Reviving the Coolness of Families to Address the US ‘Birth Dearth’ dilemma

Last week the Democrats showed us the past and the future of population policy.

Even as they cheered news that a Planned Parenthood mobile van would park right outside their national convention to choke off pregnancies with free abortions and vasectomies, nominee Kamala Harris announced a half-baked proposal to encourage childbearing via tax credits for new parents.

The party’s old, negative attitude toward parenthood and family formation was spurred by (false) 1960s fears of a population explosion that still drive Boomer-era perceptions.

But in fact we now live in an era of population implosion, with birth rates in America and elsewhere well below replacement, and still dropping. “Global fertility isn’t just declining, it’s collapsing,” according to writer James Pethokoukis.

This means that governments are increasingly trying to find ways to get people to have more children, not fewer.

Other countries are already trying that with subsidies, with very limited results. Turns out you just can’t pay people enough to offset the financial cost of having children.