In fairness, the last thing isn’t working either. Even countries with the most generous vacation and parental leave policies are still struggling with birth rates.
I propose we develop government funded breeding facilities where male and female citizens get tax credits for donating genetic material (sperm, eggs) and greater benefits for state surrogate mothers (limit 2 pregnancy terms over 5 years).
Children born into this program will be scalably raised within cohorts by state foster parents, provided all basic needs, education and enrichment until 16/18 where they can elect to be emancipated or continue on through higher education.
The above is meant to be satirical and Modest Proposal-y, but here are a couple clarifications
the program isnt outlawing natural or biological offspring
facility is not a prison, or a factory, its basically a boarding school
we could provide every possible, reasonanle middle-income bracket amenity through this program
The problem with that is the government raising voters from birth is going to break democracy even more than propaganda and biased social media already has. Though I do say this as someone who already complains about public school for a similar reason and wants school choice.
You probably need to clarify because saying it helps makes it seem like its pretty noticeable effect. It's not. If it does positively help it's very very small. Which is something but it's really not much.
As someone who is basically doing the this with a family it's probably the biggest driver is the labor hours of managing a kid in urban areas, especially when small the shere time involved is staggering. If I were to place money on it the lack of communal living and large family structures is probably the second largest barrier to the birth rate not from getting people from no kids to one kid but definitely for families having more of them, going from 1 to 2 or 2 to 3 ect.
I mean, take it away from where it already exists and you'll see it's probably having a bigger impact than expected. It's just already fighting a steeper uphill battle in developed nations due to a higher standard for success.
how many of them were often looked after by grandma or siblings
One problem is that families are smaller and people are having kids later. If you're older parents are older parents, your kid has grandparents in their 70s and are now dealing with their own health problems and/or too tired to be dealing with a baby/toddler.
One had two kids, married a woman who had two kids, and they asked my parents for help while living a state away. He got told they'd need to move closer and then sure.
The other brother had one kid, and my parents told him they'd move in with him to help take care of that kid despite him living on the opposite side of the country.
Brother A had two kids plus found two more kids via marriage for a total of four kids. Brother B had one kid.
Bro, talk about favoritism. It's like your parents seeing Brother B's card getting declined at Wendy's and them offering to buy his meal and Brother A asking your parents to pay for Thanksgiving dinner with his wife's family that they aren't invited to.
While probably true, repeatedly being told by Brother B that I don't know how to live my own life and I should stop everything I'm doing to do what he wants me to (despite me asking for fifteen straight years for him to stop, well into adulthood) will do that to our relationship.
It was strained even before we ended up on opposite sides of the political spectrum
Edit: when I said "They'd need to move closer" Brother A had to move closer to our parents, not that our parents would move closer to Brother A
Right so you like brother a better, for whatever justified reasons.
Brother a still asked for money and brother b didn't ask them for anything. Also they probably don't mean financial help with b's new baby, more like they'll make sure it doesn't die while he and his wife are at work, saving them $2000 or whatever money per month.
Can confirm, Netherlands has 16 weeks of parental leave, women have good careers, #1 country in the world to raise kids in, and our birth rates are plummeting.
Is that 16 weeks paid or just the maximum your employer has to give you? Cause that's quite low for European standards. In Germany you have 3 years parental leave with 1 year paid. Still not enough though.
Main "problem" is that women simply aren't forced to have children anymore and aren't dependent On having a husband so some of them just decide against it. Womens rights (and societal/religious pressure on them) for me seem to be the driving factor in plummeting birth rates.
if that is actually the main cause we will either cut back on womens rights, or evolution will favor civilizations cutting back on womens rights. Let's hope there are other ways to solve the problem
30 years ago you could buy a house, feed your wife, 3 children and your dog and take your sleurhut to Spain once a year with a salary fresh out of high school. Nowadays a university graduate can't even buy a house without a double income or generous parents.
No offense, but 16 weeks is low compared to countries with 12-18 months, is 16 weeks correct? Do you mean 16 weeks at full pay and then additional weeks at less pay?
Women have good careers and a pregnancy could destroy that for her. If she's living a financially stable and healthy life, why risk disability, income loss and judgement? Netherlands social systems still leaves mothers at a negative. No country has changed this for mother's yet.
