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> It's not until you get to the top several percent of income that fertility starts rising again. Yes, that's what I meant. You could argue about the significa

• toasterlovin 8y ago
  If fertility is constrained by lack of resources, the why do poor people in the developed world have more kids than middle class people?
  • antisthenes 8y ago
    Presumably because within the budget constraint, the survival rate of many kids will result in a similar amount of kids at the end of the woman's fertility window. I didn't say it is constrained by lack of resources, I said it's also constrained by lack of resources.
    • toasterlovin 8y ago
      It's probably about whether women are on a career track and, thus, what age they start having children. Poor women generally aren't on a career track. They finish school and start working a job that doesn't require school or much training. So they can (and do) have children pretty early. Rich women do usually go to college, but they meet a future husband there who is on a high-earning career track and are able to start a family relatively early because they don't have to help pay the bills. What I'm saying, though, is that if you look at the fertility curve[1] you'll see that many middle class families could eliminate one earner and still have 2-3x the income as poor families that have more children. But people are choosing not to do that (well, secular people are choosing not to do that; intensely religious people often do exactly that). That's what's interesting to me. [1]: https://twitter.com/CSchmert/status/993934031174725632 https://twitter.com/CSchmert/status/993934031174725632