6 ms·

These kind of incentives have definitely helped countering the declining birthrates in Denmark and Sweden. I wonder why people like Elon Musk and JD Vance ofte

by dtquad 2y ago

These kind of incentives have definitely helped countering the declining birthrates in Denmark and Sweden. I wonder why people like Elon Musk and JD Vance often bring up Orban's Hungary and Putin's Russia as examples of countries that are successfully increasing birthrates when Denmark, Sweden, and Czechia have higher (native born) birthrates than both Hungary and Russia.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
Narhem 2y ago
Playing with babies has tons of positive benefits. Probably reduces the health care costs long term too.
hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
According to the World Bank, 2022 fertility rates were: Denmark 1.6 Czechia 1.6 Sweden 1.5 Hungary 1.5 Russia 1.4 https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?end=2022&locations=DK-CZ-SE-HU-RU&start=1990 https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?end=2022... Pretty hard IMO to say much about the relative effect these policies are having at all, especially if you throw in other countries like Norway (1.4) and Finland (1.3).
- tsunamifury 2y ago
  Yea almost all these places are at extinction level disaster birth rates.
  - toomuchtodo 2y ago
    There are 8 billion people in the world, on track for 10 billion by 2100. A gradual decline towards ~4 billion people over the next ~150 years is not extinction. https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/article/2024/jul/11/global-population-predictions-offer-hopeful-sign-for-planet-un-says https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/article/2024/... https://www.un.org/development/desa/pd/sites/www.un.org.development.desa.pd/files/undesa_pd_2024_wpp_2024_advance_unedited_0.pdf https://www.un.org/development/desa/pd/sites/www.un.org.deve...
    - jojobas 2y ago
      Nearly all of that growth is in sub-saharan Africa and Afghanistan. An extinction in Europe is still an extinction.
      - toomuchtodo 2y ago
        Europe will have less people, but no extinction. https://www.euronews.com/next/2023/04/04/china-sees-first-population-decline-in-six-decades-where-does-the-eu-stand https://www.euronews.com/next/2023/04/04/china-sees-first-po...
        jojobas 2y ago
        Europe won't have fewer people, but there will be an extinction of Europeans. Maybe not in our lifetime but it is now all but inevitable.
        toomuchtodo 2y ago
        On a long enough timeline, we're all dead.
        jononor 2y ago
        In that future, those will _be_ the Europeans :) While heritage is important, culture is predominantly made up by the living. So if something is important to preserve, pass it on to the next generations (and not just your own children).
      - immibis 2y ago
        Why do you think there won't be any more people in Europe?
        lazyasciiart 2y ago
        Presumably Europe is working on robots that can enforce their immigration policies long after the population behind the policies is gone?
MattGaiser 2y ago
So much of the birth rate discussion is values driven, rather than actual concern about the birth rate. So they picked something/someone to blame and then figured out what to blame them for.
twelve40 2y ago
That's .. strange > countering the declining birthrates in Denmark and Sweden Both Denmark and Sweden have been plummeting nonstop for a decade+ now, how is it possible to interpret that as a success in countering decline? https://www.dst.dk/en/Statistik/emner/borgere/befolkning/fertilitet https://www.dst.dk/en/Statistik/emner/borgere/befolkning/fer... https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?locations=SE https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?location... > often bring up I learned about JD Vance's existence yesterday (not really into politics) so i'm not going to defend whatever he said or didn't, but nobody in their right mind would set a country population size of Chicago (pretty much all of those above) as a demographic example to US-scale problems, if that's what is being referred to here. Perhaps something was mentioned along the lines of "at least those countries have kids subsidies which are more meaningful to the local COL than whatever measly tax allowances we have here in the US" - that would actually be accurate - but whatever. In reality, not one of the mentioned countries managed to turn anything around yet, all are stuck well below replacement, mostly with pretty bleak trends.
toomuchtodo 2y ago
Pronatalist policies slow fertility rate declines, but do not stop them, and are extremely expensive for the small benefit that results. It is almost impossible to stop birth rate declines when women are empowered, have personal agency and autonomy, and there is robust access to contraceptives. > “Once a woman receives enough information and autonomy to make an informed and self-directed choice about when to have children, and how many to have, she immediately has fewer of them, and has them later.” https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/545397/empty-planet-by-darrell-bricker-and-john-ibbitson/ https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/545397/empty-planet... > Our findings suggest that continued trends in female educational attainment and access to contraception will hasten declines in fertility and slow population growth. A sustained TFR lower than the replacement level in many countries, including China and India, would have economic, social, environmental, and geopolitical consequences. Policy options to adapt to continued low fertility, while sustaining and enhancing female reproductive health, will be crucial in the years to come. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30677-2/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6... | https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(20)30677-2 https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(20)30677-2 > South Korea spent more than $200 billion subsidizing child care and parental leave over the past 16 years, President Yoon Suk Yeol said last fall. Yet the fertility rate fell from 1.1 in 2006 to 0.81 in 2021. > The amount of money required to trigger even these small effects is enormous. In "The Economic Consequences of Family Policies," published in the Journal of Economic Perspectives in 2017, researchers found "one extra percentage point of GDP spending" on early childhood education and child care programs was "associated with 0.2 extra children per woman." In the U.S., where the 2022 GDP was $25.46 trillion, that would mean spending more than $250 billion.* https://reason.com/2023/05/02/storks-dont-take-orders-from-the-state/ https://reason.com/2023/05/02/storks-dont-take-orders-from-t... (TLDR There is no political nor societal will to reconfigure economic systems and workplaces, nor incur the economic drag through spending on benefits programs, that would be required to stop the fertility rate decline)
- rustcleaner 2y ago
  Here's a fix which I think would work well and also be wildly unpopular with wealthy {D,S}INKs: if one is not declared congenitally infertile or dangerously nuts by 30 and have less than 2 non-felon kids at 65 when bennies start (with no good medical reason)? Then no old age entitlements (Social Security, Medicare). The more kids the richer the benefits, after all you had more kids and they're paying more in! {D,S}INKs could have had kids (not infertile, not nuts), but didn't, there should be no siphoning off the children of their peers who did. takes cover again ADDENDUM: Also maybe encouraging an 11 girl : 9 boy birth ratio could help things, with better protections for fathers' rights to be more than the responsible payer post-divorce (and maybe just stop forcibly collecting support altogether from those men making less than median and who the woman left no-fault).
rpmisms 2y ago
If I had to guess, it's because they're culturally stronger nations.
Gud 2y ago
Please don’t bring up US politics all the time. Almost in any political thread it’s always “Elon musk said this”, or “Joe Biden did that”. JD Vance and Elon Musk has absolutely zero to do with Swedish child care.
ainonsense44 2y ago
> I wonder why people like Elon Musk and JD Vance often bring up Orban's Hungary and Putin's Russia as examples ... Because they love the idea of individual power and totalitarianism.
screye 2y ago
Elon expects every person in his companies to work 70 hrs/week. He situates his headquarters in NIMBY-maxed high-COL cities like Palo Alto. He has practically eliminated maternity leave for Twitter employees (he later reversed from internal pressure) and IVF benefits were slashed. Elon has time and again shown himself to be hypocrite-supreme. The purpose of a system is what it does.

