Precisely this. I don't think any rich countries have figured out a good solution to the modern problem that boils down to "having kids used to be a EV positiv

Precisely this. I don't think any rich countries have figured out a good solution to the modern problem that boils down to "having kids used to be a EV positive, and is now EV negative" due to a confluence of factors of - needing 2 income households, paying off your own student debt, high housing costs, high childcare costs, and then high college costs for those kids. People used to have a lot of kids to help in the home/farm/etc and to offset high childhood mortality rates to ensure they had some surviving descendants. Even after people moved off the farms, say WW1~WW2 era, kids were at least seen as sort of EV neutral, grandma watched them during the day and then they were out of the house and off the balance sheet by 18. Now even people who truly want children are calculating how many they can afford and if that number is 1 or 2. I think a lot of people thinking "I'll just have 1 so at least there will be someone to look after me" will be disappointed with the % that end up too estranged/distant to truly be helpful in that manner later. This problem is even more troubling because I think we almost put too much expectation on middle/upper class parents to do all these things to support their children well into their mid-20s, to the point that birth rates in US are inversely correlated with income & social class. That is - the people least able to care for their own kids, in need of the most state aid, are the ones having more of the kids. Meanwhile the middle/upper class construct more and more levels of cost & time requirements on themselves for child rearing.