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Frances Comically Bad Fertility Policy (Simone & Malcolm Debate)
In this thought-provoking episode, Malcolm and Simone delve into France's recent policy proposals aimed at combating the country's falling fertility rates. They analyze President Emmanuel Macron's plan, which includes offering fertility checks for young people, implementing a "birth leave" scheme, and introducing a possible "duty to visit" for fathers in single-parent families. Malcolm and Simone discuss the potential impact of these policies, highlighting the ineffectiveness of fertility checks in encouraging parenthood and the unintended consequences of mandating father involvement. They also touch on the importance of equitable divorce laws, the myth of the two-parent household, and the role of cultural factors in shaping fertility outcomes. Throughout the conversation, the couple emphasizes the need for policymakers to focus on fostering a culture that values family formation and pronatalism, rather than implementing misguided policies that may exacerbate the problem.
Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello, this is Malcolm and Simone here and we are happy to be talking about some pronatalist and policy today. Today's episode is going to be focused on France's recent policy proposals to combat demographic collapse. However, I have not seen them.
So Simone is going to be presenting them to me, and you are going to be getting my in real time reaction.
Would you like to know more?
Simone Collins: Yeah, so I recently came across this telegraph article was published, I think, a little earlier this month, but it's about policies that have been discussed for a while. It's called France to offer young people, fertility tax to combat falling fertility rates.
And it discusses a couple of policies, which at best. Not going to do anything at worst are probably going to cause damage at least unless I'm crazy. I want your take on this so the gist is that France's president Emmanuel [00:01:00] Macron is laudable for recognizing demographic collapse as an issue and talking about it France's fertility rate relative to the rest of the EU is actually pretty good.
Malcolm Collins: It, but it had a massive collapse this last year. It did. 70 percent year over year.
Simone Collins: They're still above the EU average. They're still above the UK. They're still above Germany and they're still above Spain. So like generally speaking, France is, the one that looks good maybe because it's a little more Catholic.
Who knows? There's a lot. No. It's because it's less Catholic. Oh,
Malcolm Collins: really? Yeah. If you contrast it with other countries, it's actually more secular. And again, this is what we've seen across a lot of things is that the more Catholic a country is in Europe, the lower its fertility rate was the average Catholic majority country in Europe having a fertility rate of only 1.
3.
Simone Collins: Yeah. But that makes sense then. But anyway they still recognize it's a problem. I really appreciate that. So they get points for that. All right. Petty points for that. But the latest thing that Emmanuel Macron. Prince's president has proposed is fertility checks for young people. He's trying to [00:02:00] get people to test their fertility earlier.
But quite honestly, doing so isn't going to boost fertility.
Malcolm Collins: It sounds like an interesting idea from the
Simone Collins: article. I'll read what they say. Emmanuel Macron is. To offer fertility checks to all 18 to 25 year olds as part of a grand plan to combat declining fertility rates, the French president first announced his ambition to enact French demographic rearmament, which that's fun.
That's a fun term. At a press conference on January 16th, as part of a wide array of measures aimed at reviving his stuttering second term. I don't think that's g
Published on 1 year, 7 months ago