Sweden and the Scandinavian countries in general are typically offered as good examples of how policy might promote fertility. Here are the countries of the OECD ranked by total fertility rate (the data come from the website Paul linked to earlier).

High fertility:

Mexico: 2.34
Turkey: 2.21
New Zealand: 2.1
United States: 2.05
France: 1.98
Iceland: 1.9
Ireland: 1.85
Australia: 1.78
Luxembourg: 1.78
Norway: 1.78
Denmark: 1.74
Finland: 1.73
Sweden: 1.67
Netherlands: 1.66
United Kingdom: 1.66
Belgium: 1.65
Canada: 1.58

Low fertility:

Portugal: 1.49
Switzerland: 1.45
Germany: 1.41
Austria: 1.39
Greece: 1.37
Hungary: 1.35
Slovakia: 1.35
Italy: 1.31
Spain: 1.31
Poland: 1.28
Czech Republic: 1.24
Japan: 1.21
South Korea: 1.21

Within the OECD, the Scandinavian countries tend to have relatively high levels of fertility (1.67 to 1.9), while relatively low levels of fertility are found in the Continental European countries (excluding France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Belgium; 1.24 to 1.49) and the East Asian countries (1.21). This pattern generally supports the view that policy influences fertility, given the policy differences between these countries.

The Anglophone countries also tend to have relatively high levels of fertility – which indeed is a bit of a mystery in terms of the policy-fertility nexus! I’m no expert in this area, but at least one possible explanation I’ve read argues that private child care is more affordable in the Anglophone countries than in the other countries. The reason offered for this relates to the relatively high levels of wage and income inequality that are found in the Anglophone countries. As the argument goes, these relatively high levels of inequality mean that, relative to average incomes, the wages of low-wage workers are especially low in the Anglophone countries. Since child care workers are low-wage workers, this translates into private child care being more affordable in the Anglophone countries. I’m not sure how much evidence can actually be found to support this argument, though, and I’m sure other factors are at work. Cultural factors may also be important.

So, an earnings-related scheme is more likely than a flat-rate scheme to engineer a reallocation within the gendered division of household labour.

Or perhaps not just 'governmen5 action' but any change?;

I think what Magda was suggesting is that in most households men earn the higher income, and that if the paid leave is offered to the “primary caregiver” rather than the mother, the man will more likely become the primary caregiver.

I’m inclined to think that we probably would see a slight (possibly not statistically significant) increase in the number of men who choose to be the primary caregiver during the first few months of childhood.

James – Not necessarily. Ambition is not required to be respectable; indeed grasping for wealth may undermine respectability. Respectability is about personal behaviour – having a job, behaving in a civil manner, bringing up your kids properly, contributing to the community.

I would agree that the work-life balance is a big factor in fertility numbers, but demographers are not very optimistic about the degree to which policy can increase fertility via this kind of intervention in labour relations. Even in Sweden, where this kind of policy is taken to the max, fertility rates are only about 1.7 per woman (see http://www.indexmundi.com/sweden/total_fertility_rate.html) whereas it is 1.9 in Australia. I seem to recall that the believed ability of policies to influence fertility rates is in the order of 0.2. That is not such a big number cnosidering the variation in fertility rates, meaning that ‘cultural factors’ are more important. Perhaps these monetary policies change culture in the long run but they dont seem to have in Sweden.

Andrew: “‘respectable’ lower middle and working classes” = ‘aspirationals’?

Patrick: more oan endorsement of the principle that if one doesn’t know much about something, one should desist from making any strong pronouncements about it.

Or perhaps not just ‘government action’ but any change?

yes, the economic case boils down to the desirability of the social-engineering and, if we want more kids and think they have positive externalities, whether paid maternity leave is the way to go. I am a bit skeptical that it will raise fertility by much if you think of the monetary implications: kids incur immense costs over their lifetime and 6 months pay is not going to change the calculus by all that much to budding parents. Hence, we should probably assess the scheme more on its potential to change attitudes towards working mothers and the whole area of the obvious conflicting areas of child-rearing and paid employment: are there second-round cultural effects that would increase fertility? That’s a fairly tricky sociological question.