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One way to encourage births (in small countries)
Or is it just intertemporal substitution?:
Two years after having one of the lowest birth rates in the world, Georgia [the country] is enjoying something of a baby boom, following an intervention from the country's most senior cleric.
At the end of 2007, in a move to reverse the Caucasian country's dwindling birth figures, the head of the Georgian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Ilia II, came up with an incentive. He promised to personally baptise any baby born to parents of more than two children.
There was only one catch: the baby had to be born after the initiative was launched.
The results are, in the words of the Georgian Orthodox Church, "a miracle".
...The country's birth rate increased by nearly 20% during 2008 - a rate four times faster than the previous year.
Many parents say they took the decision to have another child on the basis of the Patriarch's incentive.
Here is the full article and I thank John Chilton for the pointer.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on March 30, 2009 at 07:19 AM in Religion | Permalink
Comments
Link, please!
Posted by: ck at Mar 30, 2009 7:28:02 AM
Even if it is intertemporal substitution, the shape of the population pyramid matters at least as much as its absolute size.
Posted by: Cyrus at Mar 30, 2009 7:53:32 AM
At first I read "babysit" instead of "baptise"
Posted by: Zamfir at Mar 30, 2009 8:02:13 AM
Rational people responding to rational incentives?
Posted by: Neal at Mar 30, 2009 8:18:14 AM
a blessing by an orthodox primate as equal to years of frustration, 529's and braces? I suspect this is an overdetermined result. Places also tend to have high birthrates after wars or dramatic social change, of which Gruzia has both. I don't know how you spell"baby boom" in in Cyrillic, but I bet this might be more likely
Posted by: Farmer at Mar 30, 2009 9:13:15 AM
If they all signed up to gurgle I reckon they'd have no problems at all!
Posted by: sally at Mar 30, 2009 10:18:53 AM
Is a baptism worth more than a cash subsidy?
Posted by: athelas at Mar 30, 2009 11:05:37 AM
Farmer,
First of all, the Georgian language doesn't use Cyrillic.
Second, the rest of your argument doesn't follow. The end of the cold war and the dramatic social changes and economic upheaval it brought about only served to decrease the birth rate in places like Poland and Romania. For that matter, the 1960s were certainly a time of dramatic social change in the West and the birth rate plummeted, although the invention of the birth control pill probably had something to do with it.
Posted by: anonymous at Mar 30, 2009 11:07:04 AM
Sounds to me like a case of post hoc, ergo propter hoc.
Wait, I just read the article. I see there's hard data:
"Many parents say they took the decision to have another child on the basis of the Patriarch's incentive."
I apologise.
Posted by: Phil P at Mar 30, 2009 11:59:52 AM
Posted by: 徵信 at Aug 16, 2009 10:49:19 PM
