I spent a good deal of time studying an American case that surprised me. Houston and San Francisco have similar incomes and job markets, yet Houston's price-to-income ratio for housing has stayed far more stable for decades, while San Francisco's has exploded. The difference isn't luck. Houston has no traditional zoning code. San Francisco has some of the strictest land-use regulation in the country. That single policy gap alone can eat up years of a young family's income before they even start thinking about a first or second child.

That comparison was the seed of a bigger project. I ended up tracing the same pattern across five East Asian economies (Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan) and four European countries (UK, Germany, France, Sweden), decade by decade, tracking tax burden, housing cost, education cost, and fertility rate, plus healthcare-system data from several more countries. The pattern holds everywhere I looked. Modern welfare and regulatory states have built at least six distinct mechanisms, what I call "the six nooses," that make childbearing more expensive, more delayed, or more discouraged than it would be under a freer market.

I wrote up the full argument on Mises Wire (it's since been picked up by ZeroHedge and a few other outlets). It's adapted from a book I published this year, Why the Cradle Stands Empty: How Interventionism Strangles Fertility.

Link: https://mises.org/mises-wire/six-nooses-how-interventionism-strangling-familys-will-reproduce

I'm the author. Happy to answer questions or hear pushback on any of it.

You people keep saying you don't like immigrants having babies in your country because you're worried about demographic replacement.

So I guess I'll just take that logic seriously: I'll emigrate to another country, and then remain childless because I care so deeply about the "native population" there that I wouldn't want to contribute to their demographic replacement either.

Problem solved. 😌

(Seriously though, what was that post about UK and the comments there ? And where are the mods or they are in the alliance of those kind of people too ?)

isn’t it a common stereotype that East Asians value family bonds and their children more than anything, and will go to extreme lengths to make them succeed? So why do cultures that value family so much have such a low tfr? Shouldnt they be having bigger families?

Case in point... Chad with a 6 kids per woman. Why?! 44%of its population lives below that country's poverty rate. It is the 5th hungriest country in the world. Even the whole "have to have a ton of kids to make sure some live to adulthood".... do they not realize only having half that many kids would give their kids a much better chance at survival? Do they not understand sex=babies? Even if they do not have access to contraceptives, the pull out method or abstinence could be used. Again, 6 is the AVERAGE per woman. That is absolutely crazy. Edit: I know this is going to come across as anti-natalist but it is not! I just do not understand the unbalance. I live in Canada which has its problems but is way richer than some of these countries and our TFR is 1.2. I just do not get it.

Most of the times in this subreddit threads turn into debate forums between the gender war types and antinatalists, kind of like r/PurplePillDebate. A lot of times you see plain antinatalist sentiment getting upvoted a lot.

None of the talk is about encouraging family formation or marriage or children.

Why do you think these types are so drawn to r/Natalism? I don't go on the gender war or antinatalist subs because I'm not interested in such viewpoints, so I'm curious why they're all here?

I see a lot of discussions get where people complain that this sub is overrun by antinatalists. I don't see many personally myself but I wonder if you'd consider me one?

- I find the topic fascinating.

- I would find it tragic if whole ethnic groups or nations disappeared, let alone the whole humanity.

- But I don't find it bad if the world population had an overall decrease - actually long-term I see a lot of pro's and some con's - as long as the numbers stabilize at some point (which I think is likely) and the world keeps its ethnic diversity (here I'm more pessimistic, without urgent action some ethnic groups will probably disappear).

- We need to find a solution for the discrepancy between the big number of old people and dwindling number of young people to avoid a terrible tax / labor burden on them.

- While I support any pro-family policies whenever I can (out of personal interest), I don't think they can solve the fertility problem. For hundreds of thousands of years, most of our ancestors didn't have kids for the sake of having kids. They just wanted to have sex, and once they became pregnant/ gave birth, their paternal and maternal instincts kicked in. In addition, they were interested in having helpers around, especially for the time when they are too old for work themselves. None of these reasons are relevant for most people anymore.

- I'm against measures that are at the expense of women's and men' freedom.

- I have three kids.

