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I've previously posted on the Motte about the state-funded Swedish Investigative Committee For a Future with Children (Swed. Utredningen för en framtid med barn) with instructions to look into the recent decline in fertility. Recently the Committee released its second report more closely detailing the root cause of the decline – which women are not having children anymore? As before here's a link in case you know the Swedish or want to use an AI to give you the uptake. https://framtidmedbarn.se/rapport/nr-2-fran-hoga-till-sjunkande-fruktsamhetstal-hur-ser-situationen-i-sverige-ut/
The focus of this report is a lot narrower than the previous one which means there are fewer fun takeaways. Two facts stand out. There's been a lot of speculation about coupling not working, people delaying childrearing so they are unable to get that third child, et cetera, but the report doesn't bear any of these concerns out. Men and women are still moving in together, but the major driver of the decline is that there's a growing cohort in which the couple never decides to have kids. A lot of DINK-couple (Double Income, No Kids) are no longer as eager to become DICKs (Double Income, Couple o' Kids) as they used to be. This fact is concerning because I have a suspicion it has a strong potential to rapidly initiate a self-replicating demographic spiral. DINKs have more resources compared to DICKs, and if more people choose to stay DINKs then life for DICKs will probably become even harder, which in turn will lead to even fewer DICKs. I think the carrot for DICKs probably won't be enough here: society probably also needs to put a dent in the wallet of the DINKs, maybe throught some tax scheme, to encourage more childrearing.
Beyond that the report also has a few tidbits of interest here and there. The common narrative of a foreign underclass quickly and decisively outbreeding the native population isn't quite on the mark for example, as the report points out that second-generation immigrants tend to have about as many children as natives (first-generation is another story, and a large part of the very justifiable demographic anxiety in Europe). On the other hand that also means immigration cannot possibly solve the issue long term or even medium term; while many children of immigrants often learn Swedish quite poorly, commit more crimes than average and remain largely unintegrated for vast periods of time, they at least seem to take our individualistic childless culture to heart.
This is less meaty than the previous post on the subject, but I think that's enough to bring some fodder for discussion. What do you think should be done to support our DICKs? Should DINKs be made to pay to make their lives easier? Is the reports take naive on the questions of immigration and demography?
At least around me, there are four broad classes of people who don't have kids. Some people are in more than one group.
I think all four of those cases have different solutions, and to be honest, I don't know if I know what those solutions are.
For the first case, I think several Eastern European countries have tried fairly generous tax credits to have children. I'm sure there are people here who are far more interested in this topic than I am, but if memory serves, it didn't do too much to move the needle. I vaguely recall it causing people who had two kids to consider a third, but it didn't make people who had zero kids more likely to have one.
For the second case, it's going to take a lot of work. There are a lot of variations on this - I simply used AGC as a simple example that I see a lot. Trump and the fact that every C-level executive in the country seems to be all but publicly pleasuring themselves over the idea of an impending jobpocalypse ushering in a new era of feudalism fit as well. Fundamentally, it's a problem of hope. There are an increasing number of people who have essentially zero hope that tomorrow is going to be better than today. I'm not sure how you fix that when a lot of powerful people seem to have a vested interest in keeping people scared and hopeless.
The third option is difficult. As somebody in this bucket, I hope to adopt one day. Accessible CRISPR or cheap genetic screening would also be nice.
I have no idea about the fourth option.
From what I've learned, it makes people have their next children quicker, but doesn't make them have more of them. Basically, it makes people switch from "we want two kids, but we can't really afford two pregnancies in a row, we need a few years of double income to rebuild our savings" to "okay, we can try for the second one".
Which is not to say it isn't helpful. Moving births earlier still improves a country's demographic situation, because children born earlier will come to childbearing age earlier.
For a toy example, imagine two countries with a completed fertility rate (CFR) of exactly two, but one country has the children at ages 18 and 20, and the other has them at 38 and 40. Two parents who live to 80 in country one will have 16 great great grandchildren, while their equivalents in country two will only have four grandchildren.
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