We still have a birth rate that is too high. It will be a long long time before we need to work on raising the birth rate and the problem isn't that complex.
Do you have any citations for this? Not snarking—genuinely curious, not arguing, but I was under the impression that most population growth in developed countries like the U.S. was due to immigration rather than above-replacement fertility rates.
https://ourworldindata.org/world-population-growth
{Edited for typo}
Also, don't we need some level of population growth for Social Security to function correctly? We could replace Social Security, but it would be difficult and expensive.
Unless you make up this difference with immigration, you have a declining population, which creates all sorts of short term issues.
Given that western countries have become increasingly hostile to immigration, especially from developing countries, trying to increase birth rate in western countries is a reasonable thing to explore imo.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_d...
[1] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?location...
Yeah, there's a tension here it seems. But it's harder to fix a pension system with technology, and the system is much more socially fragile. There are policy approaches available in the US that might not be available elsewhere (e.g., lifting income caps on social security and medicare taxes) that will kick the can a bit further down the road, but it's challenging to make diverse societies peaceful and cohesive.
On the other hand, private enterprise and technology have a bevy of tools that aren't as readily available to policy makers. Government in principle can encourage more environmentally-friendly energy and food production, but they're not in the business of actually innovating.
>"problem isn't that complex."
It's a very conplex problem, people, especially women, had a tectonic shift in their priorities, culture and family size.
All developing and developed countries are on the same trajectory of declining birthrates, and I have not seen any policy that can raise it succesfully.