👶 Progressive pronatalism: A Quick Q&A with … philosopher Victor Kumar

'A healthy population size matters in part because it drives productivity and innovation; any serious form of pronatalism must recognize the fundamental value of economic growth.'

Feb 28, 2025

My fellow pro-growth Up Wingers,

Pronatalism is typically considered an issue of the right, at least in this country. But declining birthrates shouldn’t be a partisan topic at all. While the issue touches on a number of conservative pillars — family values, traditionalism, economic growth — Victor Kumar argues that progressives have just as much skin in the game as anyone. From his New York Times article, Population Growth Isn’t a Progressive Issue. It Should Be:

If left unchecked, population decline could worsen many of the problems that progressives care about, including economic inequality and the vulnerability of marginalized social groups . . . Progressives need to develop their own version of pronatalism. It should stress the need for government benefits and social services like paid parental leave and subsidized child care

I asked Kumar a few quick questions about how progressives, too, can embrace pronatalist policies and why we should all be invested in a thriving, growing human family.

Kumar is a professor of philosophy at Boston University where he is also the director of the Mind and Morality Lab. He is the co-author of his 2022 book, A Better Ape: The Evolution of the Moral Mind and How it Made us Human.

1/ Why have the dangers of population decline been overlooked in left-wing circles?

Population decline threatens to reshape society in ways that should deeply concern the left. As the population shrinks and ages, we’ll face increasing scarcity and strained social services, with the heaviest burdens falling on the most vulnerable members of society — the poor, the elderly, and the disabled. Yet concern about population decline has been coded as right-wing. This perception stems from two main factors.

First, the most visible solutions are reactionary, for example, restrictions on reproductive autonomy and pressuring women into abandoning careers in favor of full-time parenting. Second, the most prominent cultural figures sounding the alarm — like JD Vance and Elon Musk — are political enemies of the left: Republicans, religious fundamentalists, or Silicon Valley futurists. Some are primarily concerned with white population decline.

The left has responded in a manner typical of modern political culture — through negative partisanship. They think: “if these people believe population decline is a problem, then it must not be one; if these are the solutions, the problem must be imaginary.” Of course, this reasoning is specious. A proposed cure may be awful while the disease is real. The left will accept that population decline is a genuine problem only if we can develop a “progressive pronatalism” that offers better solutions while explicitly rejecting gender traditionalism and nativism.

2/ In order for progressives to adopt pronatalism, will they have to abandon or significantly rewrite their climate narrative?

There is no conflict between pronatalism and progressive climate action. The core challenge on climate is to decarbonize rapidly without incurring unacceptable economic costs. This means investing in renewables like solar power, developing more advanced batteries, and extracting carbon from the atmosphere. (Global compliance is a separate issue.)

Some progressives think that population decline would also help — since fewer people mean fewer carbon emissions — but this argument is flawed. Decarbonization decouples population size from emissions. Moreover, the global population won’t decline until the next century, whereas decisive action against climate change must happen within decades.

Yet the climate crisis has spawned pernicious views within progressive circles. Most notably, economic degrowth threatens to devastate developing nations and plunge millions into extreme poverty — outcomes that progressives ordinarily seek to prevent. A healthy population size matters in part because it drives productivity and innovation; any serious form of pronatalism must recognize the fundamental value of economic growth.

Equally concerning is the rise of climate antinatalism — the view that anthropogenic environmental damage is so severe that it would be best for the human race to stop reproducing and go extinct. The impulse to take responsibility for climate change is laudable. But human life is precious. Extinction would be enormously tragic. One can believe this while also recognizing the inherent value of all conscious life. Moreover, the planet won’t heal itself all, not within any reasonable time frame, so our responsibility is not to abandon Earth but to fix the mess we’ve made.

3/ What lessons can progressive pronatalists learn from other countries’ attempts to promote population growth, both those that have slowed population decline and those that have been ineffective?

The path forward on population decline is to study global efforts, identify the most effective and least-risky initiatives, pursue them aggressively, and then rigorously study their effects before scaling up. Three lessons emerge:

1. No single intervention suffices; success demands a multi-pronged approach. France offers an instructive example. Its fertility rate, though below replacement, remains higher than neighboring countries due to substantial tax incentives for parents that increase with family size — in combination with more common tools like generous parental leave and affordable childcare. While these measures only slow decline rather than reverse it, harm reduction is valuable.

2. Effective pronatalist policies are expensive and require significant investment. In the US, restoring and expanding the pandemic-era child tax credit would likely reduce child poverty while testing pronatalist efficacy. If fertility rises, further expansion should follow.

3. Cultural context shapes policy effectiveness. Consider East Asian countries like Japan and South Korea, which have among the lowest fertility rates in the world — 1.2 and 0.8, respectively. Government interventions have been spectacularly ineffective. Marriage and family institutions in these places are so oppressive, and the economic and civic opportunities so rich, that women are making the reasonable personal decision that various government incentives do not outweigh the price of marriage. Progressive pronatalism can succeed only when combined with broader social liberation — both as a matter of principle and to be practically effective.

4/ How do you propose addressing cultural attitudes and lifestyle preferences that contribute to lower birthrates?

This is the thorniest aspect of an already-difficult problem. Cultural attitudes and lifestyle preferences tend to have a life of their own. While policy can shape them through material incentives, top-down control is limited.

The gendered division of labor remains one major obstacle. Despite significant progress toward gender equality, women in heterosexual relationships still shoulder far more of the childcare and household management. This disparity persists even in societies where gains in gender equality are greatest.

Other obstacles include declining marriage rates, resource-intensive parenting norms, and the isolation of nuclear families. Rising affluence has also dramatically expanded competing opportunities — careers, travel, entertainment, hobbies, drugs — while instilling deep-seated changes in how people conceptualize meaning and life-satisfaction.

Given the resistance of these cultural patterns to policy intervention, technological solutions like artificial wombs and robot nannies could reduce the opportunity costs of parenting. These innovations should complement — rather than replace — other pronatalist measures.

5/ While immigration is a temporary solution to population decline, how can immigration policies be integrated with pronatalist policies to create a comprehensive strategy? A tough environment right now for that idea, yes?

Immigration features prominently in pronatalism debates, while public opinion toward it has soured. But its potential as a solution has been overstated.

First of all, economic, technological, and cultural stagnation will result primarily from aging rather than absolute population decline. While immigrants tend to be younger than the average citizen, they’re older than newborns. Analysis from the Brookings Institute indicates that sustained immigration into the US can stabilize population size but can’t prevent the country from aging.

Moreover, population decline is a global problem that transcends national borders. As poorer nations develop, their fertility rates will fall. And since newcomers tend to adopt the practices of their host country, importing immigrants is effectively a way of exporting low fertility rates. This doesn’t justify immigration restrictions — immigrants deserve a shot at a better life and benefit host countries in many ways — but it underscores that immigration is a non-starter, globally.

Ultimately, the stakes extend beyond any single nation. A massive decline in well-being is likely. Extinction isn’t off the table. To seriously address the grave dangers of population decline, we have to think bigger.

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Micro Reads

Hi. Wondering why pronatalist never talk about the effect of plastic/ chemicals in plastic and how it is affecting fertility in both men and women- sperm counts are way down and worsening risks of pregnancy like preeclampsia and preterm labor. The evidence is growing that this is a massive part of the issue. This is also a nonpartisan issue so why is it consistently ignored in these substacks

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👶 Progressive pronatalism: A Quick Q&A with … philosopher Victor Kumar

'A healthy population size matters in part because it drives productivity and innovation; any serious form of pronatalism must recognize the fundamental value of economic growth.'

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