With America’s and the globe’s fertility rate currently sagging to a historic low, a new survey data analysis has found that supportive friends and family, the influence of pro-natal celebrities, and an active religious life are all major contributors to boosting birth rates and helping couples achieve their desired family size.

In an extensive new report released Tuesday by the Institute for Family Studies (IFS), authors Lyman Stone, Peter Foreshaw Brookes, and Jason S. Carroll analyzed survey data taken from 10,000 respondents across over a dozen countries, asking about “a wide range of family attitudes” including peer and family influence, desirable family size, celebrity influences, religious practices, and other factors.

The results revealed that the influence of family and friends is enormously important to how many children couples have. When people feel supported and encouraged by family members, they “desire, intend to have, and actually have more children,” IFS found, noting that parental encouragement “is associated with an 11% increase in desired number of children and a 30% increase in the likelihood of intending to have another one.” Similar outcomes were also found when they felt supported by peers, which was “associated with a 10% increase in desired number of children and a 20% increase in the likelihood of intending to have another child.”

The survey further found a surprisingly high level of influence that celebrity culture has on family size. In countries where admired celebrities had more children, the general public also had more children. For instance, in Israel and Egypt, “the typical admired celebrities have more than 2.5 children,” which corresponds to Israel’s fertility rate of 2.86 and Egypt’s rate of 2.33. Whereas the average admired celebrity in Japan has one child and in South Korea has 1.7, which corresponds with both Japan’s (1.14) and South Korea’s (0.99) fertility rates. As the authors observed, “[T]he fertility and family patterns of celebrities, politicians, athletes, influencers, and other public figures is very likely to shape the desires, intentions, and — ultimately — the behaviors of their young admirers.”

In results that mirrored prior research, the report also found that the more religious a person is, the more children they tended to have. Data showed that “Being in the top third of respondents in religiosity is associated with having 9% more children than other respondents, with positive effects showing up in many countries.” This segment of believers was also “associated with desire for more kids (+15%) and a higher likelihood of intending to have another child (+12%).” IFS also found that “people in religious communities do expect more support from their friends.”

The report’s authors conclude by pointing out that in every country surveyed (with the exception of Israel), “actual fertility rates are lower than respondents said would make them happiest.” In order to help couples achieve their desired family size, the report offers a series of recommendations for how family members, friends, religious leaders and communities, and policymakers can encourage larger families. They urge grandparents to express to their adult children “the joys of early parenthood and offer to help them” and “gently encourage” cohabitating adult children to get married. They further recommend for friends to invite their childless friends into their lives and “lend emotional and instrumental support” to their friends who are considering having more children.

As for religious leaders and communities, the authors suggest positive preaching on family life and children, reinforcement of “whatever supportive family norms already exist,” and facilitating “supportive outreach and ministries for having more children or that make it easier to have them.”

Meanwhile, the IFS report encourages policymakers to put forward cultural messaging that “emphasize[s] the joy of children” and to “protect human togetherness” by “carv[ing] out space for in-person social relationships.” This could include “federal holiday expansions,” “improvements to public parks, [and] strict policing of public disorder in public spaces that discourages their use by families.” They further endorse “more generous unemployment insurance coverage” to help ease young people’s financial anxiety and making public spaces more kid-friendly, for example by adding “large, well-equipped, high-quality playgrounds or ‘family lounges’” to airports.

The authors also advise policymakers to take seriously research that shows that “remote work can boost birth rates and employee satisfaction.” “Restructuring remote work as an explicit ‘benefit for family,’ similar to parental leave, may be the best choice for parents and non-parents alike,” the report argues. “Likewise, setting aside some child care subsidies specifically for ‘on-site day cares’ for large employers, enabling working parents to visit their children freely throughout the day” is an additional way the authors contend could “transform child care” to being more family friendly.

Lyman Stone, a co-author of the report who serves as senior fellow and director of the Pronatalism Initiative at the Institute for Family Studies, thinks that the survey results powerfully illustrate the societal influences that shape the decisions that individuals make about having children.

“Policymakers often focus on the finances of fertility, but our work shows they may need to focus on the friends, the family, and the famous people just as much,” he told The Washington Stand. “People have the families their societies tell them are good to have.”