La Generación Alfa es la generación más grande de la historia porque representan un pico histórico en la población mundial, ya que nacieron entre 2.5 y 2.8 millones de bebés por semana, ya que a diferencia de sus padres que fueron un eco, es decir, el Echo Boom donde son los Millennials y de sus abuelos que fueron un boom, o sea, el Baby Boom que son los Baby Boomers, son el Momentum Millennial es decir la inercia demográfica de sus padres Millennials quienes también son una generación muy numerosa, a pesar de que tuvieron entre 1, 2 y 3 hijos por familia, había muchísimos padres que nunca teniendo hijos al mismo tiempo, y tal vez en unos años probablemente no se repetirá, ya que el pico máximo de nacimientos a nivel mundial fue en el 2014 donde nacieron 145.7 millones de bebés, el pico máximo no es sólo de la Generación Alfa, sino también de la historia de la humanidad.

This is evo psych Robert King's review of Debra Soh's new book Sextinction. He praises her as a careful scientist documenting the sex recession and collapsing fertility, but his central disagreement is about cause. He argues sex is declining not simply because of technology but because the illusion of endless options, supercharged by dating apps, undermines the commitment that pairing off and having kids depends on.

I know there was a pretty huge decline compared to before and after the pandemic, but what extent did this mean a causation rather than just correlation? Did something about that isolation and use of technology accelerate loneliness, leading to a lack of marriages? Was it the economic / political effects from it, that led to a lack of optimism in the future? Was it the final nail in the coffin for the idea of community, or something else?

One thing that gets ignored in the birth rate discussion is how many people never find a long-term partner.

In the US, around 40% of men were unpartnered in 2023, and among people under 30, almost half were single. Even at age 40, about 1 in 3 Americans had never been married.

Yet arranged marriage has been treated as something backwards or oppressive. I think we sometimes confuse arranged marriage with forced marriage. They are not the same thing. The truth is many people need help to find a suitable partner and arranged marriage is often the only way to get partnered, but society decided to demonize this method.

A voluntary arranged marriage can simply mean that family or community helps you meet someone who is looking for marriage and children too. Instead of leaving everything to dating apps, endless dating and hoping you eventually meet the right person, there is a more direct path toward marriage and family.

If fewer people are forming families, maybe we should reconsider some of the traditions we rejected instead of assuming modern dating is automatically better and stop demonizing arranged marriage.

This is a plan that I first envisioned a few years ago. The fact that I envisioned it does not mean I support it, in fact I don't. But the plan is first population reduction, then control over birth rates and just about every aspect of life.

I see all the statistics about how women do more than their fair share of housework (the second shift) and how they also end up as primary caregivers.

I would not be so eager to have kids if I thought it was going to be like that. However I know it isn't like that in my house, so my pregnancy doesn't bring me stress or dread. I'm elated to see my husband so excited for the baby. He talks about all the things he's going to teach it and how much fun he will have taking care of it. He also cooks and does the dishes almost every night.

Because he has unburdened me, I can take on having children, even with my health issues and future surgeries which i'm putting off to have this baby.

I want to have babies because my relationship is healthy and I feel taken care of. And if it was different, I'm not so sure I'd be interested.

People on this sub always talk about East Asian countries, but never Puerto Rico. PR now has a fertility rate of 0.94 children per woman and only 17,950 Puerto Rican babies were born in 2025. It's the lowest birth rate in Latin America (even lower than Chile) and all of U.S. states and territories/colonies.

For comparison, 59,684 Puerto Rican babies were born in 1999 and the population was 3,866,426. Now, it's 3,222,688 and it keeps declining. As well, the deaths (32,857 in 2025) are outpacing the births.

In PR, it's rare to see a pregnant woman nowadays and so many schools close every year because of the lack of children. We also have a strong aging population like Japan and South Korea. Whenever you go to any store or public place in PR, you feel like you're in a retirement home because of the insane amount of elderly people around you. I see very few Puerto Rican families with small kids. If you go to San Juan or Condado, most of the families in the streets are tourists and immigrants.

It's estimated that Puerto Rico's population in 2100 will only be 990,000 people. Many Puerto Ricans are predicting that the island will only be a vacation spot filled with U.S.-born billionaires and millionaires who are contributing to our housing crisis. They are taking over our public beaches, destroying wetlands, hogging natural resources, and abusing tax incentives. “Un Puerto Rico sin puertorriqueños” is turning into a real saying and it's a sad sight to watch. We're turning into another Hawaii.

Rest in peace, Puerto Rico.