https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/e1jrvw/oc_...
[0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/e1jrvw/com...
That suggests it is still a priorities question - people would much prefer to embrace the luxury and comforts of the modern world and work to maximise them rather than starting a family.
The population density at the time was much, much, much lower than it is now.
Unless you're proposing mass de-urbanization and rolling back 100+ years of societal evolution it's practically just not all that relevant that this worked fine in an earlier era and humans could hypothetically just go back to slumming it medieval style.
> It isn't the lack of a house that is causing the drop in fertility
Find some 20 somethings in a major 1st world metro and ask them.
Which brings us neatly back to dropping fertility is driven by the divergence between salary and cost of housing. Bunch of young people looking at their budget and concluding society has made it impossible for them to provide said good life to a potential offspring
Being unable to afford a home isn't the major factor here, that has pretty much always been a factor. It is standards, priorities and options changing.
Back then it was probable that most children would just die before reaching maturity, and most humans would not live much past their early adulthood. Life was fulfilled by the most basic subsistence, and that was all.
I don't think most humans nowadays, be them rich or poor, would want to live in such an environment.
Am I soft because I enjoy playing videogames or watching a movie after my daughter is sound asleep in her girl's bedroom in a house with proper heating? Probably. I still wouldn't want to team up with my neighbor to go into the wilderness to hunt a boar while the wife and daughter freeze in a mud hut.
> That suggests it is still a priorities question - people would much prefer to embrace the luxury and comforts of the modern world and work to maximise them rather than starting a family.
When given a choice, people enjoy some mild comfort. Oh the horror.
One kid was doable for us. Two kids really stretched things and basically destroyed our savings (2 kids both costing £1k a month in nursery fees was not sustainable). A third kid would have meant either moving to a much cheaper house or some other significant financial compromise.
They looked at economic influence and found it does not account for the drop in child birth
- Many urban areas have even worse shortages of family housing. Availability of 2+ bedroom apartments is even worse than studios and 1-bedrooms. Many new multi family buildings have plenty of low-income units but no family units.
- Car seat laws are well intentioned but make it very annoying to transport children in car-dependent areas unless parents use their own car for everything.
- Childcare and education prices are very high. Of course, part of this cost is the cost of living of educators.
- Many industries are geared toward people with few or no children. Hotel rooms with capacity for more than two children are unusual, and most travel sites barely understand the idea of searching for such rooms. Even rooms with comfortable capacity for two children are a bit unusual — the common two-queen-bed configuration requires that kids share a bed.
The preceding section does mention studies that show a cause and effect relationship between e.g., income and fertility, but the effect is surprisingly small. The authors conclude the section with:
> “Pro-natal incentives do work: more money does yield more babies… But it takes a lot of money. Truth be told, trying to boost birth rates to replacement rate purely through cash incentives is prohibitively costly.”
Middle income countries like China have low fertility.
Lower-middle income countries like India are around replacement level (I think officially it's lower than replacement but lot of births are "unofficial").
West African fertility rates are high... but A LOT lower than they were 50 years ago, and still trending downwards.
Whatever the reason, it's happening everywhere.
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Oluwaseun-Kilanko-2/pub...
The war on affordable housing is probably going to continue in the west until there is some kind of systemic break (war, societal collapse, rise of a "caesar", etc). There is simply too much wealth riding on it and too much wealth feeding political corruption for any kind of sudden trend reversal.
> Underpinning these policies is an assumption that poorer women are more likely to respond to incentives to have more children. Indeed, their fertility rates do seem more elastic than those of professional women. Whereas the fertility rates of older, college-educated women have remained fairly steady over the past six decades, most of the collapse in fertility in America and Britain since 1980 stems from younger and poorer women having fewer children, particularly from unplanned pregnancies.
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2025/06/19/why-magas-pro-n...
Just like with many of these topics, most sources seem to contradict each other.
Which are values 'sold' to them via the media.
Yes. Let's be clear, public opinion hates young mothers having unplanned pregnancies, because then the support cost falls on someone else, so this is a win of decades of policy.
(under-mentioned factor: people are very, very judgy about the parenting of others, a traditional problem which has been made worse by social media, so when faced with the choice of a lot of hassle for sub-perfect parenting a lot of women simply opt not to)
2) Just throwing kids out used to be perfectly acceptable. They'd go to school, then play in the street or park and weren't welcome home until it was time for dinner. After dinner? Bedtime with maybe 20-30 minutes of time with parents.