by dtquad 2y ago

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

Narhem 2y ago

Playing with babies has tons of positive benefits. Probably reduces the health care costs long term too.

hn_throwaway_99 2y ago

According to the World Bank, 2022 fertility rates were: Denmark 1.6 Czechia 1.6 Sweden 1.5 Hungary 1.5 Russia 1.4 https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?end=2022&locations=DK-CZ-SE-HU-RU&start=1990 https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?end=2022... Pretty hard IMO to say much about the relative effect these policies are having at all, especially if you throw in other countries like Norway (1.4) and Finland (1.3).

tsunamifury 2y ago
Yea almost all these places are at extinction level disaster birth rates.
- toomuchtodo 2y ago
  There are 8 billion people in the world, on track for 10 billion by 2100. A gradual decline towards ~4 billion people over the next ~150 years is not extinction. https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/article/2024/jul/11/global-population-predictions-offer-hopeful-sign-for-planet-un-says https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/article/2024/... https://www.un.org/development/desa/pd/sites/www.un.org.development.desa.pd/files/undesa_pd_2024_wpp_2024_advance_unedited_0.pdf https://www.un.org/development/desa/pd/sites/www.un.org.deve...
  - jojobas 2y ago
    Nearly all of that growth is in sub-saharan Africa and Afghanistan. An extinction in Europe is still an extinction.
    - toomuchtodo 2y ago
      Europe will have less people, but no extinction. https://www.euronews.com/next/2023/04/04/china-sees-first-population-decline-in-six-decades-where-does-the-eu-stand https://www.euronews.com/next/2023/04/04/china-sees-first-po...
      - jojobas 2y ago
        Europe won't have fewer people, but there will be an extinction of Europeans. Maybe not in our lifetime but it is now all but inevitable.
        toomuchtodo 2y ago
        On a long enough timeline, we're all dead.
        jononor 2y ago
        In that future, those will _be_ the Europeans :) While heritage is important, culture is predominantly made up by the living. So if something is important to preserve, pass it on to the next generations (and not just your own children).
    - immibis 2y ago
      Why do you think there won't be any more people in Europe?
      - lazyasciiart 2y ago
        Presumably Europe is working on robots that can enforce their immigration policies long after the population behind the policies is gone?

