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TL;DR: They are doing it because they can. Want birthrates up? Make sure women can't open a bank account without a man's signature, can't get a degree, or idea

TL;DR: They are doing it because they can. Want birthrates up? Make sure women can't open a bank account without a man's signature, can't get a degree, or ideally can't drive or leave home at all without a guardian LMAO. It's simply not achievable without a totally unacceptable, Taliban level destruction of basic human rights. Declining birthrates are not a problem to be fixed, they are a sign of human progress. Surely eventually they will be fixed in one way or the other, but not by social changes let alone not with "financial support of families". Governments need to start having their own kids eventually.

toomuchtodo 2y ago
Governments: “How can we fix our demographic crisis!?” Data: spending mid single digits of GDP on parental support, 4 day week, flexible work arrangements and work life balance, permanent vs temporary job arrangements, subsidized daycare, affordable healthcare Governments: “There are no solutions!” @PaulHoule: Agree women simply not wanting children and being able to lock that choice in is also a material component of this outcome. Seeing similar in men: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/childless-men-vasectomies-1.7410084 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/childless-men-vasect...
- anovikov 2y ago
  Give me an example of where any monetary support measures resulted in anything but temporary bump in births (where people who wanted kids anyway, just had them bit sooner), followed by deeper decline later. It just doesn't work this way. To have more kids, you need to break human rights and give women no choice but to. Otherwise you will hardly have even a TFR of 1.0. Even today's European birthrates are inflated by what remains of religion, sexism, and patriarchal lifestyle.
  - toomuchtodo 2y ago
    > Give me an example of where any monetary support measures resulted in anything but temporary bump in births (where people who wanted kids anyway, just had them bit sooner), followed by deeper decline later. Hungary [1]. To your point, South Korea spent an enormous amount of GDP attempting to lift fertility rates (~$200B subsidizing child care and parental leave over the past 16 years, yet fertility rate fell from 1.1 in 2006 to 0.81 in 2021), but will be unable to overcome the inertia of female fertility intent and the overall adversarial environment one must exist in [2] [3]. Conversely, Tokyo is attempting a four day week [4], and so I would argue that efforts to date have been half hearted at best. The situation is not yet dire enough where countries will go "all in" and make lives comfortable enough for people of reproductive age to consider children (or more children than they otherwise would). > It just doesn't work this way. To have more kids, you need to break human rights and give women no choice but to. Otherwise you will hardly have even a TFR of 1.0. Even today's European birthrates are inflated by what remains of religion, sexism, and patriarchal lifestyle. There is nuance. There are people who never want children, and no amount of policy will sway them. They should be robustly empowered to not have unwanted children. The people who do want children but are challenged by economic or fertility circumstances, those are who policy should assist with meeting their reproductive desires and intent (if the strategy is to use fiat and policy to lift fertility). I want to be clear, in no uncertain terms, that human rights must be respected and it must always be an individual's choice with regards to their reproductive choices, rights, and freedom. Any efforts against those rights should be met with overwhelming countermeasures. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_policy_in_Hungary https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_policy_in_Hungary [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/27/opinion/south-korea-fertility-rate-feminism.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/27/opinion/south-korea-ferti... [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42068845 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42068845 [4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42342203 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42342203
    - anovikov 2y ago
      Thing is, Hungarian TFR is still low. The country is dying out and people are emigrating it, too - not lastly, because of authoritarian government in power. I believe ultimate solution will be direct: "government hires women - not families - to have kids, paying to lowest bidders until birthrate is sufficient". Which shouldn't be all that expensive. Quality of those people will be hit and miss, but was it so high when people grew up in 4-6 sibling households with half-literate mothers and ever-drunk wife-beater fathers?
      - toomuchtodo 2y ago
        This might work with some cohorts, but the women who tilt progressive or are educated? Very unlikely imho to work due to opportunity cost of 20+ years of childrearing. I'm unsure they're going to sell their freedom cheap. It is an interesting idea, and on the flip side, I'd be curious what the clearing price would be to pay women who don't want children to lock in that choice (~40% of pregnancies both in the US and internationally annually are unintended [per the Guttmacher Institute and the UN, respectively).
        anovikov 2y ago
        It will be poorest women from the underclass, of course. Just pump up the birthrate till TFR hits 2.1 by rising monthly allowance per child. Poorest women from underclass will have 6-8 kids. Rest could relax.
- PaulHoule 2y ago
  There are also issues that are traditionally considered "out of scope" for the government such as exploitative dating apps. Also social phenomena as talked about https://books.google.com/books/about/Why_Love_Hurts.html https://books.google.com/books/about/Why_Love_Hurts.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incel and such
oldpersonintx 2y ago
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toomuchtodo 2y ago