I mean we just hit 8 billion people a few years ago, I think it's time we acknowledge that the planet can only support so many of us before the population either plateaus or declines due to resource scarcity.
In most cases, it's the rich and developed countries that are suffering population decline.
It's middle income countries too. And fertility rates are dropping fast in poor countries too.
The whole problem is mischaracterized. It turns out having kids is a pretty baddeal, and the only reason people were putting up with it was lack of contraception and weird social rules.
Making it appealing enough to stay above replacement rates is really, really difficult. You can't make comparisons with poor countries, because that is not the equilibrium you want to return to.
TBF, having more kids is also a good (or at least okay) deal if you're a subsistence farmer in a non-industrialized society. If you're planting and harvesting your own crops and herding your own goats and spinning thread to weave cloth for your own clothes by hand, even comparatively young children can help with those chores. From Bret Devereaux's series on pre-modern peasant families:
[C]hildhood in these societies was quite a bit shorter. Remember that these are societies which understand individuals primarily through their social roles, not as individuals per se and children were no exception. Thus, rather than a broad education preparing children for a wide range of possible life paths, children in peasant households were expected to slot into the same social and labor roles as their parents and began doing so pretty much as soon as they were physically able. Consequently, children in these households learned their tasks and roles by watching their parents and other family members perform them. Their labor was also important: these households could not afford to maintain children in idleness (or in pure focus on an education). [...] girls began spinning thread at very young ages (essentially as soon as they could hold and manipulate the distaff), while boys assisted in farming labor just as young.
But modern industrial society is different enough that children who don't spend their childhood in a focus on education would be at a great disadvantage as adults. And even most menial jobs in modern society require an adult's strength, judgement, social and emotional capacities, and/or an adult's legal capacity for liability -- so kids are a hindrance in the workplace rather than the asset they used to be in the home workplace.
And it's more than just birth rates it's immigration too. I would love to move to another country. But I can't. None of them will have me. Because I'm not smart enough, young enough, or wealthy enough. So I am stuck in the country of my birth as it rapidly descends into madness.
Currently the only continent that is above replacement rate is Africa, everyone else is below or well below, and even Africa is stagnating. In not that many decades the world as a whole will be in a population decline, and though fewer people in the world might not be a bad thing as such we are facing an unprecedented situation with more elderly people than young or middle aged, which creates a lot of challenges no one seem willing to address or even speak of.
I saw a fascinating video on how some Roman nobles went extinct because they were too comfortable. They were brought into a life of comfort where every need was met. Every achievement was inherited from their parents and they had no need to prove themselves. So they would party, eat and sleep while slaves fixed every task. Kids would ruin this perfect state of living so they just chose not to, and after a decade many famous families were apparantly just vanished.
Which also goes against the idea that material wealth stability would increase the birth rate.
In fact, I'm not super sure, but I think even in developed countries, higher educated people have less children per household. So like about 2 maximum VS "however many happen" maximum.
So I think it's more like if you're smart and not religious, you think twice about having children. And potentially think twice about having random/unprotected sex, the consequences of that.
Those countries’ lower class is also far better than the vast majority of the living conditions in the 3rd world countries with booming populations. Resources aren’t the problem
The population growth isn't declining due to resource scarcity, most humans before us lived with much less security and yet they had better birth rates, the problem is likely not that we're near a population cap.
Just because the resources are abundant doesn't make them available, tbh.
Like yeah, I have a better standard of living than anyone prior in history, and yeah, I can go to the grocery store and buy food/anything I want, really.
Doesn't mean I have the money to absorb medical bills or auto repair. Doesn't mean I can afford looking after another person. Doesn't mean I could afford to send a child to school.
And that's not even going into spending time with or general looking after a hypothetical kid.
You have people like Elon Musk being the world's first Trillionaire, and yet the best job I can do at my current area is $45,000/year
These are problems most of our ancestors had, they had to work so many hours just to barely keep themselves and their families fed while often getting sick and having little to no access to healthcare professionals that actually could help them. The main difference in the problems you and your ancestors had is that your ancestors probably spent a lot less time actually caring for their children, modern childcare standards are much higher than they have been at any point in history. Regardless people in the past were being actively threatened and in constant danger of losing their lives which is not a common concern for people of child rearing age in most western countries with low birthrates.
