5 ms·

Haven’t seen any top down government interventions work at increasing TFR. The only thing that seems to work is high religiosity.

jojobas 4y ago
USSR bred reasonably well up until its breakup without religion. You don't necessarily need religion in order to wish to continue yourself beyond your lifetime.
- cm2187 4y ago
  I believe the USSR had a fairly conservative stance on those issues, favouring families. It's not religion but it is still social pressure.
  - jojobas 4y ago
    Nothing wrong with social pressure to do the right thing.
    - cm2187 4y ago
      And I am not saying it is wrong, but it is a form of social conservatism.
    - Bancakes 4y ago
      Society very rarely knows what the right thing is. Hence why the USSR existed in the first place post Lenin.
      - jojobas 4y ago
        Unless you have a good reason to believe otherwise, your ancestors did the right thing, for anything they did. USSR lasted that long because some people made themselves a very good repressive machine very early on.
        Bancakes 4y ago
        That’s survivorship bias. My ancestors wanted a good life for themselves, and many of them suffered different despots and sultans. They would go to war to defend their country, but not when the enemy is the ruler himself. My ancestors were wrongly conditioned to think life has to be rough, that one must suffer through. A great deal of those who opposed rulers profiting from this, were eliminated.
        jojobas 4y ago
        Mimicking what survivors did is a reasonable strategy. You don't know why but it works. Again, if you realise some of what they did didn't actually contribute to their survival it qualifies as a good reason not to do it.
  - unity1001 4y ago
    The USSR's advantage was that everyone's life was guaranteed all the way from the start and without overwork. You went to your job at 15 min. walking distance (entire cities were planned that way) in the morning, worked from 9 to 5 without having to overwork, got back home in 15 min, at the same time your children came back home from state-funded schools as your wife got grocieries for the dinner at lowest cost. (until the economic war started by the US and its Gulf Allies in the 80s). You had paid vacations, paid maternity/paternity leave, reasonable working hours, reasonable retirement age, free social clubs, hobby clubs, everything. And the most critical point: Your children were also entitled to ALL of that from birth. They were going to study in state schools, they would get a job somewhere, they would work under the same conditions, they would acquire their first car and their first flat around the same age, and if they married, not only the state would help them marry but also provide more incentives. So there was absolutely no reason to hesitate from having children - you had the money, energy, resources, and on top of that the state guaranteed that your children would be well set from the moment they born. Hence, population boomed. The USSR is not unique in that aspect. In every period of society, when people's and their childrens' lives are guaranteed, population boomed. The sociopathic profiteering in capitalist societies crippling everything including birth rates seems more like a case of natural selection when seen in that light - these countries have all the money and power in the world to stop the population decline and reverse it, but they just dont want to do it for the sake of profit...
    - jojobas 4y ago
      You could try peddling that to those who never lived in the USSR. Nothing was guaranteed, everything had to be fought for, even food. You were at the mercy of the local party boss, one careless word could cost you your career, not just in one company but in the whole country (goes without saying that you couldn't move to another). Paternity leave is something new, never have heard a lie that blatant. Also anything "free" of course wasn't, The Soviet government was the ultimate capitalist, appropriating all fruits of all labour and keeping people at "just above rioting" living standard by design, and sometimes failing even at that.
      - unity1001 4y ago
- ciphol 4y ago
  USSR was poor, we're talking about rich countries.
  - jojobas 4y ago
    It was poor, but not that poor.
- dhruval 4y ago
  Maybe social structure of some sort is responsible ? I am not sure just looking at the patterns I see in developed countries.
- medvezhenok 4y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_on_childlessness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_on_childlessness Childless people between 20-50, both men and women, paid an extra 6% in taxes to the state.
  - jojobas 4y ago
    This is no different from getting taxes from everyone and paying child benefits.
    - medvezhenok 4y ago
      Practically, yes - it's more-or-less equivalent. Psychologically, I'm not so sure. Loss aversion is a much stronger than not getting a benefit (think about not getting your bonus versus taking a pay-cut at work; even if the amounts are the same, I doubt you would feel the same about it) - so I think the explicit tax on childlessness would be more influential because of that.
audunw 4y ago
> Haven’t seen any top down government interventions work at increasing TFR. I believe this is because you won't see any effect until having kids is paid just as well as working any other job. If you can choose between a regular job paying 100%, and an incredibly hard and demanding job paying 50%, you're going to pick the first option every single time. Increasing the pay to 60% isn't going to help. You need to be around 100% or above. And like with anything else in our economy, if you're not getting enough people to take that essential job, you need to keep increasing pay until they do. So no matter how much government intervention, you're still only getting the share of people who want to have kids as a kind of hobby. Not because government intervention doesn't work at all, but because you get very little effect until you cross that threshold where having kids is a job that pays fairly. I think parts of Northern Europe is close to that threshold, but there's still some ways to go. Parental leave needs to be a few months longer (there's often a gap between parental leave ending and kindergarten starting), kindergarten must be free, and financial support for parents needs to be quite a bit higher.
- dhruval 4y ago
  Seems a bit extreme to have the government pay people to have kids on the level of a full time job when you consider that through most of human history people worked to support their kids / families and at much lower income levels. Looking at Northern Europe seems their TFR is similar to the USA despite incentives.
  - Fire-Dragon-DoL 4y ago
    That is until the children were able to work for the family, so having children was literally an investment: pay upfront to have income.
qball 4y ago
>Haven’t seen any top down government interventions work at increasing TFR. Well, they've all been symbolic measures... but that's all they can realistically do. In terms of education reform (the "give young men and women their twenties back" part), constituents of the education-managerial complex will fight hard to preserve their positions (making the education system more efficient would put many out of work), and are a significant enough cross-section of the population that threatening them will have electoral consequences that no sitting governments could survive. And that's before you get into the tax hike/redistribution schemes (the "parents need to be compensated just as much as other economic value-creators" part), which will impact everyone else, and irrevocably screws the folks that are now too old to have kids (who, coincidentally, are approaching peak voting age). For those reasons, proper reform is and will continue to be impossible for the forseeable future.
unity1001 4y ago
> Haven’t seen any top down government interventions work at increasing TFR Top down government interventions to raise birth rates and population work pretty well in countries where the government provides vital services like healthcare, education at lowest cost and also social safety nets.
- RestlessMind 4y ago
  Was that sarcasm? Because the reality is exactly opposite to what you say when you look at TFRs of societies having the best welfare - Finland (1.37), Norway (1.48), Germany (1.53), Switzerland (1.46). Even Sweden and Denmark are around (1.66), the same as the US (1.64).
  - unity1001 4y ago
    Those countries are not running interventions. They are merely providing aid to those who have children, and not much of it. Even with that, Germany had some success with it.
polski-g 4y ago
That is because governments attempts to raise birth rates are like fat people trying to lose weight: "We've tried nothing, and it didn't work!" Just increase the tax burden X-times the default rate for those without Y kids. If you aren't willing to repopulate the nation then you should be subsidizing those who are.

