Population Decline as a Crisis of Meaning
Much of the discussion around population decline focuses on national policies, economic incentives, and workforce sustainability. Governments and policymakers frame it as a numbers problem: birth rates drop, GDP shrinks, the economy destabilizes. The solution, then, is assumed to be a matter of better incentives—cash bonuses for parents, improved parental leave, subsidized childcare.
And yet, these interventions consistently fail to reverse the trend. People are still choosing not to have children. Why?
The dominant narrative assumes that people simply need the right material conditions to reproduce. If only life were more affordable, if only there were better policies in place, then surely more people would choose to have children. But this assumption ignores a deeper reality: for many, the decision not to have children is not just about economics—it is a rejection of the world as it is currently structured.
This is not just a national or policy issue. It is an existential and civilizational one.
The System Itself as the Problem
Our world is built on extraction—of resources, of labor, of human potential. The dominant economic and social structures treat people not as beings to be nurtured but as units of productivity, as consumers, as data points to be optimized. In such a system, the idea of bringing a child into the world is no longer a simple, natural step in life—it is a monumental personal and financial burden.
People sense this, even if they don’t always have the words to articulate it.
Some feel it as exhaustion, an underlying knowledge that they are barely keeping themselves afloat, let alone prepared to nurture another life. Others feel it as existential uncertainty, a question of whether this world offers something worth passing on. And those who do articulate it often find their concerns dismissed—flattened into economic calculations or written off as personal preference.
Yet, what if we took these concerns seriously? What if declining birth rates were not a sign of selfishness or economic miscalculation but a collective, subconscious refusal to participate in a system that no longer nurtures life in a meaningful way?
Beyond Policy: A Need for a Different Social Contract
Throwing policies at this issue without addressing the fundamental structures that make life unlivable is like trying to patch a sinking ship. What people need is not just financial assistance but a world where life feels worth living. A world where parenthood is not an isolating burden but a natural part of an interconnected, supportive ecosystem of care. A world where work does not drain life but supports it, where communities thrive beyond transactional interactions, where existence is not defined by exhaustion and precarity.
Declining birth rates are not a mystery. They are a signal. A sign that our civilization is running on a model that no longer inspires participation.
So rather than asking, How can we convince people to have more children? perhaps we should be asking, What kind of world would people want to bring children into?