There are only a few options and none are great.
- scandi style childcare system, would need tax rises (although frankly if we stopped funding boat rapists and stupid stuff we could do it.)
- tax breaks for mums at home, I think the Finns do this?
- making it acceptable to have a mum at home - would need higher wages for the working partner.
In Poland we just give the family 1500 zł for childcare if both parents are working, 2000 if the child is retarded.
It works for now with child care costs dropping down significantly from an average of 1000 pln to near zero in most counties.
The question is will our government bother to revalorize the payments to keep up with inflation. The program also has built in price controls but the maximum price is way above the market rate so it's not a problem for now.
tax breaks for mums at home, I think the Finns do this?
- making it acceptable to have a mum at home - would need higher wages for the working partner.
We have these things in the US, for many/ most people. There are tax credits and deductions for children that singles do not have.
And a mom at home is still the "ideal" here - the largest reasons that both parents work are need, marginal improvement in lifestyle, and the fact that many women make as much or more than men because they are competent - and no tax credit is going to comp for a high-earner.
It's often overlooked how much people date within their own social class. A high income woman is very likely to be dating a high income man, and vice versa. Even if the woman isn't making as much as the man, there are good chances that the middle-to-upper class woman works as a status indicator. She's not going to stop working to raise a kid unless her social clique begins to show favor to it. This is probably the biggest cause of fertility suppression in educated women. An uneducated woman working a generic low status job incurs little to no loss of social status in staying home. This inevitably puts a pretty strong limit on the number of children she'll want.
What is the long run effect of divorce on birthrates? A study published in March 2026 found that those whose parents divorced have significantly fewer children themselves. Because of this, even divorces that happened long ago continue to drag fertility down today:
It was already well-established that those whose parents divorced are more likely to get divorced themselves. How would this impact fertility? One theory was those from divorced families would have shorter relationships and fewer kids. Another theory said they'd have more partners and more kids. It turns out that those whose parents divorced have both a higher rate of childlessness and smaller family sizes when they do have children than those whose parents stayed together. The results confirmed the first hypothesis: Because those who came from divorced families were more likely to experience divorce themselves, their own relationships often didn't last long enough to produce children, and in other cases they saw their fertility cut short.
The decrease in fertility among men who came from divorced families (-0.24) appears to be more extreme as compared to the decrease in fertility among women who came from divorced families (-0.14). Affects also seem to be influenced by child's age at divorce:
Total fertility rate for each Asian subgroup in the US in 2025 based on age structure and fertility estimates from the 2024 census ACS estimates and provisional CDC natality for 2025.
East Asian (China, Mongolia, both Koreas, Japan, Taiwan): 1.00
Southeast Asian (Vietnam, Philippines, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Myanmar, Singapore, Malaysia, Brunei, Indonesia): 1.07
Total U.S. Asian: 1.20
South Asian (India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Bhutan): 1.40
Central Asian (Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan): 2.04
Afghans are estimated at a TFR of 2.49, so we can assume that other Central Asian groups are below replacement.
For South Asians, here are some more specific estimates:
No data I could find for Sir Lankans or Bhutanese.
Of course, this is based off of particular datasets; others have found higher or lower estimates for Asian subgroups that I've posted before in this thread here.
Not surprisingly, Yemeni TFR is the highest and Afghan/Syrian is above replacement rate. They don't have much affect on the overall population as their numbers are very small, thankfully.
Does anyone know where Turkish TFR is that low? They have lower TFR than Turks in Turkey (which is around 1.2-1.3, i think.)
I do t think we have that . Certainly not at any kind of level that would even it out. Median wage is 32k ish before tax (I know, yuropoor!), so take home is about 2k a month. Childcare for one full time is 1500 a month. Two kids in childcare is more than most working class can afford, even with the free hours and all that stuff. People space their kids out so they only have one in nursery at a time. When people also start later, that means they have fewer overall - I have heard women say a million times that they’d have liked another but they get to the point their youngest is just at school and they’re late thirties and can’t face the lack of sleep etc again, and their oldest is now 8 or so and it’s a big gap.
The scandi type systems work well, but they’re expensive. But… if we topped paying for fancy hotels for immigrants I bet we could do it and we wouldn’t have to disadvantage the elderly. Who have paid into the system and generally worked since 15-16 as well. I do not begrudge boomers their pensions and healthcare, they paid in,
Well maybe, but also maybe you just accept that paying the right people to breed is an investment in the country? Just doling out bennies for anyone who has kids doesn’t seem to be optimal, but paying for babies, if they’re the right babies, may not be bad.
As for whether high earning men go after high earning women, I think ‘to a point’ the relationship holds. For working /professional types I think it mainly does. When you get to the crazy money, the trophy wife appears. And there’s also a subset who have never worked and live off family money, but they aren’t generally marrying some random shelf stacker from Wigan, they marry within their own social circles, the bulk of people marry within their own social class.
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Not surprisingly, Yemeni TFR is the highest and Afghan/Syrian is above replacement rate. They don't have much affect on the overall population as their numbers are very small, thankfully.
Does anyone know where Turkish TFR is that low? They have lower TFR than Turks in Turkey (which is around 1.2-1.3, i think.)
Danes are bizarrely fertile -- they have the highest TFR in Western Europe (France doesn't count because their TFR is artificially inflated by Muslims and Africans, and Iceland only has 300k-400k people) at 1.51 in 2025, and in the U.S. they top out all European ethnic groups. Fascinating.
