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United Kingdom

Birth Rate in England and Wales Plunges To Lowest Level Since 1938 (bbc.com) 131

Posted by msmash from the elsewhere-in-the-world dept.
England and Wales have recorded their lowest birth rate since records began in 1938, with women having an average of 1.44 children in 2023, official data showed on Monday. The figure falls well below the 2.1 children per woman needed to maintain a stable population without migration in developed nations, the Office for National Statistics reported.

The rate has declined steadily since 2010. The steepest drops occurred among women under 30, with new mothers in 2023 averaging almost a year older than in 2013. Experts link the decline to multiple factors, including widespread contraception use, women's increased participation in education and employment, and rising childcare and housing costs. The trend mirrors similar patterns across developed economies, with EU nations like Italy and Spain reporting rates as low as 1.2 children per woman in 2023.

Birth Rate in England and Wales Plunges To Lowest Level Since 1938 More | Reply

Birth Rate in England and Wales Plunges To Lowest Level Since 1938

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  • Housing cost is the easy one to solve (Score:5, Informative)

    by JoshuaZ ( 1134087 ) on Monday October 28, 2024 @01:25PM (#64900273) Homepage
    Housing cost is the easy one to solve. Most of the UK, but England especially, have made it incredibly difficult to build new housing. So there's massive demand and very little supply, so cost goes up. While there are construction issues, the main aspects are extremely involved planning processes, regulatory barriers, and letting even the smallest community interest block housing (sometimes literally one disgruntled neighbor). See https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/news/2024/9/new_research_identifies_barriers_to_housing_supply_in_england_and_wales/ [warwick.ac.uk].
    • I wonder if there is any positive correlation between how many square feet a family occupies and how many people are in the family anyways.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ls671 ( 1122017 )

        Anyway:

        with women having an average of 1.44 children in 2023

        UK must have a world fertility record then even if they are at their lowest! 1.44 children by woman in 2023 would be an average of 14 children by woman in 10 years and 29 children in 20 years. What are they going to do with all that population?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by gtall ( 79522 )

          Quantification error. They do not mean "1.44 children IN 2023", they mean when they took the stats in 2023, women generally had 1.44 children in their lifetime.

    • Re:Housing cost is the easy one to solve (Score:5, Insightful)

      by StormReaver ( 59959 ) on Monday October 28, 2024 @01:37PM (#64900313)

      Housing cost is the easy one to solve.

      The long term solution is to lower the population. We have too many people and too few resources. Reduce the population, and the resource problem becomes much more tenable until it eventually disappears. As an added bonus, employment conditions start to favor the employed.

      We are vastly overpopulated, so any long term reduction in population is a net gain for everyone.

      • The long term solution is to lower the population. We have too many people and too few resources.

        I've heard this many times. Remind me again, what's the right population?

        We are vastly overpopulated

        So that's what, 1/10th the population, 1/100th is the right amount to you?

        I believe survival of the next extinction level event is going to depend on people, both brain power and labor. If you don't care about such things then yeah, lets clear cut the world population and build bunkers.

        Beyond that, I also believe more people means more interesting things in life. As long as people are housed, fed and educated, I think we're doing ju

      • OK then, so how do you deal with the effects of the resulting shrinking economy. I hear investors & shareholders tend to get cold feet when the value of things go down. You'll end up with large-scale capital flight. What do you do the mitigate that?

    • Thereâ(TM)s also the dislike of building upwards, or rather the general attitude towards living this way. Probably council high rises from the 60s and poor quality developments general have put people off, but if you look at other cities around the world, even just five story buildings are much more common. Where I live, the major of London has overruled locally planning rules and we have some very out-of-character high rises planned, although without commensurate infrastructure plans to improve publ

    • Expensive housing is the only way to ensure a segment of the population stays working. Food is widely available and cheap in the west. Healthcare too (at least nowadays). If you're broke in a city, you can't survive because you'll lose housing. In 1940 a home cost about 1x annual median salary. As in, most homes cost the amount a typical person would earn in one year. So if you made $2000 a year, a decent house was available to you for $2000. Which meant your mortgage was no big deal. Today, a typical perso

      • Ahh yes, I recall how no one worked 30 years ago when houses were affordable. /s

        Sorry but that conspiracy is just dumb.

