5 ms·

(Purely anecdotally, my own and my peers experience) We’re seeing educated people waiting longer in life to have children. Fertility drops, assistance from olde

(Purely anecdotally, my own and my peers experience) We’re seeing educated people waiting longer in life to have children. Fertility drops, assistance from older generations drops, the village has gone, nursery and care prices are ridiculously high, support from the government (UK) is a bit of a farce if you’re earning anything more than a living wage in cities, the opportunity cost of a parent putting a (more developed as older) career on hold Having children younger seems like a solution to a lot of this, however people know what the sacrifices are, and very understandably don’t want to make them.

0_____0 1y ago
Costs $2500-4000/mo for infant care where I am. On top of a $3000/mo mortgage. NE USA. When I see a family of 5 my first thought is "holy fuck they must be loaded." Either that or they have one parent who cannot be employed outside the home.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- nervousvarun 1y ago
  Another option: In our case we both WFH which allows us to live near my wife's parents. Which means we have the luxury of an involved, local grandparent as an option over infant/childcare. We literally put the $ we'd budgeted for childcare into a 529. Certainly don't want to speak for everyone but at least for us it's an enormous cost savings and is a "win-win" for everyone involved. Another (seemingly less often discussed) advantage to WFH.
  - red-iron-pine 1y ago
    same here. not near her parents but close enough to both hers and mine that we can effectively have them rotate through consistently (got a spare room and king sized bed for the g-parents). even just 2-3 days a week is huge from a mental health / down time / get things done around the house.
    - octopoc 1y ago
      I think one dynamic going on here is there is more animosity between generations now than there used to be. Many people get hyped up about their beliefs on social media, and when they go out into the real world they take some of that divisive thinking with them.
      - nervousvarun 1y ago
        Apologies I'm really late replying to this...hope you see it. I think this is an insightful comment with an element of truth and it's really, really sad. Yet another example of the net negative societal impact of social media. Convenience/economic context aside, the grandparent/grandchild relationship/dynamic is incredibly important to a developing psyche.
- Aurornis 1y ago
  > When I see a family of 5 my first thought is "holy fuck they must be loaded. This is an interesting divide between social media reality of children and the real world. Any parent will recognize that having 5 kids does not mean paying 5X the cost of infant daycare, which is obvious when you think about it. Infant daycare is expensive but it's also temporary. It's also fascinating that so many people assume daycare is the only option. With 5 kids, having a parent stay home or work part time is fine. You can also hire a nanny. Many of my friends do a nanny share where two families split the cost of a nanny to watch both of their kids together. I have friends who took jobs working offset schedules for a while. Many people move closer to parents who are able to help (not an option for everyone, obviously). It's also not the end of the world to take a couple years off work. It's a hurdle, but not the end of the road. Many people do it. I think many childless people who don't spend a lot of time with parents or families become fixated on the infant phase. They see high infant care costs, sleepless nights, changing diapers, and imagine that's what parenting is like. In reality, it's a very short phase of your life.
  - 0_____0 1y ago
    I'm expecting a kid in Jan. It was sort of unexpected (earlier than planned by about a year!). I'm gonna be honest I had a really grim talk with my partner about finances... I don't make tech money right now and my partner is not in a high paid field. You make good points and I'm looking into all those options now. I have friends who are doing basically everything you mentioned between them. I do think you missed the extra housing cost associated with children though. It seems like many families simply move out of the urban core when it's time to start or grow their family.
    - twoodfin 1y ago
      Congrats. Take care with the money, as always, but kids are the most rewarding “investment” imaginable.
  - IAmBroom 1y ago
    > You can also hire a nanny. Yes, or just have your servants watch them. Most families in the US can't afford a nanny. Daycare is already stretching it. > It's also not the end of the world to take a couple years off work. It's a hurdle, but not the end of the road. Many people do it. Mostly women, and that helps keep the gender pay gap going.
- WarOnPrivacy 1y ago
  > When I see a family of 5 my first thought is "holy frak they must be loaded." I had 5 kids in the 1990s-2000s economy. I couldn't start out as a couple in this economy. Over the last 30 years, rent went from ~$400/mo to ~$2k/mo. Most critical expenses increased similarly. I now live with my adult kids because together we can afford to live.
- billy99k 1y ago
  If child care is that expensive, it's cheaper for one person to stay home, unless both parents have high paying jobs.
  - triceratops 1y ago
    Revealed preference tells us people would rather have "no kids and 3 money" (credit to Homer Simpson).
  - supportengineer 1y ago
    As something of a tautology, when both parents have high paying jobs, child care can charge whatever they want. And they still have limited spaces, which the highly paid parents are now competing for.
  - const_cast 1y ago
    It can be, but it's incredibly risky for women to stay home to take care of children. And, let's be honest - they're the ones actually putting in the effort here most of the time. Most women don't want to be at the complete financial behest of their husbands, nor do they want to risk missing out on a decade of work experience.
    - swagasaurus-rex 1y ago
      Men are avoiding marriage due to the possibility of alimony, child support and courts favoring mother’s custody over children. It happened to my dad, my mom got over $1 million in 2011 when they divorced. Overall it seems like marriage is a bad gamble for both genders whenever divorce is easy to get.
      - angmarsbane 1y ago
        Divorce laws vary by state. California is equal property, and alimony kicks in immediately (no minimum length of marriage). As a female, higher earner, I paid my ex-husband alimony for a 1 yr 9 month marriage.
- MisterTea 1y ago
  > Costs $2500-4000/mo for infant care where I am. That's what grandparents are for. Growing up my immediate family lived in the same neighborhood. My mother's parents lived two blocks away and walked over. My fathers parents lived ~15 minutes away. Everyone worked locally. Baby sitters were always named grandma :-) Now you have to move across the country for a lucrative tech job, leaving behind your support network. You either plan for these things or deal with the consequences. Though I have a feeling many young tech oriented people starting their careers dont have family on their minds... And lastly, it depends on where you live. An ex military friend moved to a shitty town in PA to be near his mother and sister and bought a hose using the GI bill. He has a federal job, five kids and a stay at home wife. Pretty wild to have a family of seven these days but he is happy and doing good. Family support helps big time.
  - angmarsbane 1y ago
    I have been in tech for 7 years and it would be a stretch to afford the house I grew up in. Plus the commute to the city from my parents has increased from 45 minutes to 2 hours over the last 30 years. My high school recently closed down because families can't afford to live in the neighborhood.
    - wink 1y ago
      The house my parents bought in the early 90s (after local inflation) would cost between 1/3 and 1/4 of what such a house goes for right now. Big surprise I didn't buy one, but I suppose with 2 incomes we would have bought one for that price.
