School Vouchers, Not Child Credits, Can Bring the Birthrate Back Up

June 14 2024

As birthrates decline across the world, countries including the U.S., South Korea, and most famously Hungary have devised various incentives to encourage citizens to have more children. So far, they have little to show for the effort. The economist Catherine Pakaluk believes such policies, which focus on tax breaks, cash payments, and perks like free daycare, are doomed to fail. Instead, she argues, countries should look to religion, and the demographic success of Israel. M.J. Koch writes:

Women can’t simply be bribed into having more children. What’s needed, instead, is a more pro-children culture. “Free market solutions are the only ones that stand a chance,” Ms. Pakaluk, herself a mother of fourteen, tells the Sun.

America could instead learn from a country that has been immune to cratering birth rates around the world—Israel. “They have a larger percentage of people who have religiously devout families who believe children are blessings, and that it’s worth taking on these extra sacrifices,” Ms. Pakaluk says. If a substantial minority of the population is forming large families, there can be spillover effects that make the whole culture more family-friendly and inspire more people who are on the fence about having children to go ahead and do it.

In America, organized religion is in a decades-long decline and faith-based education has grown more expensive. “Intergenerational transmission of values is much stronger when parents are working together with churches, which pass on their values to their children,” says Ms. Pakaluk. “Schools are an enormous way in which that channel of passing on faith gets broken.”

To help reverse the inverting pyramid of America’s population, Ms. Pakaluk advocates for giving parents more “educational freedom” in deciding whether to send their children to school, and giving churches a greater role in shaping people’s values.

Read more at New York Sun

More about: American society, Fertility, Israeli society, Religion

The Mass Expulsion of Palestinians Is No Solution. Neither Are Any of the Usual Plans for Gaza

Examining the Trump administration’s proposals for the people of Gaza, Danielle Pletka writes:

I do not believe that the forced cleansing of Gaza—a repetition of what every Arab country did to the hundreds of thousands of Arab Jews in 1948— is a “solution.” I don’t think Donald Trump views that as a permanent solution either (read his statement), though I could be wrong. My take is that he believes Gaza must be rebuilt under new management, with only those who wish to live there resettling the land.

The time has long since come for us to recognize that the establishment doesn’t have the faintest clue what to do about Gaza. Egypt doesn’t want it. Jordan doesn’t want it. Iran wants it, but only as cannon fodder. The UN wants it, but only to further its anti-Semitic agenda and continue milking cash from the West. Jordanians, Lebanese, and Syrians blame Palestinians for destroying their countries.

Negotiations with Hamas have not worked. Efforts to subsume Gaza under the Palestinian Authority have not worked. Rebuilding has not worked. Destruction will not work. A “two-state solution” has not arrived, and will not work.

So what’s to be done? If you live in Washington, New York, London, Paris, or Berlin, your view is that the same answers should definitely be tried again, but this time we mean it. This time will be different. . . . What could possibly make you believe this other than ideological laziness?

Read more at What the Hell Is Going On?

More about: Donald Trump, Gaza Strip, Palestinians