Not necessarily. Japan needs to discover what DISincentives are in place that discourage the middle class from having children, and remove them, plus put in workable incentive to have children
One big thing would be to phase out the welfare state. In the past, one reason to have a large family was to try to ensure that you would have at least some children willing to care for you in your old age
Very true, particularly for Europe whereby the tax burden makes it all the harder for young people to have children. Whcih is ironic because the less children borne the greater the tax burden going forward (as generations age and are replaced by less and less working - read: tax-paying - people), making the entire thing a vicious cycle. Furthermore, there are some nations that have tried to give money-incentives to have kids .....the main problem has been that the money given is not sufficient to amount for the cost of raising a kid (per one estimate the incentive would have to be, in terms of tax, 12,000 dollars per child per year in tax breaks for such a measure to make economic sense .....the problem is that even if a nation could decide to pay that, it would only raise the - you guessed it - tax burden).
Couple to this the fact that more and more young people are seeing children as an unnecessary burden (to some extent i am somewhat trapped by this .....as wrong as it sounds, even to me, I know that I wouldn't be having the amount of discretionary income i have, nor driving the German sedan that i drive at my age, if i had a bunch of kids. I know it is wrong, but it is an influence all the same ...and even though i will overcome it some day, the fact that it is an issue in my life means that it is an issue in those of others). It is far worse in Europe once all the taxes are added in.
Anwyays, just my $0.02