David Ricardo observed in the early 1800s that most people did not settle down and have children until they had achieved the same level of financial security that their parents enjoyed at the same age.

Newsflash - human nature hasn't changed a jot.

Declining living standards and declining financial security lead to declining birth rates.

The Left gaslights us that this is the result of investment in education, as though overinvestment in credentials wasn't also a response to declining living standards and increasingly desperate competition.

The Right gaslights us that declining birth rates are the result of declines in "traditional" social roles. If 1950s social roles were still delivering 1950s results, then more 2020s men and women would follow them. But they are not.

Both wings of the Establishment want to "solve" the problem by luring other people's children to migrate here, bringing their family's capital, on the false promise of 1950s living standards; and at the cost of not just inflated credential tuition but the loss of their hard-earned understanding of how (their) society works, their native language, and too often their own hopes of timely marriage and children.