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.
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.