How might a modern baby boom occur?

[Giant Man Eating Rabbits]

No, it's a vast simplification. There are people who want to have the kids but cannot for medical reasons

Tai-Pan made no mention of medicals reason in his reply and thus is why I made no mention of it in my reply to him.

As for not being able to have have children then they can adopt an unwanted new born then? Look across the Western world with how many kids are in orthanage's.

 

[Piave92]

For advanced economies and a little bit of AI Revolution, automation of Jobs...

Universal guaranteed income enabling families to work alternatively and have a simpler household economic balance.

Free education, kindergartens and/or state-subsidized nannies.

Rewards for natality, with a monhtly state allowance until the children are deemed old enough to start working.

 

[Zireael]

As for not being able to have have children then they can adopt an unwanted new born then? Look across the Western world with how many kids are in orthanage's.

That doesn't contribute to baby boom, the baby was already born.

 

[Rufus]

If people have to ask themselves why they should have children, and start doing economic calculations, it’s already over. It means your civilization has reached a point where it can’t even justify its own existence. For pretty much all of human history, having children was simply something that just happened. People got married (usually), had sex, got pregnant and had kids. That’s it. If your society is having debates on how to increase the birthrate, you’ve already lost.

Of all the socioeconomic factors that led to the collapse of birth rates in advanced economies, I would argue none was more impactful than the expectation for women to join the workforce and work until retirement like men. Women joining the workforce then led to women being expected to have a good education too; after all, if you join the workforce, you at least want to have a decent job with good wages, and a good degree is certainly helpful in this regard. This led to women delaying family formation more and more, and for an increasing number of them it meant having no children at all.

This is why all the efforts by various governments around the world to deal with sub-replacement level birthrates will fail, even in totalitarian states like China. Because despite their proclaimed social conservatism, neither China, nor Iran, nor Hungary etc are willing to get women out of the workforce. Egalitarianism between the sexes has been so ingrained in the collective consciousness of advanced countries (including ‘authoritarian’ countries), that the idea of women not going to university and doing full-time wage labor is just inconceivable to them. Rumania’s policies under Ceausescu in this regard for example were totally schizophrenic: on one hand they banned contraception to get women to have children, but on the other hand they still expected them to work outside the home (as was usual for socialist countries).

There simply is no policy solution to this – unless you’re willing to use the full power of the state to enforce an ideological commitment to women as homemakers and mothers. That’s what the Nazis did in the 30s, and it’s probably the only example of a society managing to significantly increase its birthrate by decree without needing to ban contraception.

I think the only way out of this is through. Advanced societies will simply have to shrink, until the only ones left are the descendants of those who wanted to have children, despite all the incentives not to. There still are people who have children, some even more than two, and not all of them are poor people. As someone else said, we are currently living through a genetic bottleneck, possibly the biggest bottleneck since humans first left Africa. Who knows, in the end it might be for the best, and whatever comes out on the other side of this bottleneck might well be better than what came before.

 

[Post]

Even though the median age of marriage is higher nowadays than it was in the 1800s, it isn't substantially higher. Even in the 1800s, men and women generally married in their mid-20s. Don't believe the myth that people in the past all died before their 40th birthday and they got married right after they had finished puberty.

That wasn't my point or what I wanted to suggest. People spend more time and effort on education nowadays. There's also more women studying. And most people would want to do something with that education, i.e. make a career, which leaves less time for children.

Of all the socioeconomic factors that led to the collapse of birth rates in advanced economies, I would argue none was more impactful than the expectation for women to join the workforce and work until retirement like men. Women joining the workforce then led to women being expected to have a good education too; after all, if you join the workforce, you at least want to have a decent job with good wages, and a good degree is certainly helpful in this regard. This led to women delaying family formation more and more, and for an increasing number of them it meant having no children at all.

Exactly.

 

[PecuTheGreat]

This long thread goes into that subject.

There already is a baby boom going on in Africa and West Asia as we speak. Given favorable conditions and a cultural shift, I could see the USA, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Argentina, or Russia having another baby boom. I highly doubt Western Europe or East Asia will ever have a baby boom; they are already densely populated.

That's not a baby boom, Birth rates aren't increasing, they're just staying constant to pre-modernity/not falling extremely quickly.

 

[PecuTheGreat]

I don't think it is wealth that's making people have less kids as often suggested. I think our modern economy is essentially anti-reproduction. Kids are essentially only an economic drain on their parents, you don't even need them to hedge bets against retirement given pension.

Then there's the fact that we need to spend like a quarter of our life only education to compete and even after that most people double time working and spending time in school, a further economic drain.

We need an economic and social system that is less anti-reproduction, like for example sharing of some of the child raising responsibilities maybe between a community or between an extended family, giving people time to make more money or get a Vacation rather than feeling like they have to completely sacrifice everything to get children.

Or, a bit more of a learn on the job style of education/apprenticeship style of education, teens working, etc.

 

[PecuTheGreat]

That’s what the Nazis did in the 30s, and it’s probably the only example of a society managing to significantly increase its birthrate by decree without needing to ban contraception.

