Birth rates are falling in the Nordics. Are natalist policies no longer enough?
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Re: Birth rates are falling in the Nordics. Are natalist policies no longer enough?
#2Title adjusted to accommodate title limit.
Re: Birth rates are falling in the Nordics. Are natalist policies no longer enough?
#3The ratio of housing cost vs real income almost tripled over the last 20 years in Sweden. Add a looming climate crisis and a self-fulfillment-oriented culture and you get very few new babies.
Re: Birth rates are falling in the Nordics. Are natalist policies no longer enough?
#4It's the economy, stupid.
Re: Birth rates are falling in the Nordics. Are natalist policies no longer enough?
#5Solution is simple and well-known but requires balls: separate childbearing from marriage politically, and treat it as a full-time job. Institute flat tax charged from all adult population and use it to pay salaries to all women (not "families") with children based on number of children without regard to "quality", variating (guaranteed inflation-adjusted till age of 18) salaries, and taxes, according to the birthrate factual vs desired: increase both if birth rate is too low, until it is sufficient. As simple as that.
Because this will be exploited by the poorest underclass women who will have lots and lots of children to milk the taxpayer (and that's fine!), the resulting market-based salary won't at all be huge.
Re: Birth rates are falling in the Nordics. Are natalist policies no longer enough?
#6It's the economy, stupid.
If that was the economy, at least birthrates won't fall in countries where it has skyrocketed.
Re: Birth rates are falling in the Nordics. Are natalist policies no longer enough?
#7Let parents lay claim to X% of the loot (tax) government takes from their children. It's what boomers do to us but with reverse incentives as they profit more the fewer children they have as social security isn't tied to your contribution to the next gen tax generation machines.
Change it from tragedy of the commons to mutual cooperation.
Re: Birth rates are falling in the Nordics. Are natalist policies no longer enough?
#8It's the economy, stupid.
The researcher in the article claims it's not that easy. Should I trust busterarm or the researcher on this subject?
Re: Birth rates are falling in the Nordics. Are natalist policies no longer enough?
#9The ratio of housing cost vs real income almost tripled over the last 20 years in Sweden. Add a looming climate crisis and a self-fulfillment-oriented culture and you get very few new babies.
> The ratio of housing cost vs real income almost tripled over the last 20 years in Sweden
I think this is all that needs to be said on these articles.
(There's a lot more that _could_ be said, such as how few actual birthing HN readers there are, but I think the economics is really simple at the root of it.)
Besides, even the countries with really the worst outlook and conditions aren't falling all that fast. Russia since the high point of the 1990s: https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/russia-popula...
Re: Birth rates are falling in the Nordics. Are natalist policies no longer enough?
#10It's the economy, stupid.
You're right. We've gotten too rich.
Every bit of data seems to show that the wealthier we get, the fewer babies we have.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1328574/fertility-rate-w...