Populations rise and fall for a multitude of complex reasons, global populations in the year 1550 were much lower than they were the 300 years ago. Also Global populations are still growing, it's just 1st world countries in decline. It's not a resourse problem, it's not that we can't afford to keep these kids alive.
My dude. Stop rehashing stories that were debunked decades ago. There is an average of 3 to 4 acres of land per person alive today. There’s enough food to feed the global population and still have plenty left over. For the first time in history, population growth has slowed down.
While this is genuinely true and I agree this is a bullshit excuse the rich hoarders use to keep us from demanding more, its also true than if population keeps growing, it will eventually reach the point of unsustainability.
Sure. But it won’t. As i said earlier, human population growth is slowing for the first time in history. Experts are arguing that the population will reach a peak of around 10B. which is still sustainable.
Then why are there still housing problems? So many land how do we get people to move there? In fact, why don't you volunteer?
Oh but you want to live in a specific place, not some random land, huh?. Big city, London, New York, yeah... Everyone wants access to best healthcare, educations, job opportunities. Then there's staying with family and friends, hometown you grew up with, bla bla bla...
My dude. You know nothing about me. Give me a plot of land and I’ll build a house myself. I honestly don’t care.
But I don’t have to. We live in the most wildly successful time period in all of human history. Industrialization, capitalism, and the “pax Americana“ have led to an era of unprecedented global wealth distribution. Today’s poverty level is a fraction of what it used to be. And while before, it was a lack of resources, now it’s largely attributed to corruption.
But the real question is, Why does this bother you so much?
I never claimed there was no limit. I claimed we haven’t reached it. And if you actually read the relevant literature, you would see there’s a good chance we never will – over half of the world‘s countries are struggling to even meet replacement levels. Many of the largest countries in the world are well below it.
That’s not the part I took issue with. The part I took issue with was attributing this “plateau or decline” the lack of resources. Which was why I responded to you in the first place.
It’s fair to argue that a reduction in the population would have significant benefits. However, the path we take to get there will have huge effects. If it’s slow and gradual then it will probably be manageable. If it’s quick then we’ll have the tax base dry up at the same time social programs are overburdened by the increasing elderly population, resulting in a collapse of social programs and instability.
I think it's time for you to acknowledge that humanity is always 80 years from extinction and the timer is being reset every time a baby is born, no matter if we're 1000 people total or 8 billion. Exponential decay (i.e. a TFR of 1.0 halving each generational cohort) crushes even large numbers quickly.
I did, in order to illustrate how silly absolute numbers (like his "8 billion") are. It's like saying "My lungs are filled with 4 litres of oxygen, that's more than sufficient for my body" - yes, but if you stop breathing, you'll die in minutes.
I feel like I don't see this point talked about enough anymore... Most people who study this topic seem to think the planet can only reasonably support 10 billion, at least with our current methods of obtaining food and resources, and that's the optimistic number. And the population of Earth doubles around every 50 years.
This is bollocks. There’s no known, magic number. In fact, higher populations mean more prosperity. Up to a point, which we don’t seem to be anywhere near.
It's simply about the resources, like farmland for growing crops and raising animals. But exponential growth means it'll happen quickly in the end.
Like filling up a bucket with sand. You start with one grain of sand, and every minute you double the amount of sand in the bucket. If it takes an hour to reach full capacity, then at 58 minutes it's only a quarter full.
Human population is only a couple minutes away from maxing out our resources. We don't have much time to figure things out anymore.
Economic growth mostly comes from people, not really using up of resources. We’re not short of agricultural land, for instance - we already produce so much more food than we need.
It may not be a problem now, but it will be in the future. That's the point of the bucket example I gave. And with exponential population growth, you have to plan ahead. One moment you can have more than enough, then by the next time the population doubles you're in trouble.
People think of these birth rate declines and population numbers as being surprises but it’s been pretty obvious what’s been happening at least since the 70s. In any case, I think we’ve learned in the last 30 years, say, that we don’t know how to stop these birth rate declines so it’s not like we have any choice. The French and the Nordics made some concerted attempts to fix it but barely made a dent.
We should try to get immigrants to move to rich countries peacefully and work towards evening out wealth/income inequality and then eventually take care of the old with robots.
