One idea I have is that businesses could pay workers with children more, with it scaling by the amount of children one has. I'm sure it'd violate some sort of law, but if I were given a magic wand to do things over, this is something I'd implement. I'm a bit of a radical pro-natalist, in case one couldn't tell.
What are some ways for a country to artificially increase its population?
- Thread starter Angel Grace
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Riain
Banned
How about this. In ancient Sparta the only people who got marked graves were men who died in battle and women who died in childbirth.
So offer the GI bill for tertiary education to women who have had more than 1 child. That way women have their kids young, get educated while the kids are at kinder/school and enter the workforce for an uninterrupted career at like 30 or so.
So offer the GI bill for tertiary education to women who have had more than 1 child. That way women have their kids young, get educated while the kids are at kinder/school and enter the workforce for an uninterrupted career at like 30 or so.
Some tax benefits for having children and government baby bonuses can tweak birth rates a little bit around the edges. But to make a big difference in the late 20th, and 21st century I think you will need to:
Make your ATL country's economy highly dependant on agriculture.
Keep industrialization low, so that more manual labour is needed.
Keep infant mortality high so that families want to have a lot of kids so that a few survive. So keep the country's health system and basic sanitation poor.
Deny basic rights to women, so that they do not have options, and have no outlet in their lives other than to have children.
Embargo the country from communication with the outside world, so that no notions of modernity creep in and upset this arrangement.
So make the country into a pre-modern theme park.
Make your ATL country's economy highly dependant on agriculture.
Keep industrialization low, so that more manual labour is needed.
Keep infant mortality high so that families want to have a lot of kids so that a few survive. So keep the country's health system and basic sanitation poor.
Deny basic rights to women, so that they do not have options, and have no outlet in their lives other than to have children.
Embargo the country from communication with the outside world, so that no notions of modernity creep in and upset this arrangement.
So make the country into a pre-modern theme park.
kholieken
Banned
Ignoring immigrants (which have higher birth rate) and small religious sect, Swedish family with avg 1.9 children is probably highest. Long term cohabitation, both parents working, mandatory maternity and paternal leave, cheap childcare, etc
Thing is, he's not really a chad in the traditional sense. He's kind of a screw up. But hey, the womenfolk seem to be just fine with bearing his spawn, so he's a mighty servant of Darwin. I have another brother who's much closer to the traditional chad, and he's only got 3 children, like myself.
While there are drawbacks in women having children while young (let's say, 16-22 years old), at least not demonizing (late) teen pregnancies so they can develop a career as you describe is something that should help include fertility rates.
Think of a 16-17 years old girl who got pregnant by being reckless when having sex. If she's in doubt if she wants to keep the baby (which is likely the way she'll feel), a nudge from a doctor who believes he's doing the right thing by suggesting her to abort may be all it takes for the girl to abort. Want to do increase fertility rates? Try to make sure doctors don't do that and provide advertisement and resources for pregnant women who are considering abortion so they don't abort.
Of course, the next problem if you want to boost fertility rates is that, if that girl keeps her child, she still needs to have one or two extra kids for fertility rates to increase.
This would be an incentive for companies to hire only workers without children, which would have the opposite effect of reducing the birth rate because having a child would be a hindrance to finding employment.
I believe that a low birth rate is not something that is inevitable in an industrialized society, but it requires social paradigms that are simply not present in the West today.
Israel is an outlier in a lot of ways. They brought back Hebrew, a language that was almost dead and spoken only by scholars and turned it into the national language spoken by millions, through government policy. That is I think related to the national/cultural ethos that they are still building back from the Holocaust, which in their case outweighs the normal social pressures of modernity. I have some Israeli friends who are hippie expats and as far from Orthodox as one could get and, come to think of it, they have 4 kids.
As for the bottom quote, I think some form of low birthrate is inevitable due to economic pressures (no industrialized society is going to average six kids, nor should it), but it doesn't have to be sub-replacement if the culture and economic structure is more pro-natal.
China under Mao strongly encouraged big families as a way towards progress, at the same time it radically decreased infant mortality and increased life expectancy, and almost doubled their population from 1949 to 1976. This was due to a lot of factors, partly revolutionary zeal, but mostly I believe it was due to increasing life expectancy and decreasing infant mortality. China had been artificially held back from experiencing the normal forces of modernity by colonization, internal strife, and war, so the desire for big families was still strong in the mostly rural and peasant population, yet the post- World War 2/ Post-revolution population explosion happened as the birth rate was constantly dropping. But the survival rate increased much faster.
en.wikipedia.org
One-child policy - Wikipedia
Riain
Banned
The flip side to that coin would be to make it worth this teen couple's while to stay together, maybe the father an go to college if he marries the girl.
World Mapping
Banned
Bans on abortion and contraception, various pro-natalist policies and government propaganda to encourage big families.
Honestly what I see a lot of nations doing in the future, given population decline. Eastern Europe, Japan, and China perhaps are probably the next to go down this route.
Honestly what I see a lot of nations doing in the future, given population decline. Eastern Europe, Japan, and China perhaps are probably the next to go down this route.
kholieken
Banned
Israel also had large Hasidic minority with much higher birth rate. City like Tel Aviv likely had much lower birthrate. EOCD best is Sweden, only 1.9.
And considering east asia and eastern europe much, much lower number, the West is still not in wrong path.
Abortion bans/restrictions and pro-natalism I could see, but a contraception ban would be like prohibition in the U.S. 100 years ago. It'd be utterly unenforceable and would turn into a black market, with rubbers and pills being snuck in en masse.
Generally speaking, control rural migration and try to keep an isolated rural population that serves as a population engine.
Access of women to education, labour and media is a big factor, but well limiting those is inhumane
Unrelated but One of the few successful pro natalist policies in industrialised countries was the 80s soviet ones, the western/Slavic USSR largely managed to keep a healthy and stable birth rate hovering around replacement rates from 1960 to 1990
Honestly estimating long term fertility is something nobody can do.
Try telling anyone in France 100 years ago that its population would still naturally grow a lot when it had already accomplished its transition from 1700 to 1900
Access of women to education, labour and media is a big factor, but well limiting those is inhumane
Unrelated but One of the few successful pro natalist policies in industrialised countries was the 80s soviet ones, the western/Slavic USSR largely managed to keep a healthy and stable birth rate hovering around replacement rates from 1960 to 1990
Honestly estimating long term fertility is something nobody can do.
Try telling anyone in France 100 years ago that its population would still naturally grow a lot when it had already accomplished its transition from 1700 to 1900
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