> That's completely out of the realm of reality for many young people now and the plummeting birth rates show it.

I'm skeptical of this explanation for falling birthrates just because birthrates are falling across the world and there seems to be no correlation between fertility and financial security. America has low birthrates. Scandinavia (usually considered to have generous welfare states) has low birthrates. Hungary, where the government gives massive tax breaks (IIRC they spend around ~6% of their GDP on child incentives), has low birthrates. Europe, East Asia, India, the Middle East, the Americas, basically the whole world except for central Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa (which are catching up) has low birth rates. Obviously the economic conditions between basically all the countries in the world varies wildly, but there isn't a consistent relationship between those conditions and fertility.

Also within countries, the number of children people have is not always correlated with wealth (and at times in the past 60 years it has been negatively correlated).

Anyway, I find your argument intuitive, but it doesn't seem to align with the data we have.

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uniq7 2 hours ago | parent [-]

In which of those countries is it possible for a man to work an ordinary job, buy a house, settle down with a wife and support two or three children?

	▲	jaredklewis an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I mean that I know of first hand, just the US and Japan. "Possible" being a low bar that just means that I've seen it at least once. I don't think data with all of those factors (household income, number of earners per household, gender of the earners, home ownership, and number of children) exists for any country. Do you have data like that for 1960s America or is your argument based on extrapolations from watching Leave it to Beaver? But if we abstract your hypothesis slightly to: fertility is lower now than in 1960 because people are less financially secure now than they were in 1960, I don't think the data we have supports this.
	▲	amy_petrik 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		It's a simple catch-22 - women don't want to leave the workforce because one salary cannot support a family - yet women remaining in the workforce, since single-salary is infeasible, thusly doubling supply of workers, lowering salaries, which itself makes it infeasible to single-income a family Not to pick on women, as a feminist if you ask me, all modern men should have to be houseboys to serve their feminine masters. It does suck but it is necessary to benefit the modern women who did not suffer, in so by causing modern men to suffer -- to make amends for the suffering of all women in the perpetuity of history at the hands of all historical men, neither of which are alive today.