2.1 is the right value. That's replacement rate. Anything above is subject to healthy debate.
If you have the opinion that there are insufficient resources in the world to live the lifestyle you want for yourself or those you care about, you may think a lower fertility rate is more “right”. And if you think your tribe is in a competition for resources with all the other tribes, then you may want a higher fertility rate for your tribe and a lower one for the others.
That said, I'm of the opinion that we'll never really need to have any tough conversations about birth rates because they've fallen so drastically across the board. It seems that it will be enough to universally encourage higher birth rates in every nation for the foreseeable future (with the expected outcome being that most will still struggle to hit 2.1).
Only if you're the sort of person who cares about such things. I don't see any moral imperative to make sure any particular ethnicity or culture continues.
Before someone calls me the usual assortment of bad things, please take a moment to consider (1) the difference between treating existing people well and making new people, and (2) that I mean this literally and not in the "all the cultures besides the US should go away" sense, and would still take this position even in the blatantly racist "but that means you'd be a minority" situation you're about to try to catch me with.
Of course the term minority/majority is relative to the scope you're talking about, too. The "majority" of Americans are global minorities.
> Are some groups "allowed" this, and not others?
So no, my position is that no groups are "allowed" this.
Another way I can express this, that may be more clear, is that a culture isn't a thing on its own. It's a description of the way its members live. Those members may be very attached to that way of life, and it is immoral to take it from them (see (1) above), but the question of whether new people start living in that way is morally neutral.
Mask off moment there.
Incentivizing a woman to have a baby is extremely expensive, and I do not think any country has come up with an offer so attractive such that it causes birth rates to go up.
Which brings up 2 questions: how much does a society have to offer women, and would that society continue to be competitive on a global playing field relative to other countries that might go a different way, such as restricting women’s rights and getting birth rates up by removing women’s agency.
The USA just did this.
The global optimum matters (IMO) more than an assumption of “whatever we have is just right”