So the article goes on with some interesting facts and data, and then the "Opinion Editorial" part comes in. The author's opinion? The birthrates are low because there's not enough social services!

> But underlying all this may well be the cost of children for families with high housing costs that need to save for health care and retirement because of limited government programs.

Ah, well, thankfully this would be easy to check. All you'd have to do is look at fertility rates by country. If it was true, then you'd see that the countries with the lowest fertility rates had the lowest taxes and spending on social services.

And... that information is available. Here we go:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_territori...

Wait a second! The bottom 50 countries in terms of fertility are almost all highly socialized?

Meaning that increasing government spending on welfare decreases the incentive to have children to provide and care for you?

> More significant are those like the Netherlands, Scandinavian countries, France, New Zealand and to a lesser degree Britain. All are characterized not only by generous welfare and maternal leave provisions, and infant care systems, but also by high levels of sexual equality as measured by incomes and social position.

So you'd expect those societies to have fairly high birth rates. So out the 200 or so countries on the planet, you'd expect them not to be, you know, in the lowest 60 countries in terms of fertility rates. Good thing we have data again:

Netherlands #155, Sweden #151, Denmark #150, Finland #147, France #137, New Zealand #122, United Kingdom #148

Wait, they're all in the lowest 50-60 in terms of global fertility? Well, don't let the facts get in the way of a good argument.

I read a paper on this - as social services go up, fertility and birth rates go down. This happens in wealthy countries and poor countries, though wealthy countries also have low birth rates. Controlling for wealth, more social services, welfare, and so on = lower fertility.

The paper had a number of theories why - one was that you didn't have to count on your children to provide for you in old age. That meant less pressure to have a large number of children to make sure at least one child became successful and could care for you. Children were the "pension plan" before there were pension plans.

The article is interesting, the facts in the first half are good quite and spot on and illuminating. The conclusions certainly seem pretty clearly incorrect when looking at the data.

Social services can make many claims to fame. Higher birth rates is not one of them - in fact, if you can get over the fearmongering tone, this clip is fascinating. It talks about how the ferility rates in the lower is even lower than reported if you don't include Muslims.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0U5Kw57iv4

The video explains why societies collapse economically without having enough children, then explains that Muslims are going to take over the world. The tone is fear-monger generating, but my good English Muslim friend said he had a laugh at it, so hopefully not too bothersome to Islamic friends here. Salaam.

Anyway, article's facts? Interesting. Article's conclusion of more social services will increase birth rates? Data suggests the opposite is true.