495
submitted 1 year ago by MicroWave@lemmy.world to c/news@lemmy.world

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.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] firewyre@lemmy.world 40 points 1 year ago
[-] nilloc@discuss.tchncs.de 28 points 1 year ago
[-] Sodis@feddit.de 11 points 1 year ago

Europe got both, we are still below replacement rate.

[-] dragonflyteaparty@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Because it's a natural consequence of high education, lack of benefit for having a lot of kids, and our overall population having gotten too high.

[-] firewyre@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I agree with this except for the bit about the size of the overall population. I can say with a great deal of certainty that most Americans (for example) are not giving a single thought to how many people live in China and India when deciding to have kids or not.

[-] CancerMancer@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago

There is a third thing that people often miss in this discussion: legacy. If you own nothing then you have nothing to give to a child. The people who had the most children owned things, particularly land and business. The suburban nuclear families being as large as they were was a cultural artifact from their own parents' way-of-life, single-income households, and religious beliefs. It will not repeat itself.

With nothing to inherit, little individual hope for the future, a plurality of world leaders intent on pushing us into a world where "you will own nothing and you will be happy"... what did people expect would happen?

this post was submitted on 28 Nov 2023
495 points (97.0% liked)

News

23627 readers
3084 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS