The Stork Market: A History On Babies, Bonds, & Bologna
Despite the brouhaha of protests, parades, political shootings, and potential war in the Middle East, the march towards passing the “one big beautiful bill” continues. Though some aspects of the bill have attracted criticism from Republicans and Democrats alike, there is one small piece of legislation that is getting praise (albeit somewhat lukewarmly from the left): Trump’s baby bonus.
As noted by USA Today, “The program for American children born during Trump's current term would involve a one-time contribution from the federal government of $1,000 per toddler into a mutual fund or index fund that is tied to the performance of the stock market.”
Furthermore, the legislation also permits parents, religious institutions, and private foundations to contribute up to $5,000 annually to a child’s account until he or she reaches 18 years old. The funds are set aside for purposes such as education, vocational training, or the purchase of a first home. The full balance will be available at age 30.
The main purpose of this measure is to combat America’s declining birth rate, which hit a new record low of 1.6 births per woman in 2023. Most experts agree that a rate of 2.1 is necessary to maintain the population.
“This is a pro-family initiative that will help millions of Americans harness the strength of our economy to lift up the next generation,” Trump has said of the proposed investment.1
But while these Trump Accounts have raised some eyebrows, it is not the first time a government has taken financial action in its attempts to revive struggling birth rates.
A Renaissance Man . . . and the Dowry He Pays
Around 700 years ago, the Black Death struck Italy with particular ferocity. Contemporary chronicles and modern estimates agree that the city of Florence lost roughly 50% of its population in the first outbreak alone; repeated outbreaks continued well into the 15th century having an even graver effect. Beyond the immediate mortality crisis, the plague precipitated long-term demographic stagnation. Marriage and fertility rates declined, especially among the patriciate, for whom the lack of eligible suitors spurred a dowry inflation so immense that they became a prohibitive burden. The issue even made its way into art – Dante of Inferno fame lamented how dowries, manageable in his father’s time, were now untenable:2
“A daughter’s birth did not yet fill /
A father’s heart with fear, /
For age and dowry had not yet fled /
to opposite extremes.”
One of the ways families attempted to deal with the dowry demands was to give a dowry to one daughter and then any other daughters to convents. Though it sounds almost comical, this was a very real issue; in Venice, which did not employ dowry assistance programs like Florence, an estimated 60% of all patrician women joined convents – most without their consent.3
Facing population decline and a society unable to keep up marriage rates because of dowry madness, the city’s leadership decided to get involved and create the Monte delle Doti, a.k.a. the dowry fund. Established in 1425, it represented one of the earliest examples of a state-managed financial mechanism explicitly designed to combat persistent population decline, bolster patrician marriage rates, and maintain social cohesion in the wake of recurring plague cycles. Though a dowry fund is not precisely the same as a baby one, marriage and children were intrinsically linked in the 15th century and children were an assumption following marriage.
The Monte allowed parents (usually fathers) to deposit funds with the state on behalf of their daughters, starting at 6 years old. In exchange, the government guaranteed a substantial return – typically between 11% and 15% – payable as a dowry upon the daughter's marriage within a specified time frame.4 Originally, the dowry would go entirely to the state if the girl died unmarried. However, after its wild unpopularity, the law changed so that if the girl died unmarried or failed to wed by the cutoff age, the family received its principal back.5 Most importantly, the dowry would only be paid out upon a marriage’s consummation – a change from historical precedent, when dowries were simply given at marriage.
Of course, this scenario is not entirely synonymous with Trump’s plan. The U.S. government is the one paying the initial lump sum, whereas the Florentine government provided interest rather than the principal. Moreover, the goal for the Monte delle Doti was not purely about marriage and birth rate decline; the city was in financial straits following costly wars.
But while the scheme served multiple purposes, its main one was to alleviate the financial strain on families, particularly middling or declining noble houses, and removing a key obstacle to arranging marriages.
The long-term impact of the Monte delle Doti is complex. In the short term, it appears to have succeeded in increasing marriage rates and expanding access to dowries beyond the wealthiest tier of patrician families. However, its effects were uneven. The returns were attractive enough to encourage participation but not always sufficient to fund the full dowry; many families used it as a supplement rather than a substitute. Furthermore, it was less accessible to the urban poor, and its benefits accrued disproportionately to the upper classes.
