Some might decide to buy more expensive car or larger house and that's cool choice as well. But in the end will bring you just a temporary happiness and maybe some social status boost.
Screw consumerism, just have a child.
It's a factor, it's not the only factor.
Decrease in teenage pregnancies, decrease in alcohol consumption, contraception and day after pills, higher levels of education, less socialized culture, less generational housing etc.
Having a child is more than often a deliberate, calculated decision that is made by adults whereas in the old world pregnancies happened left and right with little to say about it. Support systems existed because the problem was pervasive. Now the problem is generally gone, and the support systems thereafter.
No country has managed to reverse the trend of declining birth rates. The better quality of life people have, the fewer children people tend to have.
It's not just about who does and who doesn't have children, it's also how many children per family. 1-2 children is the new normal. My grandpa was #7.
Unions and Fight for your rights, that's what we need
Love your own life, refuse to have children for free!
May I point you to the State of Israel? Its TFR sits at 3.
And if we really want to be nitpicky, and concentrating on the "reverse"-part of your statement, then even Balkan countries shine, as they literally managed to reverse the trend.
Perhaps we can learn from the past? Birthrates between the world wars were below replacement level in much of the western world. Then the trend reversed for a while.
That same bump is now reversing and the general trend of depopulation continues to accelerate. IIRC Bosnia has the lowest birth rates in all of Europe.
I appreciate the push back; I was overly confident in that statement. I do think however that it's correct to state that the slow trend across all developed countries could be summarized as "aggressively downwards".
Israel is literally the one exception.
In South Korea the reports are they this is very different. Kids are not tolerated in many places, many couples have few kids, society makes it quite hard on moms as well.
0 - https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/isr/isr...
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I've already discussed this in a separate reply.
If this received no taxpayer funding I wouldn't care, but when public funding is involved there need to be some checks to ensure no abuse, which Rx Kids doesn't have.
All of the checks you listed would just serve to make it harder for this money to reach the mothers that need it.
In the same way seatbelts just serve to make it harder for drivers to get to where they need to go quickly. It would not be difficult to restrict this to people below a certain tax bracket.
Rx Kids is the nation’s first-ever, community-wide maternal and infant cash prescription program, founded and directed by Dr. Mona Hanna, pediatrician and Associate Dean of Public Health at Michigan State University College of Human Medicine. Often known as Dr. Mona, she was recognized by TIME as one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World and by USA Today as one of its Women of the Century for her role in uncovering the Flint water crisis and advancing recovery efforts. Most recently, she was named to the TIME100 Health list for leading Rx Kids.
Rx Kids is administered by GiveDirectly, the global leader in safe and secure cash transfers. Rx Kids has efficiently delivered direct support to thousands of families across dozens of communities—strengthening family financial security, improving maternal and infant health, and boosting local economies. Rx Kids is built on a strong network of partners who bring together academic leadership, community expertise, and public–private investment to make this vision possible. Co-founded by Professor Luke Shaefer and in collaboration with Poverty Solutions at the University of Michigan, Rx Kids is implemented in partnership with local Community Champions and stakeholders who drive outreach, engagement, and celebration. Sustained through a robust public–private partnership that blends state investment with philanthropic and other support, Rx Kids reimagines what’s possible with a prescription for health, hope, and opportunity.