        • 1940 wasn't 30 years ago and the post you replied to didn't offer any conspiracy theories.

          That aside, buying a house costing 1x the median income in 1940 still required making the median income which meant working..

    • Housing cost is the easy one to solve. Most of the UK, but England especially, have made it incredibly difficult to build new housing. So there's massive demand and very little supply, so cost goes up. While there are construction issues, the main aspects are extremely involved planning processes, regulatory barriers, and letting even the smallest community interest block housing (sometimes literally one disgruntled neighbor). See https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/news/2024/9/new_research_identifies_barriers_to_housing_supply_in_england_and_wales/ [warwick.ac.uk].

      The fascinating thing is the narrative that one must be pretty wealthy to even think about having children.

      When it fact, it is in direct opposition to the fact that for so many years, people have married young and started families at a time when they were making a whole lot less money than when they were older.

      The problem with the "you must have a lot of money, or else you can't have children outlook is that there really are not that many people who are 6 figure income people (or even millionaires) du

      • some 45 percent of women in their 30's will be single, unattached, and childless.

        And fucking everything that walks, just like the men, and happy as a clam.

        I suspect that number will only increase.

        You bet your ass it will.

        Many women are experiencing loneliness

        lol. Na.
        Women are behaving sociosexually more like men.

        The thing people like you keep missing with your "disinterested men" claims, is that the women don't want your fucking interest.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Cyberax ( 705495 )

      Housing cost is the easy one to solve. Most of the UK, but England especially, have made it incredibly difficult to build new housing.

      Here's the thing. Housing units per capita ratio is _growing_. There's now more housing than ever, and it's better than ever.

      The issue is the _concentration_ of housing. Pro-urbanist policies create economic forces that push people to live near ever-densifying cities. While the countryside and smaller cities just die out. The fix for this is to stop these forces, not try to "build more housing".

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by shilly ( 142940 )

      Someone has been reading their Sam Bowman! I tend to agree

    • We have similar NIMBYism* in the US. Empowering local gov't results in local gov't throttling their population growth. It's not easy to overhaul the power structure to force them to build, as no town wants to give up power and thus fight like hell to keep it.

      But I also feel people need to spread out. There are empty houses in the rust belt. We can't and shouldn't stuff most our population in a few favorite cities. I can't believe sardine-canning is the only way. A few nukes on these favorite cities would si

  • There are solutions (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Baron_Yam ( 643147 ) on Monday October 28, 2024 @01:35PM (#64900299)

    1) stop stigmatizing motherhood like it's easy. It's easy to become a mother (given the right functional reproductive bits), but not easy to be a good mother. (Or a good father, but less is required of us between conception and the first few months of life outside the womb).

    2) subsidize the hell out of childcare. If kids are such an important resource for society, we should socialize the expense of raising them. Not just education, but sports and camp and whatever. Parents should be able to parent evenings, nights, and weekends while knowing they have no-hassle options for having the kids cared for while they work.

    3) subsidize the hell out of surrogacy. If some healthy woman wants to make a living for a decade by popping out other people's kids, let them.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      4) Allow more immigrants and tell the bigots to STFU. They are not going to ruin your wonderful way of life (cough) and they rarely eat pets, despite what tinted trolls claim.

      • 4) Allow more immigrants and tell the bigots to STFU.

        And what do you tell the non-bigots?

        Contrary to popular belief, the majority of the resistance isn't about immigration, it's about *illegal* immigration.

        Being against law breaking isn't part of the definition of bigotry.

        • That's what they say, until you start discussing increasing legal immigration. Then the story changes.

          Since this is about the UK (this is also true in the US) we can look for example at what happened with the Windrush Generation [jcwi.org.uk] who were and are people of color, members of the Commonwealth and in fact under British rule, who were imported by Britain as part of an effort to bolster its labor force after the Second World War. These legal immigrants, in fact eagerly sought by the British government, have been

        • Contrary to popular belief, the majority of the resistance isn't about immigration, it's about *illegal* immigration.

          Na, I don't believe you.
          Sure- some idealists really do believe that.
          The majority? Na. They're the same ones that fight each and every path to legal immigration.
          I hope you're not one of those cowards dressing your dislike of those dirty brown people in a veneer of idealism.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Tablizer ( 95088 )

          > Contrary to popular belief, the majority of the resistance isn't about immigration, it's about *illegal* immigration.

