# Leave the birthrate alone **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 15, 2026, 12:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/leave-the-birthrate-alone/1029286 "2026-04-15T12:30:52Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2026, 11:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/leave-the-birthrate-alone/1029286/127 "2026-04-20T11:48:51Z")
> [@On another topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/1029424/7): > > > [@puzzlegal](#): > > > > Society build the schools and sets the social safety net that influences whether a woman wants to have kids. > > That is society controlling the birth rate. Nope. That’s society _influencing_ the birth rate. “Controlling” is managing a specific factor to achieve a specific number _as_ the purpose. “Influencing” is doing many things each of which pushes many levers in many directions and has a bunch of effects both deliberate and inadvertent, both direct and indirect. Managing fiscal and monetary policy to achieve steady economic growth without booms and busts is all about happy consequences for jobs, and investment, and growth, and stock returns. And oh-by-the-way, stable employment in a stable economy happens to make would-be parents more likely to have that baby. That’s a huge difference. And that’s after we get past the huge conceptual difference between coercion and persuasion. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2026, 12:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/leave-the-birthrate-alone/1029286/128 "2026-04-20T12:19:13Z")
It’s impossible for society to be completely neutral on the birthrate. Or on the car ownership rate, for that matter. Society decides whether to invest in schools, whether to allow child labor in various sectors, whether to offer parental leave, how to spread (or not spread) the cost of medical care, whether to financially support the elderly and the disabled… Analogously, society decides whether to build roads, how much to tax petroleum, whether to build railroads, whether to invest in city bus routes, whether to encourage dense or distributed population via zoning rules, etc. All those influence the auto ownership rate. But they don’t coerce you to own a car, nor prevent you from purchasing one. Can society lean so hard on a decision that it brushes up against coercion? Yes. Like everything else, this is a gray area. But i think it’s the coercion that we should avoid, not the broader idea that society might have an interest in influencing decision-making and facilitate decisions that the society thinks would be good for that society. ---
**Author:** ![jjakucyk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/3d9bf3/32.png) [@jjakucyk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjakucyk)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2026, 5:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/leave-the-birthrate-alone/1029286/129 "2026-04-20T17:05:10Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > Thing is, the nations with the worst birth rates appear to be having problems in large part because of _too much_ work. People who have almost no free time don’t have time for a relationship, much less children. You’d have to heavily interfere with the job market, forbidding more than a certain amount of work per person and so on to _force_ corporations to hire more people. Legislate a 20 hour maximum workweek, at full pay equivalent of 40 hours of course. That’ll make raising kids a lot easier. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2026, 5:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/leave-the-birthrate-alone/1029286/130 "2026-04-20T17:13:05Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > Thing is, the nations with the worst birth rates appear to be having problems in large part because of _too much_ work. People who have almost no free time don’t have time for a relationship, much less children. I don’t think there’s too much work, there’s _too little_ **decently-paid** work; and so desperately poor people spend fifteen and sixteen hours a day scrabbling at whatever pauper labor they can to scrape up enough food to survive another 24 hours. Individuals work too much because of the paucity of opportunity, like a homeless person spending their days scavenging pop cans. In such an environment mandating a living wage is futile; if employers could pay such wages workers would find a way to demand it. ---
**Author:** ![We\_re\_wolves\_not\_werewolves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/838e76/32.png) [@We\_re\_wolves\_not\_werewolves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/We_re_wolves_not_werewolves)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2026, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/leave-the-birthrate-alone/1029286/131 "2026-04-20T17:56:01Z")
> [@puzzlegal](#): > > But i think it’s the coercion that we should avoid, not the broader idea that society might have an interest in influencing decision-making and facilitate decisions that the society thinks would be good for that society. Bingo. Forcing someone to have (or not have) a kid is morally wrong and probably counterproductive in the long run. Providing incentives for people to want to have more kids (e.g. federally mandated paid parental leave, affordable child care, etc.) is a good idea. But deciding to have kids is a complicated decision and the factors affecting it are not universal, so it’s determining what incentives are actually effective, and then having the political backing to enact them, that is the real challenge. ---
