Don't wanna do something like that, because then they'll just have one kid, get their house, and then they have no incentive to take good care of the thing or make more. That's why I think reducing taxes per child works.
How might a modern baby boom occur?
- Thread starter Twiggierjet
- Start date
- Status
How about the government paying people a certain amount of money per child until the kid reaches 18? Say 600$ per month per child in US which would be 7,200$ per year per child.
If having 3-4 kids would get you same amount of money ( 21,600$-28,800$ ) as income for a woman in lower or lower middle class, I would imagine many people in the country choosing to just have kids and get benefits.
If we take Indonesia, a country with replacement level fertility rate, their share of people aged 0-18 is roughly 30% according to wiki. So 30% of US would be roughly 100 Million x 7,200$ which gives 720 Billion $. This is about as much as the US spends in the military.
If having 3-4 kids would get you same amount of money ( 21,600$-28,800$ ) as income for a woman in lower or lower middle class, I would imagine many people in the country choosing to just have kids and get benefits.
If we take Indonesia, a country with replacement level fertility rate, their share of people aged 0-18 is roughly 30% according to wiki. So 30% of US would be roughly 100 Million x 7,200$ which gives 720 Billion $. This is about as much as the US spends in the military.
RousseauX
Donor
This is kinda what Scandinavia has
They do have fertility rates higher than other european countries but its like 1.7 so still below replacement rate
Economic cost to raising kids is an impediment but I think for most its not the only one. For one kids are a huge drain on time and once you have kids your life isn't really ur own anymore. Its the end to a lot of the aspects of personal development and a lot of the aspirations you hopes to achieve when -you- were young
Ok, so hire a nanny! Yeah but then the more tasks you offload onto the nanny the more you are gonna be the dad from cat in the cradle.
My own father got sent to boarding school as a teen and he fking despise my grandma for it.
Last edited:
RousseauX
Donor
This is effectively the status quo in the US its how child tax credits work
Canada has like $7200 worth of benefits per yr for kids under 6
Get rid of pensions and benefits for retirees. Then having kids to support you when you're elderly would be more attractive.
Fascinating discussion, considering how current projections by some groups show the world's population starting to shrink by 2050 or earlier. Kauffman's book 'Shall The Religious Inherit the Earth', like several YouTubers, outlines the basic idea that Western birth rates aren't falling, only that the secularised ones are, and that the religious are still having a quite consistent 3-5 fertility rate. (Crucially it seems they're also maintaining their flock or conversions are larger than disaffiliations.
Therefore, if this theory is correct, all you have to do is wait for 100 years to get through the genetic bottleneck and you'll have a baby boom again.
I suspect OP probably doesn't want to wait, in which case the answer is probably "How to deflate the housing bubble and enable the Middle-Class Dream to be affordable on 1.5 salaries"
Therefore, if this theory is correct, all you have to do is wait for 100 years to get through the genetic bottleneck and you'll have a baby boom again.
I suspect OP probably doesn't want to wait, in which case the answer is probably "How to deflate the housing bubble and enable the Middle-Class Dream to be affordable on 1.5 salaries"
It won't happen overnight and will require more than just Government incentives. In particular, there needs to be
- The availability of well-paid and secure blue-collar jobs which will re-create stable and aspirational working-class communities.
- The-establishment of career ladders enabling people to advance from entry-level jobs to the management ranks.
- Provision of affordable housing, both public and private.
- Education and healthcare which is free or low-cost at source.
- A prolonged period of economic stability.
Traditionally, young grandparents would care for young grandchildren, and old grandchildren would care for old grandparents. This means that people need to have children young but find a mid or late-twenties married couple who own a house and can afford a nice lifestyle and afford children. So if/when people can finally afford children, they have to care for their parents as well, and that's just too much of a burden for most people.
The minimum wage isn't enough and PPP-adjusted wages are going down, especially considering the cost of living. And finally, there's the Hope Crisis; public morale is low, and low social morale means short-term thinking, and ergo low birthrates.