Wait, that worked? I thought it failed?.

 

[Beatriz]

If people have to ask themselves why they should have children, and start doing economic calculations, it’s already over. It means your civilization has reached a point where it can’t even justify its own existence. For pretty much all of human history, having children was simply something that just happened. People got married (usually), had sex, got pregnant and had kids. That’s it. If your society is having debates on how to increase the birthrate, you’ve already lost.

No joke, one of the reasons I support making AGIs is that they can (theoretically) live a lot longer than humans and may well outlive humankind

 

[PecuTheGreat]

Having a large immigrant population, especially from generally poor countries, and giving them decent-paying jobs so they can support themselves and their families. Most of the world's countries with declining populations could address the issue by encouraging immigration, if only they'd stop being bigoted.

But poorer countries themselves are not as much fan of that as you might think as it is a brain drain for them and their population growth rate is gonna crater soon enough in less than a century, they're not gonna have a global reserve of population for people to migrate from and it'll become something like Eastern Europe, countries emptying because of a trend of immigration that has become self perpetuating.

 

[Crueldwarf]

If people have to ask themselves why they should have children, and start doing economic calculations, it’s already over. It means your civilization has reached a point where it can’t even justify its own existence. For pretty much all of human history, having children was simply something that just happened. People got married (usually), had sex, got pregnant and had kids. That’s it. If your society is having debates on how to increase the birthrate, you’ve already lost.

People were doing economic calculations on that for thousands and tens of thousands of years. There was a constant ongoing calculus on 'how many more mouths our land and labor can feed for a several years that new children would require to be work-capable'. And yes, they didn't have contraception, so they had unwanted babies. But do you know what was happening to these babies if the calculus of economic viability was not on their side? Post-birth contraception happened. Aka infanticide.

Our ancestors were no less smart about this whole child-rasing thing than we are. It is just economic calculus was different for them. They were direct beneficiaries of every single child that they were able to feed because these children were additional pairs of working hands in a very short order. Modern families have zero economic benefits out of their children and so they do not have them beyond their capacity (which is low because wealth inequality is ridiculous).

And governments all over the world simply didn't catch up with that idea yet and still dream about how to raise birth rates without paying what it is worth for these new children.

There simply is no policy solution to this –

There is a policy solution to this. Affordable housing. Free education. Free healthcare. And if it is not enough because general economic situation in a country is so awful then you need actually fair wage structure and labor protection laws on top. And you will have above replacement birth rates in no time.

It is just too expensive (aka it would require massive redistribution of wealth among the population) and so inconceivable to the modern rampant capitalism mindset.

 

[RedSword12]

But poorer countries themselves are not as much fan of that as you might think as it is a brain drain for them and their population growth rate is gonna crater soon enough in less than a century, they're not gonna have a global reserve of population for people to migrate from and it'll become something like Eastern Europe, countries emptying because of a trend of immigration that has become self perpetuating.

I'm talking about this purely in terms of producing a "baby boom," and how the declining birth rates in first-world countries can be addressed.

 

[Gabingston]

Have close to 10% of the population not believe in birth control on religious grounds, show indifference to marriage modern living standards, and get the space and subsidies to make their communities viable. Getting there from 1990 is tough.

I think that's doable with a far enough back POD, particularly in Catholic countries. Even if the majority of the population are chreasters who average 1.8 kids, a small but still noticeable population of trads who average 3-4 kids (I've heard that Latin Mass attending families average 3.6 kids for example) could be enough to drive the total TFR above the magical 2.1 number.

 

[PecuTheGreat]

I'm talking about this purely in terms of producing a "baby boom," and how the declining birth rates in first-world countries can be addressed.

But you're solving it by potentially giving someone else a big problem and second generation migrants tend to have the same no. of kids as the population they are integrated into. Unless there's like millions marriage age migrants which I guess is plausible for maybe half a century more, that won't be enough to cause a baby boom so really, only countries attractive enough and relatively small enough to attract that would work, not the USA definately, maybe Germany, maybe Canada.

 

[sarapen]

If people have to ask themselves why they should have children, and start doing economic calculations, it’s already over. It means your civilization has reached a point where it can’t even justify its own existence. For pretty much all of human history, having children was simply something that just happened. People got married (usually), had sex, got pregnant and had kids. That’s it. If your society is having debates on how to increase the birthrate, you’ve already lost.

Of all the socioeconomic factors that led to the collapse of birth rates in advanced economies, I would argue none was more impactful than the expectation for women to join the workforce and work until retirement like men. Women joining the workforce then led to women being expected to have a good education too; after all, if you join the workforce, you at least want to have a decent job with good wages, and a good degree is certainly helpful in this regard. This led to women delaying family formation more and more, and for an increasing number of them it meant having no children at all.

