what if pro-natalist policies just won’t work?

There have been endless discussions of the coming demographic crisis, as fertility rates in every developed country remain catastrophically low. All sorts of solutions have been proposed. There is however one question we may have to face – what do we do if we try adopting pro-natalist policies and they just don’t work?

So far pro-natalist policies have been abject failures so this seems to me to be a pretty valid question.

If they do continue to fail there would seem to be three options.

Since sub-Saharan Africa is just about the only place that still has high fertility rates option one would be for other countries to make up their population shortfalls by means of massive, sustained, almost certainly permanent, very high levels of immigration from that part of the world.

Option two would be to simply accept rapidly and drastically declining populations. This is already happening in the Baltic states. The population of Latvia has declined by 18% in the past twenty years. The other Baltic states are also disappearing nations. Emigration is a major factor but the rate of natural decrease is enough to doom these nations.

Can any nation survive such rapid population decline? Is it possible for any capitalist economy to adapt to a world of rapidly shrinking markets? We may be about to find out.

The third option is to get the Central London Hatchery up and running as quickly as possible. Millions of babies grown in artificial wombs and raised in state-run institutions. Or, even more horrifyingly, in privately-run for-profit child farms.

I said there were options. I didn’t say that any of those options would be attractive. As Huxley said, you pays your money and you takes your choice.