By Patrick Appel
Rachel Levitt summarizes a Swedish medical student’s thesis on the benefits of state-subsidized in vitro fertilization:
Europe’s dwindling population is currently threatening many state-maintained support programs like Social Security and health care. If the birth rate doesn’t increase soon, children may be increasingly forced to support the aging European population, which by 2050 will have an estimated one in three people over the age of 65. With that responsibility looming, Svensson and others believe that investing government money in IVF programs and technology could help spur future economic growth, as well as improve the morale of thousands of couples who are involuntarily childless.
It would be better for Europe to deal with it’s falling birth rate by allowing greater immigration, though even that probably won’t fix the imbalance entirely. State sponsored IVF, however noble, is hardly going to solve the problem. Megan wrote about birth rates over a year ago:
Almost all European countries have a lot of amenities for new mothers; some of those countries have high birth rates, and some of them low. America, which has many fewer amenities, has higher birth rates than Canada, which has a lot more government support for child-rearing. There’s no very good evidence that a government can do much of anything to increase its birth rate. The main culprit seems to be opportunity cost: women have more fun things to do, these days, than spend time with toddlers. And even parenting with lots of free day care involves spending a lot of time with toddlers.
The Dish 