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Trump is trying to pay his way into a US baby boom. Experts say it won’t work
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 06 May 2025
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Other countries have tried this, and it was a spectacular failure
His arrogance means that he's incapable of learning from others though, so good fucking luck
It's not a monetary issue, otherwise the middle class would have more kids than the poor, which isn't the case. It's simply that when given the right and the means to control how many kids they have, people choose to not have enough to renew the population.
Same pattern everywhere as women gain rights over their body and as contraceptives become available. Even in periods where there was a strong middle class, even in countries where socio-economic inequalities aren't as much an issue. Northern European countries and Quebec are some of the places with the most socio-economic equity and their birthrate is down the drain.
Turns out having kids is hard on a body, and I don’t blame any woman for not wanting to go through that.
That and women might have other aspirations than being baby factories. Who knew women had their own hopes and interests?
Don’t quote me but I’m pretty sure research funding for women’s health is pathetic. More so when they found out that mice are given “👻sex hormones 👻”
Yep! It’s absolutely ridiculous how we literally know less about the female body than the male body simply because nobody has bothered to look at more than tits and vag.
They still haven't been told what Transgenic means, and we know they can't read to find out themselves.
Being a parent is also difficult. I don't blame anybody for not wanting to deal with it.
Down the drain but they are much lower in countries like Germany, Italy, and South Korea where there's massive Hausfrau + Breadwinner cultural expectations. Wealth and autonomy decreases birthrates - letting women have careers and children gives you less of a decrease.
Reduction in birthrate is a problem when you decide that infinitely growing the human population is how you get prosperity. If you think the birthrate should be 4 so there's always a lot more young people than pensioners.
Even with a birthrate lower than replacement it will take a very long time to significantly reduce any country's population.
1.46 in Germany
1.24 in Italy
1.32 in Finland
1.52 in Sweden
1.41 in Norway
1.55 in Denmark
1.38 in Quebec
So no, it's not much higher than Italy or Germany, Korea and Japan are special cases though.
Jesus Christ, exclude Italy as well while you're at it
PS You forgot Iceland.
Sorry, I thought Japan was at the same level as Korea but it's actually much higher.
So yeah, Korea is a special case.
Iceland is at 1.59
Yes that does tend to be the trend, but there's also cultural effects on that as well. If we made more I would have kids, and speaking to my colleagues many of them would also want kids. But they can't afford to live.
There of course can be more than one cause for a trend, and I accept this is anecdotal.
Yeah that's why I'm showing historical data and mentioning that poorer people tend to have more kids even in first world countries.
Finland was close to 5 in 1900 and it's a clear downward trend with one bounce after WW2
So even before all the shit we're living now people were having less and less kids.
Right, but the anthropologist in me does have issues with that kind of data as applied to the US.
Living standards have not been significantly lower in any way to those countries, but we've experienced a sharp downturn in birthrates in the past 5 years. We were a 1st world nation by any measure for the past 100+ years, but our rates remained well above replacement levels.
So what is the cause for the downturn now for the US? I don't believe that can be explained with Finland's or Canada's historical birth rates.
The trend is fairly similar but I would think that mass immigration to the US probably stabilized things from the 70s and let's not act like access to contraceptives/abortion is that good in the US, which probably helped a lot to keep it closer to replacement
I thought Japans idea to subsidize alcohol was really the low point of this "We need more babies but also want to do the least amount possible to help" trend.