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Please note this study is on men who got a wealth shock. But population wise high income households have less children for some reason.

Dalewyn 4y ago
It's the case across entire countries: The richer a country or region the less children there are. For the countries and peoples moaning about low birthrates, the simplest solution is to go back to being destitute. The poorer a country or region the more children there are. Not to say that's a realistic solution, of course. But the cause-and-effect seem fairly clear that more monies equate to less kids.
- eldritch_4ier 4y ago
  You can look at fertility rates across rich countries, and what you'll notice is a rapid secular decline starts literally the exact same year that the birth control pill becomes legal. Go ahead and google fertility rates for any developed country that comes to mind and compare it to when birth control became legal. For the US, UK, Australia, South Korea, etc its the EXACT year. Wealth doesn't seem to explain it exactly: the main reason people who want kids don't have they in developed countries is a lack of mean (wealth). Wealth itself doesn't seem to be it (all else equal, having more means doesn't seem like the obvious cause). I wonder what percent of children born for all of human history were simply unplanned. The data seems to suggest something like 50%+ of them. As family planning becomes more accessible, we're finding that people just keep postponing having them and a big part of the reason they had them before was simply "oops". No surprise in hindsight. There's not a single animal on earth besides us very recently that do any kind of family planning. They just have sex and offspring happen. Why should Homo Sapiens be any different.
  - klipt 4y ago
    Evolution took the lazy shortcut of making us want sex, not children, and for millions of years that hack worked. Now that birth control exists, there will be much stronger selection for actually wanting children. People who only want sex will be removed from the gene pool.
    - jackcosgrove 4y ago
      I wouldn't call it lazy but parsimonious. At least among mammals, newborns seem to have vastly different requirements from the parents depending on the species. Optimizing for sex rather than nurturing just covers more cases.
  - orangepurple 4y ago
    It is difficult to afford raising more than two children on your own as a married couple. You have to enlist outside help. If you don't have a family to fall back on you have to purchase help. At some point one of the married couple needs to stop working instead of paying for childcare as the cost of childcare will exceed the income of one of the partners. Both partners want to maintain careers in the western world which applies further strain to the arrangement. I would have ten children if I had affordable childcare and additional help around the house. It is clear to me.
    - mpreda 4y ago
      > I would have ten children if I had affordable childcare and additional help around the house. It is clear to me. Why would you have ten children? what is the need, or the benefit, or the reason.
      - eldritch_4ier 4y ago
        Not the same person you're responding to, but I'd have tons of children too if the economics weren't a factor at all. There's just something incredibly fulfilling about raising a child. It's similar to the feeling you get when helping somebody else out in need, except you also get to experience all the magical parts of the world all around you with them as they experience them for the first time. A lot of other things feel trivial by comparison once you've experienced that.
        watwut 4y ago
        I do know families with many children. After some amount, you don't have time needed to fulfill all kids needs even if you are stay at home. At some point, educational and emotional needs of older kids go sideways since they are needed for work. And the stay at home partner seems super ultra tired all of the time. Statistically, they have more behavioral problems including in educated not poor Christian families.
        sethammons 4y ago
  - RajT88 4y ago
    You have missed the causality. Birth control has a huge wealth benefit where starting a family can be delayed until careers are more established. The number of children can be limited as well. Kids are expensive!
    - bobthepanda 4y ago
      Also, in rich countries, people have much higher standards for raising kids. In 2023 I know a lot of bougie American parents who cannot fathom making siblings share a room. 40 years ago, bunk beds were normal. 100 years ago, all the kids would probably be in one room, possibly with their parents, grandparents, etc and that type of living is still endemic in poorer nations. But how many people can afford an American house with another additional room?
      - RajT88 4y ago
        I know plenty of parents for whom private school is a must-have. Even if they themselves went to public school.
