Billionaires demand more babies but make parenthood unaffordable |
Elon Musk recently declared on X that “an immediate increase in the birth rate is needed”. It’s the kind of statement that sounds dramatic, urgent and vaguely civilisational, but it is also profoundly disconnected from reality. However, Musk is far from an isolated voice within the far right and among the world’s billionaires.
Low birthrates are not a mystery. They are not the result of moral decay, declining ambition or an excess of “woke politics”, but rather the predictable outcome of an economic system in which people are paid too little, work too much and are told to feel personally responsible for structural failures engineered far above their heads.
This disconnect is not limited to fertility. The same billionaires and CEOs who lament demographic decline also complain that people do not buy locally, that European industries are losing ground, and that “the West” is becoming economically fragile, with some even calling for bans on Chinese online platforms such as Temu or Shein. And yet, when it comes to solutions, they reliably converge on the same prescriptions: longer working hours, wage restraint, mass layoffs and deregulation.
In other words, even when their diagnosis occasionally overlaps with reality, their remedies systematically make the problem worse.
Start with wages. Across much of Europe, real wages have stagnated or fallen in recent years. Inflation has eaten into purchasing power, while salary increases have lagged behind the cost of housing, energy, food and childcare. The results are visible in the numbers: the EU’s average fertility rate has fallen to around 1.4 children per woman, well below replacement level. For millions of households, income is no longer a foundation for planning a future, but a constant exercise in damage control.
But better wages alone will not make a difference if the cost of living continues to rise. Young people simply cannot buy a home in most European countries and basic living costs have risen several times faster than wages.
All of this has direct consequences for fertility. Having children requires not just love or desire, but time, money and a sense of stability. When rent absorbs half your income, when childcare costs rival a second mortgage,........