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Comment by fjfaase | Hacker News Reader

In high income countries, you have to provide your child with higher education to have a competitive income. Because education is expensive, having more children makes it impossible to give them a good education. On top of that higher education occurs during the period that humans are the most fit. Fitness and fertility rates drop quickly after the age of 30.

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This argument kind of falls apart when you consider Europe has virtually free education and some parts like Scandinavia pay a sizeable stipend to students of higher education.

It might be a contributing factor in some countries, but there's definitely more going on.

In the Netherlands, higher education used to be free and supported with a reasonable stipend, but in the past decades, students have to pay a few thousands of Euro to attend education and the stipend are no longer sufficient to cover costs of living. So, instead of earning an income sufficient to start a family they have to make extra costs for about half of that. If they do not have rich parents that can support them, they have to have jobs (often causing extra delays) or borrow money. Both of the latter causes delays in when they can start a family. I have some colleagues who are not able to buy a house due to the debts they have. Although the interest rates for these debts are low and rules with respect to paying the debs are relaxed, the banks still take them into account when applying for a mortgage.

Higher education costs are a factor for some couples, but those are far off in the future. Housing and day care costs are larger and more immediate. It's pretty miserable to have children if you're stuck living in a small apartment.

As a counter point, education in Germany and other European countries is completely free and people still get less and less children.

That is true and there are also stipend that allow you to cover cost of basic living. But that is not true in all European countries, such as the Netherlands.

There are not many students that raise a family at the same time or earn a income sufficient for supporting a family.

I mean, if anything this makes the point. Germany's fertility rate is 1.45 and the Netherlands' is 1.43. There is very little difference despite the change in education policy. So, extrapolating from this very little bit of data, it seems that education policy has a negligible effect on fertility rate.

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