jojobas 4y ago

USSR bred reasonably well up until its breakup without religion. You don't necessarily need religion in order to wish to continue yourself beyond your lifetime.

cm2187 4y ago
I believe the USSR had a fairly conservative stance on those issues, favouring families. It's not religion but it is still social pressure.
- jojobas 4y ago
  Nothing wrong with social pressure to do the right thing.
  - cm2187 4y ago
    And I am not saying it is wrong, but it is a form of social conservatism.
  - Bancakes 4y ago
    Society very rarely knows what the right thing is. Hence why the USSR existed in the first place post Lenin.
    - jojobas 4y ago
      Unless you have a good reason to believe otherwise, your ancestors did the right thing, for anything they did. USSR lasted that long because some people made themselves a very good repressive machine very early on.
      - Bancakes 4y ago
        That’s survivorship bias. My ancestors wanted a good life for themselves, and many of them suffered different despots and sultans. They would go to war to defend their country, but not when the enemy is the ruler himself. My ancestors were wrongly conditioned to think life has to be rough, that one must suffer through. A great deal of those who opposed rulers profiting from this, were eliminated.
        jojobas 4y ago
        Mimicking what survivors did is a reasonable strategy. You don't know why but it works. Again, if you realise some of what they did didn't actually contribute to their survival it qualifies as a good reason not to do it.
- unity1001 4y ago
  The USSR's advantage was that everyone's life was guaranteed all the way from the start and without overwork. You went to your job at 15 min. walking distance (entire cities were planned that way) in the morning, worked from 9 to 5 without having to overwork, got back home in 15 min, at the same time your children came back home from state-funded schools as your wife got grocieries for the dinner at lowest cost. (until the economic war started by the US and its Gulf Allies in the 80s). You had paid vacations, paid maternity/paternity leave, reasonable working hours, reasonable retirement age, free social clubs, hobby clubs, everything. And the most critical point: Your children were also entitled to ALL of that from birth. They were going to study in state schools, they would get a job somewhere, they would work under the same conditions, they would acquire their first car and their first flat around the same age, and if they married, not only the state would help them marry but also provide more incentives. So there was absolutely no reason to hesitate from having children - you had the money, energy, resources, and on top of that the state guaranteed that your children would be well set from the moment they born. Hence, population boomed. The USSR is not unique in that aspect. In every period of society, when people's and their childrens' lives are guaranteed, population boomed. The sociopathic profiteering in capitalist societies crippling everything including birth rates seems more like a case of natural selection when seen in that light - these countries have all the money and power in the world to stop the population decline and reverse it, but they just dont want to do it for the sake of profit...
  - jojobas 4y ago
    You could try peddling that to those who never lived in the USSR. Nothing was guaranteed, everything had to be fought for, even food. You were at the mercy of the local party boss, one careless word could cost you your career, not just in one company but in the whole country (goes without saying that you couldn't move to another). Paternity leave is something new, never have heard a lie that blatant. Also anything "free" of course wasn't, The Soviet government was the ultimate capitalist, appropriating all fruits of all labour and keeping people at "just above rioting" living standard by design, and sometimes failing even at that.
    - unity1001 4y ago
ciphol 4y ago
USSR was poor, we're talking about rich countries.
- jojobas 4y ago
  It was poor, but not that poor.
dhruval 4y ago
Maybe social structure of some sort is responsible ? I am not sure just looking at the patterns I see in developed countries.
medvezhenok 4y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_on_childlessness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_on_childlessness Childless people between 20-50, both men and women, paid an extra 6% in taxes to the state.
- jojobas 4y ago
  This is no different from getting taxes from everyone and paying child benefits.
  - medvezhenok 4y ago
    Practically, yes - it's more-or-less equivalent. Psychologically, I'm not so sure. Loss aversion is a much stronger than not getting a benefit (think about not getting your bonus versus taking a pay-cut at work; even if the amounts are the same, I doubt you would feel the same about it) - so I think the explicit tax on childlessness would be more influential because of that.

