Canadian here. Housing costs have increased so dramatically this would still put you back to only maybe five years ago in terms of disposable income. This is just a wild guesstimate, but you get the idea. Anecdotally I've heard that other countries, particularly in Europe, have tried subsidized or even free daycare and that it failed to have any effect on birthrate.

If there are less people shouldnt there be more empty and available housing? If the cost of housing is high because investment companies have purchased all of the vacant housing and jacked the price put a hefty (monthly ?) tax on vacant housing that is not sold or rented in 3 months. Somewhat more affordable housing becomes available to people that requier a house to raise a family in. Lower the price to something people can afford or pay the empty housing tax. Could work for commercial properties as well.

There's already layers upon layers of empty home taxes in BC and vacancy remains near 0%. There's really no remarkable amount of empty homes anywhere. Every time someone has tried to search for it they've came up with very little.

The simple dull reality is that there's a huge shortage of homes because homes were under built for decades and decades due to 1) exclusionary zoning and 2) governments stopping funding any and all below market housing in the 1990s.

The shortage of suitable homes of course hurts families very badly.

Many large homes suitable for families are occupied by retirees that don't want to move and don't have anywhere good to move (because again, we've built little). Zoning prohibits subdivision and redevelopment of the vast majority of the surface areas of cities so creating more housing is difficult.

Families need 1300sqft+. We badly need to rezone the entirety of our cities broadly to allow massive sfh lots to be redeveloped to create multiple 1300sqft+ spaces suitable for families. Rowhouses, Townhouses, and Apartments.