Governments: “How can we fix our demographic crisis!?” Data: spending mid single digits of GDP on parental support, 4 day week, flexible work arrangements and work life balance, permanent vs temporary job arrangements, subsidized daycare, affordable healthcare Governments: “There are no solutions!” @PaulHoule: Agree women simply not wanting children and being able to lock that choice in is also a material component of this outcome. Seeing similar in men: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/childless-men-vasectomies-1.7410084 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/childless-men-vasect...

anovikov 2y ago
Give me an example of where any monetary support measures resulted in anything but temporary bump in births (where people who wanted kids anyway, just had them bit sooner), followed by deeper decline later. It just doesn't work this way. To have more kids, you need to break human rights and give women no choice but to. Otherwise you will hardly have even a TFR of 1.0. Even today's European birthrates are inflated by what remains of religion, sexism, and patriarchal lifestyle.
- toomuchtodo 2y ago
  > Give me an example of where any monetary support measures resulted in anything but temporary bump in births (where people who wanted kids anyway, just had them bit sooner), followed by deeper decline later. Hungary [1]. To your point, South Korea spent an enormous amount of GDP attempting to lift fertility rates (~$200B subsidizing child care and parental leave over the past 16 years, yet fertility rate fell from 1.1 in 2006 to 0.81 in 2021), but will be unable to overcome the inertia of female fertility intent and the overall adversarial environment one must exist in [2] [3]. Conversely, Tokyo is attempting a four day week [4], and so I would argue that efforts to date have been half hearted at best. The situation is not yet dire enough where countries will go "all in" and make lives comfortable enough for people of reproductive age to consider children (or more children than they otherwise would). > It just doesn't work this way. To have more kids, you need to break human rights and give women no choice but to. Otherwise you will hardly have even a TFR of 1.0. Even today's European birthrates are inflated by what remains of religion, sexism, and patriarchal lifestyle. There is nuance. There are people who never want children, and no amount of policy will sway them. They should be robustly empowered to not have unwanted children. The people who do want children but are challenged by economic or fertility circumstances, those are who policy should assist with meeting their reproductive desires and intent (if the strategy is to use fiat and policy to lift fertility). I want to be clear, in no uncertain terms, that human rights must be respected and it must always be an individual's choice with regards to their reproductive choices, rights, and freedom. Any efforts against those rights should be met with overwhelming countermeasures. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_policy_in_Hungary https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_policy_in_Hungary [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/27/opinion/south-korea-fertility-rate-feminism.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/27/opinion/south-korea-ferti... [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42068845 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42068845 [4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42342203 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42342203
  - anovikov 2y ago
    Thing is, Hungarian TFR is still low. The country is dying out and people are emigrating it, too - not lastly, because of authoritarian government in power. I believe ultimate solution will be direct: "government hires women - not families - to have kids, paying to lowest bidders until birthrate is sufficient". Which shouldn't be all that expensive. Quality of those people will be hit and miss, but was it so high when people grew up in 4-6 sibling households with half-literate mothers and ever-drunk wife-beater fathers?
    - toomuchtodo 2y ago
      This might work with some cohorts, but the women who tilt progressive or are educated? Very unlikely imho to work due to opportunity cost of 20+ years of childrearing. I'm unsure they're going to sell their freedom cheap. It is an interesting idea, and on the flip side, I'd be curious what the clearing price would be to pay women who don't want children to lock in that choice (~40% of pregnancies both in the US and internationally annually are unintended [per the Guttmacher Institute and the UN, respectively).
      - anovikov 2y ago
        It will be poorest women from the underclass, of course. Just pump up the birthrate till TFR hits 2.1 by rising monthly allowance per child. Poorest women from underclass will have 6-8 kids. Rest could relax.
PaulHoule 2y ago
There are also issues that are traditionally considered "out of scope" for the government such as exploitative dating apps. Also social phenomena as talked about https://books.google.com/books/about/Why_Love_Hurts.html https://books.google.com/books/about/Why_Love_Hurts.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incel and such

oldpersonintx 2y ago

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