That’s Bologna!
Florence wasn’t the only place to encourage a financial dowry system. Bologna instilled one as well, known as the Monte del Matrimonio, around a century later and managed to fix many of the issues that plagued her southern sister. The Monte del Matrimonio was set up in 1583 by a pious and wealthy cloth merchant, Marcantonio Battilana. He addressed the tensions which were tearing apart the fabric of urban society, denouncing l’intolerabile gravezza (the unbearable burden) of modern dowries.
But the Monte del Matrimonio differed from the Monte delle doti in several key respects. As noted by Mauro Carboni in his thesis for the University of Bologna:
“The fund had a distinct social goal and it actively discouraged the investments of wealthy families by imposing a relatively low ceiling on deposits. It aimed at reaching a large body of local families, encouraging saving and attracting petty investment from households’ contemporaries labelled as pauperes pinguiores – the so 18 called wealthier poor – i.e. that large section of the urban population (from 50 to 70 percent according to most estimates), made up of skilled workers, shopkeepers, and craftsmen, which were neither affluent nor indigent. It was a straightforward attempt to induce ordinary households not just to set money aside and to earn cumulative returns, but to lock savings away for a long term goal.”
The Monte functioned as an investment consortium managed by its own investors, who elected a twelve-member board of councilors and appointed professional staff to administer daily operations and maintain financial records. The board’s primary responsibility was to safeguard the fund’s financial health and formulate long-term investment strategies, such as limiting real estate investments to 10% of the fund.
Unlike the mixed results of the Florentine experiment, the Bolognese one was a resounding success:
“The Monte was a long-term success story: within a few decades, it became the city dowry bank. Between 1583 and 1796 the fund managed 35,856 accounts. On average, 168 new accounts were opened every year . . . throughout the early modern period one marrying couple in three could count on a matrimonial deposit at the fund.”
The dowries generally amounted to around a year or two years’ salary for artisans, to give an idea of how effective these saving plans could be – especially for middle class and lower middle class citizens.
From Monte to MAGA
Taken together, the experiments in Florence and Bologna offer striking historical precedents for today’s political moment. In both cases, city-states turned to financial policy to address not just economic inequality or social mobility, but demographic crisis. While Florence’s Monte delle Doti was rooted in elite preservation and shored up the marriage prospects of patrician daughters, Bologna’s Monte del Matrimonio expanded access to savings and dowries across a broad swath of society.
Trump’s so-called “baby bonus” shares the DNA of both models. Like the Monte in Florence, it involves government-mediated investment accounts timed to major life transitions (marriage in the the Middle Ages versus education or homeownership today). Like the Bolognese experiment, it aims to target working families by incentivizing long-term saving for practical goals that support upward mobility. However, unlike its Renaissance predecessors, Trump’s plan places the state rather than the family as the primary contributor – making it open to one potential error: a lack of change in behavior.
What partly made the Bolognese plan so successful was its effect on how families viewed and acted on saving for their daughters. Moreover, it affected society at large by making it seem like a problem the city-state was to tackle together.
In addition, there’s also the question of whether financial tools alone can reverse cultural and economic forces that have made parenting so daunting in 21st-century America. Birth rates are falling not just because of cost, but because of the collapse of social support – both from society at large and even the dynamics of the home. (One staggering statistic is that men only deign to do an equal amount of housework if their wives are the sole income earner.)6
In that regard, the lesson from history may be more cautionary than celebratory: saving accounts may help, but they are no substitute for broader structural reform.
Still, the Monte models show what’s possible when governments think creatively about population policy. They remind us that demography is not destiny, and that even modest financial interventions can help shape a society’s future, and here is hoping that Trump’s plan will help him become the “fertilization president” as he boasted.
https://cris.unibo.it/bitstream/11585/893969/3/Financing_marriage_in_early_modern_Italy.pd
https://www.amazon.com/Convents-Politic-Renaissance-Culture-Society/dp/0226769364
https://cris.unibo.it/bitstream/11585/893969/3/Financing_marriage_in_early_modern_Italy.pdf
https://www.medicine.mcgill.ca/epidemiology/hanley/c626/Morrison_Monte_delle_doti.PDF
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/women-breadwinners-tripled-since-1970s-still-doing-more-unpaid-work/
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