Japan's population is decreasing exactly because it's expected of everyone to go to college straight out of high school, get a degree and then work in an office with overtime (but not overtime pay, of course) until you either die or retire.
...Now when you're in college and are actually trying to get a degree and not party (unlikely many here in the U.S.) and you go right into working a job from morning until night... When do you have the time to date, marry and raise kids? Now you understand that what you just advocated is, in fact, the reason for Japan's multi-generational declining birth rates.
There's a reason why people that aren't in such highly competitive jobs, especially in the city, are the ones having the children. They have the time to do it. And the Japanese government also actually pays for people to have kids. I think it's over 420,000 yen per child now. Which definitely helps somewhat and is an incentive, but again, unless it's enough money for you to quit your job to have the time to find someone to date/marry... What does it matter? You have to get up tomorrow and be in the office from 8AM until the sun is down and when you get out of work you're going to be so mentally exhausted and physically drained that you just want to eat and go to sleep. The issue isn't money, because poorer people are having more children. The issue is time/life-style/culture. And this holds true in Japan and in the West.
