Ramesh Ponnuru recently proposed that parents get a $5,000-per-kid credit for raising children because taxes on those children's eventual earnings will fund Social Security and Medicare:
We still need to have children so that we can enjoy a secure old age. Modern societies have disguised the old bargain by socializing it. They maintain expensive government programs to assist the elderly, financed by successive generations. The children still take care of the elderly when they grow up, but now it’s all the children providing for all the elderly, collectively. … Now it is possible to enjoy a free ride, as the economists say: Don’t raise children yourself, but benefit in old age from the fact that others have done so.
David Berreby takes issue with Ponnuru's next point, that the welfare state is causing the drop in fertility:
Germany has a generous social welfare program, and its fertility rate in 2010 was 1.4. But Norway and France, which also have cradle-to-grave protection by American standards, are very close to the 2.1 "replacement rate" at which a developed nation's population stays stable. That's higher fertility than you'll find in Iran, where the social security system is private and doesn't cover a quarter of the population. So I think Ponnuru's argument makes sense on ground of fairness. It doesn't hold water, though, as a way to defend national fertility.
The Dish 