I am not saying we need to constantly increase our populations, just wonder if it has been studied and do those studies prescribe a template for short term adjustments / inducements.
An increasing number of people only achieve a level of reasonable financial security by the time they're in their 30s. When getting to that point takes that much time and effort, it's not something one wants to gamble on unless they absolutely have to, and in this circumstance having kids is in effect gambling.
The other thing is that also due to depressed wages, a couple becoming parents means that between working their jobs and taking care of their kids, their life as it previously was basically ceases entirely, which is also a hard pill to swallow. Ideally people would have time to both raise their kid and continue being who they used to be without trying to squeeze time out of the margins by e.g. giving up sleep.
There’s also other aspects of work-dominated culture like difficulty of meeting people outside of the workplace which also factor in.
We get by with paid childcare instead, because we're here now and there is only one path forward.
There’s probably enough people who do want them to keep up replacement rate if the factors I mentioned were addressed, since not only would it open some couples up to having kids, it would also make it more likely for those who’d otherwise only had one to have multiple.
Imo the only long term solution is societal acceptance of parenthood as a job instead of something that is done for free. That would be a huge cultural shift for every society, but from what I understand it will be an even harder pill to swallow in eastern asian cultures. The insane work culture has been the backbone of the growth in these economies so I think it might be hard for them to accept that it isn't sustainable.
Canada is just beginning to roll out $10/day daycare, which should reign in a lot of these costs and make it more affordable to have a family. It'll be interesting to see where Canada's growth rate is at 10, 20 years from now once that is common.
Of course other costs elsewhere (ie. housing!) have spiked so much that will further discourage household growth, so more work needs to be done.
The simple dull reality is that there's a huge shortage of homes because homes were under built for decades and decades due to 1) exclusionary zoning and 2) governments stopping funding any and all below market housing in the 1990s.
The shortage of suitable homes of course hurts families very badly.
Many large homes suitable for families are occupied by retirees that don't want to move and don't have anywhere good to move (because again, we've built little). Zoning prohibits subdivision and redevelopment of the vast majority of the surface areas of cities so creating more housing is difficult.
Families need 1300sqft+. We badly need to rezone the entirety of our cities broadly to allow massive sfh lots to be redeveloped to create multiple 1300sqft+ spaces suitable for families. Rowhouses, Townhouses, and Apartments.