Elon Musk
said he plans to significantly increase child-care benefits at his companies, citing his long-held concern about potential population decline.
Mr. Musk, the billionaire chief executive of
Tesla Inc.
and rocket-company Space Exploration Technologies Corp., divulged his intentions Friday on Twitter after saying in recent months that he thought the U.S. birthrate wasn’t “sustainable.”
He signaled details of the benefits could be available next month, but didn’t share further information.
The pledge comes as Mr. Musk has moved to cut staff at Tesla and the company faces legal battles over workplace issues. When some SpaceX employees raised concerns about the actions of their boss, the company fired them.
Other companies, including
McDonald’s Corp.
and
Goldman Sachs Group Inc.,
have recently offered their employees new child-care benefits during the pandemic such as emergency child care and paid leave for pregnancy loss. A study by Care.com released earlier this year found that 56% of the more than 500 U.S. company leaders it surveyed said their workplaces offered or planned to offer child-care benefits, up from 50% the year before.
Representatives for the companies Mr. Musk is involved with, including Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink Corp. and the Boring Co., didn’t immediately return requests for comment Friday. It was unclear what child-care benefits those companies currently offer.
Mr. Musk, 51 years old, said the Musk Foundation would donate “directly to families,” without detailing how such donations might unfold.
His comments come after Insider reported this week that Mr. Musk had more children than he had previously made public. A Tesla representative didn’t immediately respond to questions about the Insider report. Mr. Musk seemingly responded to the reports on Thursday, writing on Twitter that he was “doing my best to help the underpopulation crisis.”
Mr. Musk has frequently expressed his views on falling birthrates in the U.S. on Twitter, a platform he is trying to buy and where he frequently posts on a range of topics.
Births in the country increased last year for the first time since 2014, according to federal data released in May. Experts have described the increase, aided in part by a pandemic baby bust, as “a minor blip,” because births still remain at historically low levels.
Mr. Musk said Friday he thought the “collapsing” birthrate was a danger to civilization.
Write to Alyssa Lukpat at [email protected]
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Appeared in the July 9, 2022, print edition as ‘Musk to Increase Workers’ Benefits For Child Care.’
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