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Comment by zaidf | Hacker News Reader

May be its a cultural thing. I know a few couples in India with no kids and more they age, more their life self-admittedly sucks.

Then again, the culture I grew up in sees kids as an investment. The investment pays off when kids grow up and help their parents retire and support them financially and otherwise.

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Wow. I'd never considered having kids as a retirement plan. I shudder at the thought of a prospective parent that is considering it from that angle.

What's so wrong about it?

As countries develop and increase their social services, having kids becomes less of an advantage / asset and more of a liability. Also, in more mobile countries where people move around more for work (like the US) it's less likely that a child will still be in the same city as their parent by the time the parents are elderly.

Sure, but I wonder who you think will pay for these "social services" after we retire if not our kids.

Pretty much. I personally prefer directly helping my folks than doing so via a middle party(the gov).

Absolutely. The effect is the same, the former is just a bit more efficient.

Probably not. Pooling the resources is more likely to be efficient. If you do it at the individual level, everyone has to allocate resources for some kind of maximum likely cost versus allocating for the average need. That's also why it's more efficient to say, buy fire insurance than set aside the amount of money necessary to cover a fire - pooling risk.

I'd much rather be in a society where there are sufficient social services for the elderly and higher taxes than one where I have to depend on either my own savings or my children's earnings to cover my (very unpredictable) post-retirement needs. (Unpredictable because of the wide range of years I may live post-65.) Otherwise you have huge opportunity costs because of the need to allocate for a worst-case scenario.

Pooling the resources is more likely to be efficient.

May be on paper.

But at least the way it works in the US, the so-called fund(aka social security) that is supposed to help you out in old-age is pretty much bankrupt.

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