          I doubt that. Most the things Don and other bigots accuse "illegals" of are not differentiators between legal and illegal.

          Pet eating? Why would illegals eat more pets than legals? (BS, by the way).

          Emptying insane asylums? A country is more likely to "get rid of" those if they come legally because the illegals can illegally just wander back into the original country. (It's BS by the way.)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by RobinH ( 124750 )
      None of that will really "fix" the problem so long as we're telling young people, and particularly young women, that being a parent is "ick" or hard, or not worth it. Yes, there are times when it's very icky and there are times when it's really hard, but the truth is that it's still worth it and rewarding (I say this as a parent of 3 kids). What's happening right now is that twenty-somethings (both men and women) are being told to put off having kids for years and years to focus on their careers. This gi
    • Women wanted to work with pay equal to men, that's fine. But something happened along the way: both parents now have to work just to maybe make ends meet.

      I guess I was lucky but around here the husband worked and it was enough to raise a family. Homemaker is a fully legitimate title, but either no one wants to be one or more likely the family simply can't afford to have a parent stay home.

      How much more can you subsidize child care really? We all pay into the school system, along with a bulk of taxes t

      • But something happened along the way:

        Yep. Women flooded the labor pool and drove down wages for everyone. That lead to the situation where two workers made the same amount that a sole worker used to make.

    • But here in the real world motherhood isn't just not stigmatized it's held up on a massive pedestal.

      What we don't do though is provide literally any significant or useful long-term support for mothers who aren't extremely wealthy.

      This is because 100 years ago women and children were property. That was a trick to make men think they owned something when they didn't. But it did also mean that the family unit was basically stuck taking care of and raising their kids more or less on their own because af

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by DarkOx ( 621550 )

      I am not nearly convinced (3) is a good idea. Even leaving all the issues of faith aside, its like assisted suicide in a way, there is just so much potential for abuse.

      I don't want to live in a society where some women feel they have birth other peoples children, because it is that or homelessness..

      We absolutely need to do 1, and 2, though and curb immigration at the same time. If we don't western society is really doomed. Oh and spare me the Christian-nationalist bull crap. Even in the USA we are already

  • Huzzah! (Score:3)

    by AnotherBlackHat ( 265897 ) on Monday October 28, 2024 @01:36PM (#64900309) Homepage

    Glad to hear that, in the UK at least, overpopulation is being dealt with.

    • Shrinking populations usually result in stagnating local economies. Maybe there's a "proper way to shrink" but nobody has discovered it yet (including my E.D. doctor).

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by znrt ( 2424692 )

      it's just fertility rate going down, total population is increasing. luckily, capitalism isn't picky about race or origin as long as it gets the ever increasing meat it needs to function. brits ... do seem to be a bit picky lately, afaik. tough call.

      • The fertility rate is going down everywhere not just rich countries, its just poor countries aren't below replacement rate yet, but the world is very close.

        from here https://ourworldindata.org/fer... [ourworldindata.org] pick for example Sudan (or Ethiopia) the fertility rate was 7 per woman in 1970 now it is 4.3. The world fertility rate is now 2.3 and 2.1 is replacement rate. The world population growth will lag fertility rates because in the past the population was growing so fewer old people are dying than babies being born

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Bongo ( 13261 )

      I think it's humbling how little we understand about living systems and life itself, that the question of calculating the planet's correct carrying capacity, has been around for 60 or 70 years, if not more, and depending on who you read and what data and reasoning they use, the estimate of the correct caring capacity is anything from 500 million to 100 billion, and nobody seems to know how to reduce that degree of uncertainty.

      • That's because carrying capacity isn't a static number.
        It's based on enough variables for a technological society that it may as well be chaotic.

  • This is a Good Thing (Score:5, Insightful)

    by machineghost ( 622031 ) on Monday October 28, 2024 @01:37PM (#64900311)

    Our planet is massively overpopulated as is, and we're on the brink of making it uninhabitable for all future generations. Less humans being born is a *good* thing!

    • Long term yes, but short term we have economic systems that are insane; they require eternal growth to support our standard of living.

      We should be looking at gradually reducing the growth rate and then letting it go slightly negative... But it's crashing. It turns out that when you give people a choice of kids or more stuff... If they don't need those kids for support in retirement they're going to choose the stuff. That's on top of dropping fertility due to pollution.

