The central message of the fertility roundups has always been that we have a choice.
If we do want to raise fertility, we can do that. People respond to incentives. That means money, especially if paid up front, and it also means time, lifestyle and respect.
If we do it purely with cash, it would be expensive, but a well-designed version of this would still be net profitable to the state. On the order of $300k per additional live birth would get this done in the United States, depending on how you structure it. This is not money spent, it is money transferred, and it helps the kids quite a lot.
If we do it by dealing with the Revolution of Rising Requirements, by providing non-cash advantages or changing the culture, that's a more complex intervention, but we have options that let us do far better.
Those who disagree have tried almost nothing, and are all out of ideas.
Selection
Alex Strudwick Young: Today parents can, for the first time, access polygenic embryo testing for IQ and many diseases through a routine test (PGT-A) done worldwide and in 60% of US IVF cycles.
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Outline:
(01:05) Selection
(02:22) Surrogacy
(02:46) IVF
(08:05) Technological Versus Social Solutions
(09:32) Dakka
(10:51) All The Dakka
(12:24) Insufficient Dakka Works Insufficiently
(14:35) The Effectiveness of Dakka
(17:47) The Wrong Dakka
(18:52) Dakka Does Not Disproportionally Motivate The Poor
(21:25) Is That a Lot?
(25:23) Alternative Dakka
(26:38) The Housing Theory of Everything Is Undefeated
(35:58) Happiness
(37:16) Negative Dakka
(38:44) Mother's Day
(39:41) Status
(43:34) Hungary
(46:20) Audio
(46:26) NatalCon
(46:50) Housing Discrimination
(47:20) Your Own Quest
(49:36) Hope
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First published:
January 6th, 2026
Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/xJw5eetbzNNu9SiSZ/fertility-roundup-6-the-art-of-more-dakka
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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
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