I can only speculate of course, but I think something that'd increase birthrates in urbanized society would "simply" be arranging things such that raising a family isn't so exclusionary.
In a developed society, people are more likely to have many things they want to pursue and achieve, and due to various factors (financial and otherwise), having kids usually entails giving up on most or all of that. That probably seems like a pretty raw deal to a lot of folks, considering we all only get one life to live.
If it weren't so necessary to put off all of these things until the kids have left the nest and youth has been spent away, I'd bet a lot more people would choose to become parents.
> I think something that'd increase birthrates in urbanized society would "simply" be arranging things such that raising a family isn't so exclusionary.
There's only so much you can do. You can introduce as much subsidised childcare, parental leave, flexible working conditions, free higher education, etc, policies as you like – those things can alleviate the disadvantage to other life goals of having kids, but are unlikely to ever be able to reduce it to a level at which it ceases to be significant.
Then, there is what some rich people do, outsourcing the rearing of their children to nannies, tutors and boarding schools, such that they rarely see them – but, that's not a recipe for raising well-adjusted kids, and economically is unlikely to be scalable beyond a very small rich minority
I think it is inevitable that cultures in which reproducing is just one option on the menu are always going to have significantly lower TFR than those in which reproducing is viewed as a religious duty, with those who reject it risking ostracism in this life, and the threat of punishment in the next
> There's only so much you can do. You can introduce as much subsidised childcare, parental leave, flexible working conditions, free higher education, etc, policies as you like – those things can alleviate the disadvantage to other life goals of having kids, but are unlikely to ever be able to reduce it to a level at which it ceases to be significant.
Reducing disadvantage to insignificance is indeed unlikely, but if things were structured such (for example) that working a part-time job paid a wage capable of supporting a family, that’d go a long way. It’d enable parents to work full-time for the extra cash for some period of time prior to starting a family to build substantial financial padding and then drop back to part-time once kids are in the picture, opening up time for parents to be both parents and be people.
We’ve seen incredible improvements in productivity in the past several decades, so there’s not really much reason why that shouldn’t be possible.
There are lots of reasons why people don't have kids which don't have anything to do with their expense.
I can think of several people I know, who (I think) would have made perfectly fine parents, but probably (or even definitely) never will. Waiting for "Mr/Ms Right", who they never manage to find - he or she always seems to be already taken or chasing somebody else or being chased by more appealing options. In other cultures/societies (and even previous versions of their own), at some point they would have settled for "Mr/Ms Good Enough"–but, they've absorbed a culture which discourages (even criticises) doing that. Plus, many children of divorced parents are hesitant to have kids with someone less than ideal, because they worry it will lead to their own kids going through what they did. I doubt changes to working conditions can do anything to address those kinds of issues.
Replacement TFR is 2.1 for low mortality countries; in 2021, the OECD average was 1.58. If we talk about that shortfall, 0.52, how much of that shortfall is due to expense/workplace/career/education-related reasons, and how much due to other reasons? (I don't know.) If it is mostly due to expense/workplace/career/education-related reasons, targeting those factors may make a big difference; if it is mostly due to other reasons, targeting those factors might not make much difference at all.
Well, my thinking here is that increasing available time by reducing the number of hours people have to work to live is going to be a net benefit to individuals like you’ve mentioned in your first paragraph too. People are more likely to go out and do things and find each other if the majority of their energy and waking lives aren’t tied up with work.
It might make some difference – however, if a person's dating expectations are fundamentally out of sync with what's realistically available to them, having more time to spend on meeting new people might not change the ultimate outcome. What we don't know, is what's the proportion of "probably would have found partner if they'd had more time to look for one" versus "unlikely to have found anybody that would satisfy them no matter how much time they had to look". If it is mostly the former, your proposals might make a big difference; if it is mostly the latter, your proposals are unlikely to change much
In a developed society, people are more likely to have many things they want to pursue and achieve, and due to various factors (financial and otherwise), having kids usually entails giving up on most or all of that. That probably seems like a pretty raw deal to a lot of folks, considering we all only get one life to live.
If it weren't so necessary to put off all of these things until the kids have left the nest and youth has been spent away, I'd bet a lot more people would choose to become parents.