Children Aren’t Worth Very Much—That’s Why We No Longer Make Many
23rd February 2015
A basic truth of the modern world, which is why you don’t hear much from the Malthusians and Zero Population Growth chicken-littles these days.
The nineteenth and twentieth centuries have been characterized by a massive decline in fertility, beginning in rich western countries and spreading all over the world. It is a transformation that is still underway in poor countries today.
Except that it’s not a decline in fertility — people are just as fertile now as ever, if not more so — but a decline in people exercising their fertility … which they can more easily do because of improved baby-prevention technologies and the feminist cult of abortion-on-demand.
In the modern world, children are an economic drain, not an economic benefit; rather like a very expensive pet. Only where children are an economic benefit, such as qualifying single women to claim government benefits and establish their own households, do we see levels of childbearing that compare with historical norms.