audunw 4y ago

> Haven’t seen any top down government interventions work at increasing TFR. I believe this is because you won't see any effect until having kids is paid just as well as working any other job. If you can choose between a regular job paying 100%, and an incredibly hard and demanding job paying 50%, you're going to pick the first option every single time. Increasing the pay to 60% isn't going to help. You need to be around 100% or above. And like with anything else in our economy, if you're not getting enough people to take that essential job, you need to keep increasing pay until they do. So no matter how much government intervention, you're still only getting the share of people who want to have kids as a kind of hobby. Not because government intervention doesn't work at all, but because you get very little effect until you cross that threshold where having kids is a job that pays fairly. I think parts of Northern Europe is close to that threshold, but there's still some ways to go. Parental leave needs to be a few months longer (there's often a gap between parental leave ending and kindergarten starting), kindergarten must be free, and financial support for parents needs to be quite a bit higher.

dhruval 4y ago
Seems a bit extreme to have the government pay people to have kids on the level of a full time job when you consider that through most of human history people worked to support their kids / families and at much lower income levels. Looking at Northern Europe seems their TFR is similar to the USA despite incentives.
- Fire-Dragon-DoL 4y ago
  That is until the children were able to work for the family, so having children was literally an investment: pay upfront to have income.

qball 4y ago

>Haven’t seen any top down government interventions work at increasing TFR. Well, they've all been symbolic measures... but that's all they can realistically do. In terms of education reform (the "give young men and women their twenties back" part), constituents of the education-managerial complex will fight hard to preserve their positions (making the education system more efficient would put many out of work), and are a significant enough cross-section of the population that threatening them will have electoral consequences that no sitting governments could survive. And that's before you get into the tax hike/redistribution schemes (the "parents need to be compensated just as much as other economic value-creators" part), which will impact everyone else, and irrevocably screws the folks that are now too old to have kids (who, coincidentally, are approaching peak voting age). For those reasons, proper reform is and will continue to be impossible for the forseeable future.

unity1001 4y ago

> Haven’t seen any top down government interventions work at increasing TFR Top down government interventions to raise birth rates and population work pretty well in countries where the government provides vital services like healthcare, education at lowest cost and also social safety nets.

RestlessMind 4y ago
Was that sarcasm? Because the reality is exactly opposite to what you say when you look at TFRs of societies having the best welfare - Finland (1.37), Norway (1.48), Germany (1.53), Switzerland (1.46). Even Sweden and Denmark are around (1.66), the same as the US (1.64).
- unity1001 4y ago
  Those countries are not running interventions. They are merely providing aid to those who have children, and not much of it. Even with that, Germany had some success with it.

polski-g 4y ago

That is because governments attempts to raise birth rates are like fat people trying to lose weight: "We've tried nothing, and it didn't work!" Just increase the tax burden X-times the default rate for those without Y kids. If you aren't willing to repopulate the nation then you should be subsidizing those who are.