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I'm not even from the US, which is a more expensive country by all accounts, and that sum is still laughable from my point of view. What's that gonna get you? A

I'm not even from the US, which is a more expensive country by all accounts, and that sum is still laughable from my point of view. What's that gonna get you? A few months worth of clothes and basic supplies? Some quick googling reveals that it costs around $300k to raise a child to the age of 17 in the US, not including lost income. When people were mostly farmers, having children used to advantageous economically. Now it's the opposite. Surely a rich country can do better.

science4sail 2y ago
From a pure economic incentives perspective, I don't think that wealthy countries will solve their birth rate issues until parents are financially on par with or even ahead of childfree people. It's hard to see how this could be done without heavy transfer payments/subsidies or restricting careers/promotions based on family size. These will of course generate all sorts of adverse side effects. As a result, the general solution is to use immigration to blunt labor shortages and hope that natural selection will eventually favor natalist psychologies/cultures. This too has a lot of negative side effects.