I get talking to a fund manager at a party. He has the complexion of the one per cent: somehow matte and glossy at the same time. His biggest investor is a Gulf state, which I could have guessed. The second-biggest? The municipal pension scheme of a city that isn’t in England’s top 10 by population. At a similar event, one guest is treated with more deference than Eleanor of Aquitaine. She must represent a Faang. Or a sovereign wealth fund. But no: another provincial pension pot.
The world is full of old folk. The working-age share of the population is stretched. Even aside from the worrisome economics of that, there is the cultural stagnation. And so, while it isn’t for me, I want other people to have children. I’d support pronatalism if its success rate wasn’t mixed-to-laughable. (Almost all the world outside Africa and Central Asia has fewer than 2.1 births per woman, which is the minimum to keep populations stable.) You can’t typecast me as a militant bachelor, then, as I ask the following question:
Why is it so hard to accept that people don’t want many children, if any? All theories for the baby bust, other than choice, get undeserved shrift. One is that practical barriers — such as lack of childcare — stops people having the kids they tell surveys they want. So, Chad has a 6.1 birth rate because of subsidised crèches, does it? Shared child-rearing duties and free IVF explain Afghanistan’s 4.8? Finland (1.3) should send a research delegation to Mali (5.6)?