The best way to have more kids is to increase the size of the middle class, while lowering housing, food and childcare costs.

I don't think creating the illusion of an imaginary middle class ever helped anything. I believe it only makes things worse, as now a lot of people think they are not working class, just because they have an above median wage. Snap it, even some even hold to the illusion that they are rich, just because they have a house with a mortgage and a private pension.

What you need to have a modern, western country instead of a dog-eat-dog wild west is welfare, including universal health care.

But welfare is considered as an evil communist plot in the US and the people who are led to believe that they are somehow above the working masses keep voting against their own interests. Not just in the US, unfortunately.

I have no idea why people keep saying it's monetary reasons. Why would anyone have 3 kids nowadays? There are no real incentives, other than "I want a big family". Society actively discourages large families as well. The amount of people in their 20s aiming for that is getting smaller and smaller too.

The best way to have more kids, unironically, is making everyone as poor as possible, removing any other method of entertainment, and making "having kids" the only choice. That's how it worked for the eternity, and some people want a percentage of people to go back to it, so it would support the current established system.

I didn't say 3. Perhaps I should have said, any.

If everyone has 1/2 kids, the outcome is the same as having no kids, just with more years to get there. That’s Japan’s biggest problem right now. People are having kids. Tokyo is fairly kid friendly, and infrastructure/culture is there. But nobody wants to have 3 kids.

Simply not true. 2 is the replenishment rate. 3, is a 1.5 increase generation to generation. Our population is out of whack with the resource load. Your model is orders of magnitudes too simplistic.

Top income brackets aren't really having more than 2 children either, which is a requirement for growing population. Like most studies has shown that, in general, educated women, freedom of choice and etc. will negatively impact birthrates. It's the same thing everywhere. Sure, income, less social pressure and etc. affects it somehow, but there's just no real need in general to have 3 kids in this day and age. Asking a woman to give away at the bare minimum 6 years of their youth won't cut it nowadays. And honestly, I don't blame them, I think exactly the same way.

> People aren't having kids because of stagnant real wages and soaring home prices.

That's proably a non-insiginficant factor but unlikely to be the only one. Poorer people have never had problems reproducing in any society.

I think media exposure plays a much bigger part. Not porn exactly, but anything that glorifies a "free" lifestyle over settling down.