That is how things worked. 100 years ago in most places, and that's how it still works in places with high fertility.
Now societies (not just America) have collectively decided kids are like pets. You want one? You take care of them and you pay for them. And we'll just magically make up the ever-larger shortage of people with immigration, while complaining ever more about how evil and negative immigration is.
For what time period in what country?
Anyway, they say it's not just economics already in the abstract: > We refer to this phenomenon as “shifting priorities” and propose that it likely reflects a complex mix of changing norms, evolving economic opportunities and constraints, and broader social and cultural forces.
The two main key findings are:
Women from disadvantaged backgrounds and lower early achievement levels experience a more significant fertility-decreasing effect from college education.
And the effects of college on fertility attenuate as the likelihood of college attendance and completion increases.
But I have to say, that it rely on data from 1979, that is nearly 50 years old.
However, there are many studies that back up the claim that 'higher education levels are associated with lower birth rates.' The key findings of the linked study here close the gap between the poor and the educated in my opinion.
Personally, I prefer to follow this theory because life style means that no partner is needed to have children, and that having children is not a problem even at an age over 40. Of course, both are only possible if you are really rich and they are the other extreme of the spectrum. But in my opinion, this is what life style means.
I have 2 and I already spend most afternoons driving/picking them up from sports, If I had 3 it would literally be every day including weekends.
Couldn’t find any details about this on a quick skim of this paper on my phone.
Also, I think, to many people it’s becoming obvious that increasing birth rates cannot be achieved with measures that make people feel good, unfortunately. It will likely be a tough choice between bad and worse.
If you keep humans as sex slaves obviously there will be more kids.
With education, women can more realistically assess costs and risks of children, and will hesistate to have children until these risks are addressed (housing, childcare, income, opportunity costs, stable partner).
I agree 100%, and I also like to frame it more productively: strongly correlated A and B mean:
1. either B is caused by A,
2. or A is caused by B,
3. or both A and B are caused by some other common thing C.
↑ this gives more food for thought.
> With education, women can more realistically assess costs and risks of children
I don't remember any of my mostly-technical university's classes touching these topics at all. What kind of education are you talking about, and what does it teach?
You're missing option (4) which is A is caused by C and B is caused by D but C and D are different things..
One is opportunity cost: You simply have more options (especially women), so having children now comes at the cost of many other potential paths whereas it used to be the default.
Housing costs: Most people want to live in a few cities per country and every desirable city I've ever heard of has an affordable housing crisis. When you can barely afford enough space for yourself, how are you going to have a room for a baby, let alone multiple.
Entire generations of women have been told that it is ok to delay having children into late 30s and early 40s.
The science clearly shows that both fertility rate and increase of an unhealthy baby increase with age.
There should be 'embarassing campaigns' to revert this.
Are you really going to run the "we need more eighteen year olds to be welfare mothers" campaign?
But ideally a woman should be having a first child before 30 so a second and possibly 3rd in early 30s.
A large percentage of marriages end in divorce. Stability is statistically an illusion.
Why "obviously"? If they're not old enough to start families, why is the age of consent that low in many places?
(When I was 16 and living in the UK, it was 16, but back then so too was the age of the end of mandatory schooling).
Life sucks in the best of times. I was not going to bring a human to the world so she would suffer, replacement levels be damned.
If I was unable to give my daughter a comfortable life, I would rather have no child.
I think many people would agree with this sentiment. If we want more people to have children in early adulthood, we need a major social upheaval so that people can achieve financial stability earlier in life.
Most people that seem overly concerned with fertility and population replacement, also happen to consistently vote against any policy that could nudge things in a direction where people would be able to achieve financial stability earlier in life.
My answer to that is a vague shrug.
It might be a contributing factor in some countries, but there's definitely more going on.
There are not many students that raise a family at the same time or earn a income sufficient for supporting a family.
Not saying that one is better than the other, just that this seems the most plausible explanation I've heard so far.
So, that's it. Conservatives love to bitch out about family duties, because once you are a slave of your elder relatives ON TOP of your children caring, you will never succeed against rich people.
Dear Brits and Germans, think twice before settling down a family there because of an easy retirement.
Basically we compete more until everything costs more. Now we need multiple salaries because everyone we’re competing against is a highly paid couple. Rinse and repeat so everything of value is too expensive for “average people”.
But nowadays? why would you have a child? for a middle class+ family in a developed country, having a child is a 6 figures expense over their lifetime, limits your career, holidays, etc. From a selfish point of view, it doesn't make a lot of sense.