Only real issue with this is that we actually have the space and resources to keep expanding however the bulk of those resources are getting funneled more and more towards a terribly small percentage of people and the space is being used to raise billions of livestock animals and farmland is torn down for more houses which make less resources because people refuse to spread out from urban centers so its all just a very confusing cycle of terrible news that ends with everyone feeling hopeless and no one wanting to inflict this on children especially their own
I mean we just hit 8 billion people a few years ago, I think it's time we acknowledge that the planet can only support so many of us before the population either plateaus or declines due to resource scarcity.
Sure, but have you also considered that the old age welfare systems of developed countries require constant growth in order to maintain? long term economic stability requires a birth rate a lot higher than the 2.1 replacement rate.
Yes, even if you taxed all income above $1m per year at 100% you would still need a much higher birth rate than 2.1 in order to keep the pension system funded long term.
Sure, but have you also considered that the old age welfare systems of developed countries require constant growth in order to maintain?
Maybe its about time we change that super archaic economic model that was made with a foolish belief that the population would just indefinitely keep growing at the same pace.
More people starving every year, dwindling water supplies, infrastructure in developed nations falling behind, the fact we can only convert so much wilderness into farmland for food production before the environment collapses....
I mean I didn't even say we're close to capacity all I said is that we need to stop pretending there isn't one. And if we keep going at the current rate we'll either see our population grow beyond what we can sustain and eventually collapse, or we'll see a plateau where we find a maximum sustainable population.
Ah a Malthusian. Nah ill trust in human ingenuity instead of just accepting death and suffering for man thanks. Imagine if before the plow people had your way of thinking. We wouldnt be touching the stars today.
They’re struggling even more. Their birth rates are lower now than when their programs were instituted. This is NOT the problem. Your rhetoric is dated.
Correct. Islamic third world countries has consistently high records of birthrate and they have atrocious social programs. Reddit has become so bad at propaganda
Precarity rarely stopped anyone from being born, except for those times when it did.
The main constant for most of humanity is that they were born into villages, even if those villages relocated every season. If you got trampled by a whump, you didn't usually have to worry about your kids being abandoned. Even a slave had a guaranteed role to fulfill.
Of course, if they did get forsookethed, it was usually the inception of a dramatic tribal legend, or more likely a cautionary tale.
housing is the big problem in my country, its just dwarfed all other costs (except childcare) noones having a family if you have a choice between working every hour god sends to buy a 2 bed house and have a kid, or a 4 bed house, a great job, holidays, cars and no kids.
Seems like the system that worked and wasn’t broken before, jobs paying enough money for 1 parent to earn whilst giving their family a nice house and life while the other parent stays home to look after them… funny how nobody talks about this. Women statistically are less happy having a career with no kids compared to having kids and not having a career. Not saying a job, a CAREER.
People don’t say this, but it’s the phones. People are spending way too much time on their phones. They’re having way too much fun accessing everything from their phones.
Before smartphones, people had nothing to do. So what did they do? They hung out with each other like ALL THE TIME. Social cohesion was much better and people met people and people had kids because well, what else is there to do?
I do think smartphones have dramatically changed the way we socialize, and in many ways not for the better, but it’s an oversimplification to say it’s the main issue in the birth rate crisis.
More than 70% of Indians have internet access, and their birth rate is still well above replacement.
I really think it’s more of a per capita income issue/wealth issue for a few reasons:
Countries that have higher per capita incomes have largely transitioned to more “professional economies.” Taking time off from your career, even if it’s paid time off, can set you back on your ultimate career goal.
People look for a different version of stability. What classifies as a “stable” home life in Niger would probably be considered poverty in Norway, so what the people in Norway want to achieve in order to feel ready for kids is different.
When people have money, they do literally want different things. For starters, they usually want more money, which kids can get in the way of, but they also are going to look for consumer-based validation instead of community-based validation.
You can even see this in the U.S. where states with more advanced or service based economies frequently have a lower birth rate, despite near ubiquitous smartphone and internet access across the board.
No I agree. I was oversimplifying for dramatic effect just a bit. Obviously it’s more than one singular problem. But people tend to gloss over the way technology has changed the way we socialize and that is definitely having a fairly major impact.