      TL;DR: the domestic birthrate is too

      • I would say the the economic system is half the reason for the birth rate. If the price of housing for instance was stable or slightly negative more couples would be shacking up and having kids. Most people can only afford to buy a house now when their career is well established and in their mid/late 30s.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dvice ( 6309704 )

      Population does not grow because we are having more kids. Population grows because we are living longer than before.

      This should give you a good impression of the situation in Europe (and North America) in comparison to for example Africa. In Europe there are more old people than young, while in Africa there are a lot more kids than old people.
      https://www.statista.com/stati... [statista.com]

      And this graph will show how 25-64 year olds have have increased from 1 billion to 4 billion, while the amount of younger has stayed p

      • You're mistaking the result for the cause, i.e. the population is growing because people are young... well, hopefully you can see the error in reasoning there!

        The fact is, the birth rates in sub-Saharan Africa are through the roof, i.e. 4 to 6.6 births per woman, on average. Those Africans gotta be the charmingest, sexiest people on the planet. Maybe we should be getting them to come over to teach us their seductive ways?!
    • Our planet could easily support 20 billion people with the current technology we have. The problem is our society is built around the concept of if you don't work you don't eat and after 45 years of non-stop automation and process improvement we don't have enough work to go around.

      The problem isn't that we don't have the room for all these people it's that we don't have any place to put them in society. Hell just as waymo cars alone are going to put six or seven million people out of work very shortly.

  • 1.2 x 1.2 = 1.44 (Score:3)

    by nikkipolya ( 718326 ) on Monday October 28, 2024 @01:39PM (#64900319)

    Birth rate in Italy x Birth rate in Spain = Birth rate in England and Wales! Is that a coincidence or is there a hidden meaning?

  • Combine the hysteria with the fact that it takes far more money to live than what is being supplied to the lower echelons of most western societies, and then we have to wonder why people aren't having kids? Not to mention most of us are still reeling from our own shit childhoods. Why would we want to bring more into this hellhole world filled with bile, hatred, shitty attitudes and worse intelligence? Fuck that. We're being told constantly that we're all going to be replaced by machines. You want to bring k

    • Re:"THE WORLD IS DYING FROM OVERPOPULATION!" (Score:4, Insightful)

      by nikkipolya ( 718326 ) on Monday October 28, 2024 @02:24PM (#64900539)

      Life was not very great a century ago too. There were lots of uncertainties: constant wars, famines, plagues, unemployment, low life expectancy... Yet the birth rate was high. People willingly wanted to have many children, in spite of all the uncertainties.

      Is it because avg. education levels were very low, so parents didn't have to worry much about the cost of education? And health care was as good as absent, whether rich or poor. People squeezed into tiny houses, as they didn't own many things. And more kids meant more household income and a hedge against unemployment and starvation.

      Now things have changed. We have to send our kids to college and beyond. We now have health care, and we have to worry about the cost of future health care for ourselves and our kids as well. Houses have progressively become larger, and we cannot think of living in tiny homes anymore. Each kid needs his/her private room. Having many kids is not any kind of hedge now. If anything, it's a liability. Quite naturally, people are avoiding accumulating liabilities.

      • Life was not very great a century ago too. There were lots of uncertainties: constant wars, famines, plagues, unemployment, low life expectancy... Yet the birth rate was high. People willingly wanted to have many children, in spite of all the uncertainties.

        Is it because avg. education levels were very low, so parents didn't have to worry much about the cost of education? And health care was as good as absent, whether rich or poor. People squeezed into tiny houses, as they didn't own many things. And more kids meant more household income and a hedge against unemployment and starvation.

        Now things have changed. We have to send our kids to college and beyond. We now have health care, and we have to worry about the cost of future health care for ourselves and our kids as well. Houses have progressively become larger, and we cannot think of living in tiny homes anymore. Each kid needs his/her private room. Having many kids is not any kind of hedge now. If anything, it's a liability. Quite naturally, people are avoiding accumulating liabilities.

        A century and more ago there were more and stronger social ties, both within families and between them. You knew your neighbors and helped them out when you could, knowing that they would help you in turn. You probably had multiple levels of family member living with you in the same house, which is still the practice in many places around the world. The level of education was lower, life was harder, yet they were far happier than modern people are and weren't all being drugged into a stupor for depression a

      • "People willingly wanted to have many children, in spite of all the uncertainties."

