It's not about making numbers look better, it's about ensuring that your people don't become destitute. It's an unfortunate fact that when one third of your population is able to work (naïve example of parents all having 1 child for a generation) then each worker has to feed 3 mouths, 3.5 if they also have one child (the other parent still has two parents but shares the burden of the child). That's will full labor force participation. It's not viable no matter what social or economic system you have.