Damn

A link via Arnold Kling:

More than a quarter of Portugal’s babies are born to unmarried women, while in Austria, Ireland and Hungary the share is now above 30 percent, and in France the figure is just under 44 percent.

[Emphasis mine]

That is an incredible figure. Mr. Kling has a question for discussion. I think the welfare state is, by far, the biggest factor contributing to this depressing reality. When the government is responsible for child care, education, and health care, the family unit has less value. Take that mixture with increasing tax rates and one gets massive incentives to simply leave the kid(s) to the state.

But the population, and thus the tax base, is shrinking because Europeans are having less kids than before. So, this insanity of cradle-to-grave handouts won't last. Add in the ever-growing unassimilated members of the Religion of Peace^TM, and we get a recipe for a full-scale disaster. We are going to see some wretched ugliness in Europe over the next two decades.