Can governments increase birthrates? Should they?
Channel: ReasonTV
Date: 2023-05-18

"On the left and the right, in Europe and the United States, a consensus is growing: People aren't having enough kids," Reason Senior Editor Elizabeth Nolan Brown wrote in Reason's June cover story, "Storks Don't Take Orders From the State."

However, Brown cautions against pro-natalist government policies: "They're incredibly expensive, they produce few or no gains in fertility, and they can lead to a disturbingly authoritarian form of governance where individual choices about family formation are deprioritized and women are pressured to have babies for the national good."

Join Reason's Nick Gillespie Thursday at 1 p.m. Eastern for an unscripted conversation about whether governments can—or should—try to increase falling birthrates. He'll be joined by Brown and Scott Winship, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and director of its Center on Opportunity and Social Mobility, who has written widely on myths and realities about economic and cultural decline.

Timestamps:
0:00 — Intro
1:55 — Liz’s story “Storks Don’t Take Orders From the State” and fertility rates falling
4:00 — Pro-natalist policies don’t work
8:00 — Women want fewer kids
11:45 — How to measure the costs vs. benefits of falling fertility
15:00 — Concerns for Cincinnati’s declining population
24:45 — What happens when governments try to increase fertility rates
31:25 — Child-friendly tax policies that have been tried
35:15 — How to speak to people on the left about declining birth rates
38:45 — The argument that more kids result in more taxpayers
41:10 — Should the state be in the business of saying you should have more or less kids?
44:00 — Why the state should encourage marriage
51:00 — Bright spots in population decline
1:00:00 — How “climate catastrophe” fits into declining birthrates