maternity leave.
> Is increasing birth rates just an unsolvable problem somehow?
If solvable, it is ridiculously expensive. For one, the cost (non monetary) of birthing is placed on just half of the population. So the other half needs to sweeten the pot for that half. And these divisions are not just men/women, but also old/young.
Second, the benefit of higher fertility rates is not seen for decades, but the drawbacks are immediate. So it is very difficult for the participants to agree on a price. Many will die before they see any benefit, but they will pay the costs.
Artificial wombs might be an answer, but I doubt they are coming soon.
> I suspect that over the next few decades we will see the countries with the lowest birth rates start to push massive incentives for having more children.
With what money? Babies are seen as a liability more than a investment among young people. No amount of money the government can afford will change that. It's a consequence of ultra-individualism driven by mass market societies and the disintegration of the nuclear family in western societies. The other extreme is of course gender imbalance where females are deemed worthless, you can't fix that with money either.
>A possible solution to the fertility problem that has not been tried yet is paying families a real lot of money — a can’t-ignore-it amount of money — to have children. Millions of dollars!
If you do a search on this: "children food insecurity usa" you might find we seam to have a problem feeding the ones we have. This could be part of the problem. We might like to break off some $$ for the kids, and maybe for housing and job training too.
> In the past, having a child was a necessity for the sustainability of the country
I would argue it still is now unless you patch things with immigration (but that's just having another country do the work for you) or AGI becomes a thing.
While I do, I don't think most of Western public policy does. It seems like we've fundamentally outsourced children to third world countries. Raising a child in any state is going to be much costlier than raising him/her in the Philippines for example.
When the children become economically valuable adults - or prove to have enough economic potential (say by being admitted into a university), they are imported into the West. In a very cynical way, this is sort of what immigration has become. Instead of tackling the issue of why people are not reproducing, public policy seems happier to drain the most economically useful citizens from other countries.
"I understand that, but I also don't want to live in a country where people have children they can't afford to raise."
It's a catch 22, because people can't afford to have kids if there isn't enough economic growth, and not enough optimism for the future. Why would you be optimistic about your country's future if it's going to look like a depopulated
geriatric wasteland? Of course people don't want to have kids under such circumstances!
This is why the low birth rate -> low economic growth feedback is so vicious. Smart countries - eg Indonesia - are currently attempting radical social policies to escape this catch 22.
>Children are massively expensive, especially to the parents. Parents, especially those who work, can't be "compensated" for the work, costs and risks of raising children. The motivation to raise children is entirely irrational from the perspective of the individual.
So, essentially, no reasonable person would have children. Instead we should have an underclass of people who were, in your words, "irrational" enough to have children to move to another country to work for very low wages and serve and literally change the diapers of the aging, enlightened elite who were rational enough to not have children.
Raising birth rates to a sustainable level is a long term investment and stable solution. Mass immigration just kicks the can down the road. And currently, only two neighboring countries have birth rates above replacement rates: Indonesia and the Philippines. Their birth rates will likely drop below the replacement rate by 2050, in which case mass immigration from those countries to other countries deprives them of a stable future and royally screws countries who were dependent on immigrants who will no longer exist.
>People would have children for emotional reasons even if society does not intervene.
What if that isn't true though?
Fertility is universally falling in rich countries.
Could you give me a number of births-per-woman that would motivate your concern? I think 1 birth per woman is a reasonable number for national concern. South Korea is already at 1.0.
Without a future generation long term concerns evaporate from concern. Maybe this has already happened in some peoples minds with regard to national debt, and the long-term sustainability of social security.
>As a society, we've decided that being able to continue the population is more important than the fortunes of any particular startup.
Err no. It wasn't long ago that a family could survive well on a single income with the mother at home, cars paid, schooling sorted and food on the table. Not even remotely feasible on a single income now, unless you're talking executive pay.
Society has by and large chosen to abandon the family when it comes to supporting reproduction. Hell, we're told that we aren't reproducing at rates enough to replace us and that the only solution is bringing in cheap immigrants (got to keep those wages down) rather than making having more kids more accessible to the people already here.
Society has chosen rabid capitalism at virtually every cost possible.
The fertility and associated problems of local population can be completely ignored by the government of country like US - country with low population density, predictable steady population growth, and always a large group of people around the world willing to immigrate into the country. If not you, it's going to be someone else.
reply