I don't think it's the only explanation but children are, individually, optional so you can, for selfish reasons, do it or not.
This is only mentioned briefly in the 'infertility' subsection, and then only attributed to age, with mention of IVF as a mitigating factor.
However, there is evidence that, due to a variety of factors, there is a steady but persistent decline in sperm count globally, and that this had a sizable impact on birth rates/fertility.
https://rbej.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12958-023-0... "Infertility affects one in every six couples in developed countries, and approximately 50% is of male origin."
But, despite advances in fertility science, it can be truly challenging to have kids in your 40s.
1. Fewer people ever have kids. In every rich country the share of women who remain childless at age 45 is climbing, and it is rising at all intermediate ages as well. This is not just postponement.
2. Total family size is shrinking. Even among parents, second- and third-birth rates are trending down, so completed fertility is falling toward or below 1.5 children per woman in most of the OECD.
3. Short-run economics don’t add up. Recessions, housing booms, or pandemic shocks temporarily nudge annual births, but they neither align in timing nor in magnitude with the long-run fall.
4. Money helps, but only a little. Large cash allowances or cheap housing can raise births, yet estimates show gains of only a few hundredths of a child per woman—far from the 0.5–0.7 needed to reach replacement fertility.
5. Attitudes have flipped. Surveys across Europe, North America, and East Asia reveal a marked decline in the share of young adults who view marriage and children as central life goals; career, leisure, and personal autonomy score higher.
TL:DR; it’s culture. People don’t want kids anymore. It is not housing costs, lack of support, etc…
[1] For instance: https://www.brookings.edu/articles/lets-have-more-immigrants... - note that the author has founded a non-profit to actively promote birth control.
1. Lack of quality healthcare –> I have statutory health insurance and pay a substantial amount for it, yet it often takes weeks to get a doctor’s appointment. I can’t imagine dealing with that level of delay and bureaucracy when a child might need immediate medical attention.
2. Housing crisis –> Finding decent housing in Berlin (or any major German city) is incredibly difficult. Even a small room in a shared apartment costs around €600–700 per month if you’re lucky enough to find one. Securing a reasonably priced apartment suitable for a family could take years.
3. Rising cost of living –> Back in 2018, €50 could cover quite a lot; today it barely pays for a single grocery trip covering just a few days. Adding a child to the equation would make it feel like living paycheck to paycheck.
Many of my friends are also postponing having kids or have decided against it entirely due to financial concerns. In addition, quite a few of my female friends don’t want to have children because of the physical toll pregnancy would take and the loss of freedom it would mean, especially when compared to their male partners. It’s simply not something they’re willing to accept.
There isn't a single reason why people have fewer children. Each society experiences challenges, such as housing, which bear some similarities but differ a lot in practice, so it's easy to find counter-examples if you're looking for a single-factor explanation.
The article cites "changing norms", which reflects the broad social evolution happening—even rather conservative societies such as Iran or North Korea[1] have a below-replacement TFR! My pet theory is that this change is accelerated by the wide adoption of smartphones, which tend to “flatten” cultures toward global, westernized norms. It even happened in North Korea, which led the country to take radical, Orwellian measures[2].
[1] https://apnews.com/article/north-korea-kim-jong-un-birthrate...
[2] https://www.vice.com/en/article/north-koreas-smartphones-are...
Other point is seems like pro natalist policies will only get you so far... certainly not 2.1 replacement TFR. Note every 0.1 in TFR is about 5% missing birth for stablized population. Pronatalist policies seems to icnrease TFR by 0.1-0.3, usually settle at 1.6-1.7, i.e. still down 20% net bodies. My unpleasant conclusion is positive policies not enough, need very punitive policies, i.e. high income/wealth transfer tax to really incentivize natavist replacement TFR. AKA historic incentive - if you don't have lots of kids you die poor and uncared for. All the cheap housing, free daycares, xyz subsidies is not enough. % of population will have a shit time raising their first kid and decide 1 is good enough.
Or you know... immigration, which of course going forward means disproportionately brown and black skin. Queue Family guy skin color chart meme.
