These countries tried everything from cash to patriotic calls to duty to reverse drastically declining birth rates. It didn’t work.

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.

  • hungryphrog
    2·
    1 year ago

    I agree with you, but also what are we going to do when there are a ton of old people who need to be taken care of, and there aren’t enough young people to take care of them?

    • Rediphile@lemmy.ca
      13·
      1 year ago

      They will suffer. And I’m willing to be among them as it’s worth it long term. The alternative of infinite growth isn’t a realistic possibility in a world with finite resources.

    • kromem@lemmy.worldEnglish
      7·
      1 year ago

      You’ll see AI stepping in on a lot of areas where there’s decreased labor supply.

      And a bonus for when you are old - AI is going to be far less likely to secretly be a sadistic fuck going into an industry with a vulnerable population in order to torture you when you have dementia and can’t tell anyone about the regular abuse.

      You’d be surprised at how often that kind of stuff happens when “young people take care of old people.”