Imagine if having children came with more than $150,000 in cheap loans, a subsidized minivan and a lifetime exemption from income taxes.
Would people have more kids? The answer, it seems, is no.
These are among the benefits—along with cheap child care, extra vacation and free fertility treatments—that have been doled out to parents in different parts of Europe, a region at the forefront of the worldwide baby shortage. Europe’s overall population shrank during the pandemic and is on track to contract by about 40 million by 2050, according to United Nations statistics.
Birthrates have been falling across the developed world since the 1960s. But the decline hit Europe harder and faster than demographers expected—a foreshadowing of the sudden drop in the U.S. fertility rate in recent years.
Worldwide Efforts to Reverse the Baby Shortage Are Falling Flat: "Demographers suggest the reluctance to have kids is a fundamental cultural shift rather than a purely financial one" https://t.co/GDF4fuEAA8
— Jim Russell (@ProducerCities) October 14, 2024
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