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Comment by idiotsecant | Hacker News Reader

This is absolutely a governmental issue- S Korea and the US are similar in that people are having fewer children in these places because having children is prohibitively expensive. Having children is prohibitively expensive because income inequality is at an all time high - a smaller and smaller portion of people are able to capture more and more of the resources. Income inequality is a direct result of government policy and can be mediated with changes to those policies. It's happened before, and it can happen again.

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Are the birth rates higher among rich people? My impression is that they have fewer children. Historically, More materials and wealth means less children.

Can govt really cause people to have more children? Or can they just remove roadblocks? I would go with the latter. The former is a social problem.

The very rich and very poor have a lot of children. The middle have little.

In the US it depends entirely on whether you're married. Household income goes up? You get more likely to have kids if you're married.

Hard to tease out but here's a start

https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/demo/tables/fertili...

While it expensive and I’m sure that discourages some, richer people seem to have even less kids than poorer people.

Work culture and family life probably have a lot to do with it in addition to cost.

This is a pretend cope. People had more children during the Great Depression than they do now. Ethiopians during a 10 year famine had more children than Westerners do now.

Its not related to money.

Life is expensive. Kids are even more expensive. With both partners working, having a kid is one hell of a pandora's box regarding costs, care etc. People have a high expectation of what is a reasonable standard of living for their kids, which pushes the age when they try (if ever) further and further as well.

It sure as hell is a money issue. Just not a cheap one.

Agreed it's culture. some cultures have ten kids and they work the farm. Kids are quite cheap if you don't have the attitude of each kid needs new clothes, car, and college. In fact they can sort of become free and cheap labor if you're ever been to certain family restaurants and their child waited on you who was around 13 yelling back to the cook your order.

Yup. Germany pays people 200€ per month per kid.

They still have lower TFR than the United States.

Charities asking for money use images of desperate and needy women and children in there advertising campaigns kind of discourages the will to bring more into this world. Having two handfuls of children used to get gov. handouts equal to an exec's pay but I don't know if times have changed and those social programs are gone.

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