Declining birth rates are threatening to shrink populations and economies, as Elon Musk and other tech leaders have warned for years, and governments in Europe and the U.S. are taking action.
“Low birth rate is the number one threat to the West, followed closely by migration,” Musk posted to X this month. “There will be no West if this continues.”
This year, France, Spain, Italy, Hungary, and the U.K. rolled out new incentives such as longer paid parental leave, tax breaks for mothers, subsidized child care, and housing support, Business Insider reported Sunday.
In the U.S., Congress approved an expanded family tax credit package in July.
French President Emmanuel Macron has gone so far as to call for a “demographic rearmament.”
Demographers told BI that while Musk and other tech leaders — including Telegram CEO Pavel Durov and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman — have amplified the debate, pronatalist policies have existed for decades. Researchers note that lavish spending in Scandinavia, Hungary, Japan, and South Korea has failed to reverse long-term declines, with fertility rates across the developed world still well below replacement.
“The population isn’t ‘collapsing’ — it has collapsed,” Tim Pool wrote on X last month. “The shoreline is receding and no one understands the tsunami about to hit us.
“As U.S. population goes it will be impossible to redevelop. Automation won’t replace your customers.”
Musk replied a day later this should come as no surprise.
“I’ve been warning about this since the turn of the century,” Musk wrote on X.
BI quoted these experts on the situation and West’s reaction:
- Ronald Lee, Center for the Economics and Demography of Aging at UC Berkeley: “Concern with low birth rates is nothing new and certainly nothing that anyone in the tech world, and certainly not Musk, should get any credit for originating or leading on,” he said, noting Hungary spends about 5% of GDP annually on pro-birth measures with little result. “Financial incentives are mostly absurdly small relative to the cost of a child.”
- Tomas Sobotka, Vienna Institute of Demography: “This is not a new topic among researchers and many policymakers. Musk and some other commentators have only made the issue more visible — and, regretfully, also more politically polarized. Altogether, these packages of family policies can boost fertility rates in the order of up to 0.2, maximum 0.3 children per woman.”
- Wolfgang Lutz, Wittgenstein Centre: “Tech leaders like Elon Musk may be experts in their fields, but they are not experts in demography. Their views on fertility are based on gut feelings and vague conjectures rather than scientific reasoning.”
- Durov: “Declining fertility [is] an increasingly serious issue worldwide. … Defy convention — redefine the norm!”
- Anna Rotkirch, Population Research Institute in Helsinki: “We need new and bolder solutions, which also have to come from employers, city planners, and society at large — not just politicians.”
- Karen Benjamin Guzzo, Carolina Population Center: The modest measures being discussed will likely not “budge” birth rates because they don’t tackle the main barriers American parents say they face: expensive housing, unaffordable child care, and the absence of paid leave.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.
