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Comment by Mawr | Hacker News Reader

No need to contemplate anything if your run-of-the-mill average job lets you support your entire family and purchase a house.

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They also didn't contemplates it as something ubearable if they had to live many persons or even extended family in the same small house, including rentals, and if two persons had to work hard. Manual laborers, factory workers, etc, farmers where both father and mother worked, still had many children.

It's not like this only happened in the window between 1940s-1980s where the run-of-the-mill average job let you support your entire family and purchase a big enough house.

People are acting confounded that the birthrate is goong down.

But if people cant afford kids they wont have them.

Its like super simple.

Exactly. I suspect the lack of understanding or overcomplicating the reason the birthrate is declining may have something to do with the much higher than average salary of the average HN commenter relative to the average worker's salary in the US. It's common for people who need to go to the doctor to avoid going to the doctor because they can't afford it. A baby is an order of magnitude more expensive than that and an ongoing expense of doctor visits and potential ER visits among other costs and logistical issues.

I don't agree with the premise (data point: I grew up poor, with siblings), but certainly the inverse isn't true.

Singular data point. Were talking macro level.

Talking about the educated West where people have the information and tools to make the decision.

Context inference is important

Macro level poorer people have more children than middle class and up people. In the "educated west" (and elsewhere in the world as well I think).

extremely strong inverse co-orelation with education even in poor countries.

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