Vietnam has just left his policy -restricting families to two children. China now says: “Three is the best. “The Russian government is targeted Child -free lifestyle. And the White House is Thinking baby bonuses.
Many countries try to turn low birth rates, but a new one Report of the United Nations Population Fund argues that governments operate on a “Fertility Fallacy” – An assumption that young people no longer want children, or at least not as much as they ever did. Policy makers, the report says, does not recognize the real crisis: money.
When investigating people in 14 countries on four continents, the agency found that financial security is a major problem for people who are considering having children. The report, published on Tuesday, says that many people have or expect fewer children than they wanted.
“It is often assumed or implied that the fertility percentages are the result of the free choice,” said the report. “Unfortunately that is not the whole picture.”
The report pushes back on a cultural and political story in increasing fertility, which blames younger generations, especially women, because they have no children because it would disrupt their desired lifestyle.
Instead of complaining about the rise of what vice-president JD Vance called ‘childless cat ladies’, or to blame individuals for the purchase of the population, such as many ‘pro-natalists’, experts say that those who are concerned about stagnating or declining population groups must investigate the conditions that make people raise doubts that they can raise children’s doubts.
“The research shows that people want children, but say that the circumstances are not good,” says Karen Guzzo, a family memograph who leads the population center of the University of North Carolina and who was not involved in the UN study.
What is also remarkable about the report, said experts, is that asking about whether the way to increase fertility is to direct birth rates instead of the overall quality of life. And it points in other areas of policy -making that are less directly related to the population size, but that can lead to the desired results.
The conclusions of the report stem from an overview of approximately 14,000 people in Brazil, Germany, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Italy, South Korea, Mexico, Morocco, Thailand, Nigeria, South Africa, Sweden and the United States -countries that represent more than a third of the world population.
Researchers discovered common frustrations across the board. Dr. Guzzo noted in an interview that people in India and people in the United States often mentioned the same concerns about their children.
The findings of the UN report, she said, vote in accordance with her own research into fertility in the United States, who have found a mismatch between the goals, expectations and results of people, often associated with economic problems. People don’t say “no” to having children, she added, so much they say “not now” when they are concerned about economic safety.
Among adults older than 50, whose reproductive lives were probably complete, almost a third fewer children reported than they would ideally chose. Among those younger than 50, about one in nine said they expected that they would also be short of the desired number. Far fewer people, regardless of age, reported that they have or expect more children than they wanted.
Although the idea that money, or the lack of it, stimulates the family size, for everyone who has a child or has ever considered one to have one, demographers saying that is not related to the survey, say that the report is important because it starts to quantify that concept.
Demographers say that the baby bonuses and other short -term benefits that are offered in some countries do not stimulate population size Because they are not considering persistent structural problemsSuch as paid parental leave, childcare and housing costs.
Thoai NGO, chairman of the Ministry of Population and the Family Health of Columbia University, noted that working women particularly experienced more pressure than ever to spend time with their children and offer them out -of -school opportunities while trying to fulfill their own personal and professional ambitions.
The UN report is valuable, he said in an interview on Wednesday, because it is shifting the cultural focus from a “alarming perspective on the population decrease” to investigate the policy that people would help “start a family and grow a family with dignity and opportunities.”
But Dr. NGO said that more research was needed to get a complete picture of how work and family are linked.
He noted that the report did not deal with the role of immigration as a solution. The survey also did not accept the role of technology in changing labor dynamics. But the rise of artificial intelligence is expected to replace some human tasks and can change the relationship between family formation and working life, he said.
The world’s population is expected to peak later this century and then fall. But in many countries, including the United States, fertility has fallen well below the replacement rate and the population in Europe and parts of East Asia have fallen for years.
In those trends, policy makers see an economic crisis of brewing, in which fewer people in working age support the economy, and more elderly people who collect pensions and need expensive care.
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