1970’s. I was unaware that had been fixed. That’s a good thing.
If they can still afford it, and it still meets their needs, of course. Moving is a huge amount of work, there are risks, it’s stressful… I’ve seen it listed after “death of close family”, “major illness” “divorce”, and “lost job” as a common major source of stress.
Agreed. Increasing the size of the cash incentives would be highly likely to work. When you talk to young people, one of the biggest reasons they list for not having children is that they cannot afford it. Thus far, most cash incentives assure that these new parents will still remain in poverty if they have children. Whether it is practical or not I cannot say, but if the cash incentive were large enough it would be much more common for one parent to stay home so they could have, and take care of, children. There are definitely people that want to do this and if were paid an amount similar to a real job there would likely be many people that would do it.
Of course they stay if it meets their needs and they can afford it and don’t mind spending it. I guess what I’m wondering is how often that’s the case, because I’ve known loads of people who downsized after their kids moved out - but a 3 BR in my area is $2-3K a month more than a 1BR and the downsizing could easily be location -dependent
Having businesses truly embrace work at home would likely help. Most families need to have both parents working. That often means putting the kids in childcare, which is a huge hassle and expense. If instead it was normal for the parents to work at home, raising the kids would be a lot less stressful and be a lot more manageable.
I’m not going to say that it wouldn’t help - but it wouldn’t necessarily eliminate the expense and hassle of child care . Plenty of people who work from home still have childcare. It depends on the age of the kids ( a 10 year old is not the same as a 4 year old) and the job.
It was clearly stated in my post:
… [quote=“BippityBoppityBoo, post:410, topic:1012655”]
And there are lots of places in the US where I might have the vote, but I would die from an ectopic pregnancy or a fetal demise before I could vote in the next election. Not every woman has the agency to be flown or driven hundreds of miles for reproductive care or abortions.
A vote doesn’t do much for a woman if she’s dead.
[/quote]
I’m gonna say that. I’ve already shared Sweden’s very supportive subsidies and paid time off for parenting. And they have a fertility rate of 1.52 and dropping according to this site.
They also have high work from home rates, almost 44%.
It is pretty solid evidence that those things don’t work. Good to do anyway! But not effective at increasing births.
More statistics:
Average annual salary of men in the U.S. in 1972: $7,450
Average annual salary of women in the U.S. in 1972: $2,600
Average annual salary of man in the U.S. in 2025: $66,622
Average annual salary of women in the U.S. in 2025: $56,663
Number of women on the U.S. Supreme Court in 1972: 0
Number of women on the U.S. Supreme Court in 2025: 4
Number of Blacks on the U.S. Supreme Court in 1972: 1
Number of Blacks on the U.S. Supreme Court in 1972: 2
Birth control has been legal in every state since 1972.
You seem to be claiming that because there is presently a slight majority of Republicans in both the House and the Senate and there is a Republican President who ignores what other people say that means that there will never be any return to the slowly increasing status of women (and also Blacks). Are you saying that any movement backward can never be reversed? The history of civil rights for Americans is not a straight upward line over the entire history. It’s been an increase in civil rights over the long run, but there have been slight downward movements at times. Don’t be discouraged by the outcome of single elections. Vote in every election to throw out every politician with what you consider the wrong views.
Moderating:
We are again drifting pretty far from population growth, or lack thereof. This discussion is very interesting, but please take it to another thread.
No one thing will turn things completely around. Maybe Sweden’s fertility rate would be much lower than 1.52 if they didn’t have all that support for parenting. When a Swedish family is considering whether to have their first child or add another child, having those benefits likely helps tip the decision towards having the child. It doesn’t mean that the decision becomes a certainty, but that those things help make it more likely that people decide to have kids. It’s probably going to take lots of small things to make having kids be attractive enough so that birthrate actually increases. If a family is just scraping by, they may decide that they can’t have kids because they can’t afford childcare. But if they could care for their own children while working, that helps make it more likely they decide to have a kid. WFH alone won’t turn things around. It’s just something small that helps tips the decision more towards having a kid rather than not.
Of course not, the reality is that if you give people a good life they don’t need other kinds of fulfillment, like having kids. Or they don’t want to fuck up the good thing they got going. Improving things does not make people more likely to have kids, only forcing them does.
