The crisis of low and falling birth rates is the most urgent problem facing Malta.

While the government continues to introduce pro-natal policies to reduce the birth rate, it remains far from clear what policymakers or indeed the concerned public and civil society are supposed to do. Before we can get clear-headed on the appropriate action to take to address this issue, it is important to have some clarity on its causes. And there are plenty of causes.

The explanations vary from the material (too much or too little prosperity) to the cultural.

A number of things need to line up to have children: an inner motivation and ethos, a partner who wants to have children with and sufficient commitment, housing that is suitable, means of support, the time and flexibility to raise kids and more. If we want to reverse low fertility, it is likely that not only will we have to adopt different approaches at different times, reflecting the diverse nature of the diagnosis, but we will also have to take a long-term perspective (this will be the work of generations) and accept that a degree of trial and error and experimentation will be required.

Of course, we don't want to simply reduce people to mere economic units or cogs in a machine. The preciousness of humanity is not simply about numbers. But as much as it feels uncomfortable or dehumanising to talk about people in terms of numbers, we have to do that to see clearly what is happening. The numbers tell an alarming story, and we have no choice but to pay attention.

We must introduce the concept of a 'fertility stack', which is the simple idea that fertility factors work cumulatively, and the more factors that a place has working in its favour, the higher the fertility will be. Low birth rates may seem like a problem that is too big for us to solve, but all sorts of difficult problems become manageable when broken into a series of smaller problems. By no means is it necessary to have every factor, but it will be hard to fix the birthrate crisis if you focus too narrowly.

If you say that culture should encourage people to have children, you might face pushback. Some will claim that society and its leaders shouldn't have an opinion on this. Desire for children is a private affair, they may say. Except that anti-natalists have been in the field for fifty years, advocating for people to have fewer children, both directly and via environmentalism. And they continue to do so, even as fertility falls far below replacement almost everywhere and country after country faces slow collapse.

Israel's high fertility - at least a whole child more than in any other OECD country and close to twice the OECD average at nearly three children per woman - deserves special attention. Israeli fertility is significant because we normally associate developed countries with high levels of education, income, and urbanisation and, by association, low fertility.

Israel is the exception-a developed, highly educated, urban, and wealthy country that still manages to produce a fertility rate well above replacement.

Early Israeli leaders like David Ben Gurion and Golda Meir spoke openly and in direct language about the importance of having children. Subsequent leaders have continued to uphold these values and have added policy supports. Most of all, Israel has never wavered in its pronatalism. While generations around the world (and especially in East Asian countries like Korea) were hearing the message that the world is overpopulated and were told to cut down on the baby-making, Israel kept its core belief in the value of children.

How much does marriage matter? Every country that reaches replacement fertility has a high marriage rate. Any observer of Israeli society will attest to the centrality of the family and the expectations of marriage and childbearing that permeate the population.

You might think that marriage is of fading importance. You might think that the value of marriage in driving fertility is falling, now that births outside of marriage are culturally accepted. You would be wrong. Marriage and childbearing continue to be closely linked. The problem is that fertility outside marriage is lower, and marriage itself is becoming less common.

Physical attraction and the sex drive were once all that was needed for high fertility. But now with a range of techniques and tools for contraception, people can follow their innate drives without having any children at all. Ways for avoiding pregnancy have existed for centuries but have been perfected much more recently. In this brave new world, children are a choice rather than a by-product of our biological impulses.

For women who wish to have children but can't, technology has not been able to extend a woman's reproductive window that much.

Moreover, young couples are facing an evolutionarily crowded environment in our towns and villages, which triggers serious status anxiety and thus suppressed reproduction. A depopulation conveyor belt is running hot in those areas.

There is one more huge issue with affordable housing and fertility. The ones who need the bigger houses usually aren't the ones who have them, while millennials and Gen Z are often stuck in little apartments, completely inappropriate for families.

Finally, there is a mathematical reality that we must come to terms with to solve the low birthrate crisis. A two-child norm will not do. Big families are the only way to return to high birthrates.