Baby bonuses won't solve the birthrate problem, by Jeff Jacoby at the Boston Globe.
Jacoby gives the now-familiar statistics about replacement level births in developed (and now less-developed) countries: US, Europe, South Korea, Japan. He then runs down the list of the common explanations and favorite solutions. Those explain and solve at the margin at most. It's a good place to have your own favorite myths kicked around.
“The real secret to Israel’s fertility rates appears to be cultural,” wrote Danielle Kubes in Canada’s National Post in 2023. “The family is at the absolute center of Israeli life. Getting married and having kids is the highest cultural value.” It is a value that goes beyond religious observance and political ideology. It cannot be explained by government financial aid (welfare benefits in Israel are comparable to those in Western Europe). Rather, it boils down to this: Israelis of every stripe share a conviction that having children is the best and highest means of imbuing life with meaning.
Imbuing life with meaning. This one has held up pretty well.
1 comment:
I don't know many couples who have children because they'll get a baby shower out of it.
This kind of government "baby shower" doesn't come close to the financial expense of a child, not to mention the cost of time and opportunities.
Raising children is irreducibly generous and even sacrificial--I don't see that financial incentives bear much on that kind of decision. Its rewards, as the article says, lie elsewhere.
This kind of cultural change can't be top down, only bottom up. (No pun about diaper changing intended.)
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