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wcoenen 3 hours ago

This comes up in every discussion about demographics. But counterintuitively, there are no examples of financial incentives actually fixing this problem.

For example, in 2022 Hungary was spending 6.2% of GDP on such incentives[1], but this only managed to bring total fertility rate up to about 1.6 [2].

It is the same everywhere else. The real reason fertility has declined since the sixties is because people have access to effective birth control. Nobody wants to be a baby factory.

[1] https://abouthungary.hu/news-in-brief/hungary-to-spend-6-2-o...

[2] https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/hun/hun...

pjc50 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Back of an envelope suggests that to really make this work you'd need most women in the 20-40 range to have the job title of "parent" and a lower middle class or more salary paid by the state, so .. 10-20% of GDP? Nobody wants to contemplate just how expensive this is going to be, including the fact that now you have a short-term labour shortage (because they're out of the regular workforce as well!)