Elizabeth Nolan Brown and Scott Winship: Governments Can't Increase Birthrates. They Shouldn't Even Try.
The right and the left are pushing pro-natalist polices that have never worked and are deeply misguided.
This is the audio version of The Reason Livestream that takes place every Thursday at 1 p.m. Eastern.
The topic this week was whether falling birthrates in the United States and other countries are a bad thing that governments should try to reverse. My guests were Reason Senior Editor Elizabeth Nolan Brown, whose June cover story is "Storks Don't Take Orders From the State," and Scott Winship, who runs the American Enterprise Institute's Center on Opportunity and Social Mobility and has written widely on the myths and realities about economic and cultural decline.
We talk about whether past government policies have proven effective in changing birthrates, whether the state should be involved in such decisions from a moral perspective, and why the right and left are increasingly committed to pro-natalist policies.
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