alt Hacker NewsNah, I don't buy for a second the reason is economic. I remember how the conditions were much worse when I was a kid and my parents raised me anyways. And I look at how countries getting richer leads to less kids.
I know that this is the rhetoric around why people are not having kids, but it's a pretext, it's not the real reason.
Replies
> Nah, I don't buy for a second the reason is economic.
Mass Mutual, 2024: Of those surveyed who plan to remain child free, 43% cited “inability to afford children”[0].
Pew, 2024: Of those who feel it is unlikely that they will have children, 41% of people under 40 cited “can’t afford it” as a reason they are not having children, versus only 22% for those 40+[1].
Morning Consult, 2020: 41% of adults without children cite “it’s too expensive to raise children” as a reason; 24% say it is a “major reason”.[2]
BadCredit.org, 2024: 86% of adults who have delayed having children did so for financial reasons[3].
The Morning Consult survey may be particularly useful if you want to look at just one, because it has more granular age cohort breakdowns which show a clear trend for younger people not having children for financial reasons.
[0] https://www.massmutual.com/global/media/shared/doc/q3_2024_m...
[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2024/07/25/reasons...
[2] https://assets.morningconsult.com/wp-uploads/2020/09/2806512...
[3] https://www.badcredit.org/studies/plans-to-have-children-in-...
The difference is that the cost to give your kids what you had as a kid and the opportunities you later had access to has gone up. People don't want to raise kids if they can't give them a life at least as good as they had.
Yes, there's lots of things about today that are better than 30 years ago. TVs are bigger, cars are safer, etc. But the ability to give you kids the childhood and initial opportunities you had seems far less likely to many people.
It's more of time and emotional effort. Come back exhausted from work, imagine having to take care of 3 kids. Insane. Sure if you get a babysitter etc. maybe it helps.
I still think the both parents working thing was maybe good for gender equality but you gotta say the capitalists loved it and probably creamed themselves imagining double the labor pool. But now you see the price of it. How can it be possible for both parents to work and still somehow have kids?
You can deny it all you want, or you can ask people why they're not having kids.
https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2024/07/25/reasons...
33% say "not finding the right partner". Everything being too expensive such that we're working all the time and don't have any down time is a huge part of that. Economics play into leisure time, stress, and things that kill relationships and the desire to have sex/kids.