        bluecalm 4y ago
        No surprise there. Public school experience varies from traumatic to just a gigantic waste of time during the best development years. Once you go through that you don't want your children to have the same experience.
        RajT88 4y ago
        It was as fine for me as it was for other successful people I know. I do not see how our experience justifies tens of thousands of dollars per year. Other than a general commitment to providing "the best" to their kids.
    - eldritch_4ier 4y ago
      A wealth benefit for who? Maybe in terms of aggregate societal wealth, but in terms of relative wealth things have gotten worse (you can't buy a home and raise a family on a single income anymore for instance). Before: everyone had one wage earner per household. Prices for goods meets this reality. After: everyone has 2 wage earners per households. Prices for goods meets this reality. Nothing has changed except now you need 2 people earning to live just as well as before. More aggregate output means "more GDP", but who cares when your life is relatively worse in many ways.
  - anonymouskimmer 4y ago
    > There's not a single animal on earth besides us very recently that do any kind of family planning. The original family planning, infanticide, or abandonment of eggs for egg laying species, is practiced by a variety of animals.
- huitzitziltzin 4y ago
  > The richer a country or region the less children there are. Used to be true but now has changed. The richer have more children. See a recent survey on the new economics of the family by Mathias doepke of northwestern.
  - orangepurple 4y ago
    As I mentioned in a previous comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35407438 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35407438 this is likely due to the additional help they can enlist at marginal additional cost by virtue of being rich
  - ngc248 4y ago
    Maybe there is a specific amount of wealth beyond which the rich start having more children
- osigurdson 4y ago
  >> For the countries and peoples moaning about low birthrates, the simplest solution is to go back to being destitute I don't think that this is true anymore. We have crossed the Rubicon, birth rates will only increase if people can maintain a good standard of living with less stress and more available time.
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  > But the cause-and-effect seem fairly clear that more monies equate to less kids. I disagree. I would guess the cause is women gaining agency to dictate how many children they birth, from a combination of being able to control when they have sex, birth control, and access to abortion. It just so happens that women generally do not have these things in poorer societies.
  - Beaver117 4y ago
    You think there's no contraception in poor countries? Come on. It's not just that. There's a level of wealth where people just choose to delay having kids
    - lotsofpulp 4y ago
      I wrote more than just birth control. Women in poorer countries might not have the economic opportunity to have the freedom to choose to have fewer or no kid, i.e. their society coerces them via lack of other options. Also, in poorer countries, one’s physical securities may be more strongly related to the size of one’s family.
    - noelwelsh 4y ago
      https://www.healthdata.org/news-release/lancet-160-million-women-worldwide-have-unmet-contraception-needs-new-study-reveals https://www.healthdata.org/news-release/lancet-160-million-w... > Estimates suggest that more than 160 million women and adolescents who wanted to avoid pregnancy were not using contraceptives in 2019, despite significant progress in the use of modern contraceptives globally over the previous 50 years. > Major disparities in contraceptive use still exist between regions – with more than half the women with unmet need for contraception living in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.
  - csomar 4y ago
    Wrong guess. It's not about money but culture. The arabs still re-produce by high numbers whether they have monies or not. This has come down in the recent years as they got more westernized.
huitzitziltzin 4y ago
This study covers men and women who got wealth shocks through three different programs, two of which are fairly conventional lotteries and the last of which is a “save to win” program where your odds of winning are a function of your bank account balance (to encourage savings).
vintermann 4y ago
The obvious explanation to me is that having children costs money, and having children is a big disadvantage for many effective money-making enterprises.
- noelwelsh 4y ago
  Young children stop you doing a lot of thing. I don't want to spend a decade changing nappies, cleaning up vomit, and waking up at 2am. Pregnancy is also annoying and potentially dangerous for the mother. I can't speak to others motivations, but those are the reasons I don't have more than 2 kids.

