I continue to think that despite the likelihood of birth rate being multiplicatively impacted by different factors, housing being stable and inexpensive has to be a leg on which all the other factors build. I know so many people who have put off having kids despite wanting them because they do not believe (having gone through the great recession, experiencing modern hiring and firing practices, the pandemic, and seeing global warming, and now AI, while being given a roadmap called "just go to college and everything will be easy" from boomers) that it's prudent when rent and mortgage payments hang over ever all other factors and when things never actually "feel" like they improve for them and don't seem likely to.

Make housing so cheap that people feel there's nothing risky about working minimum age job with 3 kids and you have the first leg of higher birth rates being societally supported IMO.

But that's not an easy place to arrive.