from Hacker News

Miyazaki Might Be Right: Cases of a Town, a City, a Province, & a Country

by RetiredRichard on 6/5/24, 6:10 PM with 26 comments

• by more_corn on 6/6/24, 12:18 AM

  Making our towns and cities a safe and supportive place for children is a great way to promote having children. A primary reason people choose not to have children (when they get the chance to choose) is not wanting to bring children into an inhospitable place/world/life

• by redleader55 on 6/6/24, 12:57 PM

  Tax cuts for parents. When 50-60% of what I make goes to the state, which provides "universal"(ie. subpar) services, 20-30% of the rest goes to a landlord because home ownership is no longer afforable, it's pretty hard to have more than 1 child.

• by carpdiem on 6/6/24, 5:52 AM

  I'm all for innovative ideas in supporting families and children, but the examples from the article hardly count as "successfully reversing fertility declines".

  - Nagi, Japan. TFR: 2.95 (replacement rate is ~2.1). Astonishing. This is the only true success in the article.

  - Nagareyama, Japan. TFR: 1.5. At this rate, the population will drop by ~25% every generation.

  - South Tyrol, Italy. TFR: 1.64. Marginally better than Nagareyama. Noticeably better than the rest of Italy (TFR: 1.2), but still a population in strong decline.

  - Czechia. TFR: 1.6 (https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?location...). Better than the European median, but not exceptional. Roughly on a par with Lithuania (1.63), Belgium (1.59), and the UK (1.57). Noticeably behind France (1.79). None of these countries at such TFRs are even capable of maintaining their population at a stable level, and should all be regarded as undergoing some level of population collapse.

• by kleene_op on 6/6/24, 5:33 AM

  Family-friendly policies are investments that bear fruit 20 years from now, far too long a commitment for our short-sighted governments.

• by epoxia on 6/6/24, 7:33 PM

  I wonder how much of this is a selection bias of people already set on having a family choosing to settle in such a place. E.g. Tokyo population increases, Japan population decreases. Aside from the Czech example it doesn't seem like much was accomplished.

• by mensetmanusman on 6/6/24, 11:08 AM

  These locations required many decades of thoughtful planning to almost reach 2.0 TFR (sans the first example, which is over 2).

  The wealthier a country is, the more $ required to break the opportunity cost calculus.

  E.g. the US would require over $200k in subsidies per child to reach native fertility rates over 2.1 amongst the non-orthodox religious subset.

  Likelihood that this happens amongst the boomer class that still thinks like Malthus on average? Zero. They have all the political power, but no incentive.

• by nottorp on 6/6/24, 3:51 PM

  > The town began offering free medical services for children until junior high school ... Over the years, those policies have expanded to include free medical care for children through high school ...

  I don't understand. Japanese health care is US like by default?

• by dudinax on 6/6/24, 3:12 AM

  Might be right? He's obviously right.

• by ilrwbwrkhv on 6/6/24, 1:17 AM

  Yes we need to make things better for humans. Not for some capitalistic non human overlord system.

• by SomeoneFromCA on 6/6/24, 11:04 AM

  "Free healthcare for children?". I thought Japan has universal healthcare....