Dalewyn 4y ago

It's the case across entire countries: The richer a country or region the less children there are. For the countries and peoples moaning about low birthrates, the simplest solution is to go back to being destitute. The poorer a country or region the more children there are. Not to say that's a realistic solution, of course. But the cause-and-effect seem fairly clear that more monies equate to less kids.

eldritch_4ier 4y ago
You can look at fertility rates across rich countries, and what you'll notice is a rapid secular decline starts literally the exact same year that the birth control pill becomes legal. Go ahead and google fertility rates for any developed country that comes to mind and compare it to when birth control became legal. For the US, UK, Australia, South Korea, etc its the EXACT year. Wealth doesn't seem to explain it exactly: the main reason people who want kids don't have they in developed countries is a lack of mean (wealth). Wealth itself doesn't seem to be it (all else equal, having more means doesn't seem like the obvious cause). I wonder what percent of children born for all of human history were simply unplanned. The data seems to suggest something like 50%+ of them. As family planning becomes more accessible, we're finding that people just keep postponing having them and a big part of the reason they had them before was simply "oops". No surprise in hindsight. There's not a single animal on earth besides us very recently that do any kind of family planning. They just have sex and offspring happen. Why should Homo Sapiens be any different.
- klipt 4y ago
  Evolution took the lazy shortcut of making us want sex, not children, and for millions of years that hack worked. Now that birth control exists, there will be much stronger selection for actually wanting children. People who only want sex will be removed from the gene pool.
  - jackcosgrove 4y ago
    I wouldn't call it lazy but parsimonious. At least among mammals, newborns seem to have vastly different requirements from the parents depending on the species. Optimizing for sex rather than nurturing just covers more cases.
- orangepurple 4y ago
  It is difficult to afford raising more than two children on your own as a married couple. You have to enlist outside help. If you don't have a family to fall back on you have to purchase help. At some point one of the married couple needs to stop working instead of paying for childcare as the cost of childcare will exceed the income of one of the partners. Both partners want to maintain careers in the western world which applies further strain to the arrangement. I would have ten children if I had affordable childcare and additional help around the house. It is clear to me.
  - mpreda 4y ago
    > I would have ten children if I had affordable childcare and additional help around the house. It is clear to me. Why would you have ten children? what is the need, or the benefit, or the reason.
    - eldritch_4ier 4y ago
      Not the same person you're responding to, but I'd have tons of children too if the economics weren't a factor at all. There's just something incredibly fulfilling about raising a child. It's similar to the feeling you get when helping somebody else out in need, except you also get to experience all the magical parts of the world all around you with them as they experience them for the first time. A lot of other things feel trivial by comparison once you've experienced that.
      - watwut 4y ago
        I do know families with many children. After some amount, you don't have time needed to fulfill all kids needs even if you are stay at home. At some point, educational and emotional needs of older kids go sideways since they are needed for work. And the stay at home partner seems super ultra tired all of the time. Statistically, they have more behavioral problems including in educated not poor Christian families.
        sethammons 4y ago
- RajT88 4y ago
  You have missed the causality. Birth control has a huge wealth benefit where starting a family can be delayed until careers are more established. The number of children can be limited as well. Kids are expensive!
  - bobthepanda 4y ago
    Also, in rich countries, people have much higher standards for raising kids. In 2023 I know a lot of bougie American parents who cannot fathom making siblings share a room. 40 years ago, bunk beds were normal. 100 years ago, all the kids would probably be in one room, possibly with their parents, grandparents, etc and that type of living is still endemic in poorer nations. But how many people can afford an American house with another additional room?
    - RajT88 4y ago
      I know plenty of parents for whom private school is a must-have. Even if they themselves went to public school.
      - bluecalm 4y ago
        No surprise there. Public school experience varies from traumatic to just a gigantic waste of time during the best development years. Once you go through that you don't want your children to have the same experience.
        RajT88 4y ago
        It was as fine for me as it was for other successful people I know. I do not see how our experience justifies tens of thousands of dollars per year. Other than a general commitment to providing "the best" to their kids.
  - eldritch_4ier 4y ago
    A wealth benefit for who? Maybe in terms of aggregate societal wealth, but in terms of relative wealth things have gotten worse (you can't buy a home and raise a family on a single income anymore for instance). Before: everyone had one wage earner per household. Prices for goods meets this reality. After: everyone has 2 wage earners per households. Prices for goods meets this reality. Nothing has changed except now you need 2 people earning to live just as well as before. More aggregate output means "more GDP", but who cares when your life is relatively worse in many ways.
- anonymouskimmer 4y ago
  > There's not a single animal on earth besides us very recently that do any kind of family planning. The original family planning, infanticide, or abandonment of eggs for egg laying species, is practiced by a variety of animals.
huitzitziltzin 4y ago
> The richer a country or region the less children there are. Used to be true but now has changed. The richer have more children. See a recent survey on the new economics of the family by Mathias doepke of northwestern.
- orangepurple 4y ago
  As I mentioned in a previous comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35407438 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35407438 this is likely due to the additional help they can enlist at marginal additional cost by virtue of being rich
- ngc248 4y ago
  Maybe there is a specific amount of wealth beyond which the rich start having more children
osigurdson 4y ago
>> For the countries and peoples moaning about low birthrates, the simplest solution is to go back to being destitute I don't think that this is true anymore. We have crossed the Rubicon, birth rates will only increase if people can maintain a good standard of living with less stress and more available time.
lotsofpulp 4y ago
> But the cause-and-effect seem fairly clear that more monies equate to less kids. I disagree. I would guess the cause is women gaining agency to dictate how many children they birth, from a combination of being able to control when they have sex, birth control, and access to abortion. It just so happens that women generally do not have these things in poorer societies.
- Beaver117 4y ago
  You think there's no contraception in poor countries? Come on. It's not just that. There's a level of wealth where people just choose to delay having kids
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    I wrote more than just birth control. Women in poorer countries might not have the economic opportunity to have the freedom to choose to have fewer or no kid, i.e. their society coerces them via lack of other options. Also, in poorer countries, one’s physical securities may be more strongly related to the size of one’s family.
  - noelwelsh 4y ago
    https://www.healthdata.org/news-release/lancet-160-million-women-worldwide-have-unmet-contraception-needs-new-study-reveals https://www.healthdata.org/news-release/lancet-160-million-w... > Estimates suggest that more than 160 million women and adolescents who wanted to avoid pregnancy were not using contraceptives in 2019, despite significant progress in the use of modern contraceptives globally over the previous 50 years. > Major disparities in contraceptive use still exist between regions – with more than half the women with unmet need for contraception living in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.
- csomar 4y ago
  Wrong guess. It's not about money but culture. The arabs still re-produce by high numbers whether they have monies or not. This has come down in the recent years as they got more westernized.

huitzitziltzin 4y ago

This study covers men and women who got wealth shocks through three different programs, two of which are fairly conventional lotteries and the last of which is a “save to win” program where your odds of winning are a function of your bank account balance (to encourage savings).

vintermann 4y ago

The obvious explanation to me is that having children costs money, and having children is a big disadvantage for many effective money-making enterprises.

noelwelsh 4y ago
Young children stop you doing a lot of thing. I don't want to spend a decade changing nappies, cleaning up vomit, and waking up at 2am. Pregnancy is also annoying and potentially dangerous for the mother. I can't speak to others motivations, but those are the reasons I don't have more than 2 kids.