Reversing the birth dearth /
The contemporary population replacement rate across developed countries is 2.1 births per woman of childbearing age. Historically, meeting that mark has never been a problem; nations tend to grow naturally. Recently, as countries have begun to modernize, an emergent issue has been that women are ele...
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Format: | eBook |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
London :
SAGE Publications: SAGE Business Cases Originals,
2024.
|
| Series: | SAGE Business cases.
|
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | Connect to the full text of this electronic book |
| Summary: | The contemporary population replacement rate across developed countries is 2.1 births per woman of childbearing age. Historically, meeting that mark has never been a problem; nations tend to grow naturally. Recently, as countries have begun to modernize, an emergent issue has been that women are electing to have fewer children. As a result, populations in developed countries are declining, some quite dramatically. Birth rate trends present several challenges to these economies. Populations with greater proportions of aging dependents must absorb greater costs, which demand more resources taxed from the shrinking portions who are in their economic prime. On the other hand, there are reasons to believe that a departure from the status quo is not entirely bad news because these declines limit the environmental impact of humanity and fewer children will permit greater freedom for more women across the globe. Nevertheless, the issue has generated enough concern that many countries have implemented sometimes aggressive policies to reverse the birth dearth. Programs that allocate childcare services, tax easements, and family paid work leave have been attempted in countries as varied as Hungary, South Korea, and the United States. But these tend to produce only fleeting successes before the declining trend eventually reemerges. The general failure of public policy to earn the intended, sustaining results raises questions of what is feeding the declining birth rates across the globe. The case study asks students to consider whether the pattern represents a genuine crisis and, if so, what might be done to resolve it. |
|---|---|
| Physical Description: | 1 online resource. |
| ISBN: | 9781071946336 1071946331 |