Indeed, Look at France. Hard to tell people suddenly “sorry, what you’ve been working for most of your life for, you can’t get”
(Pardon the agist cartoon, but it made me think of this)
Does it need to happen over a large part of the developed world or is only a single country fine?
If it is only one or a few countries, I suspect one factor could be a large influx of low-wage female guest workers with temporary visas; maybe from formercolonyistan so they have learned the language of the country they are going to in school.
Just say it happened because they needed to do the jobs they no longer wanted to do themselves. The plan was to let in male guest workers for their mines suffering from labour shortages; on temporary visas as the natives disliked the idea of permanently having around a large group of 'foreigners' who might not assimilate. However the law also allowed women to come in, much more came than expected.
According to this article here, wage inequality increases the fertility of rich families. The mechanism? High-income households can better afford to have low-income people take care of their children and homes, yielding more time for both careers and families.
This article here goes even further:
So lots of lowly-paid guest workers which could function as nannies or maids might allow middle/upper-class women to have more children without sacrificing their career opportunities.
And this might also increase fertility for poor families. How? Because the guest workers are 'stealing' the jobs of young, lowly-educated women.
According to this article here, one of the reasons for the baby boom was that during WWII:
With the result that after the war young women had difficulty finding employment because the jobs traditionally being done by young women were already filled by more experienced older women.
Then:
So, all the pink collar jobs for which few education or experience is required unexpectedly being filled by guest workers might have a comparable effect.
However, I doubt it is on its own enough to create a 'full' baby boom, other factors like beforementioned religious revival are likely needed for a large effect.
Also, there are multiple maybe's or might if the circumstances are correct's involved; however, as you are writing fiction it only has to be sufficiently plausible to not break suspension of disbelief.
Last edited:
Giant Man Eating Rabbits
Banned
Are you actually reading my posts correctly as you seem to be having a serious problem with comprehension.
Re-read my previous post, I never said that adopting babies would increase the birth rate. I stated in a reply to your post about childless couples that if a young couple wanted a child and couldn't due to medical reasons they could adopt a unwanted child instead and then get the "Baby Bond" 0f $26,000 per year.
RousseauX
Donor
That would actually work better than like 90% of the suggestions here
Most reliable way to raise fertility rate is to make society as a whole a lot poorer
No one have really seriously tried, the Scandinavians and French are fine with just below replacement rates and making the rest up with rising pension age and immigration. Really pushing birth rates up would demand some more serious incitement structures.
People need to understand that birth rates are a long term problem and it have not been a serious problem for anyone yet. The Scandinavians was troubled by it in the seventies and eighties and did rise the birth enough that it pushed the problem decades into the future.
We will almost certainly see a shift in that in the coming decades.
RousseauX
Donor
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc()/child-tax-credit-4199453-1-7dd01914195e4ab2bc05ae78a40f8f0c.jpg)
Child Tax Credit Definition: How It Works and How to Claim It
For 2023 taxes filed in 2024, the Child Tax Credit is $2,000 for children under age 17. Up to $1,600 of that amount is refundable. Learn what it means for your taxes.
$3000 per child under 17 after covid began i believe. $2000 per child before that
Not a comment about the argument, but the term "genetic bottleneck" had been thrown around several times here.
And I don't think it's been used properly any of the times.
While we cannot disprove a genetic factor in number of wanted children, if it was a major factor, I'm pretty sure if it was it would have been bred out long ago.
This would be more of a case of cultural evolution. Were the subcultures that encourage births survive.
No genetics necessary.
incorrect, there are degreres of discincentivisation of having multiple children in various parts of the developed world
Women have always been in the work force. Whether it was helping on the farm, laundry woman, seamstress, etc.
The change was where they were working. Most of the time it was jobs that could be done at or near the home, where you could juggle work & kids.
Similar to what my wife & I do. She works outside the house, while I do a part time online & child-raise.
Make working & learning from home more manageable would also be a good idea. But would not guarantee babies.
- Status