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.

  • PizzaMan@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    But the cost of that would far exceed anything remotely reasonable. I say fuck it, let the birthrate drop for a few decades. The planet could use the break.

    • zepheriths@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      It’s only catastrophically low in traditionally “western” countries. the world’s population is still growing. It appears immigration is now a requirement to grow the economy. How interesting.

      • PizzaMan@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        Conservatives/fascists are just gonna LOVE these next few decades. Climate change is set to destroy countless homes, displacing millions if not billions of people. If they think the “border crisis” is bad now, they’re gonna lose it then.

        • GraniteM@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          That’s why they want to militarize the border and normalize the concept of the ethnostate now, so they can machine gun climate refugees in the near future.

      • Kage520@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I think that’s predicted to level off in 60 years then drop. Though I guess it was level before the industrial revolution, so a lot could still change.