I see economcis stuff about birthrates in western countries every once in a while from economists (In addition to the white genocide types of course), and I do wonder what a state would do that took seriously issued of birthrate. For right now it’s not a critical problem, but I wonder what policies you would need. Universal childcare? Paid Surrogacy?
I do wonder about that last one sometimes actually, would it be possible to raise entire generations as basically wards of the state? Is that going to be the future? At some point hopefully, the world will be industrialized, so the current solution won’t last forever.
It depends on how serious they really are, and what the dominant ideology is.
Liberalism’s answer is to import immigrants, but if that weren’t feasible they’d begin running out of options before they’d have to switch to another ideology.
Someone like me would be willing to take more drastic measures as total collapse loomed, including having the state raise children on its own if necessary.
I don’t think really any state is serious about this. Not Japan, not even Singapore.
None of them are serious, but one thing that might make them serious apart from worsening demographic crisis is some sort of artificial gestation. Carrying a child right now is a deeply personal act, if you had this then technology then it might not be. Would that change things?
You’re right though, it sort of sits awkwardly with the ideas of the liberal state where we’re all individuals. If you’re going to bring people into existence as an act of policy, then I think you either need some sort of strong commitment to welfare of said people or some sort of greater cause that both the people and the state are in service to in order to make the system have legitimacy. If a state literally raises a generation and then there is no job for them, then “personal responsibility“ doesn’t really cut it.
At this point though, I’m not convinced either way on whether boring welfare state solutions like child benefits and universal child care wouldn’t solve the problem though. Those don’t require a fundamental re-orientation of the relationship between a citizen and the state and can be done in a theoretically liberal way, but they do require things we seem to be unable to do right now.
You need to be run by Republicans. I’m not joking.
Because Republicans have policies that create affordable families, and Democrats don’t.
Uhh, policy ideas like child benefits, paid higher education, providing healthcare for minors, paid family leave?
Republicans have affordable housing. Which means you can have that third/fourth bedroom, that short commute, and extra money left for the extra food.
Also, Republicans have early and long-running marriages. (The direction of causation I leave to you)
The demographic transition is a world-wide phenomenon of developed countries, not a peculiarity caused by US home prices.
Fair enough.
But the hardest causation in American politics is the amount of time that white women* spend married to Republican vote share. And Red states do have notably higher fertility. (Not, you know, African levels, but 2.3 vs. 1.8).
* I mean, it might also be true for minorities, but when that flips the black vote from 85% to 95%…
What that is saying is that the demographic transition has not yet totally sweeped the US.
The US is actually less developed in some ways. This messes with the healthcare prices.