People from my generation aren't having kids.

This is a statistical certainty, and first reason they cite is financial difficulties.

I understand the argument, but there are a couple of caveats to it.

First of all, what financial difficulties? If you look at the data, Niger, Chad, DR Congo, Somalia and Central African Republic occupy the top 5 in the list of countries with the highest birth rate in the world in 2024.

Those are some of poorest countries in the world.

By contrast, he countries with the smallest birth rate were Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, Ukraine and Hong Kong. Apart from Ukraine, which is on the list for obvious reasons related to the war, the other four countries are very rich countries.

If you look at statistics, the correlation is actually the opposite of what you think, as in the the richest countries are even fewer kids, while the poorest countries are even more kids.

So financial difficulties? Maybe.

The other thing we should point out, and this is probably one of the key issues here, in my view at least, is that if you're a millennial and you were born and raised in a country that has a relatively good economy, that is relatively wealthy - so I'm thinking the United States, Canada, Japan, Australia, pretty much every country in the European Union and some countries outside of it and so on - there are two things that we know for certain.

The first thing is that you probably had a decent childhood. You may have not been rich but you had a house, you had food. You probably went to school. You probably had the opportunity to go to the movies with your friends sometimes or to go for a drink or to go to some club.

However, when compared to what our parents had, it does look like we were handed the short hand of the stick.

When I was a teenager most of people from my parents' generation had homes, access to credit, cars, kids. Most times, two cars per household. Some people had two homes.

Our generation? By the time we're my age, we certainly don't have kids, we also don't have a secure job. and we certainly don't own a home.

So why is that? I think there are a variety of reasons, but one of them is that I'm afraid we're going to have to admit that we're a bit spoilt.

We like having no responsibilities. We failed to grow up for whatever reason. And I don't mean this in a derogatory manner because quite frankly, I'm also the same, but it is true.

A lot of people my age are still doing the same things they were doing when they were in their early 20s, which is not exactly probably the way supposed to be.

But then again, I don't think it's ever fair to blame people for wanting to do whatever it is that want to do.

So what is there to do about it? Unfortunately the answer is probably not much.

The thing is, with demographics, there's not a lot you can do because you cannot force people to have children.

You can encourage them with various tax breaks and incentives and programmes. You can do that.

But statistics show that these don't really work that well and you never see the result for a couple of decades.

By definition, because whatever you're doing today, if it's about the population, you'll see the effect in 20 or 30 years.

So to be honest, maybe I've just wasted your time.

Because I talked about a problem you probably are already aware of and I haven't really provided a solution either for it. Sorry.

Happy Sunday.