        People willingly wanted to have many children, because of all the uncertainties. If you had a few kids then hopefully at least one of them would look after you when you can no longer do it yourself.

  • Good and this is why (Score:3)

    by couchslug ( 175151 ) on Monday October 28, 2024 @01:57PM (#64900413)

    Population growth mostly benefits rich developers. It promptly ruins formerly desirable areas.

  • The population will eventually decrease (Score:3)

    by TheStatsMan ( 1763322 ) on Monday October 28, 2024 @02:02PM (#64900441)

    England is kinda the canary in the coal mine for the west at large, but we really need to start thinking about solutions to our Ponzi scheme economy that don't rely on immigration or some other form of population growth.

    We either do it before fossil fuels run out, or after, but waiting until after is going to mean a lot more death.

    • England is kinda the canary in the coal mine for the west at large

      Japan's situation is far more serious. Their birth rate is decreasing a lot faster than most other nations and people there have a long life expectancy.

      • England is kinda the canary in the coal mine for the west at large

        Japan's situation is far more serious. Their birth rate is decreasing a lot faster than most other nations and people there have a long life expectancy.

        Another one to look at is South Korea. In another century there may not be enough people for there to be a South Korea, at least not as it is now.

    • It's not really so much a lot more death, just not enough births to replace them. I'm fine with it and wish the economy wasn't currently 'designed' such that everything must always be expanding to remain profitable - It's a stupid premise.

      • If we outgrow our ability to convert fossil fuels to food there most certainly will be a lot of death. I think people underestimate the magnitude of death that can result from famine.

  • Happening everywhere (Score:4, Interesting)

    by dskoll ( 99328 ) on Monday October 28, 2024 @02:03PM (#64900451) Homepage

    This is happening everywhere, not just in developed economies. Go to Our World in Data [ourworldindata.org] and check. Fertility rates are falling virtually everywhere. Just to pick a few random examples: Botswana went from 6.4 in 1950 to 2.7 in 2023. Haiti went from 6.3 to 2.7. Kenya from 7.4 to 3.3. The world average went from 4.9 to 2.3.

    In the long run, stopping population growth is a good thing. In the short to medium term, it's going to cause a lot of economic turmoil.

    • I know I have been looking at the same stats, but I think we need a lot of economic turmoil without it we will not change. I am coming to the conclusion that without a solid slap to the face to snap us out of the ruling classes economic delusions nothing will change.

      We now have such amazing technology now that we should be so much more efficient, but because of our economies endless need consume more, the diversion of resources into screwing each other over (e.g. crypto, licensing everything, dynamic pricin

  • Birth rates in pretty much every country in the world are decreasing.

    Are we going to get a slashdot article for each of the 195 countries in the world having a declining birth rate?

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by skam240 ( 789197 )

      The global population is projected to go up another 2 billion over the next half century https://ourworldindata.org/un-... [ourworldindata.org] so not so much on the "pretty much every country".

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Tyr07 ( 8900565 )

        Decreasing, not negative. Important distinction.

      • They are not contradictory statements. First the fertility rates are currently 2.3 (2.1 is needed for a decrease) second population decrease will lag fertility rates because a population that had a greater than replacement fertility rate since a larger population is giving birth. Lets use real data from here https://ourworldindata.org/gra... [ourworldindata.org]

        lets say people from the 1950 are the ones dying off, there was 2.5 billion, that is there are 3 times more people now. so even if each woman on average only produces en

  • Same Old Story (Score:3)

    by organgtool ( 966989 ) on Monday October 28, 2024 @02:06PM (#64900469)
    Another one of these stories, another group of comments blaming economics. Right off the bat, let's get this out of the way: many nations have offered economic incentives, some fairly significant, and none of them have managed to increase birth rates by any appreciable amount. And birth rates were already plummeting back when the economy was much stronger, so that line of reasoning isn't consistent with the data.