**Author:** ![We\_re\_wolves\_not\_werewolves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/838e76/32.png) [@We\_re\_wolves\_not\_werewolves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/We_re_wolves_not_werewolves)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2026, 6:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/leave-the-birthrate-alone/1029286/132 "2026-04-20T18:01:18Z")
> [@jjakucyk](#): > > Legislate a 20 hour maximum workweek, at full pay equivalent of 40 hours of course. That’ll make raising kids a lot easier. Great idea! Better yet, legislate that no one has to work at all, but everyone still get’s paid a full time wage with full benefits! That would REALLY help with raising kids. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2026, 8:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/leave-the-birthrate-alone/1029286/133 "2026-04-20T20:30:29Z")
While we’re at it, outlaw salaried work. It’s the “exempt” workers who’re actually just hourly worker drones who are expected to put in 60 hours work for 40 hours of mostly adequate pay who are the other face of the exploited workers with no work life balance and no time for family. Oddly enough, other civilized countries manage to protect all their worker rights and their corporations don’t all shrivel up and die the next morning. Only in the USA are modern corporations so feeble that paying their workers would kill them. ---
**Author:** ![Charlie\_Tan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/charlie_tan/32/12582_2.png) [@Charlie\_Tan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Charlie_Tan)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2026, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/leave-the-birthrate-alone/1029286/134 "2026-04-20T21:15:26Z")
> [@We\_re\_wolves\_not\_werewolves](#): > > Providing incentives for people to want to have more kids (e.g. federally mandated paid parental leave, affordable child care, etc.) is a good idea. I provided some facts in another thread on this topic and I just want to reiterate that here. AIUI, having kids in the U.S. is (or may be?) expensive. I often read about what a burden financially it is. I live in what I believe is the most generous country in the world when it comes to having kids - Sweden. I’ll list them all. n.b. I will use the word free, as in the individual parents do not pay up front for some services. Please don’t counter with “but it’s paid through taxes.” Of course it is. But those taxes are paid regardless of the choice to have children or not, so it has no bearing on the discussion on what incentives are needed. • Childbirth is free, including hospital stay. • Parents get 480 days paid parental leave, i.e. 97 five day weeks. It’s up to the parents how they want to split the days. You will keep your employment and wages can not be stagnant due to the parental leave. • Parents will get a check for $140 every month per child from birth to the day they graduate high school (normally at 19). This is the same for all parents, regardless of income. • There’s a fee for pre-school/kindergarten/childcare. It depends on the income of the household, but maxes out at around $200/month. You’re free to use childcare provided by the local municipality or a private entity. Using privately owned will not cost more. • Mandatory 6-15 school is free. Again, public or private is the choice of the parents. There’s no cost for picking private. • Secondary education (16-19) is free. Same system as primary. • University is free. I should expand on this. There’s no tuition, nor fees. However, most kids move away from home, which will of course cost money. Books and other stuff needed for uni has to be paid by the student. Most take out loans, so getting a degree will leave people in debt. Getting a master’s degree will leave the student with about $50k in loans when graduating. • Medical care and medicine is free for children under 18. • Dental is free for children under 19 (I don’t know why it’s not the same for medical and dental.) And here’s the kicker: the latest figure I can find for fertility rate is 1.4/ woman in Sweden and 1.5/woman in the U.S. (2024) Clearly, subsidies and financial incentives are not affecting decisions. The benefits in question have been in place since at least the 1990’s. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2026, 9:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/leave-the-birthrate-alone/1029286/135 "2026-04-20T21:29:29Z")
There must be a point at which financial incentives would change things. There is a dollar amount for which we’d have another child (or adopt). There probably is some dollar amount for most adults. Maybe it’s too expensive, or maybe not, but my guess is if (hypothetically) the government paid people $50K to have a baby, we’d see more people have babies. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2026, 9:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/leave-the-birthrate-alone/1029286/136 "2026-04-20T21:50:16Z")
Using a different scale (birth rate) because that’s what i can find easily in [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_birth_rate), here are a few selected countries: Iceland 12.8 US 12.21 Ireland 12.08 Norway 11.89 France 11.56 Denmark 11.25 Netherlands 10.98 UK 10.8 Sweden 10.76 Finland 10.33 Canada 10.11 Germany 9.02 Portugal 7.99 Italy 7.0 Spain 7.12 Greece 7.52 South Korea 6.95 Japan 6.90 I think that what drives fertility rates is extremely complex. Fwiw, most of the families i know in the US with a lot of kids are recent immigrants from much poorer countries. I think this data suggests that the generous childcare benefits in northern Europe are increasing the birth rates there. But i agree it’s not conclusive. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2026, 9:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/leave-the-birthrate-alone/1029286/137 "2026-04-20T21:57:31Z")
