Ever since the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve were prescribed ‘to be fruitful and multiply’. The world’s population exploded and seemed hurtling to a stage of seeming unquenchability.
However, now the opposite has occurred and countries from Japan, South Korea to our island paradise have seen birth rates shrivel up like a male ego after a cold shower.
But in this world where even married, middle-class people are resistant to having a second child and many women are choosing to delay motherhood till 30. It begs the question who will continue to produce the next generation especially as the current workforce is greying at a rapid pace. With political and economic instability still a thing, what is the incentive for a family with no kids or 1 child to contribute to the multiplying?
The introduction of paid family leave. Improvements on maternity and paternity leave with the former increased to a full year and the latter 6 months with the majority of it expected to be spent before the child is a year are key steps in encouraging a fight against the baby bust. A joint payment by NIC and the employer to facilitate parents’ income at this juncture would be welcomed. Many individuals currently fail to live to reap their NIC benefits often failing to reach retirement age and enjoy their pensions or schemes and this would be a tangible way of achieving it and a more realistic version of what the fund was meant for.
The continuation of or introduction to free and subsidized nursery and day care for parents is another cornerstone policy in ensuring that persons are encouraged to procreate. Subsidized payments to teachers for after school programs to support working parents. A much-needed release valve as many continue to be latchkey kids. A third plank would be the use of monetary payments, a one time EC payment of $10,000 with bonus payments of $7,500 and $5000 for a second and a third child would be the initial start to such a project. Followed by the use of baby kits (pampers, wipes, formula, breast pump and other necessities) to aid especially lower- income working class parents who would struggle under the high prices in the various supermarkets. This would be followed by one-time grants to purchase apartments or condominiums in housing developments by first time parents as well as the opportunity for micro loans to facilitate stay at home parents who may wish to start a business.
The parliament can enact legal protections for remote work for families registered under the baby boom scheme and the expansion of the child tax credit to $5000 per child. Moreover, the strengthening of universal Pre’k, infant, secondary and tertiary education access is needed in order to ensure that citizens have access to education whether it is academic or technical vocational. The ramping up of the current administration’s goal to send one child per household to university would be essential to support a baby boom program. A focus on diversifying scholarships to be more inclusive of arts and varied STEAM areas may be a consideration.
The promotion of IVF and fertility drugs especially in a country where many women suffer from PCOS and other fertility related illnesses is a necessary aspect of a baby boom programme. This would perhaps be of incentive to persons graduating with bio-chem degrees from UWI and its ilk rather than the lure of the classroom just because it is a stable income to pay back loans.
And finally if all else fails and the locals hesitate to embrace the spirit of Gaza Indu when she appealed to Adidja Palmer to be her baby daddy then there is the appeal to the diasporas to return with incentives for relocation and resettlement within the society. There lies also an appeal to countries where migrants often outgrow the native born with readily available passports and visa access their countries fail to provide with the use of our burgeoning CIP fund and or the use of the emerging Sovereign Fund to support these initiatives.