Israel booms with babies as developed world’s birth rates plummet. Here’s why.

At the entrance of an event called BabyLand, expectant mothers and their partners – along with tired-looking, newly minted parents – lined up to receive bulging bags of free baby products.

Over the course of the three-day event, 50,000 people paraded through the balloon-festooned convention center, some pushing strollers occupied by two or three young children.

Religious, secular, Arab, and Jewish, they were on a mission: shopping for discounted diapers and baby formula and perusing stalls offering the latest versions of snack containers and sheets for bed-wetters.

Pro-natalist Israel is having a sustained baby boom, and now has the highest per capita rate of population growth in the developed world, experts say.

Families here have an average of 3.1 children, compared with 1.7 in other developed countries. At this rate Israel’s population, which currently numbers 8.7