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There are countries with significantly more maternity leave and public health care, still with low fertility.
Could you be tempted to have four or more children if the government canceled / retired your student loans / and or mortgage debt? No income tax for the rest of your life? The elderly giving up their seats for you on public transit, boy scouts, police and other public servents saluting you? You get the veterans and first responders discount at Lowe's?
I did not take out loans. They have so far offered $0 payments to my husband for having children in his household. We will be in bad shape if they rescind that, but it's not like we can take the kids back.
Maybe! But that sounds like the sort of thing that wouldn't be long term sustainable, due to the market adjusting.
I'm pretty sure I'm net negative in this respect already. And to the extent that in the future I make more money while having less children at home, this will not be good for them. If they're going to subsidize me later, it should be directly, not through the government.
That sounds embarrassing and awful. But, also, my area doesn't have functional public transport.
Ugh, no, that sounds like a negative thing
Meh. I don't consider things to be on sale until they're at least 30% off, but also I don't think we've bought anything from Lowe's in years, and don't have any plans to do that. I bought a bag once with a Peace Corps discount of 40% off or something. Best bag I've ever bought, I still use it every day. Apparently there are already teacher discounts that I don't bother using.
I was trying to imagine modern and US centric versions of the benefits of the Cross of Honour of the German Mother (Ehrenkreuz der Deutschen Mutter) Wikipedia describes them as
It should be noted that many of the women to receive this award were already 60+.
I like the idea of debt retirement, if my wife had accrued 250k in debt through medical school and post graduate study, we'd have fewer children. But as we don't see countries with 'free' education producing higher fertility I suspect it's a minor factor.
I think Russia is actively working on something like that, so maybe we’ll get another chance to see how it works out.
Hungary has been working on this for a while now.
The vibe I get via western reporting seems to have gone from this won't work, to this works but is expensive.
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