An important fact is missing in this chart: working hours. That also explains why the curve goes up in the lowest segment: those people are probably not employed or not full time employed. After reaching a certain income level, you start having a lot more childcare options that you wouldn’t have with a lower income.
The birth rate would be much closer to the 2.1 you need for a stable population if there were affordable or even free childcare options, because Stay-at-home-Mum/Dad is only possible if either the partners income is high enough or the income of the other party is so low that it doesn’t matter.
Also. most civilized countries have laws protecting pregnant women from getting fired and have a lot more paid leave for them. US companies would push women to give birth in their toilet break and write them up if they take too long if they were allowed to.
Crazy that virtually nobody is above the 2.3 replacement rate.
That is… until you have exactly one kid and realize how much work it takes. I wonder what happens to that chart if you look at “Hours employed by household”.
Betcha the low end is underemployed and the upper end is full on leisure class.
Betcha the low end is unemployed and the upper end is full on leisure class.
Lower end have more because of limited access to contraception (which costs money) among other things. But yeah, the whole “being broke” excuse is bullshit. Poor people have more kids and even people that are doing great don’t have that many kids. Theoretically you could hit replacement rate by making everyone a millionaire but I don’t know how that could work.
Theoretically you could hit replacement rate by making everyone a millionaire but I don’t know how that could work.
I doubt this would work. Financially, my family is towards the middle of that chart now. We were lower when we had our first kid and only a bit improved when we had our second. And honestly, it was pretty touch and go whether or not we would have the second. Our first was a handful as a baby and it left us wondering if we could handle a second. Thankfully, he calmed down a lot (or we just got used to the new normal) by the time he was pushing 18 months. After we had the second one though, I fully embraced the “cut my nuts off” solution to birth control (vasectomy). I don’t regret that choice at all. None of that was ever about finances. It was simply about the fact that raising children is hard and takes a lot of time.
Ultimately, I think the decline in birth rates isn’t about finances or selfishness, it’s just a change in social norms. Society has spent decades training people to the “nuclear family”. Movies, TV, and other media has pushed the “2 kids and 1.5 dogs in a home in the suburbs” for so long, that people internalized it. So, folks who do want to have kids shoot for that. Having 4 or 5 kids is now seen as an oddity, rather than the norm.
There is also a much better acceptance of women as something other than a walking womb to be filled. We no longer look at an unmarried woman in her 20’s or 30’s as some sort of spinster to be shunned. Sure, negative stereotypes still exist (e.g. Crazy cat lady); but, it’s much rarer for fathers to be selling off their 16 year old daughters to 40 or 50 year old men as child brides to be kept barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen for the next 30+ years of their life. Women are expected to have full lives now, which may or may not involve raising children. As one might expect, many have taken full advantage of that and simply chose to not have any. This move from what amounts to sexual slavery to being treated as an actual person is going to mean there are fewer women having children and many of them delaying until they are actually old enough to make an informed decision about it.
Theoretically you could hit replacement rate by making everyone a millionaire
I might argue its a cultural shift as much as an economic one. We spent the 80s and 90s shaming people for having kids before they were “ready”, with “ready” meaning first “graduated high school” and then “graduated college” and then “owned a home” and then “had sufficient savings and health care”.
I ended up waiting to have kids until I was in my late 30s. And I only really have the time and energy and finances to support one. Would love to have a house full of kids, that’s not happening this late in life.
By “we’re broke” they mean not making $400k a year.
An important fact is missing in this chart: working hours. That also explains why the curve goes up in the lowest segment: those people are probably not employed or not full time employed. After reaching a certain income level, you start having a lot more childcare options that you wouldn’t have with a lower income.
The birth rate would be much closer to the 2.1 you need for a stable population if there were affordable or even free childcare options, because Stay-at-home-Mum/Dad is only possible if either the partners income is high enough or the income of the other party is so low that it doesn’t matter.
Also. most civilized countries have laws protecting pregnant women from getting fired and have a lot more paid leave for them. US companies would push women to give birth in their toilet break and write them up if they take too long if they were allowed to.
If that’s how much money you need to maintain a family, then yes, that’s how much money you need to maintain a family.
The definition of “broke” changes depending of what you are expecting people to do.
I would like to buy me a summer house but I’m broke.
Crazy that virtually nobody is above the 2.3 replacement rate.
That is… until you have exactly one kid and realize how much work it takes. I wonder what happens to that chart if you look at “Hours employed by household”.
Betcha the low end is underemployed and the upper end is full on leisure class.
Lower end have more because of limited access to contraception (which costs money) among other things. But yeah, the whole “being broke” excuse is bullshit. Poor people have more kids and even people that are doing great don’t have that many kids. Theoretically you could hit replacement rate by making everyone a millionaire but I don’t know how that could work.
I doubt this would work. Financially, my family is towards the middle of that chart now. We were lower when we had our first kid and only a bit improved when we had our second. And honestly, it was pretty touch and go whether or not we would have the second. Our first was a handful as a baby and it left us wondering if we could handle a second. Thankfully, he calmed down a lot (or we just got used to the new normal) by the time he was pushing 18 months. After we had the second one though, I fully embraced the “cut my nuts off” solution to birth control (vasectomy). I don’t regret that choice at all. None of that was ever about finances. It was simply about the fact that raising children is hard and takes a lot of time.
Ultimately, I think the decline in birth rates isn’t about finances or selfishness, it’s just a change in social norms. Society has spent decades training people to the “nuclear family”. Movies, TV, and other media has pushed the “2 kids and 1.5 dogs in a home in the suburbs” for so long, that people internalized it. So, folks who do want to have kids shoot for that. Having 4 or 5 kids is now seen as an oddity, rather than the norm.
There is also a much better acceptance of women as something other than a walking womb to be filled. We no longer look at an unmarried woman in her 20’s or 30’s as some sort of spinster to be shunned. Sure, negative stereotypes still exist (e.g. Crazy cat lady); but, it’s much rarer for fathers to be selling off their 16 year old daughters to 40 or 50 year old men as child brides to be kept barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen for the next 30+ years of their life. Women are expected to have full lives now, which may or may not involve raising children. As one might expect, many have taken full advantage of that and simply chose to not have any. This move from what amounts to sexual slavery to being treated as an actual person is going to mean there are fewer women having children and many of them delaying until they are actually old enough to make an informed decision about it.
I might argue its a cultural shift as much as an economic one. We spent the 80s and 90s shaming people for having kids before they were “ready”, with “ready” meaning first “graduated high school” and then “graduated college” and then “owned a home” and then “had sufficient savings and health care”.
I ended up waiting to have kids until I was in my late 30s. And I only really have the time and energy and finances to support one. Would love to have a house full of kids, that’s not happening this late in life.