Our ancestors were not very rich yet managed to have many babies.
You don't HAVE to pay women to have kids if they want them.
In the developed world, we have our priorities screwed up.
That's why we're not having kids.
Right now, the most fertile years of a woman's life are spent in school or building a career.
I'm not knocking education or careers.
But we might consider a new way of living: whereby we encourage women to have kids earlier in life, and then go to school and have careers.
Of course, that would assume a population of similarly-aged men who have steady jobs and are ready to take on parenting.
Unfortunately, there are still too many men out there who live like adolescents well into their twenties.
You can't pay people to be parents if they don't set up their lives to be parents. And in the Developed World, the body of people who should be settling down to have kids aren't doing it.
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Update
Related: Will Russia come back to life?
It is hard to exaggerate the demographic straits that Mother Russia finds itself in. According to the projections of the UN Population Division—we are speaking here of the so-called “low variant,” historically the most accurate—the Russian population will shrink by more than 30 million by mid-century if current trends continue. The population will age rapidly, from an average age of 37.9 in 2010 to and average age of 49 by 2050. In other words, most Russians will be beyond their childbearing years, and Russia’s demographic fate will be sealed.
Vladimir Putin contemplates a holy relic.
Vladimir Putin contemplates a holy relic.
The economy will follow the population into the tank. No economy can thrive when a population is moribund, filling more coffins than cradles.