Rough averages give the cost of raising a child to 18 in the US at around $300,000. 50K sounds like a lot but that’s just toddlerhood. I don’t know of any country that has offered that much money, but dozens have tried monetary incentives and none has worked to truly raise birthrates. That doesn’t seem to be the answer. > **[You Can’t Even Pay People to Have More Kids. - Population Connection](https://populationconnection.org/article/you-cant-even-pay-people-to-have-more-kids/)** > > These countries tried everything from cash to patriotic calls to duty to reverse drastically declining birth rates. It didn’t work. ---
**Author:** ![Pleonast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pleonast/32/1183_2.png) [@Pleonast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pleonast)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2026, 10:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/leave-the-birthrate-alone/1029286/138 "2026-04-20T22:39:26Z")
> [@Charlie\_Tan](#): > > There’s a fee for pre-school/kindergarten/childcare. It depends on the income of the household, but maxes out at around $200/month. You’re free to use childcare provided by the local municipality or a private entity. Using privately owned will not cost more. For clarity, I think you mean there’s a _grant_, not a fee? ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2026, 11:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/leave-the-birthrate-alone/1029286/139 "2026-04-20T23:09:55Z")
The dollar values in that article seem pretty low to me. Maybe it’s too expensive to be practical, but I still hold that there is indeed some dollar value that would raise the birth rate to whatever desired level. Maybe a million bucks? That’d be more than enough for me! ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2026, 12:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/leave-the-birthrate-alone/1029286/140 "2026-04-21T00:34:30Z")
Somehow I had completely misinterpreted @Der_Trihs’s post to be referring to impoverished third world countries. It is only now upon rereading that I see that he was actually talking about the developed world and the heavy demands on corporate professionals. N.M. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2026, 4:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/leave-the-birthrate-alone/1029286/141 "2026-04-21T04:19:56Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > Is the fear that some cultures in fact reject the whole liberal idea of tolerance of other cultures a legitimate one? I mean, rejecting the liberal idea of tolerance of other cultures is definitely a real thing among variious groups. The thing is, though, that in the modern US the rejection of tolerance of other cultures seems to be most deeply embedded among nativist white conservative Americans. If bigotry, intolerance and authoritarian values weren’t flourishing so vigorously in the US version of “western culture” these days, we wouldn’t have Donald Trump as President. > [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > If you import immigrants who do not share western values on women’s rights, gay rights, jewish rights, democracy, secularism, childrearing, etc …then they’ll fit right in in modern MAGAland. Oh, except for the being-brown part, I guess. And if their theocratic ideals don’t happen to be specifically **Christian** -theocratic ideals, no doubt that will be a source of friction too. But yeah, the idea that the USA nowadays is any kind of exemplar of liberal, tolerant so-called “western” values is rather a joke. Sure, some parts of our culture are still clinging to those principles, but the current crop of powerful Trumpists and fellow travelers is actively attempting to destroy them. ---
**Author:** ![Charlie\_Tan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/charlie_tan/32/12582_2.png) [@Charlie\_Tan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Charlie_Tan)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2026, 9:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/leave-the-birthrate-alone/1029286/142 "2026-04-21T09:02:13Z")
> [@puzzlegal](#): > > I think that what drives fertility rates is extremely complex. Fwiw, most of the families i know in the US with a lot of kids are recent immigrants from much poorer countries. I think this data suggests that the generous childcare benefits in northern Europe are increasing the birth rates there. But i agree it’s not conclusive. I’m not really following. I’m saying that in spite of lots of incentives, fewer children is the norm. Mind you, those incentives were not put in place to increase fertility rate, but to increase equality. BTW, I used fertility rate because the figure I keep seeing is 2.1 child per woman to keep a steady population. I’m not sure how fertility rate and birth rate correlate. Butt, here as well, the birth rate is is at the level it is due to immigration. > [@Pleonast](#): > > For clarity, I think you mean there’s a _grant_, not a fee? I’m not sure I get your comment. * * * Another factor is average/mean age of first child. On googling I find quite a few sites thgat show numbers that are really consistent. However, they all agree on two things: the age of having the first childhas been creeping up - slowly - all around the world, no matter the country; but it's clear that the poorer the country, the lower the age. It seems as it's typically about five years lower in the poor global south than in the rich part of the world. Getting started early means having a larger window of oppurtunity to have more kids. Obviously. It would be interesting to see the figures broken down to by state/province, by immigration status, by income, by education level. I don’t think it’s a stretch to think that women with no tertiary education, recent immigrant, in poor rural areas have more kids than post doc women in rich urban centers in the same country. But I’m too lazy to try to chase down those numbers for a countries and subdivisions to verify that assumption. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2026, 10:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/leave-the-birthrate-alone/1029286/143 "2026-04-21T10:48:37Z")
