I went to a somewhat poor high school and an extremely prestigious university. My fellow university graduates who are now making lucrative engineer salaries ar

I went to a somewhat poor high school and an extremely prestigious university. My fellow university graduates who are now making lucrative engineer salaries are the ones with teslas and MBPs, and from what I've seen they are not raising children by choice (most of them are not even married or have long term relationships. I'm married but my wife and I decided we want to wait a few years so she can finish her PhD and start her career first. Our goal is to start having children before we are 30). While my wife and I are struggling with the prospect of never owning a family-sized property in our high CoL city because it is so expensive, it's not the main reason we haven't started a family yet. Much bigger are concerns about how it will impact my wife's career, and if she will be forced out of the workforce forever if she takes a few years off until the children are old enough for school. From my hometown (edit: just to be clear, this is a low-CoL city and my friends mostly 24-27 years old), no one that I know owns a tesla or similar luxury object. A larger percentage of my friends from back home are married compared to my friends from university, but still almost none of them have started families. I can't speak for them all, but the impression I get is that the people who are on track for something that could be considered a career (teaching, for example) are focusing on their careers. Those who didn't end up with a career but did go to college are more or less drowning in college debt. Those who didn't go to college are trying to work their way up to a higher education through part-time community college and what not. In other words, I agree with your central thesis that this is by choice that the birthrate is declining. In particular, the fact that women now have the choice to start careers and earn money instead of going to college for an "MRS" degree and then starting a family (I know exactly one person in my high school class who wanted to do this, and she does indeed have two beautiful children today). But difficulty getting debt-free for college graduates, and difficulty owning property, are certainly contributing factors, because it provides external pressure on couples that they need to spend more energy+effort on their career. As I understand, raising children requires a considerable amount of energy+effort, so the conflict there should be quite obvious.