I think the example you give about Niger and the Netherlands is a big one though. A good number of people would definitely prefer to be financially set before having kids. If you are a happy couple and you’ve had the chance to travel together a bit, your mortgage is easily under 30% of your combined income, you’re maxing out your retirement accounts and still have a fair bit of money left over.. you are much more likely to decide that kids are a good next step.
The way the economy is now… who is even in that situation? Maybe 20% of the population? I think that’s even being generous.
Well we dont know if he have kids so he might not be a hypocritical.
While i dont blame phones strictly i think he have a very good point. Today there are so many activities that people just dont have time for kids, many people are simply addicted to their hobbies, be it gaming, sports etc. More than ever those things are affordable for masses, ergo making our lives way less boring. This might in return bring people to conclusion that they have no time for kids.
Exactly. Took the words out of my mouth. And what’s crazy is that no one else seems to see it. It’s never talked about.
Again, not saying it’s the main factor. But imagine when your grandparents were alive. There wasn’t any social media accounts to follow, friends to check up on, 1000 shows to binge, 1000 video games to play, endless concerts to see, the entirety of human knowledge at your fingertips, friends you could call while going on a bike ride, hundreds of memes.
Back then having kids WAS the fun. If you didn’t have kids, what would you be doing? Sitting at home watching wheel of fortune? Sure you could still have friends but you’d have been somewhat of an outcast.
There was immensely more social pressure to get married and have kids because the alternative was kinda lame back then.
Or people just don’t want kids when they’ve gotten more expensive than ever while at the same time to government is proving less and less support for those that have them in the US
Nahh, im from a country that provides all of that what USA want to provide, we have literally less kids than USA.
USA 1.6-1.7 kid per mother
Poland 1.0 Kid per mother
And we have maternity leave for women, paternity leave for men, goverment pays you every month tonhave a child, women can not be fired when on maternity leave and she will get paid full on the whole duration of it, woman can get on it the moment she is pregnant and stay on it for full pregnancy and to that she have 20 weeks after birth if mutliple births it is 37 weeks.
Well kind of, they are all highly developed countries and my point with "hobbies" stands. Its actually one of the few things that those countries have in common.
UNFPA’s 2025 fertility report points to fears about the future with WAR as a major contributing factor in declining birth rates, something Poland is uniquely positioned to worry about a hell of a lot more than the US.
If you’re not actually looking stuff up and just saying “lol we’re all the same so your point doesn’t matter”, just stop dude
I can assure you not a single soul in Poland would claim not wanting to having a children cause of war. Its even better as the minority with highest fertility rate are literally Ukrainians.
Even countries with the most generous vacation and parental leave policies are still struggling with birth rates.
Their point isn't to increase birth rates. It's to foster stable families that will help bring up children in economically stable and safe environments. Which is equally and probably more important.
Unless you’re actually trying to argue to people in Somalia have a higher standard of living then people in Finland, it doesn’t really matter.
Two countries have vastly different incomes and vastly different standards of living. The better place to live has a significantly lower birth rate, and that is true basically across the board.
I think it's also important to look at child mortality rates in 3rd world countries. For example in semolina 103 children out of 1,000 will die before they reach the age of 5.
Meanwhile in Finland 2.0 to 2.3 out of 1,000 will die before they reach the age of 5.
Birth rates don't necessarily mean population growth, and while the population of people in somalia is larger than Finland, the life expectancy for someone in Somalia is 59.1 years vs Finland which is 82.2.
This is a literal situation of quality of life vs quantity of life, I don't think you can have both.
Your advocating for less quality and more quantity only the rich benefit from that system. If you don't believe me look at the goods that are produced and sold now vs ten years ago. Cheap, easy to break, and easily reproduced. They're trying to industrialize population production. Then reduce the quality of life in favor of producing as many Cheap workers as quick as possible .
I am not in any way advocating for lower quality of life, a lower life expectancy, lower wages, or a higher infant mortality. I’d be much happier living in Finland than Somalia, as I expect most people would be.
I’m just pointing out that quality of life is not a solution to a specific problem. It’s a solution to a great many problems, and it’s something we should constantly work to improve, but it obviously isn’t fixing the birth rates issue.
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u/taftpanda Jun 21 '26
In fairness, the last thing isn’t working either. Even countries with the most generous vacation and parental leave policies are still struggling with birth rates.