Natalism Boom

Everyone's Wondering Where the Babies Went

We are in a natalism boom. The lack of kids is starting to shock. This transmission covers the boom, from how many kids to fit in one bedroom to South Korea’s proposal to pay $70,000 per birth. It ends with some suggestions on what the boom should mean for you.

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For some, the highlight of the natalism boom was Elon Musk re-Xing the NatalCon keynote speech from Natalism.org

https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1784768522645889111

We are in an interesting moment where people at the cutting edge of political change are starting to think in terms of problems that need solved instead of factions that need coordinated. Historically moments like these have led to political realignments. New awareness of a vital problem, new vital politics.

Natalcon was a great event that brought together people who from a faction standpoint shouldn’t have been in the same room. What bound us was a shared problem.

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The Wall Street Journal lays out the basic for its audience. https://www.wsj.com/world/birthrates-global-decline-cause-ddaf8be2 (May 13)

Birth rates are dropping everywhere. They are already unsustainably low in every developed country.

The recent drop has been precipitous. It happened extremely quickly.

And here’s the basic point that even many very intelligent people who are natalist-aware don’t know.

The birth rate drop is continuing. And it seems to be accelerating.

Our position, velocity, and acceleration are all crisis levels. Lo, unto the second derivative.

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US birth rates have, for the nth year in a row, hit a new all time low

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/vsrr/vsrr035.pdf (April)

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Fertility collapse is now making its way into the center of the ever popular catastrophist genre of non-fiction writing:

What Is Causing This? “Demographic Winter Is Coming” As Fertility Rates Plummet All Over The Globe

(May 13)

He takes another stab at explaining why we are collapsing. He picks rising biological rates of infertility plus a rabidly anti-child culture as his culprits.

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Tim Carney’s new book Family Unfriendly: How Our Culture Made Raising Kids Much Harder Than it Needs to Be continues to attract attention. Here’s an interview published last week (May 9)

https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2024/05/94879/

He also got an editorial in the Washington Post arguing that bigger families are happier and easier to run than smaller ones. Yes indeed. Many of us have had that same experience. There are many reasons people have small families but one unfortunate reasons is that they give up just when they are starting to get good at it. You will want to read it. It inspired a mere 6165 comments from the Washington Post readership. (April 30)

We agree with him. Two kids are not double the work of one and after three kids there is a real inflection point where on a day-to-day basis having more children doesn’t make any extra burdens at all, especially with the older ones helping with the younger ones and the with the kids richly entertaining each other.

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MoreBirths has another data-driven concise look at why we have a birth dearth. He says declining religiosity has a huge role to play. Religion drives fertility. (Or is it the other way around?) (May 5)

https://x.com/MoreBirths/status/1787136084654104773

Get right with the universe that you are going to bring more souls into?

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Or are birth rates falling because marriage rates are falling? Most people don’t have kids unless they are married so the fewer marriages, the fewer births. If people still generally get married over the course of their lifetime but put off marriage until later than before, at any given time the percentage of the population that is married and therefore having kids will be smaller. From the Washington Post (April 25)

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With the extremely recent trend of South Korean companies offering huge baby bonuses, the South Korean government is contemplating paying out $70k per child. Good. They ought to. It’s not just an expected-value calculation about how much taxes a marginal increase in future taxpayers will bring you. For South Korea, its an existential threat. (May)

South Korea’s military budget is currently $48 billion. It’s GDP is 1.76 trillion. Last year somewhere around 250,000 new South Koreans were born (and the number is dropping every year). If this proposed new policy succeeded beyond anyone’s expectations and tripled the births—which would put South Korea at a sustainable replacement rate—rescuing its people from eventual extinction—the total expenditure would be 52.5 billion. About the same as annual military expenditure. Roughly 3% of GDP. For an existential threat, that seems reasonable. Of course the policy may not succeed that well, but then it won’t cost that much.

3% of GDP for a literal existential threat actually seems quite small.

