In past the motive for marriage was sex and companionship which was frowned in society if out of wedlock. Now it is not frowned upon. The old constraint is gone and we need to add new constraints if we want to solve the problem.
Kurtzerkag has a good video about it: https://youtu.be/TYhNHX372ek?si=5ESz3ykXykyUcmYg
Good wages, enough free time, affordable housing, free child care, universal healthcare.
That’s the better way.
There plenty of people who want to marry and get kids but they don’t have enough time and money.
Now it‘s easy to have sex without the risk of getting pregnant unwanted.
So know you have to provide the right environment so people want to have children.
Back then the choice was much more limited.
Also most children died before adulthood.
If you are affluent with each additional kid the risks more rapidly outweigh the rewards. Since all of us are generally more affluent now it is quite sensible to avoid having many kids.
The history around childbirth is really very brutal and grim. We should be having less kids. It's a positive sign for our species, like having less blood spilled over religious conflicts.
People who have kids because they don't know what else to do with their lives are probably raising children that are going to turn into unpleasant adults. I'm not sure why I would want to incentivize more kids where I would not relish the parents undergoing mitosis either. If someone wants to reproduce have at it, but why should I be excited by this? If "hell is other people" then what are other people's kids?
If you want to spawn children under the theory that they can sew my clothes be my guest. I assume you did not mean to confine this benefit to yourself given the other things you lumped it with.
I have no interest in bringing a soul into this world to satisfy anyone's economic interest. If you disagree that's your prerogative. Historically the only thing more dangerous than having kids is trying to control who has kids. So do what you will. Just don't ask I be excited for you to raise children under such a flimsy theory.
Nordic countries did this. Birthrates have been declining regardless. Even Gulf Arab countries which are an even more enviable welfare state, and have considerable religious-cultural emphasis on childraising, too, have seen declining birthrates.
Do you aware how expensive Nordic countries are to live in and have social life even counting all the free stuff?
And gulf arab countries are basically even worse in this regard.
Very high educated well earning women can offload their duties to others even the getting pregnant part these days. Educated women also tend to have a higher desire for large families, I know families with large amounts of engineers/lawyers/doctors where almost all get more than 2 children.
But your proposal really f's over people with real trauma and medical conditions that prevent them from having kids. I've met several people that don't want kids due to the trauma they endured as children or men and women that are just infertile.
Also various things get cut in half e.g. SALT cap phase-out income limit, mortgage deduction limit that MFS is almost never worth it except in a few niche situations and it acts as a last resort option if you are no longer on speaking terms with your spouse but haven't divorced yet, yet need to file taxes for the year.
As a secondary problem, people (traditionally women, but with a two-income household it could be either party) often already can't leave a relationship because they can't support themselves and their child(ren) without the other half and so they're stuck in relationships that might either not work for them or that are downright abusive. With a big tax on leaving your partner... oof, why in the world would you want more lock-in?! Is this a manosphere control thing that I'm not aware of?
The population crisis is that the current population isn't sustainable: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_Overshoot_Day (and most of those haven't a rich lifestyle yet; most people on HN are in the top 10% worldwide income). We need either to become more sustainable per capita, have fewer capita, or get more earths. Any solution is fine. Otherwise, we'll run out, and the remaining 90% of people get a lot of undeserved worldsuck
Note that we are already doing what you want: world population is projected to increase by 25% (!) in the next 75 years. At the same time, we're lifting people out of poverty (https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-population-in-ex...) which causes them to be able to buy more stuff, live richer lives, and be less sustainable (e.g. visible on a CO2 chart for the same countries: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita?c...). Which is fair right? Why shouldn't they get to live like us. But we can't go on like this; something has to give.
More people isn't helpful for at least another century. Let's evaluate the baby-making situation in 2100 and work on the real problems we face today
by accepting that it is unsolvable. you will not fix it with incentives, disincentives, and government-funded nagging. fixing the population crisis requires undoing urbanization and education. good luck with that.
First, I don’t think we can reduce past marriage motives in the way you describe as different cultures have had varying views of marriage and sex throughout human history.
Next, has it been proven that monetary incentives increase childbirth? I thought I’ve read things showing that it doesn’t do a lot to influence birth rates. E.g., Sweden has some pretty generous time off and support policies for having kids and their birth rate is really not much higher than other less supportive countries of comparable status (wealthy, developed countries).
Finally, I dispute the idea of a “problem” existing in the first place. I think the long-term survival of the human race is more likely with a smaller population than at present. When I see news about birth rates plummeting in third world countries as they develop, I feel relieved, not worried.
I think it’s easier to deal with population loss than it is to deal with overpopulation, too much carbon emissions due to high population, habitat destruction due to continued human habitat expansion, etc.
My mini-conspiracy theory would be that it’s mostly corporate interests that don’t want the population to go down. During the plague, the population was cut dramatically and as a result wages were higher for 100 years due to a labor shortage. Corporations just want more underpaid labor and more customers. I submit the idea that maybe individuals aren’t actually better off with a constantly increasing population.
I’ve also noticed that, at least in the US, the political cohort most concerned about solving low childbirth is doing the least to support higher childbirth. They disinvest in education and are against no-tuition community college and university, they are against universal no-tuition childcare, they are against paid parental leave (the US mandates zero days of paid parental leave on a federal level), they are against medically necessary abortions in emergency situations during child-rearing, they are against immigration which also increases US population and birth rate, they are against universal healthcare, they’re against sustainable population growth through urbanism, public transit, and renewable energy, preferring single family home car-dependent and environmental destructive sprawl development.
In other words, find your political representative in your jurisdiction that talks a lot about needing to have more babies and see if they’ve ever talked about raising the minimum wage or taxing billionaires to fund better access to education, nutrition, child care, time off, healthcare, public transit, etc.