Father-of-11 Elon Musk says parents should be “incentivized” to have children to “create the next generation of people, otherwise they will be forgotten”

Elon Musk says people should be incentivized to have children to spur population growth around the world.

The billionaire father of 11 warned that humanity will fall into “oblivion” if birth rates fall.

“There should be an incentive to have children, not a financial penalty like in most countries!” Musk wrote on X, formerly Twitter, which he owns.

“We have to create the next generation of people, otherwise we will be forgotten,” he added.

The statement came in response to the publication of a poll on the website of Katalin Novak, the Hungarian president, asking: “Should people with children be financially disadvantaged compared to those without children?”

Tesla tycoon Elon Musk has eleven children and is committed to pro-birth policies

Musk wrote on the social media platform X, which he owns, that more needs to be done to incentivize people to have children

“In Hungary we want people with children to have a financial advantage,” Novak added.

It comes like Hungary recently announced a series of pro-natalist policies These include tax exemptions for women with more than four children, loans that are written off when couples have three or more children, help for first-time buyers with children and access to government fertility clinics.

Musk himself has 11 children: Techno Mechanicus, Griffin, Vivian, Kai, Saxon, Damian, X, Nevada, Exa and a set of twins whose names are not yet publicly known.

The Tesla mogul has previously made pro-natalist comments during a factory visit in 2021, proclaiming: “If people stop having children, civilization will collapse,” Wired reported.

Later at a Wall Street Journal event in 2022, he reiterated: “The fundamental obstacle is labor, there are not enough people.”

“I cannot emphasize this enough.” “One of the greatest threats to civilization is the low birth rate.”

As the U.S. struggles with declining birth rates, the cost of raising three children now costs the average American family $54,000 a year – with costs rising to more than $90,000 in the most expensive places in the country.

Typically, childcare, housing, food, medical costs and transportation costs are highest for the firstborn, with a national annual average of $20,814.

Musk’s post was in response to the Hungarian president’s publication of a poll on the child policy website

For the second child, that amount drops to $17,413 per year, before dropping even further to $16,513 for the third child.

SmartAsset examined the costs of groceries, child care, health care, additional housing and other necessities in 381 metropolitan areas when a family of two working adults includes one, two or three children in their budget.

According to the study, Ann Arbor, Michigan, is the most expensive place to raise children in the U.S., largely due to exceptionally high child care prices.

Raising three children under the age of four in the city costs the average family about $91,063 – with child care costs a whopping $22,000 per year per infant.

Raising the first child costs $31,670, according to SmartAsset, but for the third it drops to $28,924 – a percentage drop of almost 9 percent.

The San Francisco area is notoriously expensive – especially when it comes to real estate.

Typically, child care, housing, food, medical expenses, and transportation costs are highest for the firstborn

The third child costs parents about 20 percent less than the first, a new study by financial technology company SmartAsset has found

According to the study, Ann Arbor, Michigan, is the most expensive place to raise children in the U.S., largely due to exceptionally high child care prices

According to the study, the San Francisco-Oakland-Berkeley metropolitan area is the most expensive place to raise a single child at $35,647.

This comes after a groundbreaking study earlier this year found that child care costs across the country have risen 220 percent in three decades – well above the general rate of inflation.

Soaring costs have pushed many parents out of the workforce, the education organization Annie E. Casey Foundation found. Families face an effective geographic “lottery,” with child care costs varying by thousands of dollars between states.

The rising cost of child care is partly due to more parents working, increasing demand, and child care centers themselves being underfunded and under-resourced.

Child care businesses typically survive on margins of less than 1 percent, the report said.