I don’t believe in the governments’ ability to get above 2.1 TFR but I do believe they have the power to decrease birthrate, like with child car seat requirements, Obama-era fuel efficiency regs which in practice caused increase in automobile weight (which is dangerous to kids walking), housing supply restrictions via badly designed zoning guidelines, funding for academia. sex ed plausibly has a positive or negative effect—condom distribution causes higher rates of teen sex for instance.
The EA question is how much do these things matter. I’m too lazy to look it up but I predict that housing prices swamps everything else birth-wise and decreasing deathrate is way more tractable physically and politically.
I don’t believe in the governments’ ability to get above 2.1 TFR but I do believe they have the power to decrease birthrate, like with child car seat requirements, Obama-era fuel efficiency regs which in practice caused increase in automobile weight (which is dangerous to kids walking), housing supply restrictions via badly designed zoning guidelines, funding for academia. sex ed plausibly has a positive or negative effect—condom distribution causes higher rates of teen sex for instance.
The EA question is how much do these things matter. I’m too lazy to look it up but I predict that housing prices swamps everything else birth-wise and decreasing deathrate is way more tractable physically and politically.