Nothing (that aligns with classically liberal values). Offering child rearing incentives like free childcare, education, outright money, etc does not seem to work, such as in the Nordic countries. People who grow and experience wealth simply don't want to have kids.
If you truly want to raise the birth rate, at any cost, you would reduce education levels, make people poorer, raise religiosity, and ban contraception and abortive services for not just women but everyone. But your country's economy would suffer over and above the slowed birth rate you'd otherwise have.
In the future though, with artificial wombs, I'd imagine we'd go through a Brave New World type scenario where the government grows children themselves (and maybe has the bright idea to stratify the children's gender, race and intellectual capacity as well, but the latter is unlikely if we have AI and robots that do the jobs instead of needing perpetually content Street cleaners).
>you would reduce education levels, make people poorer, and raise religiosity.
The important part of this is making sure women lose their agency over having children by both removing access to effective contraception and their financial independence.
> If you truly want to raise the birth rate, at any cost, you would reduce education levels, make people poorer, raise religiosity, and ban contraception and abortive services for not just women but everyone.
I think it is simpler than that: abolish any state-sponsored retirement plans. People used to have a lot of children so that someone could take care of them in their old age. Now that you have retirement savings you have no need for kids anymore.
>Offering child rearing incentives like free childcare, education, outright money, etc does not seem to work, such as in the Nordic countries. People who grow and experience wealth simply don't want to have kids.
Pay large sums of money to promising young intelligent couple to have kids.
(and no, the govt should not do it)
That still doesn't work unless the sum of money is quite large, over and above the cost of raising the child. And even then, there are many wealthy families, millionaires and billionaires, who still don't have kids. Having children is simply not as elastic of a good as people imagine it to be.
>That still doesn't work unless the sum of money is quite large
Yes it has to be large (several millions), enough so that the couple never have to work again for their entire lives. I would add a whole bunch of other things, ( like delegating the bulk of childcare to somebody else, with a couple only overseen what care is being taken) but it's a good start.
My larger point is that this is not exactly the unsolvable really hard technical problem.
In terms of human assets intelligent people and their offspring are the most important assets that society can have. ( agreed this has negative connotations of eugenics, but the overall concept is sound IMHO)
If you truly want to raise the birth rate, at any cost, you would reduce education levels, make people poorer, raise religiosity, and ban contraception and abortive services for not just women but everyone. But your country's economy would suffer over and above the slowed birth rate you'd otherwise have.
In the future though, with artificial wombs, I'd imagine we'd go through a Brave New World type scenario where the government grows children themselves (and maybe has the bright idea to stratify the children's gender, race and intellectual capacity as well, but the latter is unlikely if we have AI and robots that do the jobs instead of needing perpetually content Street cleaners).