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Sub-replacement fertility in national populations: Can it be raised?

This paper comments on the four main functions demographers perform: fact-finding, analysis, prediction, and policymaking. Successes in the first two of these are counterbalanced by weakness in predictive ability. The focus of the comments, however, is on policy. Demographers were influential in promoting efforts to lower very high fertility but are ineffectual in proposing policies that could reverse the tendency of fertility to sink well below replacement levels. The paper argues for a break from exclusive reliance on the standard measures of modern welfare states intended to raise fertility and urges exploration of radically new approaches. Two promising innovations are briefly outlined: one would give the right to vote to all citizens regardless of age, the voting right of minors being exercised by parental proxy, and another that would reform state-administered pension schemes by arranging a direct transfer of working children’s mandatory contributions to social security funds to their retired parents.