No sooner do I post a chart yesterday on some select fertility trends around the world than along comes the Wall Street Journal today with a major feature about how pro-natalist policies are falling significantly short of their goal of boosting fertility rates.
First, nothing so clearly demonstrates that Paul Ehrlich’s famously wrong “population bomb” hypothesis is deader than the dodo bird than the major media’s newfound fascination with falling populations and the below-replacement fertility rates of most advanced nations.
Second, the Journal article throws shade on the attempts of various countries, in particular Norway and Hungary, to provide substantial financial incentives for family formation and higher fertility. (In Hungary, if you have four children or more, you can be exempt for life from the income tax. Imagine how much Donald Trump would have saved in income taxes if America had this tax incentive. Talk about supply-side economics!)
There is one important “tell” in the story. It mentions that the falling fertility rates of the last two generations may be more a cultural than financial phenomenon (though don’t discount the stupid car seat mandates for small children that make it difficult for families to have third child in the U.S. because you can’t fit a third infant seat in most models, and children are required legally to ride in one practically until they reach voting age these days). I think the culture explanation is likely correct. I love seeing stories in the New York Times and elsewhere of leftists, especially climatistas, who say they don’t want to bring any children into our doomed world. I actually applaud this attitude. These are exactly the people we do not wish to reproduce. But the Journal story quotes a 28-year-old professional Hungarian woman saying, “If we were to say we’ll have two kids, we could basically buy a new house tomorrow [because of government incentives]. But morally, I would not feel right having brought a life into this world to buy a house.”
Would anyone in America ever say they find it morally troubling to take advantage of the mortgage interest deduction for a larger house for a growing family? I’m guessing that this woman is not a supporter of the Fidesz Party.
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