zlacker

>>toomuc+(OP)
The ratio of housing cost vs real income almost tripled over the last 20 years in Sweden. Add a looming climate crisis and a self-fulfillment-oriented culture and you get very few new babies.

>>brtkdo+T5
Upper-middle and upper class aren't having children either though, so my bet is on the latter side of your argument. Huge opportunity costs for having kids before your mid 30s, and afterwards, it's a bit late to have more than a couple kids to have sustainable population numbers.

Definitely a bit hypocritical of me, since I'm also a part of the problem who doesn't want to have kids. But, at least for me, it's not worth it right at this time.

>>kredd+ha
>Upper-middle and upper class aren't having children either though

Interesting. In USA fertility is tub / U shaped [0]. Filthy rich just hire nannies and bang away and dirt poor have none to negative opportunity cost

[0] https://twitter.com/theHauer/status/1222514313723875332/phot...

>>beaegl+jc
Can you elaborate on that? Every statistic I've seen so far looked like even "the filthy rich" don't have enough kids. Obviously you'll get some exceptions that are talked again and again on the media, but that's not the norm.

Even by just looking at my surroundings, I have some friends who make decent money, and they're still on "no kids" train, even though hiring 24/7 help would just cost them pennies.

>>kredd+Pe
Most the statistics cut off at ~200-300+k income catch all bucket which drowns out the rich averages. See my source above capturing higher income buckets which pronounce the U.

Near equal (higher) fertility at both extremes might be, but not proof of, the hypothesis the dirt poor and filthy rich are the fertility rate you get when opportunity cost looks near 0.

A bucket you often see stopping at 300+k imo far too low as the lower band of that is usually high stress highly educated long hours professional and small biz owners who have insane opportunity cost to have children.

>>beaegl+vf
I still don't understand how the opportunity cost can be 0 for the rich. Women still have to get pregnant, and sacrifice a lot of things at the cost of 1 year per kid. Like sure, they'll have nannies, but the years of "when you can have fun and do all the self-fulfillment stuff" is gone. Usually that cohort of people are also fairly educated, so they have even more connections and opportunities to lose during those lost years.

Sure, if your goal is to have as many kids as possible, that's a different topic. But that's statistically insignificant amount of people as of now.

>>kredd+ck
I can't say for everybody but around 30 "fun and self-fulfilling stuff" becomes repetitive and bland. You see the end of it and then having a baby changes everything. Fun but bland thing become funnier once you experience them together with the little person.

>>thrift+ZS
To each their own. I've heard second hand accounts for all kind of scenarios - parents regretting their decisions in their 30s, extremely happy parents, childless extremely happy couples in their 50s, and some with their regrets. That being said, even if you have 1 child to "have some fun with the little person", it's still below 2+ children a couple is supposed to have to fix the birth rate problem.