Several evaluations suggest that policies that provide financial
support to families or paid leave at the time of childbirth have
a positive, but rather limited, impact in fertility. Of all the
policies introduced over the years, provision of childcare
services appears to be the most effective in encouraging
families to have children and women to remain in the
workforce.
French family policies provide a diversified system of
supplementary resources in the form of money, time and
services needed to raise children. The State provides support
to diversified types of families with children at ages from early
to late childhood. Another key ingredient has been the high
stability of family policies, based on strong popular support.
This stability gives confidence to families that they will benefit
from continuous support from the birth of a child until entry
into the school system and beyond. Such confidence creates a
favourable environment for the decision to have children
It will be a lot easier to save the planet, and obtain full sustainability if we have lower birth rates for a generation or two. The population has more than doubled since I was born, and it's evident in everything. We're feeling the strain in every facet of our lives. I know this is an unpopular opinion because everyone automatically assumes you're pro-eugenics or other unpopular ideologies when you suggest that we reduce our birth rates, but I genuinely believe it would have a net-positive impact on the world.
I'm with you actually, it would definitely be easier to reduce consumption by simply having less people. I just wanted to point it out because I feel like it's a stat that might get misinterpreted by a lot of people that there's 1.xx% babies per person when it's not.