Arsene Dumont on Legislative Measures to Remedy Depopulation in France

摘要

Continued below-replacement fertility and the nearing prospect in some regions of actual population decline are increasingly matters of concern for European social policy. Yet measures aimed at raising fertility have a dubious record of success. For example, a recent assessment of Germany s efforts to do so, entailing generous cash transfers to couples with young children, roundly criticized them as ineffective. The measures were based, it was argued, on an outdated view of the family. (See the account of the study and the ensuing political controversy in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 6 June 2013.)