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So, motteizeans, thought experiment- you’ve been hired by the government of a country you’ve conveniently never noticed before, let’s call it genericland. Genericland has a problem- they have an economy dependent on high tech manufactured exports using highly skilled labor that can’t be imported, it has to be homegrown, and has had a TFR of 1.5 for long enough that the government is seriously worried about a labor crunch taking them from an upper to a middle income economy in 20 years or so. They’ve hired you to raise the birthrate enough to save the economy in the long run, and are willing to spend .5% of GDP to get it to 1.8 or 1% to get it to 2.1. You don’t have reserve currency status, but genericland has excellent credit ratings. The government is dominated by long-running consensus politics and will stick with your recommendations long term. They aren’t concerned with feminism, but are dependent on remaining in American good graces and are well aware that they cannot get away with saudi-level black sheep behavior. The population is homogenous and speaks a language not spoken elsewhere, but 90% are fluent in English. Family norms are perhaps slightly more conservative than PMC American ones, but not by a wide margin. And, of course, because the government wants future factory workers, it’s strongly preferred if the fertility increase doesn’t come from genericland’s underclass and doesn’t care how it affects the elites, it needs to target the working to middle classes.
What do you do?
For myself, all women with white collar jobs get two year’s entitlement to WFH after every childbirth in addition to parental leave, in which they can’t be required in the office more often than 1x week. Renters who get married have access to a government loan to buy the apartment or house they rent, and the government issues loans to couples having a 3rd child to help buy a bigger home. At a fifth child these loans are forgiven and payments pause for three years after a fourth. The ministry of culture is directed to work with generican-language pop culture producers to promote pro-family memes, female pop stars are paid to give interviews and sing about how much they love being a mom. High schools now require ‘family formation’ classes to graduate in which teens assist existing families with childcare(particularly for girls this is strongly associated with wanting kids) and learn social skills for forming relationships, along with some basic home ec. New fathers get an automatic 5% raise regardless of employer. Female civil servants have the option to go part time if raising a child, and genericland’s many factories are enrolled in a subsidy program that pays them to allow female workers with a child under ten to work part time.
Generally speaking, pouring all your hard earned money into a deteriorating asset is a terrible idea. So the local populace responds by limiting supply and making their terrible investment look amazing through hoarding and supply crunch. Afterall, their entire life savings are invested in this 1 asset who material value is a lot lower than what you pay for it. Allow building of more housing, and housing prices themselves will stay low enough such that loan amounts are proportionally lower. Just providing loans is insufficient and sometimes quite harmful.
This will fall so flat on its face, that it will be laughed at for decades to come.
In the short term, It's effectively a wealth transfer from those in their 20s to those in their 30s & 40s. How do you avoid losing a massive part of your young workforce to out-migration ? anything more than 2 children means guaranteed stay-at-home mom. Why will women want to live in this society that penalizes them for working ?
Assuming most men end up becoming fathers, will it mean a corresponding ~3%-point increase in tax rates ?
Some ideas:
Mandatory conscription for all for 2 years. Involves anything for social service, working in schools, being a nanny, etc.
exposure therapy is the best way to get people to want kids & community. Show, don't tell.
mandatory conscription is soft way to control in and out migration
It also makes men grow into men. Never met a completely socially inept Singaporean or Israeli. Plenty of those among Chinese and American Jews.
allows both sexes to fuck around, and enter university with a degree of seriousness
Generous paternity and maternity leaves for sure. But even more generous 'return to work' programs. Have grad school be seen as a 'return to work' program for all genders.
Make housing dirt cheap by scaling up middle rise dense housing.
Mother-in-law home subsidy
Propaganda around
Climate change optimism / Tech optimism
IVF (higher twin rates)
Kids achievements over adult achievements. Youth teams, Teen competitions glamorized more.
short-distance policies
policies to allow couples to go to same universities & common conscription programs (exploitable, but this isn't a scarcity society, so maybe not?)
generous WFH policies across the board for all
Have you seen the sorts of "communities" that get social service? You want to get the birth rate down to 0, this is a great way to do it.
As E.O. Wilson said, great idea, wrong species.
I meant it as an umbrella term. I am guessing that this presently utopian nondescript nation does not have Tenderloin/Seattle/Skidrow level of social deterioration.
Could you elaborate on why you think that ? Separated Single Family Housing only exists for North America, villages & millionaires. Everyone else in most of the world lives in apartments, and quite happily too.
But not happily enough for the TFR of their countries to exceed that of North American countries, the average [African] village, or millionaires.
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The Netherlands is a fairly urban place, and one of the most densely populated places in Europe, which is already more densely populated than the USA.. But unlike the USA or even most other places in Europe, that density is spread around the country uncommonly much. I know of no other country with our number of inhabitants (seventeen million) while lacking a city of even a single million: Austria, Greece, Bulgaria, Denmark, Belarus, Serbia, and Hungary are countries with fewer people on net but bigger capitals.
Mind you, even so, that Dutch houses tend to be a good deal smaller than detached American suburban houses are. Those are considered a luxury good and few normal people will live in or own one.
I feel like the Netherlands at least compensates by having safe streets/parks almost everywhere that the average kid can play without supervision. I always had the feeling that this matters even more and large houses are just a compensation tool if kids cannot be outside on their own because of crime/dangerous roads/it is literally illegal.
Maybe so, but I don't know that we're unusually safe by (Western) European standards. The commons being unsafe for children seems more American than really 'Western'; they're the weirdos here, not us.
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