It's not just about fertility rates either, fertility rates have actually increased across much of western Europe in recent years, largely as immigrants have more children.
There is always going to be the mathematical factor that the current retirement model was built on the idea that people would live until about the age of 70. If they are going to live to 90, that means they are going to be drawing a pension for 20-25 years, rather than 5-10. That is always going to mean a bigger cost, and a higher share of the population, regardless of the number of young people entering the workforce.
Call me an elitist dipsh!t if you want, but even if we set retirement funding aside, a future in which an increasing large share of children come from the least stable, lowest income, least educated households is one that horrifies me. You can already feel this instability and dysfunction coming through at the community level.
The solution to that is, of course, a society with a smaller gap between the wealthiest and the poorest.
