A Trust Fund for Mothers: A Possible Answer to Dwindling Motherhood.

A response on the problem of falling birth rates.

Once more, a population crisis post came up on social media: How can the United States fix the problem of people not having kids or only having one or two? The phrasing changes, but this question gets asked often, and again I did not see a single comment that I felt had a realistic chance of doing that of the ones I read.

Here is my idea for a possible solution:

A massive stock trust fund that gives quarterly payouts out of the dividends it collects to mothers and grandmothers of American citizens for each child born to her and a quarter share for each grandchild.

To solve this problem, you need to raise the social and economic status of mothers. This trust goes a long way in doing that. How well it does that will have to do with how large the fund is, and seeing to it is not diluted. The only ones getting this fund should be the mothers and grandmothers only. It is not child support, and the children do not get it on moving out or on the death of their mother and/or grandmother. Mothers, and grandmothers only, period.

This would need to be a private open-record fund, to prevent congress, and others from “borrowing” from it, or to prevent them from trying to win votes by expanding it to others diluting it. It is a sure bet that if it is a government-controlled fund, groups will start lobbying congress to have people added to it; or for congress to mandate that pay be deducted from it and the mothers required to buy what they are selling out of it.

It must stay for mothers and grandmothers only, ensuring that mothers get an economic edge over all others, and grandmothers have incentive to help their daughters become successful mothers. This is not for her kids, or husband, and they have no right to it (though she may gift them money from it) and it ends upon her death. It is for her and her alone, not her dependents. But if controlled by congress, lobbyists will fund the candidates that will change that.

The fund itself would be a private trust fund that owns stock. Each quarter it would pay out ½ of all dividends collected since the last pay out. What percentage the payout each mother and grandmother gets is set by how many children and/or grandchildren she has.

The remaining half would be evenly divided into half for trust operation, and half for buying new stock for the fund. Part of that operation is maintaining a website where anyone can log on and pick from a huge list of stocks that has paid dividends for the past 3 quarters and buy that stock for the trust. The trustees may, at their discretion, sell any stock that has paid no dividends for the past 20 quarters, provided all money from said sales goes to buying more stock that is paying dividends. This would be the only way that they can sell trust-owned stock.

This creates an ever-growing fund. Whether it gets big enough to make much of a difference to mothers depends largely on how much support it gets. Ideally, it should grow faster than the number of new mothers each quarter being added. With luck, a grandmother retiring will have a huge help in her retirement.

Making motherhood much higher status than is now has and more young women will see it as good option, rather than something holding them back. Giving them an economic edge on all others would be one of the best steps you can take in that direction.

Let me know what you think.