MattGaiser 2y ago

So much of the birth rate discussion is values driven, rather than actual concern about the birth rate. So they picked something/someone to blame and then figured out what to blame them for.

twelve40 2y ago

That's .. strange > countering the declining birthrates in Denmark and Sweden Both Denmark and Sweden have been plummeting nonstop for a decade+ now, how is it possible to interpret that as a success in countering decline? https://www.dst.dk/en/Statistik/emner/borgere/befolkning/fertilitet https://www.dst.dk/en/Statistik/emner/borgere/befolkning/fer... https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?locations=SE https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?location... > often bring up I learned about JD Vance's existence yesterday (not really into politics) so i'm not going to defend whatever he said or didn't, but nobody in their right mind would set a country population size of Chicago (pretty much all of those above) as a demographic example to US-scale problems, if that's what is being referred to here. Perhaps something was mentioned along the lines of "at least those countries have kids subsidies which are more meaningful to the local COL than whatever measly tax allowances we have here in the US" - that would actually be accurate - but whatever. In reality, not one of the mentioned countries managed to turn anything around yet, all are stuck well below replacement, mostly with pretty bleak trends.

toomuchtodo 2y ago

Pronatalist policies slow fertility rate declines, but do not stop them, and are extremely expensive for the small benefit that results. It is almost impossible to stop birth rate declines when women are empowered, have personal agency and autonomy, and there is robust access to contraceptives. > “Once a woman receives enough information and autonomy to make an informed and self-directed choice about when to have children, and how many to have, she immediately has fewer of them, and has them later.” https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/545397/empty-planet-by-darrell-bricker-and-john-ibbitson/ https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/545397/empty-planet... > Our findings suggest that continued trends in female educational attainment and access to contraception will hasten declines in fertility and slow population growth. A sustained TFR lower than the replacement level in many countries, including China and India, would have economic, social, environmental, and geopolitical consequences. Policy options to adapt to continued low fertility, while sustaining and enhancing female reproductive health, will be crucial in the years to come. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30677-2/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6... | https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(20)30677-2 https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(20)30677-2 > South Korea spent more than $200 billion subsidizing child care and parental leave over the past 16 years, President Yoon Suk Yeol said last fall. Yet the fertility rate fell from 1.1 in 2006 to 0.81 in 2021. > The amount of money required to trigger even these small effects is enormous. In "The Economic Consequences of Family Policies," published in the Journal of Economic Perspectives in 2017, researchers found "one extra percentage point of GDP spending" on early childhood education and child care programs was "associated with 0.2 extra children per woman." In the U.S., where the 2022 GDP was $25.46 trillion, that would mean spending more than $250 billion.* https://reason.com/2023/05/02/storks-dont-take-orders-from-the-state/ https://reason.com/2023/05/02/storks-dont-take-orders-from-t... (TLDR There is no political nor societal will to reconfigure economic systems and workplaces, nor incur the economic drag through spending on benefits programs, that would be required to stop the fertility rate decline)

rustcleaner 2y ago
Here's a fix which I think would work well and also be wildly unpopular with wealthy {D,S}INKs: if one is not declared congenitally infertile or dangerously nuts by 30 and have less than 2 non-felon kids at 65 when bennies start (with no good medical reason)? Then no old age entitlements (Social Security, Medicare). The more kids the richer the benefits, after all you had more kids and they're paying more in! {D,S}INKs could have had kids (not infertile, not nuts), but didn't, there should be no siphoning off the children of their peers who did. takes cover again ADDENDUM: Also maybe encouraging an 11 girl : 9 boy birth ratio could help things, with better protections for fathers' rights to be more than the responsible payer post-divorce (and maybe just stop forcibly collecting support altogether from those men making less than median and who the woman left no-fault).

rpmisms 2y ago

If I had to guess, it's because they're culturally stronger nations.

Gud 2y ago

Please don’t bring up US politics all the time. Almost in any political thread it’s always “Elon musk said this”, or “Joe Biden did that”. JD Vance and Elon Musk has absolutely zero to do with Swedish child care.

ainonsense44 2y ago

> I wonder why people like Elon Musk and JD Vance often bring up Orban's Hungary and Putin's Russia as examples ... Because they love the idea of individual power and totalitarianism.

screye 2y ago

Elon expects every person in his companies to work 70 hrs/week. He situates his headquarters in NIMBY-maxed high-COL cities like Palo Alto. He has practically eliminated maternity leave for Twitter employees (he later reversed from internal pressure) and IVF benefits were slashed. Elon has time and again shown himself to be hypocrite-supreme. The purpose of a system is what it does.