Subsidies can’t overcome anti-procreation culture

OPINION:

In a restaurant recently, I saw a couple with their three children. Before eating, they prayed. Once a common sight, it’s now rare.

If America is to have a future, this family points the way.

Finally, there is a consensus that we are in the midst of a fertility crisis, which some call “Demographic Winter.”

In 2023, America’s total fertility rate, the number of children the average woman will have in her lifetime, was 1.6, well below the replacement rate of 2.1. Our fertility rate has been at replacement only one year in the past half-century. In the not-too-distant future, population decline will begin.

The fall of fertility is a worldwide phenomenon.

China’s total fertility rate is 1.0. Japan’s is 1.26. Germany’s is 1.4. By 2040, every region on earth will have below-replacement fertility.

You can’t have a modern industrial society without robust population growth. Tesla Chairman Elon Musk says, “Civilization is going to crumble if people don’t have more children.” An aging population will impact everything, including pensions, tax revenue, the workforce and defense.

President Trump understands this well. During the campaign, he promised: “We will support baby booms, and we will support baby bonuses.”

Mr. Musk says: “Instead of teaching fear of pregnancy” — that if a woman has children her life will be over — “we should teach fear of childlessness.”

The left’s response is typically loopy.

Writing in The New York Times, the chronically aggrieved Michelle Goldberg whines that Mr. Trump’s “crude chauvinism” is a major impediment to “the creation of healthy families.” Compared with this, former Vice President Kamala Harris’ ode to a yellow school bus makes sense.

There is no shortage of proposed solutions to the birth dearth.

The Wall Street Journal wants more immigration, which won’t increase fertility but will help depress wages, which is all corporate America really cares about.

Mr. Trump says a $5,000 baby bonus “sounds like a good idea.” In 2016, Russia offered a baby bonus equal to its annual per capita income for a family’s second child. The result was negligible.

An analyst for The Heritage Foundation recommends longer parental leave and subsidized child care. Have more children so they can be raised by strangers?

Throwing money at the problem has been tried repeatedly in Hungary, Russia, Japan and South Korea. The results are mixed at best.

Subsidies can’t overcome a culture that conspires against procreation.

More people are remaining single, choosing the dreamland of cyberspace over real relationships. Increasingly, those who do marry don’t want children. The percentage of adults without children who say they will never have them increased from 14% in 2002 to 29% in 2023.

The most ominous trend driving falling fertility is the loss of faith. It also points to a way to extricate ourselves from the quagmire.

Two decades ago, 42% of U.S. adults said they attended religious services weekly. Ten years later, it was 38%. Now, it’s 30%.

Think about who’s having children: traditional Catholics, evangelicals, Hasidic Jews, Mormons and the Amish, whose fertility rate is eight to 10.

What do they have in common? They take the Bible seriously. They believe the First Commandment to “Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth” was never repealed. Faith is the invisible hand that rocks the cradle.

What, then, should natalists do? Buy a tambourine and join a Salvation Army band?

We need to encourage a revival, with subsidies for religious schools and a more positive portrayal of people of faith in the news and entertainment media.

Something as mundane as the president posting videos of Bible reading and prayer in the White House at Easter would help, instead of his predecessor celebrating Transgender Visibility Day.

When Mr. Trump signed an executive order stating the federal government recognizes only two sexes, he was affirming Genesis.

A few states have enacted laws requiring the posting of the Ten Commandments in public schools. That’s a start.

We could also clean up the curriculum. Instead of teaching the myths of overpopulation and environmental apocalypse, we should be teaching the reality of an abundant earth threatened by demographic decline.

Instead of degenerate sex education, let’s have instruction helping students to one day assume the responsibilities of parenthood.

The expression “Demographic Winter” conjures up a scene from a Russian novel of a sled racing across a frozen landscape while being chased by howling wolves. The wolves may be metaphorical, but faith alone will keep them away from our doors.

• Don Feder is a columnist with The Washington Times.