  - bdavbdav 1y ago
    Which worked great when people had long retirements and were procreating early. Grandparents are working longer, older age when their children have children, and generally enjoying retirement more instead of grand parenting.
    - MisterTea 1y ago
      > and generally enjoying retirement more instead of grand parenting. These are just people who never liked kids. My friends parents were still working and went out of their way to watch the kids when available. Believe me, there are people who LOVE kids.
- 486sx33 1y ago
  [dead]
- moralestapia 1y ago
  The funny thing is that childcare is ... actually free.
Aurornis 1y ago
> this, however people know what the sacrifices are, and very understandably don’t want to make them. My anecdote: As a parent, when I talk to people my same age or younger without children they often greatly overestimate the sacrifices necessary to have children. I can’t tell you how many times I've heard people (who don’t have children) make wild claims like having children means you won’t have good sleep for the next decade, or that they need a 4,000 square foot house before they have kids, or that it’s impossible to raise kids in a MCOL city without earning $200-$300K. A lot of people have locked their idea of what it’s like to have children to the newborn phase and they imagine changing diapers, paying $2-3K infant care costs, and doing night time feedings forever. I’ve had numerous conversations where people simply refuse to believe me when I tell them my kids were sleeping through the night after a couple years or potty trained by age 2. I think a lot of this is due to class isolation combined with getting a lot of bad info from social media. When you mingle with more of the population you realize most families with kids are not earning programmer level compensation and not living in 4,000 square foot houses, yet it’s working out. Reddit is an interesting peek into this mindset. Recently there was a thread asking for serious answers from parents about if they regretted having children. The top voted comments were all from people who said “I don’t have kids but…” followed by a claim that all their friends secretly regretted having kids or something. If you sorted by controversial there were a lot of comments from people saying they didn’t regret it and loved their kids, but they were all downvoted into the negatives. It’s wild.
- korse 1y ago
  Well said. This all tracks strongly with my experience.
- bdavbdav 1y ago
  I’ve got one fantastic child, the relief of starting to get my time and freedom back is still enough to remind me I don’t what to loose that again, even temporarily.
- Der_Einzige 1y ago
  The parents might be fine but the kids aren’t. I got my great programmer job entirely because of anger that my family was and continues to be in relatively bottom feeder jobs. The trauma associated with living in even relative poverty compared to your peers is hard to overstate. Being a parent is a selfish decision - full stop. Antinatalism becoming socially acceptable is entirely due to an authentic ethic of compassion that the older generation and parents have abjectly failed to embody.
parpfish 1y ago
one of my theories for why we specifically see highly-educated people waiting longer or opting out is that it's a consequence of tiger-mom/helicopter-parent upbringings its a double-blow to deciding to have kids -- a) they were raised to pursue personal/career excellence which deprioritized becoming a parent, and b) when they look back at their parental role models they see an unsustainable level of over-involvement that they don't have the time/money to match and think that that's what's expected of being parents. if we started normalizing more hands-off parenting styles where we let kids be kids and don't expect as much from parents, everybody wins.
- salamanderman 1y ago
  Agreeing with you, and connecting it to the link, my parents talk about their childhood as basically being feral. You had multiple kids in the house who entertained/babysat each other (possibly by beating each other up, but whatever) and you also had streets filled with kids doing whatever (baseball in a dirt field, playing in traffic). The rule was to be home by the time the streetlights came on. Organizing and transporting to playdates etc. was not a thing.
  - billy99k 1y ago
    I grew up in the 80s and 90s. This was my childhood. In the summer, I would play with the neighboorhood kids until dark and come home. My mom would yell out the back door when it was time for dinner.
  - anon291 1y ago
    Look at the way our cities are built. I live in a grid based streetcar suburb and my kids can be let out feral. If you live in a modern subdivision ... Good luck. The roads are too big, and there is nowhere for kids to go. Meanwhile, my local city has free lunch at the park for kids every day during the summer and kids can go unaccompanied. I see tons of kids out riding bikes and walking by themselves. Impossible in modern developments. You'd have to cross a six lane road with 50mph traffic to get anywhere not safe.
    - 1y ago
MisterTea 1y ago
> Having children younger seems like a solution to a lot of this, Indeed. I have a friend who's younger brother fell madly in love with a girl his family did not approve of. He left home at 19 to live with her then returned about a year later married, with his first child at age 20. Shortly after he had his second child he finished university then helped his wife finish university and nursing school. They're 37 now, 3 kids, both have a career, house, and they still go out with friends and have a solid social life. Just saw them this past weekend and his son is a young man looking at university, daughter is excelling in school, and a toddler (happy mistake.) BUT! He had a lot of help from family which is key.
- WarOnPrivacy 1y ago
  > BUT! He had a lot of help from family which is key. Yep. When typical wages equal 100% of rent, how is a new couple supposed to sustain themselves?
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
socalgal2 1y ago
Money is not the issue according to this from 4 days ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44529456 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44529456 According to that the issue is culture. We, as a species, have effectively just changed into people who no longer want kids (on average). Changing culture is hard. Sure, every little economic reason might have been some small influence on that culture but fixing the monetary issues will not suddenly snap the culture back. The culture has fundamentally changed. Just to cause arguments, some things which I'm guessing were an influence in getting her. Cars? (easy to get away from family/village, the culture that valued family). TV/Cable/Video-Games/Youtube? (infinite entertainment 24/7). Fast easy prepared food? (no needing to meet with others for meals). Computers/SmartPhones/Internet? (infinite entertainment and/or ways to interact with others but not actually meet). Suburbia? (the need to drive to be close others)
- schmidtleonard 1y ago
  "We gave 1000 lucky participants $3.50 and a used bubblegum wrapper to share between them, but it didn't measurably increase their marginal propensity to have kids at all! Clearly the root problem couldn't possibly have anything to due with economics!" It's wild how quick and eager economists are to discard money as a driving factor when the solution could possibly involve more social spending. If this were about taking credit for success, they would be tripping over themselves to explain how economics drives the cultural factors, lol.
  - socalgal2 1y ago
    Did you just make that up? I don't see what that has to do with the linked study
  - Scramblejams 1y ago
    It's mentioned in the piece: As Lyman Stone wrote in 2020, “pro-natal incentives do work: more money does yield more babies… But it takes a lot of money. Truth be told, trying to boost birth rates to replacement rate purely through cash incentives is prohibitively costly.”
- 1y ago

