# Leave the birthrate alone

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/leave-the-birthrate-alone/1029286>\
**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:** 1\
**Showing post:** 21

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**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 15, 2026, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/leave-the-birthrate-alone/1029286/21 "2026-04-15T16:39:39Z")

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Here’s 1500+ generally very thoughtful posts from a year-ish ago about deliberate efforts to raise birthrates. Not so much whether we should or should not (although that topic gets picked over too), but how well various efforts to date have or have not worked. [Narrator: _Almost total failure everywhere every time._]

> [@Is There Any Practical Way to Increase the Birthrate?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-practical-way-to-increase-the-birthrate/1012655):
>
> Most countries’ birthrates are now below that needed to replace the current populations. Mostly we consider this a good thing. Put that aside for a moment. Many things have been tried to encourage women to have more children. These include cash incentives, free or low-cost child care and so on. None of these ideas have worked. Can you imagine any practical way to increase birthrates in a population? I cannot.

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