What things could Singapore change to fix their birth rates? Empirically, nothing that any country is trying is working.
19 year old Singaporeans within a year of dating must sit down with their partner's families to put a $200k sgd deposit on a house to join the 7 year waiting list so they can get married by the time they are 27.
2/ Singapore does a decent job at this, but further normalize domestic workers. Domestic workers drastically soften the blow women experience in their careers, especially with kids.
If they can push costs down further (like housing a worker is expensive), this would enable more Singaporean women to have more free time to date, get married, etc.
3/ Male Singaporeans have a mandatory 2 year service, which detracts from their time to date. Potentially offer more benefits to marriage or more time off to date.
only thing I would add is the size of HDBs - they've been shrinking which I'm sure puts psychological pressure on young adults to not have kids.
Because most countries aren't actually trying anything nor can the government do much in that regard when the issues are cultural and emotional.
The low-birthrate couples who can't/don't want kids aren't suddenly gonna want them if you give them 3 months of paid maternity leave and a monthly stipend or other such welfare perks.
And those who do have kids because of government welfare perks, were having kids anyway, they're now incentivized to have even more.
The countries that do try seem to fall short of actually replacing even a few years of serious career work and offer no way to go back to that career after taking care of children for a while, so you just need to do that.
In what way? Pay them a six figure salary to stay home with kids for a few years?
>seem to fall short of actually replacing even a few years of serious career work
Where would that money come from? How high would the taxes have to be? Why would anyone start a business to hire in that country with such a massive cost for them they can't afford?
The welfare state only works if it's a safety net, not a 1:1 replacement for working wages.
Working out the logistics of paying for it is another matter, but if it's too expensive then you can't really complain about the low birthrate - either the state pays or the people do for all that time spent on raising kids. People who rationally choose to skip that time to work or do other things need to be motivated somehow if you want the kids, right?
So ultimately it depends on how seriously you want to take the birthrate crisis. This is the simplest way I can think of to tackle the two income household obstacle though.
People on a six figure lifestyle in High-Col cities, will see a 5 figure welfare pay as a life downgrade and will not be incentivised to have kids.
The only ones incentivise will be those for whom 5 figures is an upgrade, I.E. the poor, who are already having kids regardless.
Reagan spent years screaming about "Welfare queens" who were supposedly doing just that for a pittance in comparison, so it sure is funny how many people now insist that it can't even be possible, since so many people were so convinced it was happening for $400 a month in food stamps, at scale.
I also know a lot of women who wanted kids but couldn't afford it without, essentially, a tech industry husband. Or people like my sister, who has made raising kids her life's work since she was 16 but couldn't afford to have kids herself until she fell ass backwards into a nearly free house, from her now husbands family.
Everyone in my large friend group who wanted to start a family, literally wanted the traditional family structure and setup and "being a dad", had to wait a decade to get a home and a career that supported it. This includes the fact that having a child without good enough healthcare to support it or getting unlucky means medical bankruptcy.
It's not culture that people with lower understanding of finances and risk have kids still when having a kid is a serious drain on your finances. It's "duh".
If you want people who have an educated and mature understanding of risk to take that risk, it has to be worth it. Suck it up. You don't get to benefit from an uneducated populace anymore.
https://www.reddit.com/r/aznidentity/comments/1s184vi/cdc_da...
Unironically Mao/Nixon and Henry Kissenger almost put us into a hilarious world where we (the USA) would have "imported" ~10 million Chinese women. Mao unironically proposed this and his argument about why it would have hurt us is that they "have too many children!":
"Chairman Mao: (Laughing) Those are honest words.
Dr. Kissinger: This is our position.
Chairman Mao: Do you want our Chinese women? We can give you ten million. (Laughter, particularly among the women.)
Dr. Kissinger: The Chairman is improving his offer.
Chairman Mao: By doing so we can let them flood your country with disaster and therefore impair your interests. In our country we have too many women, and they have a way of doing things. They give birth to children and our children are too many. (Laughter)
[Page 132] Dr. Kissinger: It is such a novel proposition, we will have to study it."
- https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v18...
Maybe the europeans are an exception