A huge chunk of Millenials and Gen-Z cannot afford to start families and have children.
That in itself is a major fail for our species, and should tell you everything you need to know.
That in itself is a major fail for our species, and should tell you everything you need to know.
Housing: children used to be expected to share rooms. Now it's not the norm -- but there's no reason it can't become the norm again. When you talk to your parents or grandparents, they often had large families living in tiny houses.
Daycare: children used to be tended to by family members or religious communities. Now we isolate ourselves from family by moving far away, don't join communities (religious or otherwise), and for whatever reason don't ask mom and dad for help with the kids. Also, the age at which we trust children to stay at home without supervision has risen over time. These are all choices we're making that make children much more expensive.
Education: k-12 is free in the US, but lots of folks want private education for their kids. That's fine, I do too, but I realize it's not a required cost. University is definitely expensive, but loans are widely available. And, of course, not every child needs to go to an elite university.
These are the choices making it difficult to afford children, but they are mostly choices we don't have to make.
It used to also be fairly common for the mother of the children to be tending to them, until the more recent trend of the mother working and paying someone else to do it. Gets especially expensive when there's more than one child.
It was also more common for the mother to be married when having children [1], which helps allow for that.
[1] https://www.childtrends.org/publications/dramatic-increase-i...
Daycare: public funding for community resources like daycare/childcare as well as PTO for childcare has atrophied after decades of austere policy. Its not always a choice to not utilize childcare options. I am not religious and I dont have an extended family to rely on, so my options are... privatized childcare because community based options are nonexistant. not to mention the need for dual-income families to keep up with rising cost of living
Education: public school funding has atrophied after decades of austere policy. Not to mention ass-backwards funding structures that prioritize high-income neighborhoods over poor neighborhoods. US job markets are also unreasonably obsessed with college credentials, so you have families taking out loans they cant afford to give their child a chance. And hey those loans make homeownership even harder.
This idea that it is the individual's choice to make things expensive ignores a host of other systemic factors that remove choices from the board. We COULD make education better and cheaper for everyone. We COULD dedicate resources to help support new families. We COULD make housing more affordable for everyone. We kinda have to stop blaming individuals for things out of their control.
But I agree about public funding of education. You’re right that that one probably leads directly to smaller family sizes in some cases, when families can’t afford private school.
The hidden catch in your comment is perhaps that they can't afford to have children and raise them in the way you (or whomever) thinks they should.
I don't think it's a fail for our species at all. I could agree to disagree that it's a failure of some of our current societies.
When health-care is universally tax-payer funded, the differential between the free-market unregulated premium you would pay for what you get and what you actually pay in taxes for it represents the net public benefit you've extracted. If you earn nothing, then odds are you can't afford health care even though you get it.
There may be many other things that that person can't afford, but the thing provided to them is not one of them.
It makes more sense when you step back and realize it isn't provided for free. If you don't pay taxes, it was provided by others who could afford to pay for it on your behalf. Someone else could afford it, and you got it. If you otherwise could have afforded it on your own or paid the tax that represents at least the free-market rate at which you would have got it, then you could have afforded it.
>Would you say that someone "can't afford" to use roads because they wouldn't be able to afford to have them constructed if the state hadn't already done so?
The unsubsidized cost of the road for an individual isn't the cost to construct the road, it's the free market value of the utility the road provides them. While not perfectly reflected, a toll charged by a private toll road will give a ballpark of what that cost is.
Similarly if you earn nothing, have no money, and use the roads freely provided to you then you cannot afford the roads. But you're still provided use of the road. Someone else was able to afford the roads, and they paid for it instead. You're completely dependent on the charity of the public to allow you using roads you yourself didn't pay for -- and that would be pretty much the definition of being unable to afford something you were provided. Whereas if you paid taxes commensurate with your use of the roads, then it's safe to say you can afford to use the roads.
In this manner, people often have kids they can't afford, and instead others who can afford to pay (at least partially) for them do so in the form of Medicaid / WIC / EBT / Section 8 and other benefits.
* full health insurance through Medicaid
* Food subsidies i.e. SNAP, WIC, etc.
* Section 8 housing (which can often times be very nice housing in extremely desirable neighborhoods of large cities like DC, NYC, SF).
* TANF a.k.a. welfare cash
* free tuition / grants / job training through dozens of federal, state, and private programs
* free daycare (again through dozens of fed, state, and private programs, often included with job training grants)
* public transportation vouchers
* down payment and first-home buyer programs.
Compare that to the same-aged single or married woman living in the exact same city making $75K. She may literally live next door to the theoretical subsidized woman described above, yet be paying 60% or more of her take-home pay in rent alone. She will be paying hundreds of dollars / month for health insurance and have a $2K deductible to boot. No food or any other subsidies. Add a few hundred dollars / month for her tuition loans, and she has $0 left at the end of the month which means she will (correctly) feel unable to afford a child, especially when child-care will cost her up to $2K / month.
But at least her corporate employer will pay for her abortion!
In your example she's making an absolutely terrible financial decision to spend 60% of her income on housing--rent, no less. And that is apparently inflexible.
I wonder what percentage of children is raised in homes making under $75,000? I would venture a huge majority in America, and approaching 100% when you account for the whole planet.