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Stakeholder Control: Tribal Communities & Baby-Friendly Employment to Save Human Fertility
A recent National Review article called attention to the fact that nearly all measures to prop up humanity’s quickly declining birthrate have failed, and that allegedly the only successful factor behind a high enough birthrate is marriage. This article points out that increasing the marriage rate will require worker-friendly employers and communal living, like the secular moshav/kibbutz communes of Israel.
As rightwing National Review, and leftwing Vox, point out, no country has found a way to increase the birthrate, not even by paying parents tons of money. Scandinavian countries are famous for their health work/life balance, social welfare systems, and support for mothers, and yet even there the birthrates among the native population are still below replacement.
So far, though, countries have experimented with paying parents only a few thousand U.S. dollars per child. That is not much money. Some public intellectuals like Robin Hanson at his Substack advocate paying parents far more, maybe US$300,000 per child! Sums that high seem far more likely to have a significant effect, although they also will be far more expensive.
In the United States, married women have a birthrate above the replacement rate of 2.1 children on average per woman…
