• frostbiker@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    If you want to lower immigration rates, you’re gonna need to increase birth rates

    The opposite is also true: if you want to see higher birth rates then housing needs to be affordable. Most Canadians require some financial stability before they start a family, and that is difficult today with the sky high housing costs.

    • EhForumUser@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      if you want to see higher birth rates then housing needs to be affordable.

      Canada’s birth rate has held stagnant for the last 50 years. No time in the last 50 years has housing been affordable? Hell, Toronto had a housing crash in the 1990s. And it still wasn’t affordable right after that?

      If your answer is no, it is likely that it is fundamentally impossible to make housing affordable. It ultimately uses up a lot of labour and resources, while removing food growing capability and damaging the climate, for no productive benefit. Good for the individual, but a terrible strain on society as a whole. The cost reflects that.

      and that is difficult today

      And for the last 50 years, it seems. Even if we can wave a magic wand at housing, how can we be sure that doesn’t end up “I can’t have kids, food is too expensive!” and then “I can’t have kids, internet service is too expensive!”?

      The reality is that life has never been affordable. The only thing that changed 50-some-odd years ago was the invention of the birth control pill. And the harsh reality is that life can never be affordable. There is not enough time in the day.