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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   614 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for August 23, 2026

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I just saw a tweet and I don’t care if it’s factually true because a it’s definitely directionally true but it seems like Humans overall just hit below replacement fertility. That would seem existential at some point. Shouldn’t we be considering radical policy choices. One big issue is men dropping out of the labor force. One radical thing we could do would be positive male discrimination. Make firms hirer men whenever possible. There are probably a lot more radical policies but more stable male careers would definitely seem to help. Not saying we should do that specifically but it probably should be inside the Overton window.

I think it's well-within the Overton window if you're a conservative or at least "family oriented." The problem is that it's verboten among most blue-tribers, for whom any incentives, no matter how gentle, toward more traditional family structures are equated to regressive coercion. The best they can do is support cheaper/subsidized childcare, which isn't nothing. However, if the Nordic countries where that already exists are any reference, cheaper childcare alone does little to promote additional births.

It does help. Cheap childcare, social safety nets, and generous parental leave are commonly cited as reasons for why the birthrate in those countries are higher than their neighbors. It just isn't quite enough, as there are problems related to birthrate that seemingly cannot be solved just by throwing money at them.

Things working out relatively fine in the Nordics until sometime in the 2010s. Things only really collapsed in the wake of Corona.

It seems to me that the various family friendly welfare interventions did something if we look at fertility in the wake of their introduction in the ~70s but now there is some different problem(s) driving the collapse in fertility. So while a nation like the US could possibly get some kind of benefit from introducing something similar, it's also extremely unlikely to actually get close to solving things.

Perhaps it's smartphones, perhaps it's a whole host of things reaching some critical point of delaying family formation. Who knows?

Perhaps it's smartphones, perhaps it's a whole host of things reaching some critical point of delaying family formation. Who knows?

The Nordics, like most countries, saw a collapse in marriage that caused the collapse in fertility. The timing does suggest that smartphones were the cause (although this demographer thinks that the pre-2012 collapse was due to the recession whereas post-2012 is due to dating apps and shortform video). Interventions in the US would probably be more effective because there is a population of religious Americans that already want to marry and have children, so the incentives would be more effective. Whereas in secular Scandinavia paying people more money to have children won't do much if kids interfere with their expressive individualism.

Perhaps it's smartphones, perhaps it's a whole host of things reaching some critical point of delaying family formation. Who knows?

My bet, as always, is on a combination of industrialization, urbanization, welfare state, electronic entertainment, propaganda and the inevitably declining value of labor. Good luck reversing all those! The world of tomorrow will not be the world of yesterday, and human life will not be what it was.

Cheaper childcare is, literally, nothing*. It's a subsidy for moms to work, which is why progressives are OK with it.

*in high income countries

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