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Comment by Animats | Hacker News Reader

Well, let's see how it works for Russia. Russia has a 1.41 fertility rate (2.1 is breakeven). Plus Russia has lost somewhere around a million soldiers so far in Ukraine. Deaths outnumber births by 1.6 to 1. They need fresh meat for the grinder.[1]

Current steps being taken include:

- Emphasizing family values via the Russian Orthodox Church

- Restricting abortion, which was cheap and easy in the USSR days

- Encourage teenage pregnancy (there's a "Pregnant at 15" TV show)

- Encouraging immigration

So far, it's not working much.

[1] https://nationalsecurityjournal.org/russia-might-be-losing-1...

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Most countries today are losing population (below replacement value).

The US is at 1.62, Taiwan is at 0.85.

There are a lot of economic factors required for having children that are simply not there anymore for quite a lot of people. Third-party malign interference has never been higher. Those dating apps all the women are using, they aren't matching people up to have babies.

They are matching people up who won't ever have babies.

What makes this worse unfortunately over time is intelligent people don't have children if they can't support them; so if you have growing inequality with no social mobility upwards, you have an evolutionary skew towards the dumb similar to the movie idiocracy.

It's not that scary. You don't have to go to church. And don't have to listen to church broadcasts or channels. And no one forces you to do anything.

There don't seem to be any real restrictions on abortions in Russia.

It's funny but this show was first invented on American TV(*https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/16_and_Pregnant), then for a long time on the Ukrainian channel, and only then on a not very popular and not central channel in Russia.

There are also more standard material measures. Maternity capital. And all sorts of small benefits for large families. Preferential mortgages for housing.

Not everything is so gloomy Russia. But it's not helping well yet.

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