demographic collapse and economic incentives

That the West is heading for demographic collapse is pretty much an established fact. Sub-replacement fertility is now the norm. In countries like Germany the fertility rate is disastrously low. In eastern Europe the situation is even worse, with countries like Lithuania well on the way to national extinction. And in east Asia it’s worse still. Taiwan is almost certainly beyond saving.

It’s long been accepted that economic development and prosperity almost inevitably leads to a plummeting birth rate, but while you might expect that fertility rates would eventually stabilise at a much lower level that isn’t happening. They just keep declining.

And of course we’re then told that we must accept mass immigration from the Third World or we’re economically doomed. Whether that’s really true or not can perhaps be debated, it  is possible that lower populations might be advantageous in some ways, but nonetheless it’s an argument that immigration restrictionists must find a counter for.

So can anything be done to halt the decline of fertility rates? Obviously the answer is yes but most of the solutions are at this point in time politically out of the question. It’s not very likely that any western government is going to outlaw feminism or abolish quick and easy divorce, no matter how desirable such actions might be.

Among the few politically feasible measures are economic incentives. To the extent that they’ve been tried they haven’t been notably successful but that may be because they’ve been poorly thought out. The idea that putting more money in people’s pockets will make them more willing to have children is simplistic and naïve. If people are contemplating starting a family they do not want short-term handouts. What they want is long-term security, and affordable housing.

Long-term security means job security. Job security is something we used to have in the bad old days. Of course in the bad old days we also had successful marriages and happy family life.

When it comes to having families what matters is not how much money people have, but the extent to which they can rely on having an adequate income for long enough to raise children and then be able to look forward to not living in destitution when they get old.

Equally important is affordable decent housing. That means not just a reasonably comfortable home, but a home that is not so far out in the suburbs that it requires a two-hour commute to get to work and a two-hour commute to get home again.

I’m not suggesting that job security and affordable housing would magically solve our demographic problems, but there’s little doubt that it would at least help a little. And as an added side benefit it would allow people to live lives that are somewhat more satisfying than the pursuit of mindless pleasures and an endless supply of consumer goods.

Of course I’m just day-dreaming. Can you really imagine a government wanting to put the interests of families ahead of the interests of globalists and social justice warriors, or seeing family life as more important than GDP growth?