In fact, Europe's fertility rate in later generations was also alarmingly low. At the very least, the number of native Europeans had been in steady decline. The only reason the overall balance could still be maintained was the continuously growing numbers of black people and Muslims.
For modern European politicians, this was still a barely acceptable situation, but it did not fit the underlying logic of a universal empire steeped in religious tradition.
Europe's negative population growth should not be blamed simply on welfare systems and women's high levels of education. Economic transformation and rising childcare costs were the real keys.
After the transition from an agricultural society to an industrial one, the labor value of children in farming and industry gradually declined, while the cost of raising them skyrocketed during the same period.
Coupled with severe class rigidity and changing traditional values, this eventually led to the great population depression of the 1870s.
Did Franz really need to start worrying now about something that would happen twenty years later?
The answer was that he absolutely did. Once fertility rates and attitudes toward childbirth changed, they could not be changed back even after generations.
After the end of World War II, every European nation, without prior agreement, adopted policies encouraging childbirth. In southern Italy and Britain, there had even been bizarre cases of families living off their children.
They relied on government subsidies brought in by having children to cover household expenses, then kicked those children out at eighteen, repeating the cycle over and over.
Yet even with subsidies reaching such extremes, they still failed to save the fertility rate. Instead, they merely benefited black people and Muslims.
But the Austrian Empire clearly could not replenish its labor force with black people and Muslims, and Franz had no interest in