Direct financial incentives are defeated by much stronger social trends like helicopter parenting and the changing importance of having children, says the Financial Times’ John Burn-Murdoch.
LONDON: Between 1980 and 2019, the world’s most developed countries roughly tripled their real-terms per capita spending on child benefits, subsidised childcare,In egalitarian Finland, home to some of the most family-friendly policies in the world, the fertility rate has fallen by a third since 2010. In Hungary, famous for its extravagant payouts aimed at boosting the nation’s number of babies, fewer children were born last year than at any time since records began.
But when it comes to the heavy lifting on birth rates, culture is far more powerful than policy, often exerting its influence several steps before the point at which childcare costs might become a serious consideration. In 1965, mothers of young children in developed countries spent an average of just over an hour a day doing activities with their kids. By 2018 that had risen to three hours, and in Korea approaching four. Korea’s fertility rate has plummeted to 0.72, while in France, where parenting is much less hands-on, birth rates have held up well and now stand at 1.8.
A study last year by Lyman Stone, a demographic economist and senior fellow at the Canadian think-tank Cardus, shows that the competing priorities that most erode birth rates among young women are the desires to grow as a person and to focus on their career. Worries over the demands of helicopter parenting also rank high - childcare costs come in at a lowly 14th place.
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