> [@Charlie\_Tan](#): > > > [@puzzlegal](#): > > > > I think that what drives fertility rates is extremely complex. Fwiw, most of the families i know in the US with a lot of kids are recent immigrants from much poorer countries. I think this data suggests that the generous childcare benefits in northern Europe are increasing the birth rates there. But i agree it’s not conclusive. > > I’m not really following. I’m saying that in spite of lots of incentives, fewer children is the norm. Mind you, those incentives were not put in place to increase fertility rate, but to increase equality. And I’m saying that the European countries with generous parental benefits seem to have higher birth rates than those with less generous benefits. That’s why i listed all those countries. Is Sweden at replacement fertility? No. But it’s also not looking at a plummeting population the way Spain is. At least, that’s how i read the numbers. > [@Charlie\_Tan](#): > > BTW, I used fertility rate because the figure I keep seeing is 2.1 child per woman to keep a steady population. I’m not sure how fertility rate and birth rate correlate. I don’t know how they correlate, either, but I’m sure that higher numbers of one measure correlate to higher numbers of the other. As i said, i grabbed this because it was a nice consistent list comparing across many countries. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2026, 11:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/leave-the-birthrate-alone/1029286/144 "2026-04-21T11:15:47Z")
Wait, there’s a Wikipedia article on fertility rate, too. Here’s the UN figures from Wikipedia, for the same countries. They come with lots of caveats about data quality > **[List of countries by total fertility rate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_fertility_rate)** > > This is a list of all sovereign states and dependencies by total fertility rate (TFR): the expected number of children born per woman in her child-bearing years. > The first lists show the most recent year where there is published total fertility rate (TFR) data ranked by sovereign states and dependencies, and are ordered by organization type – intergovernmental, governmental, or non-governmental organization that searched, organized, and published the data. > The United Nations ranking list is b... France 11.56→1.64 US 12.21→1.62 Ireland 12.08→1.6 UK 10.8→1.54 Denmark 11.25→1.52 Portugal 7.99→1.52 Iceland 12.8→1.5 Germany 9.02→1.46 Netherlands 10.98→1.44 Sweden 10.76→1.44 Norway 11.89→1.42 Greece 7.52→1.34 Canada 10.11→1.33 Finland 10.33→1.3 Japan 6.90→1.23 Spain 7.12→1.21 Italy 7.0→1.2 South Korea 6.95→0.75 Except for Portugal, the order is pretty similar. **Birth rate** , also known as **natality** and **crude birth rate** , is the total number of live [human births](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Childbirth) per 1,000 population for a given period divided by the length of the period in years. The **total fertility rate** ( **TFR** ) of a population is the average number of children that are born to a woman over her lifetime, if they were to experience the exact current age-specific [fertility](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fertility) rates (ASFRs) through their lifetime, and they were to live from birth until the end of their reproductive life. ---
**Author:** ![Pleonast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pleonast/32/1183_2.png) [@Pleonast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pleonast)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2026, 11:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/leave-the-birthrate-alone/1029286/145 "2026-04-21T11:56:11Z")
> [@Charlie\_Tan](#): > > > [@Pleonast](#): > > > > For clarity, I think you mean there’s a _grant_, not a fee? > > I’m not sure I get your comment. When you said: > [@Charlie\_Tan](#): > > There’s a fee for pre-school/kindergarten/childcare. It depends on the income of the household, but maxes out at around $200/month. You’re free to use childcare provided by the local municipality or a private entity. Using privately owned will not cost more. I’m not sure how being forced to pay is helpful to parents? Can you explain what you mean here in different words? ---
**Author:** ![Charlie\_Tan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/charlie_tan/32/12582_2.png) [@Charlie\_Tan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Charlie_Tan)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2026, 12:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/leave-the-birthrate-alone/1029286/146 "2026-04-21T12:33:48Z")
OK. Kindergarten is not mandatory, as is primary education. Primary is free, no matter if you pick a private or public school. Kindergarten costs. As I think it does in most countries\*. I just did a random check and found one in a Chicago suburb, where it’s north of $2K per month, depending on age.I don’t know how typical this is, but I think most Americans have at least some notion about what it would cost in their area. I merely said that if you put your kid in any pre-school facility, it will never cost more than about $200 per months. So no one is forced. Does that clear things up? [Here’s a NYT article. I got it through free trial, so I can’t gift it.](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/06/upshot/child-care-biden.html) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/leave-the-birthrate-alone/1029286.md?page=6) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/leave-the-birthrate-alone/1029286.md?page=8)