[phatfish]

I bet these five could easily get birth rates above 2.0.

- Reasonable maternity leave allowances.

- Good affordable (or free) healthcare.

- Good affordable (or free) child care until school age.

- Free education to university graduate level.

- Affordable housing.

The super-rich have no interest in allowing this to happen, so countries where having a child is a significant cost will continue to have low fertility rates.

[lttlrck]

Yet despite having none of those things the US birthrate is above most of Europe.

I don't think you're necessarily wrong BTW but it's not that simple.

[bombcar]

All of those may help (and arguably, European birthrates would be much worse if they didn't have them) but I don't think they're alone enough to turn around the zeitgeist of the country as a whole.

The two main hurdles to increasing birthrate are:

1. Convince couples with no kids to have one. 2. Convince couples with two/three kids to have one more.

The list might help but the question is how much for each.