As for Turks, I can't speak to the disparity between U.S. Turks and Turks in Turkey, but I can tell you that Turkish TFR is often inflated in European countries because half of the "Turks" there are Syrians and Kurds.
For the rest of the right-hand column, I think that the Lebanese, Moroccan, Egyptian, Armenian, and Jordanian TFRs are all good previews of where these countries' TFRs will likely end up within the next decade as they complete their fertility transitions.
I'm honestly shocked that U.S. Palestinian TFR is that low; their last recorded TFR was 3.36 in 2020 in the Palestinian territories themselves. Maybe it's because the Palestinians in the U.S. are disproportionately educated professionals and/or Christians? Or maybe since their cause is so deeply entwined with broader left-wing politics, their kids absorb a lot of left-wing culture (including anti-natalism) by default? Who knows.
For Israeli TFR, non-Haredi Jews in the U.S. have extremely low TFR, so I guess Israeli Jews sort of acculturate into mainstream American Jewish culture and adopt lower TFR norms in the process.
Afghan TFR seems like it's probably torn between recent unassimilated arrivals who have 4 kids and more assimilated second-gen professionals who probably have closer to 2. Ditto for Iraqis.
No idea what to make of Syrians. I believe that their TFR in the U.S. is fairly consistent with their TFR in European countries but likely lower than their TFR in Syria proper (no exact data, though). It's interesting that the Muslim-majority Levantine Arab countries who have experienced recent instability (Syria, Iraq, Palestine) all have notably higher TFR than their more stable neighbors (Egypt and Jordan). Lebanon is the exception because of its large Christian population pulling TFR down even despite unrest.
Birth rates are substantially higher for married women than unmarried, so the steep decline in marriage over the decades is one of the major culprits for crashing TFR in first- and second-world countries.
Birth rates are substantially higher for married women than unmarried, so the steep decline in marriage over the decades is one of the major culprits for crashing TFR in first- and second-world countries.
Curious that male marriage rates trail female marriage rates almost perfectly by 10%. I'd argue this can largely be explained by the natural higher rate of males at birth (5% or so depending on population) and males marrying about 3 years later on average (which would especially raise male marriage rates when the average age of first marriage is over 30 years old, more common today and less common in the past).
That tidbit aside, this is absolute catastrophe for the nation. This basically restricts married years of potential childbirth for almost all women to less than 10 years before fertility issues are all but assured. It's also flying in the face of often assumed notion that people get married in college. These numbers are almost certainly propped by up the hyper religious elements of the country.
What? Maybe it's different in america but here most look to settle after college, not during. Even if they pick up a gf that they end up marrying, they wait for it till past college. Marriage often precedes buying a house together or making babies (for either religious or legal reasons) which is something you do after you get a job, not before.
That aside, I don't think this is the cause, but a symptom. People can't find longterm partners, therefore they don't have anyone to marry, therefore you won't get babies. It is not like all these people that don't marry before 30 magically get married soon after. The 75% of women won't get married late and have fewer babies, they just don't marry and get babies at all. The problem is people being unable to couple, not low marriage rates.
What? Maybe it's different in america but here most look to settle after college, not during. Even if they pick up a gf that they end up marrying, they wait for it till past college. Marriage often precedes buying a house together or making babies (for either religious or legal reasons) which is something you do after you get a job, not before.
That aside, I don't think this is the cause, but a symptom. People can't find longterm partners, therefore they don't have anyone to marry, therefore you won't get babies. It is not like all these people that don't marry before 30 magically get married soon after. The 75% of women won't get married late and have fewer babies, they just don't marry and get babies at all. The problem is people being unable to couple, not low marriage rates.
It depends on where you are in America, but in my age group (Gen Z), unless you're religious or from a traditional migrant background, there tends to be an attitude that around 28-30 is when you should seriously start pursuing marriage/long-term partnerships/children. Which is of course disastrous for fertility rates, but the overwhelming cultural zeitgeist that your 20s are the new teens and your 30s are when the actual "adulting" happens means that you're unfortunately not going to see a shift back to normalcy anytime soon.
Yes, that's what I said, you're the one coming up with the notion people get married in college.
And besides marrying happening later, coupling also happens less often which means less people get married in the first place (you can't marry if you don't have a girlfriend). People don't just delay their marriage by 5-10 years, they don't have someone to marry. I can also imagine the housing market having an influence on marrying. If you're ready to buy a house together but you're not married yet, it's an impulse to get married for financial reasons. With the current housing market you won't get a house anytime soon, and as long as your gf coughs up her half of the rent it's fine.
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Not surprisingly, Yemeni TFR is the highest and Afghan/Syrian is above replacement rate. They don't have much affect on the overall population as their numbers are very small, thankfully.
Does anyone know where Turkish TFR is that low? They have lower TFR than Turks in Turkey (which is around 1.2-1.3, i think.)
At first glance I was going to just do the fun racism count (12 out of 39 if you count Czechs and Italians) but fucking Yemenis are darker than most Ethiopians, y'all are really trying to juice your white numbers.
At first glance I was going to just do the fun racism count (12 out of 39 if you count Czechs and Italians) but fucking Yemenis are darker than most Ethiopians, y'all are really trying to juice your white numbers.
Syrians etc are counted as White because of Jesus (seriously, look it up). Israelis are counted as white because majority of Jews in US are ashkenazim. I don't know why turks are counted as white (i suspect same reason as Syrians) but they are mostly greek anyway.
