I’ve never quite understood this, because the birth rate is highest at the lowest income level. So, the people who are least able to afford child care have the most kids. I know people will say the reason is a lack of education or insufficient access to birth control, but if that’s the case then what causes people to have fewer kids is a better education and more access to birth control, not unaffordability. And that seems to be supported by the fact that households making $50k to $75k have more kids than households making $150k to $200k. Yeah, they’re both making less than $400k, but the people making $200k are much closer to $400k, yet they have fewer kids.
I think you understand this pretty well. For educated people parenting is a choice. They wait for the right moment in the career, they make sure they will be able to provide their children with everything they may need and that their kids will have optimal conditions for growth and development, they consider their other passions and projects and weight them against having kids.
Uneducated people simply have kids and don’t really give it a second thought. You have kids, you feed them some junk food, give them phone to play with and that’s it. You’re a happy family.
This is an oversimplified explanation. I think its more complicated than this, there’s a rural urban divide as well and kids have historically been effective farm workers in some capacity. So if pre-industrial areas or agricultural communities utilize child labor, then kids become a very immediate return on investment.
This cost for kids changes in industrial societies where work is overseen by factory managers and kids get put into dangerous positions without oversight. The incentives become fucked and kids start getting crippled. Sending kids off to school starts to become a better return.
This is also evident in demographics where industrialization is immediately followed by declining birth rates.
If you gave parents money for kids doing well in school, it would lead to a lot of weird conflicts but it might offset the basic financial incentives around children.
Yes, I was talking about developed countries. In developing countries the incentives are different but they also work on a different level. The difference in birth rate between developed and developing countries is much bigger than between families with different incomes in developed countries.
Inequality is the primary factor. If people making $150k to $200k can reasonably conclude that having children would be a burden on their future economic prospects (in an already uncertain future), they will decide against it. $50k to $75k is probably more in the “fuck it, we might as well have more sources of potential labor and income and maybe a subsidy or two since we’re already at this point”, and people making $400k or above have nothing to fear from child expenses.
Nah. The people having the kids aren’t generally thinking about another source of labor. I come from a stinking, filthy kind of poverty. Sex is free entertainment and family planning costs money or time to get to the clinic and you have to deal with assholes who think the family planning clinics are abortion factories. So you think “if we’re careful it won’t happen, I’ll just pull out”.
A lot of quiverful ministries are also home to the very poor. Some of them are given teaching for how to get extra money from the government for every kid. The man works, the woman does not, and the older kids are in charge of the younger ones. Childcare solved, in their eyes. I could be mad at them for gaming the system, but I’ve already got too much anger in my heart over the government blaming it on the “welfare queen” stereotype. You know the lie. Black woman with 5 kids from 6 daddies, every one of the daddies is gone. When in reality the system gamers are poor white evangelicals of a specific flavor.
I’ve never quite understood this, because the birth rate is highest at the lowest income level. So, the people who are least able to afford child care have the most kids.
The child tax credit makes a huge difference. It’s something like $6k per kid per year when they’re under the age of 8 I think it was? When you’re only making around 40-50k per year, an extra 8-10k each tax season is a huge opportunity to improve your finances. I knew one family that had 3 or 4 kids, probably made about 40k per year, they’d stop paying their electricity bill during the winter because the utility can’t legally disconnect you from your heating source in the winter then pay off the debt each tax season.
Additionally many of our social safety net programs are based on family income, with the income threshold increasing as family size increases, so a family making 50k a year with 1 kid might not qualify for food assistance, but a family making 50k a year with 3 kids probably will. Medicaid also will cover fulltime childcare in many states, further negating the financial hurdles of having kids, and once the kids are old enough you can have the older kids babysit the younger ones further reducing costs (of course parentification is very pervasive in this way!) there’s a lot of hurdles that this funding can bypass (then of course put parents in a tight spot that they have to figure out when a new technicality is added to kick them off of these benefits)
If you’re looking at people in developed countries where more kids doesn’t necessarily mean more labor, the difference can also be somewhat explained by religion and quality of life concerns. Extremely religious people in the us, who tend to be less educated and have lower incomes, may not believe in contraception and believe that “god will provide”. That may sound like an exaggeration, but I personally know someone with 7 kids who cannot afford to feed them but thinks that they will go to hell if they use condoms and denying their husband is also a sin somehow. They just talk about how god intended for their family to struggle. That’s not a mindset you generally see in high income families.
