I think that this trend is self-reinforcing: When you have fewer children, you need to activate a larger part of your young population for work. A big pool (the largest?) is women who traditionally don't work or work less than men. Working makes it difficult to raise children (and might make the decision to have them difficult, too). In consequence, you end up with less children this year and run short of workers 20 years later.
Child care will never fully remove this effect for three simple reasons: Child care workers are scarce (as they are, traditionally, mostly women), children can only deal with child care for a certain amount of time (it is really exhausting for smaller kids), and getting the kids to and from child care acts like extra hours of unpaid work for the family.
So if a state wants to have a more stable local population, I think it will be inevitable to subsidize families more directly: Reduce working hours for parents (equally, of course) and fully pay the difference (would be really interesting to do a cost/benefit calculation here). Give out other perks (cheaper mortgages, maybe parking space or other permits, first choice when it comes to vacation, maybe the parents get a vote for their children and so on). Finally, the state might even turn to penalizing child-less adults or "nudge" people into having babies (e.g., by taxing contraceptives).
If you don't agree with such an active role of the state, consider the alternative: active control of migration. This in turn brings its own set of problems that all nudge the state to take authoritarian measures (for instance border control ala US-Mexico).
Consequently, any industrialized state has to take an active role regarding demographics and I think it will look somewhat dystopian in our eyes.
From what I've heard South Korea is very capitalist and people are overworked. Suicide rates are crazy. It's all pointing back to Maslow's hierarchy again; perhaps people just don't have the energy to start a family amidst all that pressure and stress.
Child care will never fully remove this effect for three simple reasons: Child care workers are scarce (as they are, traditionally, mostly women), children can only deal with child care for a certain amount of time (it is really exhausting for smaller kids), and getting the kids to and from child care acts like extra hours of unpaid work for the family.
So if a state wants to have a more stable local population, I think it will be inevitable to subsidize families more directly: Reduce working hours for parents (equally, of course) and fully pay the difference (would be really interesting to do a cost/benefit calculation here). Give out other perks (cheaper mortgages, maybe parking space or other permits, first choice when it comes to vacation, maybe the parents get a vote for their children and so on). Finally, the state might even turn to penalizing child-less adults or "nudge" people into having babies (e.g., by taxing contraceptives).
If you don't agree with such an active role of the state, consider the alternative: active control of migration. This in turn brings its own set of problems that all nudge the state to take authoritarian measures (for instance border control ala US-Mexico).
Consequently, any industrialized state has to take an active role regarding demographics and I think it will look somewhat dystopian in our eyes.