We can disincentivize it substantially by replacing tax benefits for having kids with tax burdens for having kids, promoting family planning and making contraceptives free and easily accessible as possible, making childbirth and childrearing as expensive as possible, etc.
Simply reverse everything many countries once did to encourage children and growing populations.
Which translates a tax break on each child into a tax penalty on each child after the first. Free family planning becomes free contraception and sterilisation for those who want it. Instead of advertising campaigns encouraging families a campaign discouraging larger families, and perhaps nudging it to be socially unacceptable. Make any fertility treatments an entirely private sector activity.
I would have had more children if childcare was more heavily subsidized. Make it a tax deduction up to a fraction of the amount you pay in taxes to keep it from incentivizing those without financial means to have children.
One of the simplest ways is to offer economic incentives to people who have fewer (or no) children instead of the opposite (which is our current policy).
If we incentivize those who are childless and have shrunk their carbon foot print, that would also encourage people to make thoughtful decisions about baby making. Example: If someone didn’t have any children at all, then they should get tax free status or reduced premiums etc.
A woman increases her carbon foot print 10-20 times with every child. Medical costs and food and transport and pretty much everything is borne by the rest of us. Suspend benefits. Tax excess children and give tax breaks or retirement benefits to those who didn’t have children.
I suspect that retirement benefits would be a better incentive than tax free status. Most people hope that children would take care of them when they get older. It’s not worth the true cost of over population.
Simply raising tax credit on children would help a lot in the US. It also should not be progressively reduced like other tax credits do with income, as it is disincentivizing successful people from procreating.
Providing better medical care and birth control? Educating the population on family planning? Making the cost of raising children more expensive, in order to create economic incentives to have fewer children?
There are a lot of ways to contribute to society without contributing a person, but many parts of our culture consider these ways to be somehow secondary. If we can change this, we can reduce our population without forbidding anyone from having children.
For starters, I think we should increase tax benefits for people who don't have dependents and who are participating in research, or teaching, or nurshing, or ... create a list of activities which we want to see more of but that the market does not prioritize. Let's celebrate, and empower, individuals who take the time they would be spending on their own kids, and instead spend it on solving society's problems.
This would increase the likelihood that somebody without children has the kind of impact which makes them a role model for existing children. This will help erode the idea that people who chose not to have children are somehow defective and will decrease the likelihood that a person decides to have kids.
The problem is that the incentive doesn't work. Low-income folks have more children than high-income folks, even though they're the ones who are more adversely affected by childcare costs (larger percentage of budget). If disincentivizing having children through high childcare doesn't work, then we should accept that people will have as many kids as they want to, make things easier for the people who are already alive, and find other ways to manage overpopulation (easy access to contraception being the most effective and humane)
Remove tax deductions for more than two kids per couple. Tax the suburbs more highly. Encourage couples to only have two kids just like we encourage people not to litter. Trade less with countries with high birth rates and raise fees on those countries’ environmental impact. All that could be done democratically, no?
A less severe form would be financial incentives for licensed parents. You're still free to have children if you want, but you're only supported by the state if you got a license. Pair this with free birth control implants and abortions for everyone who wants them and you get most of the effect without the use of force. You could even pay men to get a vasectomy.
Another idea I heard once, that I think is pretty sensible, and which could be implemented in the future as contraception techniques progress, is to have every kid rendered unable to reproduce for free with a reversible procedure that they could then have undone (again, for free) on demand after reaching legal age, when they feel like having kids. This would remove unwanted teenage pregnancies which also tend to contribute to poverty.
Paying women to have babies does not incentivize what a society wants, which is kids who are properly raised and contribute to society. That requires many years of effort, something I don’t think that can be incentivized by a cash gift or tax credit.
The only economic incentivize I can think of that might work is to remove all old age benefits and require people to depend on descendants, but that is not going to be politically palatable until there is no choice because the system fell apart.
Or, again, make it easier to raise kids. Subsidize childcare, or even better, allow zoning that stimulates community development so people have free childcare in their neighbors or extended family living nearby.
Modest idea: Moderately tax no-kids zones. Spend the money to subsidize services which are ~essential to those with young children (such as day care) and ~useless to those without.
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