My rough understanding is we have 20-50 years of efforts in the Nordics. Long enough to form "Nordic Paradox" for situation where pro-natal policies still lead to below replacement rates. There's also weird dual cultural shift - Nordic countries women labour participation rate stagnated or even decreased - more wanted to become full time moms/homemakers - so there is desire for family formation. But second culture shift is the desire is still sub replacement level, i.e. people want 1-2 kids. Not enough people want 2 kids to replace themselves. Not enough people want 2+ kids to make up the people that want 1.
> go on forever
Yeah it's more to illustrate the levels of abundance in terms of pro social policies that could sustain culturally acceptable >2 TFR. Be religious. Have UBI. Ensure people work little if they don't want to. Ensure they have access to cheap labour that does all the work for them. Then maybe TFR could settle between 2-3. Right now the few exception are a few million people sustained by disproportionate fossil exports. That model can't scale without another source of abundance.
> Long enough to form "Nordic Paradox" for situation where pro-natal policies still lead to below replacement rates.
Having just read [0], this confirms my earlier suspicion the support is not generous enough there.
(Also a huge political issue in probably all countries getting older - the political power skews to the older generation making increasing support for young families harder to finance with budget constraints. Welfare for grandparents and poverty for single parents.)
> That model can't scale without another source of abundance.
Yes of course it can't, it's the whole planet financing it for them. But maybe we don't need that level of abundance - previous generations certainly didn't, even some of them already liberal and educated. And I think we are still missing some fundamental cause here. Maybe modern life is not only too expensive, but also too complex and complicated to navigate into parenthood at the right time and place in life and then it's too late?
The conventional reason is # of kids is depressed relative to female education levels, but my unsubstantiated pet theory is elimination of boredom - mobile penetration also seems to map well with TFR declines. I think the opportunity cost / effort if >1 kid is too much, and from what I hear about friends with 2 kids that overlap by a few years, having 2 kids is >2 times harder, and they're not shy about sharing it. Modern life has too many comforts/distractions, hence imo positive policies will have hard time making 2+ kids desirable vs also adding punitive making not having 2+ kids undesirable.
My rough understanding is we have 20-50 years of efforts in the Nordics. Long enough to form "Nordic Paradox" for situation where pro-natal policies still lead to below replacement rates. There's also weird dual cultural shift - Nordic countries women labour participation rate stagnated or even decreased - more wanted to become full time moms/homemakers - so there is desire for family formation. But second culture shift is the desire is still sub replacement level, i.e. people want 1-2 kids. Not enough people want 2 kids to replace themselves. Not enough people want 2+ kids to make up the people that want 1.
> go on forever
Yeah it's more to illustrate the levels of abundance in terms of pro social policies that could sustain culturally acceptable >2 TFR. Be religious. Have UBI. Ensure people work little if they don't want to. Ensure they have access to cheap labour that does all the work for them. Then maybe TFR could settle between 2-3. Right now the few exception are a few million people sustained by disproportionate fossil exports. That model can't scale without another source of abundance.