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> No country has managed to reverse the trend of declining birth rates.

Perhaps we can learn from the past? Birthrates between the world wars were below replacement level in much of the western world. Then the trend reversed for a while.

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For at least half that time period between world wars, there was significant economic depression.

It might simply be the economy. The vibes are bad and have been bad since the late 70s because wealth distribution is lopsided and income growth is stagnant.

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Question is why was this the case? I feel a natural explanation is it's a reaction to there being less people around on account of the huge number of deaths, in which case there's probably little reason to worry: if birth rate increases as population drops then the system should tend to equalise itself. If it's something else related to a gigantic war specifically then it's a bit less certain (one very important question is was the growth just a displacement in time from all the couples who could not have a child during the war but now can?).
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> No country has managed to reverse the trend of declining birth rate

May I point you to the State of Israel? Its TFR sits at 3.

And if we really want to be nitpicky, and concentrating on the "reverse"-part of your statement, then even Balkan countries shine, as they literally managed to reverse the trend.

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Israel is still declining just more slowly [0]. They do show the general point of this thread: it’s not money that is causing people to have fewer kids. It is the changing social structure and norms, in Israel they appear to tolerate kids everywhere, everyone has lots of kids adding social pressure, family and social support structures are strong making it easier.

In South Korea the reports are they this is very different. Kids are not tolerated in many places, many couples have few kids, society makes it quite hard on moms as well.

0 - https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/isr/isr...

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> And if we really want to be nitpicky, and concentrating on the "reverse"-part of your statement, then even Balkan countries shine, as they literally managed to reverse the trend.

That same bump is now reversing and the general trend of depopulation continues to accelerate. IIRC Bosnia has the lowest birth rates in all of Europe.

I appreciate the push back; I was overly confident in that statement. I do think however that it's correct to state that the slow trend across all developed countries could be summarized as "aggressively downwards".

Israel is literally the one exception.

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> old world pregnancies happened left and right with little to say about it.

Yes.

> Support systems existed because the problem was pervasive. Now the problem is generally gone, and the support systems thereafter.

Meh, support for single moms or pregnant teenagers was not all that great. To large extend, they were punished and suffered, they were blamed. Their kids were oftentimes blamed.

You are better off being pregnant teenager is a single mom today then in 1950 or 1925 or whatever.

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