11 countries that desperately want people to have more sex

singapore family

There are few things more important than fertility in determining a nation’s future viability.

Demographers suggest that a country needs a fertility rate of just over two children per woman to hit “replacement fertility” — the rate at which new births fill the spaces left behind by deaths.

But because of certain cultural and economic forces, only about half of the world’s 224 countries currently hit replacement fertility.

For those that don’t, encouraging people to have sex can involve strategies that range from highly explicit to downright bizarre.

Denmark

If you aren’t going to have a kid for your own family, Danes are told, at least do it for Denmark.

No, literally, do it for Denmark.

The small Nordic country has such a low fertility rate — about 1.73 children per woman — that Spies Rejser, a Danish travel company, has come up with ingenious incentives to persuade women to get pregnant.

First, it offered to provide three years’ worth of baby supplies to couples who conceived on a vacation booked through the company.

Now it has come up with a sexy campaign video titled “Do it for Mom,” which guilt trips couples into having kids to give their precious mothers a grandchild.

Russia

Vladimir Putin once brought Boyz II Men to Moscow to rile men up right before Valentine’s Day.

Can anyone blame him? As Tech Insider recently reported, the country is experiencing a perfect demographic storm. Men are dying young. HIV/AIDS and alcoholism are crippling the country. And women aren’t having babies.

The problem got so bad that in 2007 Russia declared September 12 the official Day of Conception.

On the Day of Conception, people get the day off to focus on having kids. Women who give birth exactly nine months later, on June 12, win a refrigerator.

Japan

Japan’s fertility rate has been below replacement since 1975.

To offset that decades-long trend, in 2010 a group of students from the University of Tsukuba introduced Yotaro, a robot baby that gives couples a preview of parenthood.

If men and women begin thinking of themselves as potential fathers and mothers, the students theorized, they’ll feel emotionally ready to take a stab at the real thing.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider