Jim Penman traces how governments have tackled declining birth rates, from China's one-child policy and forced sterilizations in India to modern childcare subsidies. He argues subsidies miss the real problem: housing costs and savings requirements delay childbearing so long that people can't have the families they want. He had 10 children on a low income.
I can remember back in the day, we're talking about zero population growth, zpg, it was a big thing. Hey, we're threatened by overriding mass population growth. Like in China, the crazy policies like the one child policy. And in India, they used to forcibly sterilize you had young men camping out in the field, fear of being grabbed and given forced vasectomies. You did these draconian things which were never necessary because wealth and urbanization always solves the problem. Well, governments are starting to try and do all kinds of things, but governments, basically what they do is they make subsidies, say for childcare. The problem with that is that people don't have children for economic reasons. Now I've got 10 children. And I started having children when I was a law mowing contractor. My wife was a student, not working. I was deeply in debt, didn't have a house. Okay. I just wanted kids. And then with time, because I had a family, I suppose I just had to work hard enough to support it. And that was the attitude in the past. People these days, you know, that they need to have, you know, savings, they need to have houses which are ridiculously expensive. And then children come maybe when they're in their 30s, which is often too late because they just can't have the children they want.
Rising mental illness and falling birth rates have the same cause, it is this.....
