Lately I’ve been noticing that the people who mainly should not have children, whether due to economic limitations, illnesses, or even mental instability, are the ones who have the most children, and many times they end up as single fathers/mothers. My question is whether it would be a good idea to implement some kind of regulation and set minimum requirements that must be met, mainly to prevent the child from ending up in the future as a criminal or a social burden due to those factors.
Birth rates are on a decline, globally. There is more concern about aging demography than the opposite.
But who would you consider “fit” to have offspring?
Most people are more concerded about making a life for themselves than raising a family, nowadays. Survival is an adequate way to put it.
Rising cost of living, paired with low or simply inadequate wages, poor working conditions, environmental concerns, political concerns or just simple life option is making more and more shy away from having a family.
And this is pretty universal. Unless religious views, often paired with repressive and regressive views on womens rights and autonomy, and culture weighs heavily on the matter, many choose to not have children or have one or two, at most. Less than sufficient to maintain a population stable.
Arguing that cheap labour will always be necessary is a risky assessment, when advanced robotics and automatization has been pushing people away from the industries that would soak up the people with less education.
And with the ever growing push to funnel money away from workers to instead distribute profits to shareholders, things get even worst.
States should be considering a full and complete review on taxation. There is no justification for an individual or a country to hold more money than entire countries GDP. Profits are unpaid fair wages. Without fair wages, misery settles and becomes the norm.