    I have a ton of reasons for why I believe birth rates are lowering but the biggest reason is the one I've realized most recently: society has gotten to a point where parenthood is almost an afterthought. Instead of fostering ambitions of parenthood in children, we focus almost exclusively on preparing them for their careers. People are spending more years of their life in higher education and establishing a career before having children. And for a growing number of people, this means focusing less on serious relationships, let alone preparing for raising a family, while they become accustomed to living alone or in casual relationships. And when that happens, you can become set in your ways and being in a serious relationship will become even more challenging. A quick look at the numbers will show that the number of people even interested in being in a relationship is plummeting, so it's no surprise that fewer people are having kids. This is mostly a social issue, not an economic one!

    As others have pointed out, a decrease in the population may not be the worst thing to happen to humanity, but that's only the case if it's gradual. We need enough young people to feed our aging population applesauce and change our diapers. And for many of them, they'll have had no prior experience doing that since they haven't had kids.

    • Another one of these stories, another group of comments blaming economics. Right off the bat, let's get this out of the way: many nations have offered economic incentives, some fairly significant, and none of them have managed to increase birth rates by any appreciable amount. And birth rates were already plummeting back when the economy was much stronger, so that line of reasoning isn't consistent with the data.

      I have a ton of reasons for why I believe birth rates are lowering but the biggest reason is the one I've realized most recently: society has gotten to a point where parenthood is almost an afterthought. Instead of fostering ambitions of parenthood in children, we focus almost exclusively on preparing them for their careers. People are spending more years of their life in higher education and establishing a career before having children. And for a growing number of people, this means focusing less on serious relationships, let alone preparing for raising a family, while they become accustomed to living alone or in casual relationships. And when that happens, you can become set in your ways and being in a serious relationship will become even more challenging. A quick look at the numbers will show that the number of people even interested in being in a relationship is plummeting, so it's no surprise that fewer people are having kids. This is mostly a social issue, not an economic one!

      As others have pointed out, a decrease in the population may not be the worst thing to happen to humanity, but that's only the case if it's gradual. We need enough young people to feed our aging population applesauce and change our diapers. And for many of them, they'll have had no prior experience doing that since they haven't had kids.

      Am glad to hear others making these arguments, I am continually surprised at the proportion of people who think this is some kind of economic issue rather than a failing of our societies and cultures to inculcate the values and traditions that are necessary for them to continue. The comfort and constant entertainment available to people in the modern world is an extremely nice thing, but it also causes people to become who are not vigilant of human tendencies to become soft and settled down into a pillowy p

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Tyr07 ( 8900565 )

        It's a combination, but the specific economic issues are a failing in our societies.
        What's the benefit?

        Oh, you want a family? Okay, but then they're financially responsible for everything including your partner and if they leave you they take your finances and family with them and you're just left with the obligation. Government funding will aide your family, you just get the bill. Want to get married and have kids? Hm...no.

        There's one of the factors right there.

  • Uhm... does that mean they need to allow more immigrants to keep everything in balance? - Devil's advocate
  • https://worldhappiness.report/... [worldhappiness.report]
    Our youth have miserable lives compared to us. Housing is a huge expense because we older people limited the housing supply so that our houses would become more valuable. Then when we saw that there were not enough babies being born did we look at how little consumption our youth had? We might have tried to alleviate our guilt by subsidizing some daycare spots for the poorest of mothers but what we really did was massively increase immigration. That made housing worse,

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Tyr07 ( 8900565 )

      People want to keep pretending it's not the economy while they're profiting from it, but it really, really really is.

      If I had a house in a nice place with a backyard, 3-6 bedrooms, kids sounds like fun and fulfilling. Teachers salary in the 70s could get that.
      Now you can be an educated professional and foreign investments basically assure you that you're going to be paying someones loan on a house at a crippling rate prevent you from getting one or living in a tiny apartment

      Why would you want to bring in mo

  • The trend line hasn't changed much since 2016. Next year it will "plunge" again to 1.40 or 1.39.

  • Fix the cost of living problems adults are facing today and they'll be having kiddos in no time.

    People who are barely keeping up with the cost of living are not going to add to their financial
    misery by mixing children into the equation. It's also selfish and downright stupid to start having
    kiddos if you can barely afford rent and groceries as it is.

    ( Someone should send Elon the memo since he can't seem to figure out why folks aren't having kids )

    I can personally attest to how miserable childhood is going t

  • Just import all those unwanted republican children,

  • Endless growth is impossible
    We need steady-state sustainability

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