[slothtrop]

> If fertility rates get stuck at 1 or below

There's no reason to believe they would be "stuck" into perpetuity.

Right now, young people comparatively want fewer kids than the previous generation. That's owing to both life stresses (as they say it) and cultural shift, neither of which are written in stone. The fertility rate has stagnated with prosperity, but the U.S. was also quite developed by the end of the world wars, and we then had the boomers.

> they require a lot of societal wealth

Scandinavian countries aren't particularly wealthy compared to the U.S., Germany, France, Japan and others.

[throwuwu]

You must mean total wealth rather than per capita because most scandinavian countries are more wealthy than Germany, France and Japan per capita and are quite close to the US. They’re all below replacement rate and headed lower anyways.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(no...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and...