To reverse below-replacement fertility one must first understand what its causes are. Governments (and most others) have mostly skipped this step and/or choose

To reverse below-replacement fertility one must first understand what its causes are. Governments (and most others) have mostly skipped this step and/or choose to live with major causes for human freedom reasons and for political stability reasons. The primary cause is wasting women's time. Statistically speaking, biological fertility declines secularly from menarche to menopause--roughly 15 to 45 years of age. We discourage women having children below 18 and the risks of bad outcomes for mother and child go up a lot after 40. So realistically there are 22 years in which women can have children. In that time they have to find a good partner and establish a household and enough security to raise the children. Creeping credentialism is a major problem in developed countries. In the 1960s a career could be started with high-school education; now a degree and preferably a higher degree is required. These take four to ten years out of that 22 year window. Following the credential, time is required to establish an income stream and some savings for household formation: a career. This takes longer than it did in the 1960s when manufacturing jobs were "good jobs". Establishing a household takes longer than it did in the past too. Having got education, people are choosier about where to live and where they want to school their future children. So that can take another five years before they start having children. With credential, career, and housing, you only have 7 to 12 years left. In that time, mathematically you are overwhelmingly likely to have fewer children than if you started with 22 years available. And these 7 to 12 years are those with lowest fertility and highest risk of complications. (Women have been sold egg-freezing and such as workarounds; the reality is that these don't have good chances of success and are very expensive besides.) Both credentialism and housing/schooling are zero-sum Red Queen races, but they are very deeply embedded and will be very difficult to uproot and replace. To reverse fertility decline we need to arrange things so that women can have children young and start their careers later without feeling penalized--especially compared to women who choose not to have children. There is your problem, I guess.