[maxglute]

So far, no amount of pro-natal policies will get you replacement TFR, see wealthy MENA countries where people have make work jobs, extravagant support (nannies etc), and TFR still dropping below replacement 2.1. The reality >2.1 TFR is product of uneducated women without opportunities. As long as women are educated, have agency, body autonomy, in aggregate family formation stays below replacement, even when not resource constrained i.e. women in workforce with opportunity to assume fulltime homemaker rolls (rich family, ample social support) still stops short at replacement TFR. Unless policies regress, the only thing left untried is mixture of extremely pro-natal policies and punitive anti-natal policies, i.e. taxes, opportunities, travel bans to control brain drain, wealth transfers that heavily penalize people with <2 kids.

Or accept (mass) immigration, which LBH only black and brown countries have excess bodies. Countries will have to decide whether they hate slow decline more than they hate getting darker or hate their women's rights. Or maybe on long timeline, some scifi shenanigans like test tube babies, shifting sex ratio, i.e. 2:1 female to male ratio brings replacement TFR to 1.5 and all the family structure changes that entails (more single moms, institutional polygamy, functional state orphanages etc), i.e. state will have to be much more active in demographic management.

Ultimately, it seems cannot carrot to replacement TFR, maybe able to stick, but no politician in any system really wants to touch that stick.