These countries tried everything from cash to patriotic calls to duty to reverse drastically declining birth rates. It didn’t work.
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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.
Already, non-parents have to pay for public schools they’ll never use, and so-on.
Alternatively, you’re paying for the schooling that you did use so that the people following you still have the same access you did. Whether you spawned them or not is irrelevant, unless you plan to just close the door behind you.
Also (in theory) paying to educate those that will be voting for your government. And like, a thousand other reasons. Public school is good for society regardless of if you have kids