IMO this really gets to the meat of the matter.
In the modern educated economically secure world (you know the one that ended a couple months ago) having kids is not one of those must-do necessities. Instead it’s a major buzz-kill for lots and lots of people.
Meaning that the few couples who choose to reproduce (or goof up and reproduce by accident) need to have very large families to make up for all the couples living smarter, not fecund-er.
IMO the two things we really care about are the total fertility rate, and a measure of how many couples are abstaining from kids versus how many are having lots.
You are absolutely correct. People keep mentioning things that well make a parent’s live easier, but we’ve seen from other countries, they don’t tend result in making more parents (or making parents have more kids).
I think there has to be some kind of cultural shift to make having more desirable. Obviously, everyone doesn’t want kids and I don’t think you are ever going to get everyone to want kids. So, how many kids do people have?
Currently, women sacrifice more for them, and even with cultural changes, biology is still going to be harder on them. But also, one or two kids will fulfill the emotional parenting desires of many people, and if 20% don’t have kids, 30% have 1 kid, 40% have 2 kids, and 10% have 3 kids we’re not at replacement level. Younger marriage might well mean more, but that would mean “resetting” marriage to a cornerstone of life rather than a capstone, and I don’t know how you’d do that, again, especially given the opportunity cost (in terms of career, long-term earning, free time, and fun spending and vulnerability to inequitable power dynamic with spouse as a result of the first two items) for women having children at a younger age.
You could try straight-up propaganda - family sitcoms with actual happy families with 3+ children or shows with the glamorous wealthy having multiple children. I heard something similar about pale models for promoting sunscreen in Australia in the past. But we seem to be on trend for more cynical humor/shows these days. I’m not that optimistic about success.
I do think romantic relationships and how people feel about them (cynicism, lack of ability to connect, ideal of perfection, etc.) play in, but no idea how to even approach that.
I know women say they want more kids than they have and people say they would have more if they had more money, but I do honestly think a lot of that comes down to the difference between what people say they want and what they actually do when given opportunity, just based on what we see different income levels do.
Geography puts limits in some areas (Silicon Valley is a valley, after all), but there is plenty of open land. I would say the issue isn’t any one thing. It is a fantastic number of issues which can be individually overcome but in aggregate make it virtually impossible to build things.
There’s a project in CA (called California Forever) to build a satellite town like you describe. By all rights this should be easy–the spot is a lot of low-grade farmland near an Air Force base. It’s a good spot for a new city, with decent transportation access and other things. We should have a dozen of these projects, really. But of course it’s been a long, hard slog the whole way and it’s probably still years off.
I think a lot of this is intentional. A book came out recently, Abundance, by progressives arguing the case for being more growth oriented. It was well-received by some but there was intense pushback from their own, calling them capitalist shills or evil deregrulators the like. Growth-oriented progressives are going to need far more influence before their ideas actually have a positive effect. Malthusian de-growthers are still a very significant influence and they see this impossible tangle of regulations and other things as a positive.
There’s a few “likely” and “maybe”s there. And “maybe” @DigitalC is right and it decreases fertility?
But at least at the, pretty generous, level Sweden has tried, strong family friendly support has not led to more kids.
I really just don’t think it is a reasoned calculated economic decision for most.
That’s Israel. The secular population is below replacement number but made up for by the ultra Orthodox mostly and partly by Arab citizens.
Long term having most raised in ultra religious households maybe not my ideal solution though.
The most “practical” way to increase the birthrate is to ban contraceptives and establish very harsh penalties for breaking the law.
I think that’s a horrible solution, but the “ends justify the means” crowd might end up using it because it’s really the only effective way outside of sci-fi fantasy land.
Agree completely. As you and said to each other upthread back in January between about post 193 & 202. 
Yeah forgetting that I’ve already said that is the first sign of … what was I saying?
We may not have a choice. One possible end to the drop in birth rates is that groups with high fertility rates will outcompete those with low rates. They’ll be increasingly represented in the population and their genetic and memetic dispositions toward more kids will be further enhanced.
Would be nice if more liberal-minded folks came up with a non-religious memeplex that favored more kids.
Our future might be the combination of the movies Idiocracy and Religulous.