The Thai government wants its citizens to have more sex. Yes, really.
As if there isn't a lot of it going on already, right? Actually, the government just wants to encourage couples to have more than one child.
It offers to double the tax breaks for each child after the first one from 30,000 baht to 60,000 baht. Parents can also claim up to 60,000 baht in deductions for prenatal care and delivery expenses.
Why would the government spend 2.5 billion baht a year to urge citizens to engage in more amorous activities?
Planners are worried that Thailand is becoming an ageing society at the same time that the overall fertility rate has been declining.
They fear there will not be enough people to make up for lost labour as older people retire from the work force.
Statistics from the Interior Ministry show there are currently just over 700,000 new births per year compared to over a million new births during the boom years in the late 60s through the 80s.
They are worried by the declining ratio between working and retired people. In 20 years or so, 1.7 people will have to provide for one old person, the ministry says.
It's interesting to note that as countries develop economically, more people stay single or have fewer births. Thailand is just one of many countries that have found themselves facing this dilemma.
Japan, of course, has been in the doldrums in terms of fertility rate for more than 20 years while more of its citizens are ageing.
Our neighbour to the south, Singapore, reportedly has the lowest fertility rate in the world, at just 0.81 children per woman. Thailand's fertility rate is double that at 1.6, still considerably below the replacement rate of 2.1.
But are we in such dire straits demographically as the picture officials paint?
They say figures don't lie, but we know statistics do.
It's ironic that the Interior Ministry cited a number of a million births as a goal to reach. This number was achieved during Thailand's highest birth rate of over 3%. At the time, the population expanded so much and fast that the government saw fit to launch a campaign to reduce growth.
Mind you, the country did so well that its campaign was subsequently cited as a model for population control around the world.
Factually, even though the total fertility rate of Thai women is declining, the Thai population continues to increase. The 700,000-plus births per year are offset by 400,000 deaths. That means the population increases by over 300,000 each year or at a rate of 0.5% per year.
Concerns over labour shortage also seem overblown.
Speaking at a population conference in 2014, demographer Prof Emeritus Pramote Prasartkul suggested that the perceived shortage might be addressed by increasing the retirement age to over 60.
The current forced retirement age of 60 is out of step with modern health conditions and life expectancy. Adding five years to the retirement age would increase the labour force by 4-5 million, neatly making up the shortfall in the job market.
The academic did not say it but the measure has an added benefit of addressing social issues, such as loneliness, depression and poverty, among old people.
Jobs unwanted by Thais as dangerous, dirty and difficult have already been filled by foreign migrants. More migrants can be recruited as needed.
Thousands of migrants' children are likely to spend years in the country. If granted permanent residency, they can be educated to contribute valuable services to their adopted country.
Jobs requiring high skills could be opened up for foreign workers.
Foreign workers and migrants, by the way, also pay taxes.
Technology, such as robotics, has been employed to modernise production as well as replace human labour. The trend is set to increase in the future in broader scale.
A major flaw of the latest population policy is that it is one dimensional. It is fundamentally an economic decision with insufficient consideration to social and environmental implications.
We have had serious environmental problems domestically and globally. Any increase in population only adds pressure to our already overburdened natural resources.
Worsening the environment means worsening quality of life for future generations. This might have been a key consideration of many people nowadays not to want to have children. An economic incentive does not do justice to this concern.
Prof Pramote also suggested that officials pay more attention to the quality rather than the quantity of births.
He might have in mind the rising numbers of unplanned pregnancies among teenagers.
Quality births, according to Prof Pramote, are births to women who want them, and are prepared and have planned for them.
"We must begin with good quality of birth followed by good quality of education and socialisation to ensure that new members of society develop well," he says.
That is an area where the money slated for tax breaks can be better spent.
With feasible solutions to their population concerns, why do nations still insist their citizens produce more offspring?
No one would say it out loud, but I suspect that on a subconscious level national leaders are worried about the racial dilution of their populations.
But with the world connected as it is by technology and economics, not to mention ecology, it makes more sense to look at the issue on a global scale rather than a parochial one.
An increasing population does not address the world's most pressing problems, nor, as a matter of fact, the problems of individual nations.
Wasant Techawongtham is former news editor, Bangkok Post.