Really rich people, on the other hand, very often have 3+ kids (as poor people do, but for different reasons). In the US, Bill Gates has 3, Bezos has 4, Zuckerberg has 3, Musk, well, I've lost count :)
The thing is that, of course, typical measures like giving some small economic aid to parents, slight improvements of a few weeks in maternity/paternity leave, etc., which are the kind of things the article focuses on, just don't move the needle. This is hardly surprising. None of those things significantly improve work-family balance. Much more radical measures would be needed, like multi-year maternal/paternal leaves with measures to guarantee that there is no or small impact on career, or a significant reduction of standard full-time working hours to, say, 30 or so a week (be it for parents or for everyone). But for all the talk about fertility being a problem that needs fixing, no country seems to be willing to do anything even remotely close to that.
Note that the measures I'm proposing are focusing on time, not money, because time is really the limiting resource for raising a child in a high-income country. Of course, with money you can buy time (daycare, caregivers, etc.) - so I'm sure things like massive building of public housing to bring down prices can also help. But it should be more efficient to focus directly on time - and more fulfilling for the parents to actually, well, have time to raise the kids themselves.
Yes, if they could erase any material difficulty, most people would like to have 3 children. However, they can't, and the "priority change" means people arbitrage more in favor of enjoying the leisure of a child-free life over the hardship (and rewards) of parenting.
Parents of past generations just didn't have the same hardships. Juggling work and family life was easier back then.
Tried. Never could. The reason:
ECONOMIC!!!!! For higher education and jobs, had to keep moving, Indiana, Maryland, Ohio, NY. The moving was EXPENSIVE in all of time, money, effort. Couldn't put down roots.
Worst part: NEVER could make money enough for a house, so always RENTED, which, long term, is a financial disaster.
Due to the financial stresses, my wife, back with her mother on her childhood farm home, killed herself.
For me, the sheriff came with several assistants and guns and dragged from my rented house all my belongings and left them on the grass. Lost my large professional library -- math, physics, computing -- piano, furniture, clothes, etc.
The shame and humiliation -- my brother's family, with 4 houses, made a place for me.
Looking back, the families that owned nice houses or even just one house, ALL were founders and owners of small-medium BUSINESSES and were NOT "employees". They were financially able to have children and DID.
Education? Wife was Valedictorian and then PBK, Summa Cum Laude, Woodrow Wilson, NSF, and Ph.D. My Ph.D., applied math and computing. These educations took time and money and made us welcome only as university research professors, and the ones I knew who had a house and children (darned few children) were all poorly paid and had other income, e.g., one was in the USAF, got a Ph.D., retired, became a professor.
Net, the US had kids from 1940 to 1960, and after that kept losing to the present where, literally, the birth rate is so low we are going extinct. Why? For good family formation, the US is a big LOSER.
Why? The US economy moved from farms to cities. The city business owners did well, but their employees didn't. So, e.g., Dad grew up in a small, country town. His father ran the general store, and his step father ran the feed and grain mill. They did well financially. Nearly everyone else in the area was a FARMER living on a FARM or working for farmers, e.g., a blacksmith, carpenter, etc. Once we visited, and I saw cows being milked and hay being loaded into the hayloft. Dad's family supported him well in college. After college, he got a job as an employee and never again did nearly so well. Wife's father? Farmer but on the side head of the local REMC (rural electric membership cooperative). Families broke up and scattered
Am still good at math and computing, so doing a startup: Hopefully from my work the children in my brother's family will have plenty of money for a good, private, college, good marriages, nice houses, close enough to keep the family together. But I don't know what they will do to be successful financially on their own.
So far it looks like in the US we need to have the population shrink by 50-75%, have people leave the big cities, have plenty of farm land per person, and live on farms, rely on the Internet and small businesses with much of the needed production automated and with the physical distribution and retailing as in Amazon.
jmsflknr•3h ago
zx8080•2h ago
Insurance companies vs children won 1:0, for the support in old age.
viraptor•2h ago
brazzy•2h ago
viraptor•2h ago
brazzy•1h ago
It's pretty clearly not simply household income vs. cost of living, though, the data just doesn't support it.
YuukiRey•2h ago
So far I've only skimmed the paper, but here's an interesting quote:
> Among respondents of a 2018 survey conducted for the New York Times, the desire to “have more leisure time” is offered as the leading reason for not having children among adults who...
If your assumption is that economic reasons cause the decline in fertility rates, it's tempting (and natural!) to view every alternative explanation in the context of economics. In other words: all alternative explanations are symptoms of economic problems, so the root cause remains money.
But quotes like this can also be interpreted as people changing their priorities regardless of income and worries about housing. Maybe, freed of traditional role models, people would rather watch Netflix all day long in their single person household.
chongli•2h ago