The fact that it's both men and women in Israel could be significant. I heard stories about people meeting their romantic partners in the army during the mandatory service.
I’m starting to become more convince that economies which fundamentally squander this peak fertility moment will shoulder a burden that will lead to their demise. How long can we get the fertility timing wrong before we are no more? I guess we’re about to find out.
it's all fine and dandy to think people should be parents in their early 20s, but think about where you were at 20. did you stay with the same person? I think if you ran surveys in the west, you'd find a disproportionate amount who either didn't have anyone, or who broke up not long after. I like to think I'm a much kinder, calmer, and more self-aware person than I was at 18, or even 25.
at 30 you might be a more tired but hopefully at that point you've:
(1) dated enough to know what to look for in a partner; (2) have found that partner who is a good match; (3) have progressed enough in your work that you're less at risk at big economic suffering
I think people who try and save up in advance of kids are a little nutty - focus on your retirement, and emergency fund, they can borrow money. it's almost never an advantageous position for it to be paid off.
3 can definitely be solved by good policy. But I think it's just foolishness to suggest that people can start having kids whenever. At least in my experience and my peers' experience, finding the person who likes you enough to consider that is the blocker by a long shot. Everything else can be solved with money.
by the way, comments earlier about Israeli military service were interesting -- it makes sense to me as an accelerant in bonding, same as some university experiences. That was however not my experience in university undergrad...
Maybe our newfound prologued lifespan gave the illusion we could shift fertility out into the suboptimal band of years indefinitely. But if our economy is structured in a way that demands this shift I have to think it comes at a long term cost where we become too top heavy so to speak and have increasingly diminished returns on how much reproduction we can sustain at those biologically suboptimal band of years with whatever guarantees that may come from deferring reproduction to that better time that may never actually come.