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> poor people have many babies, rich people have few babies...Does anyone have an alternative explanation for the surprisingly high child poverty rate? The qu

> poor people have many babies, rich people have few babies...Does anyone have an alternative explanation for the surprisingly high child poverty rate? The question makes me think of Malthus. He argued that population grows geometrically, while agricultural production is linear, but the major restraint on reproduction would chiefly be access to food. You could extend that to say that the poor will be less numerous, but feeding them will cause their population to rise and result in inflation (I think that was apropos the Poor Laws). That was the 18th century thinking, at any rate. Some explanations I've encountered for why it doesn't work out that way involve examining other checks on reproduction which include things like education level and rights of women, and rate of child mortality. I think you raised a great question that's worth examining -- hopefully someone else can shed light on the subject.

imtringued 5y ago
I find the Malthus argument amusing because populations simply stop growing if there isn't enough food. The worst thing that will happen is that there are lots of hungry people. I don't see how that is different than today. Meanwhile, in the reality we live in today, our economies are actually struggling because of a lack of population growth. Lots of economists simply assume endless exponential population growth to justify endless economic growth. The dependence on growth relies on our insistence to work full time. Technology reduces the need for labor. So to give everyone full time jobs we have to grow the economy. It's quite stupid. Imagine a simplified dishwasher economy. We have a replicator that generates food for free but it doesn't clean dishes. To increase labor efficiency keep building bigger and bigger dishwashers. For some strange reason we still insist on working 40 hours per week loading and unloading the dishwasher. There is something strange about this. Every time we build a bigger dishwasher, we have to eat more (=have more children) just to keep the 40 hour work week filled. This is the dependence on growth. We have to keep growing just to stand still at full employment.

imtringued 5y ago

I find the Malthus argument amusing because populations simply stop growing if there isn't enough food. The worst thing that will happen is that there are lots of hungry people. I don't see how that is different than today. Meanwhile, in the reality we live in today, our economies are actually struggling because of a lack of population growth. Lots of economists simply assume endless exponential population growth to justify endless economic growth. The dependence on growth relies on our insistence to work full time. Technology reduces the need for labor. So to give everyone full time jobs we have to grow the economy. It's quite stupid. Imagine a simplified dishwasher economy. We have a replicator that generates food for free but it doesn't clean dishes. To increase labor efficiency keep building bigger and bigger dishwashers. For some strange reason we still insist on working 40 hours per week loading and unloading the dishwasher. There is something strange about this. Every time we build a bigger dishwasher, we have to eat more (=have more children) just to keep the 40 hour work week filled. This is the dependence on growth. We have to keep growing just to stand still at full employment.