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The quality contributions roundup has a lot of discussion of fertility. I found it pretty disconcerting to read, since it all seemed to assume that the only way to get women to have kids is to enforce a top down dystopia. This is not my personal experience in my social surroundings★, but of course I live in Israel so I don't count‡.
Anyway, here is my follow-up question:
If you had the ability to set policies that will encourage increased fertility, what policies would you be implement across the board for both men and women simultaneously?
In other words, not "women can't be allowed access to higher education until they've had at least two children", but "people of child-bearing age can't be allowed access to higher education until they've had at least two children". Or "new parents of children are given twenty additional paid vacation days", or whatever. Are there any such policies you think could actually be effective?
★ if anything what I see is women regretting not being able to have more kids
‡ In Israel, fwiw, having kids is simply by default assumed to be a shared responsibility of men, women, and society. It is expected that men take (government paid) sick days to stay home with sick kids. It is not blinked at for the manager to show up to a meeting remotely with a sick kid in his lap. It is expected that men will leave work early several times a week to pick up kids from school — at least in all the places in Israel I have lived I have seen reasonably close sex splits of the parents at pickup/dropoff. I am not clear on whether or not this is equally the case in America — I don't get that impression, but as my knowledge of America is limited to TV and internet discussions, I could be wrong. But I see fathers at the park supervising their kids all the time, and the internet discourse re America is about men getting assumed to be pedophiles for being around kids... So I assume there must be some difference...
Israel has a great many advantages in terms of parenting that we can export to the rest of the world! Not just culturally, but also in terms of policy:
A healthcare system using the voucher system, paid by the government, rather than tied to employment. This is more related to the US than anything.
A voucher system for maternity wards. Hospitals compete to get the most births, and as a result the maternity ward in most hospitals is really nice.
Healthcare includes a large battery of tests & information kits during pregnancy.
Facilities to monitor & help with babies' and toddlers' growth, and vaccinations (Family Health Centers / Tipat Halav).
Pre-school and elementary school operates 6 days a week, leaving parents with 1 day / morning a week to make more kids.
We don't do this in Israel, but it's really important - build more housing units. High prices seem a-priori bad for fertility.
As a counterexample, Finland has equally good policies in the field of healthcare/childcare, but their TFR is abysmal. I get closer and closer to the conclusion that it's the Jewish memeplex that preserves Israel's TFR, not anything else.
There are probably more examples of low TFR with good healthcare than high TFR with good healthcare. Other than Israel, I can't even think of any for the latter.
That said, I think the general direction of causation is both (modern country/culture) --> (low TFR) AND (modern country/culture) --> (good healthcare), rather than (good healthcare) --> (low TFR). I do think you can increase TFR with better healthcare policy, but I admit I have no empirical data to back that up, only personal experience. I'm also not familiar enough with the actual workings of European healthcare, so I don't know if their policies actually match my suggestions or not.
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