Baby brain: Why MAGA’s pro-natalist plans are ill-conceived

America’s politicians have babies on the brain. In February, President Donald Trump told officials to make IVF cheaper. Even without its procreator-in-chief, Elon Musk, the White House is thought to be working on a bigger package of pro-natalist policies. Vice-President J.D. Vance is keen. Mr Trump says he favours a $US5000 (about $7700) handout for new parents. In Britain, meanwhile, Nigel Farage, the leader of Reform UK, a MAGA-ish opposition party, has proposed tax breaks and benefits to encourage women to have more children.

Politicians have long feared the fiscal consequences of an ageing population, with too few young workers supporting legions of pensioners. Governments in places with very low birth rates, such as Japan and South Korea, have spent billions trying to reverse the decline, with little success. The new pro-natalist policies of the transatlantic right differ from older ones in that they are more targeted at working-class women, whose fertility rate has fallen the most. That might make them a bit more effective. But not at a reasonable cost, or without creating perverse incentives.

There is no evidence that working-class women in America currently have fewer offspring than they actually want.Credit: Getty

Previous attempts to deliver a baby boom have either failed or been eye-wateringly expensive, relative to the number of extra births they deliver. Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orban, started a big pro-natal push in 2011, and has since given parents everything from tax breaks and cash handouts to free child care. These policies cost a staggering 5.5 per cent of the country’s GDP annually – more than almost any government will spend on an ageing population in any year between now and 2050. In February, mothers of two were promised a lifelong exemption from income tax.

Hungary’s fertility rate rose to 1.6 children per woman in 2018, from 1.2 in 2011, making it a poster child for populist pro-natalists everywhere. However, it has since dipped, suggesting handouts encouraged some mums not to have more babies, but to have the same number sooner. Other countries, including Japan, Norway and Poland, have tried tax breaks, handouts, maternity leave, subsidised child care and even state-sponsored dating, to little effect. Such policies mostly soften the blow to the finances and career prospects of professional women from having children, without persuading them to have more.

Like Mr Orban, both Mr Farage and Mr Vance see pro-natalism as a way to boost the native population over the immigrants they so dislike. However, they would not spend as lavishly as Hungary, and they would focus the cash more narrowly on poorer parents. Mr Farage would scrap a cap on benefits, which stops families claiming benefits for more than two children, and boost the threshold below which earnings are exempt from income tax for one half of a married couple. Mr Trump’s handouts would be a bigger relief for poor households than rich ones.

Underpinning these policies is an assumption that poorer women are more likely to respond to incentives to have more children. Indeed, their fertility rates do seem more elastic than those of professional women. Whereas the fertility rates of older, college-educated women have remained fairly steady over the past six decades, most of the collapse in fertility in America and Britain since 1980 stems from younger and poorer women having fewer children, particularly from unplanned pregnancies.

In 1994, the average age of a first-time American mother without a university degree was 20. Today, about two-thirds of women without degrees in their 20s have never given birth. Mr Trump’s and Mr Farage’s policies might therefore lead to more babies being born than the approaches of places like Norway, which focus on offering child care, a benefit that professional women tend to take up.

However, it is implausible that any policies will change a country’s demographic trajectory at a less-than-extortionate price tag. The state should help poor families because they need help, not because it wants them to have more children. There is no evidence that working-class women in America currently have fewer offspring than they actually want. Nor is it obvious that encouraging them to procreate would yield a better society. The period of falling fertility rates and fewer teenage pregnancies coincided with more girls staying in school and going to university, which improved their prospects in all kinds of ways.

A pro-natal policy generous enough to work might encourage them to drop out of education earlier, reversing some of those gains. All in all, best to leave family planning to families.

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