The other factor is quality of life (and yes, education). If you’re making enough to afford a home and a good education for 1-2 children, you may be looking to give your child a good life and a good springboard for their future. If you know that no matter what you do, you will never be able to afford a college education for your child, then that makes having a child “less expensive” in that regard. You know you won’t be able to afford sports or extracurricular activity equipment, or new clothes, so while a family earning more may spend a smaller percentage of their income on any single child, the resources they are expecting to be able to provide them increase. A lot of low income families may have the approach that if a child is fed they’ve done the thing. Check mark on parenting for the day. If that’s the approach to parenting then it’s less resource intensive than a more involved approach that some high income families may have. I want to be clear that this is not a moral failing or some kind of judgement being passed. I think a lot of people don’t realize the day to day of very low income families. There are still people in the US raising families with no access to electricity or even running water. They have a very different background and understanding of what a family looks like. I don’t think they are inherently evil for having more kids and being unable to provide for them in the way others may expect, but I also think that’s not an excuse to allow children to live in unsafe conditions. I legitimately believe that if we had better education in low income and rural areas that you’d see this disparity drop, as they learn the different options education can provide and strive to ensure their own children get the best education and support possible.
A lot of that might also be location based. Where I am right now we’re paying ~1700/mo for daycare. Wife got a job for nearly double our current combined income (for 260k) so moving to Boston, daycare going to ~3000/mo and housing going from 2k/mo to looking at 6-10k/mo. It almost feels like a paycut…but at least driving should become more optional.
I’ve never quite understood this, because the birth rate is highest at the lowest income level. So, the people who are least able to afford child care have the most kids. I know people will say the reason is a lack of education or insufficient access to birth control, but if that’s the case then what causes people to have fewer kids is a better education and more access to birth control, not unaffordability. And that seems to be supported by the fact that households making $50k to $75k have more kids than households making $150k to $200k. Yeah, they’re both making less than $400k, but the people making $200k are much closer to $400k, yet they have fewer kids.
I think you understand this pretty well. For educated people parenting is a choice. They wait for the right moment in the career, they make sure they will be able to provide their children with everything they may need and that their kids will have optimal conditions for growth and development, they consider their other passions and projects and weight them against having kids.
Uneducated people simply have kids and don’t really give it a second thought. You have kids, you feed them some junk food, give them phone to play with and that’s it. You’re a happy family.
This is an oversimplified explanation. I think its more complicated than this, there’s a rural urban divide as well and kids have historically been effective farm workers in some capacity. So if pre-industrial areas or agricultural communities utilize child labor, then kids become a very immediate return on investment.
This cost for kids changes in industrial societies where work is overseen by factory managers and kids get put into dangerous positions without oversight. The incentives become fucked and kids start getting crippled. Sending kids off to school starts to become a better return.
This is also evident in demographics where industrialization is immediately followed by declining birth rates.
If you gave parents money for kids doing well in school, it would lead to a lot of weird conflicts but it might offset the basic financial incentives around children.
Yes, I was talking about developed countries. In developing countries the incentives are different but they also work on a different level. The difference in birth rate between developed and developing countries is much bigger than between families with different incomes in developed countries.
Stupid people do stupid shit. Smart people use their brains.
To be fair not every uneducated person is dumb. And not every smart person makes good decisions. But overall, I think it’s true.
-Almost System of a Down
Sad, but I’ve witnessed many versions of this.
Inequality is the primary factor. If people making $150k to $200k can reasonably conclude that having children would be a burden on their future economic prospects (in an already uncertain future), they will decide against it. $50k to $75k is probably more in the “fuck it, we might as well have more sources of potential labor and income and maybe a subsidy or two since we’re already at this point”, and people making $400k or above have nothing to fear from child expenses.
Nah. The people having the kids aren’t generally thinking about another source of labor. I come from a stinking, filthy kind of poverty. Sex is free entertainment and family planning costs money or time to get to the clinic and you have to deal with assholes who think the family planning clinics are abortion factories. So you think “if we’re careful it won’t happen, I’ll just pull out”.