The claim has been made that South Korea has already spent around 1% of GDP a year on babymaking incentives to no result. We are unable to verify. But we assume it’s true because of how little this amount is in proportion to the problem and in proportion to what would actually motivate people. 1% of GDP is hardly revolutionary.

Even the visionary Lee Kuan Yew made this mistake. In 2013 he suggested offering two years worth of the average Singaporean salary per birth, which he suggested would prove that birth rates did not respond to incentives. We agree with him that the experiment should be tried. We do not agree that two year’s salary is an obviously overwhelming sum that more than compensates for the material costs of having a child.

For comparison the US equivalent sum would be 100,000 according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (the average US salary being approximately 50k). The same source estimates that the average material cost of raising a child is 300,000. While we believe this number may be exaggerated for many people, the total cost from birth through college/luanch into adulthood is certainly much higher than 100k. While we do believe that the birth rate problem isn’t just about incentives, we are surprised at the number of people who believe that material incentives don’t work when they aren’t even close to bringing a couple to break even, let alone to actually getting some kind of material reward. Nero at least fiddled while Rome burned, whereas many people seem like they would have instead pinched pennies and pared cheese.

By one estimate we calculated that an appropriate child subsidy in America would be between 100k-300k.

The track record on subsidies for increasing birth rates is not great. What does that tell us? Not much, because the subsidies have just been absurdly small. If South Korea follows through, hopefully the subsidy is large enough that it should at least give us an idea if subsidies can work, even if 70k is still too low.

Let’s hope South Korea does it. We need to know and South Korea can’t afford not to.

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The original conservative influencer has an article up (May 17)

He predicts a resurgence in status for social conservatives and the fecund religious. If you read the comments, look for the one that asks “where the trad women at?”

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The Pope has urged Italians to have babies. (May 10)

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A writer for the Atlantic points out that each kid does not actually have to have their own bedroom. (May 13)

They really don’t. The isolation of American life does not have to begin at home.

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Suzanne Venker has a new book out whose theme is that women need to ignore or even run contrary to a lot of standard social expectations if they want to be happy. We assume it has polemical elements but at least two pieces are sound Steader advice. (May 3)

• you will be enjoy your own children beyond what you can imagine, and you will enjoy having more of them more

• If you want to do things better than the broken and unhappy results you see around you, you have to do things different than the broken and unhappy mainstream culture. Begin with the end in mind and don’t be afraid.

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Peachy Keenan, in inimitable Peachy Keenan style, is kulturkampfing. Along the way she coins a phrase. The Inchil. (April 29)

Some of the childless people, of course, do want children. They are involuntarily childless; they are inchils, if you will. They desperately crave marriage and parenthood but dating apps, porn, seed oils, the housing crunch, and Bidenomics have rendered potential mates averse to commitment and family phobic. This is the tragic and inevitable side effect of the automated, atomized “you’ll own nothing and be happy” life

What Does It Mean For You?

So there’s a boom in natalism content. So what? What does it mean for you?

Participate

Like, share, comment, post your own natalist content. Knowing there’s a problem is the beginning of a solution.

Really Participate

A natalism boom is nothing if it never leads to a natal boom. No amount of success you might experience as an influencer can compensate for the dwindling and extirpation of your own family line. Whatever your next step is—marriage, children, more children, grandchildren, more grandchildren—embrace that stage and turn it up to 11.

Be

Your health, good humor, happiness, wit, aesthetics is anc continues to be the best sort of natalist content. Be the propaganda you would see in the world.

Brag

Talking about status is low status, so no one likes to spell these things out. We steaders on the other hand have a barnyard frankness. We will spell it out. You should absolutely use this natalist boom to burnish your prestige, especially with your family.

“Hey, you know how I’m always talking about birth rates? Look, the world famous Wall Street Journal is worried about it now. Wealthy stockbrokers are reading this morning about a problem that I already told you about three years ago.”

“Remember that conference I went to last year? Elon Musk is tweeting about it.”