In the face of shrinking populations, many of the world’s major economies are trying to engineer higher birth rates.
Policymakers from South Korea, Japan and Italy, for example, have all adopted so-called “pronatalist” measures in the belief that doing so will defuse a demographic time bomb. These range from tax breaks and housing benefits for couples who have children to subsidies for fertility treatments.
Moreover, birth rates are notoriously hard to change, and efforts to do so often become coercive, even if they don’t start out that way.
As demographersand population experts, we also know that such efforts are usually unnecessary. Manipulating fertility is an inefficient means of solving social, economic and environmental problems that are almost always better addressed more directly through regulation and redistribution.
A new pronatalist movement
According to the most likely scenario, the world’s population will peak around the beginning of 2084 at about 10.3 billion people – approximately 2 billion more than we have today. After that, the global population is projected to stop growing and will likely shrink to just below 10.2 billion by 2100.
Yet many countries are already ahead of this curve, with populations predicted to decline in the next decade. And that has prompted concerns among some nations’ economists over economic growth and old-age support. In some instances, it has also prompted nativist fears about “replacement” through immigration.
The pronatalist movement is, we believe, inherently misguided. It is premised on the belief that ever-larger populations are needed to spur economic growth, which alone will lift individuals and communities out of poverty.
Seen this way, pronatalism is a Ponzi scheme. It relies on new entrants to produce returns for earlier investors, with the burdens falling most heavily on women, who are responsible for the bulk of childbearing and child-rearing, often without adequate medical care or affordable child care.
In the face of shrinking populations, many of the world’s major economies are trying to engineer higher birth rates.
Policymakers from South Korea, Japan and Italy, for example, have all adopted so-called “pronatalist” measures in the belief that doing so will defuse a demographic time bomb. These range from tax breaks and housing benefits for couples who have children to subsidies for fertility treatments.
Missouri-based airline executive Farhad Azima said on Thursday he had settled with the law firm Dechert and two of its former senior attorneys over allegations
The Bank of Japan is set to keep monetary policy steady on Friday, but signal its confidence that solid wage growth and consumption will allow the central bank to
M&G Investments sees attractive valuations in some longer-duration government bonds and non-U.S. equities, a multi-asset fund manager at the London-based firm said on Thursday.