I am a top 15% earner in my area, have been for 7 years, and I'll be able to afford a home maybe in another 5-10 years.

If you consider starting a family with no hope of ever getting out of renting, as landlords constantly raise monthlies, you might reconsider children.

On top of the issues with people working so often and so hard that they rarely have time to meet anyone outside of work; no wonder people aren't marrying.

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arcticbull 16 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> If you consider starting a family with no hope of ever getting out of renting, as landlords constantly raise monthlies, you might reconsider children.

Generally the less money you make the more kids you have. It's really a question of prioritization. People say they're holding off on kids for X or Y reason but I think this is more of an expressed vs revealed preferences situation. They would rather chase material wealth for themselves than have kids, and to be clear I'm not judging just observing. Through most of human history mud huts weren't a blocker to having kids.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/241530/birth-rate-by-fam...

	▲	toomuchtodo an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> Generally the less money you make the more kids you have. Previously, but this no longer holds. https://www.governance.fyi/p/45-why-rising-family-size-tempo...
	▲	cosmic_cheese 16 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		That’s because people pulling a nice paycheck have gotten a taste of stability and don’t want to risk losing it, and this is intensified when the economy is turbulent. People making less never had stability in the first place and don’t have as much to lose. Aside from that, it's merely observations/anecdotes, but from what I’ve seen people who have managed to achieve a massive uplift in economic status (say from minimum wage in their mid-20s → net worth north of $500k-$1m in their mid-30s) are more likely to have children than people who’ve always been wealthy. I would theorize that such individuals feel a greater degree of economic freedom, having lived at the bottom and being able to make more effective use of what they have.

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cosmic_cheese 16 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Right, I think we’re running into the limitations of a scarcity-based system here. Even many well compensated couples would face having to make major tradeoffs with their economic stability, careers, time spent with the kids, retirement, quality of life, etc, and are accordingly choosing the path of least risk.

Even the most generous countries aren’t fully compensating for the costs of raising a family, and the assistance offered by many is less than pocket change. It’s only natural that incentive is going to be low.