Reply To: Binah-Shidduch Issue

mox: “another relevant point that has to be taken into account is the tremendous advances in reproductive medicine over the past ten or so years”

While it is wonderful that medicine is helping solve another “crisis” by saving many couples from childlessness, it has little impact on overall birth rates. People are not using IVF etc to have 10 children but to have 1 or 2. Also many of the issues it solves are hormone imbalances due to excessive obesity or anorexia, issues largely new to this generation. So it is not causing an increase in overall birth rates, just mitigating a potential cause of decline.

So if all this hullabaloo about fixing the “age gap” is based on the miss-assumption that birth rates are rising, I think NASI should call back the 70 signatories and explain to them that they were fed faulty data. As mox explained, it’s irrelevant if the birth rate is 2%, 4.5% or 10%; what is important is whether it is rising or falling.