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Comment by cosmic_cheese | Hacker News Reader

I wonder how many more failed tiny financial band-aids it will take before governments figure out that moving the needle on birth rate requires that deep systemic issues be addressed.

The most astute observation I've seen on the topic is that in a capitalistic system in which monetary value is assigned to everything, the value of children is deeply negative and therefore they are not desirable. By having children, most couples are putting their stability, wellbeing, and long-term prospects on the line. The opportunity cost is staggering. If more children is the desired outcome, that tradeoff must cease to exist, and a lousy $2k isn't anything remotely close to that.

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Very few people understand the depth of what you just said.

$2K or even $20K is meaningless for a parent making $100K or more.

Kids have a negative value to a professional class member.

If you engage in agriculture or some similar activity, a child as old as 10 can be a helping hand in some way or the other. No surprises that Amish farmers have a high birth rate.

https://ashishb.net/parenting/pregnancy/

It's not clear exactly what the number is, but if one observes individuals who manage to climb out of the low and middle classes and accrue a certain amount of wealth (somewhere in the ballpark of $600k-$1m net worth and up, maybe), pretty consistently not long after that achievement they've settled down and started a family.

I think for many the desire is there, but sufficient de-risking is required for them to be comfortable with acting upon it.

$600,000 net worth is nothing these days, I’m worth about that much after saving for 7 years and can’t even afford the mortgage for a $300,000 house, even if I put 20% down.

Investments are so much better at earning money than working for wages, in my case the amount of retirement savings I have after 7 years is larger than my cumulative earnings during the same period, and I’ve been saving about 40% of my gross income. Part of my net worth is ESOP equity that I can’t monetize in any way so that’s part of the reason why my net worth is higher than my earnings over the same period.

I think there's just not enough money in the county to induce more babies. The cost would be a shock. Anyone wealthy enough to shoulder the cost would fight so hard against it, it would never stand a chance. IMO the number is probably something like $10k per year per kid. Foster Care pays somewhere between 8k-12k.

This is such an important point. As a father of two, children are turning out to be a very large investment...larger than anything else I ever will pour money into, probably by an order of magnitude (though not quite, since I have a house).

I talk to lots of people in SV, heads of design, engineers, as well as folks from around the world that I work with, from San Diego to Argentina and Chile. So many 20-30 year-olds have told me they are never having kids. Life is too fun, and they want to see the world. But training the next generation is hard work, and it's easy to do a terrible job. We want to incentivize people to have kids and be great parents. But that requires voluntary sacrifice, which is a hard sell.

If I hadn't had kids, I could retire now. As it is, I'll be lucky to be able to work and get a job so I can earn for the next couple of decades so I have enough to retire.

$2k doesn't even cover a month of daycare where I live. I pay $4200/month for two kids, and that's with 10% off one for a 2-kid discount.

Get rid of old age benefits and the value will become positive.

That would introduce a new problem of all of those seniors suddenly becoming more dependent on their younger family members, which is exacerbated by kids moving all over the country in search of greener pastures.

There's not really a solution that doesn't involve heavy restructuring in one place or another.

>That would introduce a new problem of all of those seniors suddenly becoming more dependent on their younger family members, which is exacerbated by kids moving all over the country in search of greener pastures.

That's how it always was. It used to be your kids were your retirement safety net.

What's different now than 100yr ago is that those working generations also have the state taking a 20-50% cut which used to be available to be sent home to help out mom and dad.

They could work longer.

In the UK, for example, the retirement age was set to 60 for women and 65 for men, when life expectancy was substantially lower than today. On the current trajectory, a large number of "boomers" at death will have only "paid into" the system for half their lives, while extracting most of the economic reward of the last 70 years.

Those kids are following their parents' and grandparents' 401(k).

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