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And yet, there was a baby boom when economic success per capita in the US was at an all-time high, with TFR far higher at that time than at any time after the US became an industrialized country.
It's not just the rent, though that is a part of it. Countries that don't have the housing problem (and aren't clearly being sabotaged for the purpose of pumping up rent; and the US in particular still manages the highest TFR in the developed world despite that sabotage) still have a population contraction problem, anyway, and the market for family formation is (like all markets) irrational, dependent on limited information, and as life-alternatives get better the clearing price for forming one goes up anyway (the "stop educating women/ban porn and birth control" memes are pointing at symptoms of the root cause).
No it doesn't, Israel has the highest fertility in the developed world(or for that matter anywhere outside of Africa or Central Asia).
The baby boom was caused by a massive increase in male wages without a corresponding increase in female wages combined with conservative social norms. We're uh, not going to replicate that. Especially not on purpose. It wasn't just a generalized increase in prosperity, people just consume more when that happens. It specifically made marriage more attractive to both men and women and had the social norms to ensure marriage=babies.
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Yes, the Baby Boom happened. But... that was it. TFR peaked in 1960, collapsed, and remained collapsed. You want that back, you probably need to win a non-nuclear WWIII -- and that condition is probably necessary but not sufficient.
Housing isn't going to make a dent. It's putting the cart before the horse anyway; the Levittowns and later suburbs were built because there were young families looking for houses; young families didn't form because there were now suburbs available.
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