A lot of quiverful ministries are also home to the very poor. Some of them are given teaching for how to get extra money from the government for every kid. The man works, the woman does not, and the older kids are in charge of the younger ones. Childcare solved, in their eyes. I could be mad at them for gaming the system, but I’ve already got too much anger in my heart over the government blaming it on the “welfare queen” stereotype. You know the lie. Black woman with 5 kids from 6 daddies, every one of the daddies is gone. When in reality the system gamers are poor white evangelicals of a specific flavor.
Ah, good point. Made the mistake of thinking everyone was a rational actor.
Also, another “fuck Reagan” for perpetuating that harmful stereotype.
The child tax credit makes a huge difference. It’s something like $6k per kid per year when they’re under the age of 8 I think it was? When you’re only making around 40-50k per year, an extra 8-10k each tax season is a huge opportunity to improve your finances. I knew one family that had 3 or 4 kids, probably made about 40k per year, they’d stop paying their electricity bill during the winter because the utility can’t legally disconnect you from your heating source in the winter then pay off the debt each tax season.
Additionally many of our social safety net programs are based on family income, with the income threshold increasing as family size increases, so a family making 50k a year with 1 kid might not qualify for food assistance, but a family making 50k a year with 3 kids probably will. Medicaid also will cover fulltime childcare in many states, further negating the financial hurdles of having kids, and once the kids are old enough you can have the older kids babysit the younger ones further reducing costs (of course parentification is very pervasive in this way!) there’s a lot of hurdles that this funding can bypass (then of course put parents in a tight spot that they have to figure out when a new technicality is added to kick them off of these benefits)
If you’re looking at people in developed countries where more kids doesn’t necessarily mean more labor, the difference can also be somewhat explained by religion and quality of life concerns. Extremely religious people in the us, who tend to be less educated and have lower incomes, may not believe in contraception and believe that “god will provide”. That may sound like an exaggeration, but I personally know someone with 7 kids who cannot afford to feed them but thinks that they will go to hell if they use condoms and denying their husband is also a sin somehow. They just talk about how god intended for their family to struggle. That’s not a mindset you generally see in high income families.
The other factor is quality of life (and yes, education). If you’re making enough to afford a home and a good education for 1-2 children, you may be looking to give your child a good life and a good springboard for their future. If you know that no matter what you do, you will never be able to afford a college education for your child, then that makes having a child “less expensive” in that regard. You know you won’t be able to afford sports or extracurricular activity equipment, or new clothes, so while a family earning more may spend a smaller percentage of their income on any single child, the resources they are expecting to be able to provide them increase. A lot of low income families may have the approach that if a child is fed they’ve done the thing. Check mark on parenting for the day. If that’s the approach to parenting then it’s less resource intensive than a more involved approach that some high income families may have. I want to be clear that this is not a moral failing or some kind of judgement being passed. I think a lot of people don’t realize the day to day of very low income families. There are still people in the US raising families with no access to electricity or even running water. They have a very different background and understanding of what a family looks like. I don’t think they are inherently evil for having more kids and being unable to provide for them in the way others may expect, but I also think that’s not an excuse to allow children to live in unsafe conditions. I legitimately believe that if we had better education in low income and rural areas that you’d see this disparity drop, as they learn the different options education can provide and strive to ensure their own children get the best education and support possible.
Protip: the low incomes are causal. If you have a kid your income goes down
pretty much, they’re desperate for you to make more white babies
oh…you’re not white?
i’m calling the polICE
They have more kids and then saddle the older kids with all of the parental responsibilities
A lot of that might also be location based. Where I am right now we’re paying ~1700/mo for daycare. Wife got a job for nearly double our current combined income (for 260k) so moving to Boston, daycare going to ~3000/mo and housing going from 2k/mo to looking at 6-10k/mo. It almost feels like a paycut…but at least driving should become more optional.
It’s because they don’t have access to healthcare and women don’t have rights in a lot of those impoverished societies
That’s why they’re shutting down the department of education ignorant people have more kids. It’s explained in the beginning of idiocracy