You and rayiner are sort of in agreement, although I also disagree with the labeling of “white (European) American individualist culture is inexorable in America.”
Specifically,
> it’s that having children is necessary for acceptance and respectability in Muslim society, and moreover children are socialized to care very much about those things.
Replace Muslim with “more orthodox or cultish Muslims/Jews/Christians/Mormoms/etc”
In any case, the current and previous older generations that had fewer kids will not feel the consequences, due to the momentum of population growth, but all these social safety net and retirement benefits like pensions and healthcare don’t come from thin air.
While one way to incentivize having kids is belonging to a tribe like rayiner described, the other could be removing those old age benefits so that the cost of not having kids is (potentially) higher. Obviously, governments can promise all the benefits they want, but there is no delivering them if there are no hands to do the work (and I doubt innovation in automation will outpace declines in labor force).
Specifically,
> it’s that having children is necessary for acceptance and respectability in Muslim society, and moreover children are socialized to care very much about those things.
Replace Muslim with “more orthodox or cultish Muslims/Jews/Christians/Mormoms/etc”
In any case, the current and previous older generations that had fewer kids will not feel the consequences, due to the momentum of population growth, but all these social safety net and retirement benefits like pensions and healthcare don’t come from thin air.
While one way to incentivize having kids is belonging to a tribe like rayiner described, the other could be removing those old age benefits so that the cost of not having kids is (potentially) higher. Obviously, governments can promise all the benefits they want, but there is no delivering them if there are no hands to do the work (and I doubt innovation in automation will outpace declines in labor force).