That's every country these days, no one has a solution. Even giving people tens of thousands of dollars doesn't seem to help. It's not necessarily a problem with an economic solution, much as people like to say that it's due to poor work environments etc, because poor people have way more kids than middle class or rich people.

Raising kids is expensive and tens of thousands doesn't cover any significant portion.

However, it's not just money alone that is the problem. Money helps a lot, but like any complicated problem, it's got multiple front. Money for one, but another is just child care in general. This is based on my experience and other parents I interact with, but child care is fucked up. Not just costs. When I was growing up, my grand parents were very involved. They would watch my sister and I in the evenings sometimes or take us for a weekend or we would go to their house to swim in the summer. For some period, my grandparents had us in the summer while mom and dad were working. There is a phrase of, "it takes a village to raise a kid." And that village was close family and friends. Grand parents would pick us up from after school events. Aunt and uncle would watch us with their kids and my parent would watch theirs, vice-versa. It was grand parents, neighbors, aunts and uncles. Now looking at me raising my kids and my friends doing the same, it all on just the two of us (myself and spouse). Grand parents don't want shit to do with their grand kids unless it's Christmas diner. And that is a pretty common thread amongst every other parent I interact with. And day care doesn't exactly solve that. Day care solves the regularly scheduled care Monday through Friday during business hours. Not even forgetting that some places, where I live, its a 9 month wait list to get into any daycare. And then full-time care pretty much consuming and entire parent's paycheck. It doesn't solve the, dad's car broke down, Mom needs to go pick him up and help out, but can't exactly pack the kids up. When that happened to my mom and dad, mom dropped me and my sister off with my grand parents.

Tens of thousands of dollars? So ... nothing compared to real estate prices?

Not to mention how nothing it is compared to the cost of certain child care activities that one might have to pay for if one has a child with any health, neurological, developmental issues.

People are rightfully risk averse nowadays. Fuck the species if it just wants to bully its young into breeding.

The solution is obvious:

Remove commuting by encouraging remote work, incentivise dumb phone use or penalise smart phone use, create affordable property prices and secure future pensions, incentivise no televisions and create an environment where men and women can co-mingle naturally. You're right tens of thousands isn't going to cut it.

Basically apartment complexes with plenty of facilities like cafes, libraries, parks, restaurants and sports facilities and micro mobility solutions for transport surrounded by nature. Effectively reversing some of the trends we've established over the past few decades.

The reason this isn't done is because it wouldn't grow the economy, it would shrink the economy. You're effectively telling people to work less, have more leisure time and spend less.

When you start giving something comparable to the actual cost of having a child, it's going to matter.

You need more than one bedroom to have a child, that increases the price of a home in Vancouver by 200k. What should I do with tens if thousands?

I've been thinking about what kind of payment it would take, and I think trying to offset the potential career of one of the parents would do it.

So maybe median salary for ten years or something for every couple with their first kid?

Immigration is the solution. Producing a child and getting it college educated costs, to the parents and society, $400K+ (a 22 years ordeal with a lot of risks like the child growing into a drug user, criminal, etc.) Bringing in a college graduate immigrant - close to $0 in 0 time.

The same way like production of any products - if it is significantly cheaper to manufacture it say in China, it will be manufactured in China and imported, no matter what tariffs are, while domestic production will go down with overall increase of the efficiency of our civilization as a result.

I'm sure there's some level of payment that would do it. Tens of thousands sounds like a lot, but it's a bit of a joke for a something that costs 10x more and takes up decades of your life.

Every country? No. Every European country? Yes.

They can reduce or eliminate taxes on couples with kids...