>>512329033
Multiple reasons.
1) A lot of women have no desire to be mothers in general, they're just not interested in it.
2) A lot of women would like to have kids but they perceive the economy as being shit so why do it, and they don't want to slow down their careers by having kids, which will happen even with a robust social safety net.
3) A decent amount of people think that AI and robotics will make birth rate concerns a thing of the past.
4) Men have a non-negligible role (probably) regarding their earning power and employment in this and male participation rate in the labor market has been on the decline for decades now.
5) A lot of women think the planet is doomed due to climate change, so why have kids.
6) A lot of women (people in general) don't get what the big deal is if a country has 1.5 kids per woman instead of 2.1+, and to be fair, it's a very long term problem.
There's a good chance that humanity has somewhat reached the Earth's carrying capacity given our resources and ability to extract fossil fuels. I think it's 50% an economics issue. It may be resolved in the long term by people who don't want to have kids just being selected out of the gene pool, it may be resolved by men taking on way more of the work of raising children, maybe the governments bend over backwards for women and give them universal pre-K/childcare and tax breaks, maybe the governments move to heavily restrict abortions (though I don't find that likely).
