alt Hacker NewsHowever, he specifically said "will want to have children and feel/know that their children's lives will be good ones."
But this doesn't necessarily mean being richer. For example, many people are afraid of what unchecked climate change is going to mean for kids born today. No amount of individual or country wealth is going to fix that issue.
I have kids myself, but man... I really really worry about this. I do personally know people cite climate change as one factor in having no kids (or fewer kids). Some people even think that having kids will make it worse. They're not wrong...
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I think this is exactly right. It's not just environmental disasters either. There are more existential risks looming than ever before. The relative peace of the post-WW2 order kept things relatively calm and quite prosperous for decades, but everyone can see that coming to an end right now.
Maybe things will work out fine or even great in the medium term, but I think a lot of childbearing age people are looking around and thinking the next 30 years might be a lot worse than the previous 30.
> unchecked climate change is going to mean for kids born today
No amount of climate change today could compare with the threat of war and famine in the past, and yet they still had kids.
Louise Perry even goes so far as to hypothesize that the distinct lack of threat contributes to low fertility, under the term "mortality salience": https://x.com/Louise_m_perry/status/2014296167262126192