As Singapore goes all out to reverse its ultralow fertility rate, many nations facing tough economic and social problems as the ranks of young people dwindle watch closely for lessons.

Singapore’s fertility rate is among the 10 lowest in the world. The average number of births per woman in 2015 was 1.24, according to government statistics. That’s well below the replacement rate of 2.1, the number of babies generally required to maintain a country’s current population level.
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Singapore is an acute example of what has become a worldwide trend. Nearly half of all people now live in countries where women, on average, give birth to fewer than 2.1 babies. The Population Reference Bureau, a nonprofit research group in Washington, estimates the world population will reach 9.9 billion in 2050, up about 33 percent from an estimated 7.4 billion now. Yet the growth rate has steadily declined since its peak in the late 1960s.
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Governments across the world, from Denmark to Japan, are struggling to come to terms with shrinking populations, and the implications for everything from supporting aging populations to growing the economy. But Singapore’s all-out approach stands out as one of the most ambitious.
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Singapore has introduced a wide range of policies to help defray the costs of raising children in one of the world’s most expensive countries. Couples can get baby bonuses and housing priority, and men can take advantage of extended mandatory parental leaves – just like women. The government sponsors dating services to help with the first step: finding a partner.
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The government’s aim is to help make parenthood as easy as possible. Aside from the housing initiative, it has also extended mandatory paid paternity leave from one to two weeks and even provides cash for babies. Families receive $14,000 (Singaporean; almost US$9,900) for their first child and are eligible for the same amount if they have a second; they receive S$20,000 for a third child, as well as for a fourth, and S$26,000 for each child beyond that.

The results have been mixed.
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“I cannot solve the problem, and I have given up,” Lee (the country’s founding leader) wrote in his last book, published in 2013. “I have given the job to another generation of leaders. Hopefully, they or their successors will eventually find a way out.”
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Josephine Teo (enior minister of state who oversees the National Population and Talent Division) often urges young people to look for love and settle down early, but even she has acknowledged a fine line between gentle persuasion and heavy-handed intrusiveness... "Millennial Singaporeans, who number nearly a million, are not about to start families because someone exhorts them to. If and when they decide to, it will likely be because they regard marriage and parenthood to be achievable, enjoyable, and celebrated.”

Although most people don’t realize it, Israel is the only Western country that has a positive birthrate

The average Israeli woman has three babies in her lifetime, nearly double the fertility rate for the rest of the industrialised countries in the OECD.

Today's population of 8.4 million is forecast to reach 15.6 million by 2059 and 20.6 million in a high case scenario.
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there is no national discourse or recognition that a problem exists. On the contrary, government policies are geared to encouraging a high birth rate.

The reasons are various, from the biblical command "Be fruitful and multiply" to the death of six million Jews in the Holocaust, to fears of being outnumbered by Arabs.

Israeli government policy encourages population growth with benefits such as child allowances, free schooling from the age of three and funding for up to four in vitro fertility treatments a year.