This is why all the efforts by various governments around the world to deal with sub-replacement level birthrates will fail, even in totalitarian states like China. Because despite their proclaimed social conservatism, neither China, nor Iran, nor Hungary etc are willing to get women out of the workforce. Egalitarianism between the sexes has been so ingrained in the collective consciousness of advanced countries (including ‘authoritarian’ countries), that the idea of women not going to university and doing full-time wage labor is just inconceivable to them. Rumania’s policies under Ceausescu in this regard for example were totally schizophrenic: on one hand they banned contraception to get women to have children, but on the other hand they still expected them to work outside the home (as was usual for socialist countries).

There simply is no policy solution to this – unless you’re willing to use the full power of the state to enforce an ideological commitment to women as homemakers and mothers. That’s what the Nazis did in the 30s, and it’s probably the only example of a society managing to significantly increase its birthrate by decree without needing to ban contraception.

I think the only way out of this is through. Advanced societies will simply have to shrink, until the only ones left are the descendants of those who wanted to have children, despite all the incentives not to. There still are people who have children, some even more than two, and not all of them are poor people. As someone else said, we are currently living through a genetic bottleneck, possibly the biggest bottleneck since humans first left Africa. Who knows, in the end it might be for the best, and whatever comes out on the other side of this bottleneck might well be better than what came before.

Women wanted to join the workforce. It wasn't something they only took up because suddenly society told them they should do it. Or rather, women wanted to be able to live without making compromises (such as by marrying drunks or wifebeaters, giving up dreams of being a doctor, having more kids than their body could handle, etc) and they saw having a job and an education as the surest way of guaranteeing their independence.

However, you can't actually recreate the high-fertility society where women had less autonomy and more economic incentive to have kids because, well, history happened. The genie is out of the bottle. Generations of women have lived and died believing women are equal to men. Present-day women (plus quite a few men) aren't about to forget that. Even if a country tried to bring back the days when women needed a husband's signature to open a bank account, not every country will do so, and the women will of course find it ridiculous that they could sign the lease for an apartment on their own just by crossing an imaginary line in the ground.

So the only real solution, barring sci-fi ones, is to have a society where children are born and at the same time where women can keep their cherished independence. That circle must be squared.

 

[Kalga]

There is a policy solution to this. Affordable housing. Free education. Free healthcare. And if it is not enough because general economic situation in a country is so awful then you need actually fair wage structure and labor protection laws on top. And you will have above replacement birth rates in no time.

[USA context] ... and yet the trailer trash, urban ghetto, and immigrant groups continue to have children despite lacking those things...
[PRC context] ... and yet the rural 傻瓜 continue to have children despite being far worse off in most metrics than their urban counterparts.

This is such socially middle class mentality while it's already known that it's precisely the education (especially those of higher education) and the sense of moral responsibility that it imbues people with that makes them not wanting to have children. The more amenities government tries the more those same socially middle class will claim it's not enough and demand for more, all the while not having children at the replacement rate.

But they will be replaced by the children of those who did not adhere to the high moral standards of the socially middle class.

 

[Insane Ranter]

Bird-Flu hits and kills off 10% - 15% of the population.
Governments start huge campaigns to push people to have large number of children to replace those that we have lost.
Throw families a "tax-incentive" or "bonus per kid".

 

[Parmenion]

I don't think we need to specifically get women out of the workforce, that's not likely to go over well and with good reason. I think we just need to make being a parent a more acceptable life path for everyone. There's a lot of social stigma against stay at home parents in general, and that needs to be addressed.

 

[RousseauX]

Have close to 10% of the population not believe in birth control on religious grounds, show indifference to marriage modern living standards, and get the space and subsidies to make their communities viable. Getting there from 1990 is tough.

Israel has positive fertility rates largely because both secular nationalists and religious Jews want society to have high fertility rates. Maybe someone like Putin could promote this in Russia? But it would probably take several generations to get there.

It should be noted that even among orthodox israeli jews the fertility rate has being plummeting

 

[Fulano]

I been saying that since my first post: most of the massive costs of childrearing often bandied about these days comes from the fact that in previous generations children are raised communally ("it take a village" was often literal rather than metaphorical) and thus the costs were spread out and in nonmonetary forms, but nowadays it's considered rude/immoral/unethical to burden neighbors and relatives to do those kinds of things (not to mention the sheer disdain towards children from certain segments of the population & culture).

That was a pretty common model in the West, until modern post-WWII social dynamics changed everything. The grandparents usually took care of their grandchildren, just for the parents to have time to develop themselves in whatever they wanted. Then, such parents became grandparents themselves, who in turn took care of their grandchildren, and so on. But you would need enough social cohesion in your community and probably less migration patterns to achieve that.

Tax cuts, like unreasonable tax cuts. Maybe something like couples (Married or not, just cohabitating) pay 20% less on homeowners and insurence, plus another 10% off taxes in general per kid, something like that, along with heavy support.

Maybe a "make a baby, get a free house" kind of program? And yes, I know it sounds silly, but the possibility of owning a house is becoming one of the main problems in modern western society (if not the main one in some countries) that sweetening the deal of having a child with a free house doesn't sound that far-fetched to me.