> TBH need someone to attempt very illiberal effort to make babies because every pro maternity policy has failed to bring TFR > replacement. At this point it should be abundantly clear that short of religion, carrot policies cannot reward their way to 2.1+ TFR. Or I guess embrace immigration.
Frankly this is a wrong take.
For one the TFR of religious countries is also trending downward and below replacement.
Immigration is a zero-sum game that won't help for long term.
And the issue is carrot policies just don't give out enough carrots (do the math and you'll see that easily). A really generous family support that makes having children wortwhile compared to the alternatives will have the desired result.
IMO take so far data is showing no amount of generous policies will convince people to have more than 1-2 kids (hit replacement TFR) long term unless they're living life of leisure + ample subsidies AND help. At some point stress/obligation of child rearing is going to eat away at other commitments (i.e. work). Hence highlighting MENA countries where religion+resource coordinate but TFR still collapsing and trending below 2.1 TFR.
The statistic exception being being REALLY GENEROUS, Fully Automated Luxury Communism leisure tier support i.e. living in maids, nannies, drivers -> UAE Emiratis and Qataris where locals ex migrant worker pop still has declining TFR that _may_ settle beyond replacement (currently around 3.1, still down from 3.7 10 years ago). But that requires functionally UBI, optional work i.e. state setups 30hr per week "public sector" for locals while expat / cheap / slave labour handles everything else. The latter being key, need UBI tier to be able to cover hiring other humans to do domestic work, maid, nanny, cook, driver etc.
Maybe a do-able level of "abundance" if we look other way on exploitation, already lots of migrant labours in west, but we tend to keep them in factories or fields, not civic/domestic realm. PRC trying to build their army of care taking robots. But IMO that's the minimum, if you can't ensure that level of support (not just money but labour), positive policies won't get past replacement TFR. If Emrati/Qatari TFR stabilize below replacement in 10-20 years, then it's sign to ceiling on human willingness to have multiple kids, i.e. can't subsidize way for locals to reach replacement TFR.
> IMO take so far data is showing no amount of generous policies will convince people to have more than 1-2 kids (hit replacement TFR) long term unless they're living life of leisure + ample subsidies AND help.
How long is the long-term data we have? Is the generous support at the start of the policy still generous relative to the changed conditions much later?
> If Emrati/Qatari TFR stabilize below replacement in 10-20 years
My guess is they will collapse too; their lifestyle is financed by oil buyers. This will not go on forever and more importantly they have more and more people to feed and pamper but not more oil to sell. And now that we have technologies that can broadly replace oil, they can't raise the prices too much either.
My rough understanding is we have 20-50 years of efforts in the Nordics. Long enough to form "Nordic Paradox" for situation where pro-natal policies still lead to below replacement rates. There's also weird dual cultural shift - Nordic countries women labour participation rate stagnated or even decreased - more wanted to become full time moms/homemakers - so there is desire for family formation. But second culture shift is the desire is still sub replacement level, i.e. people want 1-2 kids. Not enough people want 2 kids to replace themselves. Not enough people want 2+ kids to make up the people that want 1.
> go on forever
Yeah it's more to illustrate the levels of abundance in terms of pro social policies that could sustain culturally acceptable >2 TFR. Be religious. Have UBI. Ensure people work little if they don't want to. Ensure they have access to cheap labour that does all the work for them. Then maybe TFR could settle between 2-3. Right now the few exception are a few million people sustained by disproportionate fossil exports. That model can't scale without another source of abundance.
> Long enough to form "Nordic Paradox" for situation where pro-natal policies still lead to below replacement rates.
Having just read [0], this confirms my earlier suspicion the support is not generous enough there.
(Also a huge political issue in probably all countries getting older - the political power skews to the older generation making increasing support for young families harder to finance with budget constraints. Welfare for grandparents and poverty for single parents.)
> That model can't scale without another source of abundance.
Yes of course it can't, it's the whole planet financing it for them. But maybe we don't need that level of abundance - previous generations certainly didn't, even some of them already liberal and educated. And I think we are still missing some fundamental cause here. Maybe modern life is not only too expensive, but also too complex and complicated to navigate into parenthood at the right time and place in life and then it's too late?
The conventional reason is # of kids is depressed relative to female education levels, but my unsubstantiated pet theory is elimination of boredom - mobile penetration also seems to map well with TFR declines. I think the opportunity cost / effort if >1 kid is too much, and from what I hear about friends with 2 kids that overlap by a few years, having 2 kids is >2 times harder, and they're not shy about sharing it. Modern life has too many comforts/distractions, hence imo positive policies will have hard time making 2+ kids desirable vs also adding punitive making not having 2+ kids undesirable.
Frankly this is a wrong take. For one the TFR of religious countries is also trending downward and below replacement. Immigration is a zero-sum game that won't help for long term.
And the issue is carrot policies just don't give out enough carrots (do the math and you'll see that easily). A really generous family support that makes having children wortwhile compared to the alternatives will have the desired result.