You can’t even pay people to have more kids - lemm.ee
lemm.ee
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.

The comments section absurd. Just everything from ethnonationalism to personal grievance politics. Not an optimistic take to be seen.

  • Dirt_Owl [comrade/them, they/them]
    ·
    7 months ago

    “replacement rate” of 2.1 children needed to sustain a stable population.

    Wtf is that 'replacement rate' bullshit. There are 8 billion fucking people on the planet. We only need a couple hundred thousand for a healthy population. BILLIONS OF PEOPLE ARE STILL BEING BORN WE ARE NOT GOING TO RUN OUT.

    Fucking assholes just want an excuse to force pregnancy and to keep the supply of cheap labor flowing.

    • buckykat [none/use name]
      ·
      7 months ago

      The total world population is still going up, as it has the entire time we've been able to reasonably track it. The only way you can see a number below this supposed replacement rate is by doing ethnonationalism.

  • envis10n [he/him]
    ·
    7 months ago

    Having kids is a choice people should have. If they don't want them, they don't have to have them. There should be options for handling that between sexual education, contraception, sterilization, abortion, adoption, etc.

    Forcing people to either extreme of that is not acceptable. It just seems like common sense that people should be able to make those choices for themselves and their families. You don't have to like it.

    That's all not even getting to the replacement theory bullshit

  • AssortedBiscuits [they/them]
    ·
    7 months ago

    Forcing people to have kids is cringe.

    Forcing people to not have kids is cringe.

    Thinking people should have more kids is cringe.

    Thinking people should have less kids is cringe.

    • Ideology [she/her]
      ·
      7 months ago

      When he saw that AssortedBiscuits achieved cringelightenment, the Buddha smiled.