Opinion: Have a baby, get $5,000 — a good deal?

U.S. President Donald Trump has offered to give $5,000 to every woman who has a baby. If you’re poor, especially abjectly poor, this probably sounds like a good deal. It’s not.

At this writing, he has not promised prenatal care, government-paid delivery and hospitalization, paid parental leave from work, pediatric services, or free or partly-subsidized child care. Most advanced economies offer the whole package.

Overpopulated world

In 2025, the world is overpopulated and every major problem (including war) that I can think of is directly or indirectly attributable to this truth. Over millennia, with short interruptions like war, the “Black Plague” or “Spanish Flu,” the world has experienced a birth rate that has been higher than its death rate. This led to a slow accumulation of living people. Then came the Industrial Revolution around the middle of the Eighteenth Century. That was the fuse that set off the “population bomb.”