Can Governments Increase Birthrates? Should They?

"On the left and the right, in Europe and the United States, a consensus is growing: People aren't having enough kids," Reason Senior Editor Elizabeth Nolan Brown wrote in Reason's June cover story, "Storks Don't Take Orders From the State."

However, Brown cautions against pro-natalist government policies: "They're incredibly expensive, they produce few or no gains in fertility, and they can lead to a disturbingly authoritarian form of governance where individual choices about family formation are deprioritized and women are pressured to have babies for the national good."

Join Reason's Nick Gillespie Thursday at 1 p.m. Eastern for an unscripted conversation about whether governments can—or should—try to increase falling birthrates. He'll be joined by Nolan Brown and Scott Winship, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and director of its Center on Opportunity and Social Mobility, who has written widely on myths and realities about economic and cultural decline.

• Producer: Bess Byers