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I'm laughing, because this is Ireland, more or less. We don't have a fertility crunch as of yet - in fact, our population is finally increasing since Famine levels. But I also remember a late government minister in the 80s saying that we had to emigrate, that the country was too small to support the population (around 3 million at the time). Our replacement rate does seem to be low, but it's still pretty good for Europe:
So it's not fertility that is the problem, it's being held hostage to foreign investment instead of developing your own native industries that won't collapse as soon as a global recession hits or the headquarters back in the USA decide to do some belt-tightening and close down overseas branches.
My advice, such as it is (based on Ireland):
Do NOT concentrate everything in one major city so the rest of the country is living on scraps
Solve your goddamn housing crisis
Make wages liveable so that people can get married and have kids and one partner can be the full-time home maker (or do part-time work)
This means making sure employment opportunities are not all concentrated in one major city (see point 1 above) or in a few scattered locations around the country. If you want people to live adult lives, you have to give them the chance not to hollow out the rural/small town communities by all moving to the capital or even emigrating.
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My goal with genericland was to be able to cover Japan, Ireland, South Korea, or Italy with sort of the same scenario, so I’m rather pleased that it got pegged as both an Ireland and Japan analogue.
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