Gut Social Security, Fund Fertility - by Stephen

If you want to get engagement on Twitter right now, posting some scary chart about fertility is a fool-proof method. James Pethokoukis did this to perfection last week:

The natural conclusion to a chart like this is that paying people to have kids doesn’t work, and it especially doesn’t work in South Korea with its downright draconian work culture and high levels of conformity. Basically, it’s a cultural issue, and unless pronatalism once again has its time in the sun, South Korea is doomed to a slow extinction.

The idea that culture is the culprit for the developed world’s cratering birth rate is a popular one that is only growing in consensus. Singapore’s former prime minister Lee Kuan Yew probably summarized the idea best when he wrote:

It’s not hard to find evidence for his argument. On an anecdotal level, as a 25-year-old dude, I very rarely meet a woman who wants to have kids. Obviously my experiences mean very little in the grand scheme of things, but I’d bet many of you have experienced something similar, and polls consistently back this up:

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