Here in America, we haven’t done much of anything, but I suggest we could at least remove some of the disincentives to having kids. One surprising (but not really) disincentive to having more kids is found in car-seat laws. According to a recent study, they only save a few kids’ lives but cause many parents to forego a third kid (which requires a bigger car): “We estimate that these laws prevented only 57 car crash fatalities of children nationwide in 2017. Simultaneously, they led to a permanent reduction of approximately 8,000 births in the same year, and 145,000 fewer births since 1980, with 90% of this decline being since 2000.”
There are all sorts of other ways in which laws, regulations and social attitudes make parenting more expensive and stressful than a couple of generations ago, even as it receives less social approbation. They should vanish if we want more kids.
It may come down to a religious battle. The Bible encourages people to be fruitful and multiply, and more-religious populations, like Orthodox Jews, evangelical Christians and fundamentalist Muslims, are still having children at a brisk rate. Meanwhile believers in the modern pagan religion of environmentalism are foregoing children, and even getting sterilized because of “climate change.”
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