On fertility rates - Michelle Goldberg in NYT:
‘Long before Donald Trump said he wanted to be known as the “fertilization president,” Hungary was trying mightily to promote traditional families and raise its lagging birthrate. “We are living in times when fewer and fewer children are being born throughout Europe,” its prime minister, Viktor Orban, said in 2019. Immigration, he argued, was no answer to this demographic shortfall. “We do not need numbers, but Hungarian children,” he said. “In our minds, immigration means surrender.” He then announced a seven-point “family protection action plan” meant to encourage marriage and baby-making. It included government loans of 10 million Hungarian forints (at the time almost $35,000) to women under 40 when they married, which would be forgiven if they had at least three children. Large families would receive help buying cars and houses, and women who had at least four children would be exempt from personal income taxes for life.’
(…)
‘But if Trump really wanted to arrest the decline in America’s fertility rate — which reached a historic low of 1.62 births per woman in 2023 — the best thing he could do is resign in concert with his entire administration. The crude chauvinism his presidency represents is a major impediment to the creation of healthy families.’
(…)
‘It shouldn’t be surprising, then, that in one 2022 survey, a majority of young women said they probably wouldn’t date a Trump supporter. The most recent season of the reality show “Love Is Blind” dramatized this political mismatch, with two progressive women ditching their fiancés over their politics. Growing alienation between the sexes will naturally make it harder for them to pair up and have kids.
One way Trump could help heal this rift is by going away.’
Read the article here.
An interesting hypothesis, low fertility rate and inequality between men and women go hand in hand.
But even if you manage to get rid of this inequality, I’m pretty sure that the fertility rates will remain well below 2.
One more time, cats and dogs are less stressful than humans.