0_____0 1y ago

Costs $2500-4000/mo for infant care where I am. On top of a $3000/mo mortgage. NE USA. When I see a family of 5 my first thought is "holy fuck they must be loaded." Either that or they have one parent who cannot be employed outside the home.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
nervousvarun 1y ago
Another option: In our case we both WFH which allows us to live near my wife's parents. Which means we have the luxury of an involved, local grandparent as an option over infant/childcare. We literally put the $ we'd budgeted for childcare into a 529. Certainly don't want to speak for everyone but at least for us it's an enormous cost savings and is a "win-win" for everyone involved. Another (seemingly less often discussed) advantage to WFH.
- red-iron-pine 1y ago
  same here. not near her parents but close enough to both hers and mine that we can effectively have them rotate through consistently (got a spare room and king sized bed for the g-parents). even just 2-3 days a week is huge from a mental health / down time / get things done around the house.
  - octopoc 1y ago
    I think one dynamic going on here is there is more animosity between generations now than there used to be. Many people get hyped up about their beliefs on social media, and when they go out into the real world they take some of that divisive thinking with them.
    - nervousvarun 1y ago
      Apologies I'm really late replying to this...hope you see it. I think this is an insightful comment with an element of truth and it's really, really sad. Yet another example of the net negative societal impact of social media. Convenience/economic context aside, the grandparent/grandchild relationship/dynamic is incredibly important to a developing psyche.
Aurornis 1y ago
> When I see a family of 5 my first thought is "holy fuck they must be loaded. This is an interesting divide between social media reality of children and the real world. Any parent will recognize that having 5 kids does not mean paying 5X the cost of infant daycare, which is obvious when you think about it. Infant daycare is expensive but it's also temporary. It's also fascinating that so many people assume daycare is the only option. With 5 kids, having a parent stay home or work part time is fine. You can also hire a nanny. Many of my friends do a nanny share where two families split the cost of a nanny to watch both of their kids together. I have friends who took jobs working offset schedules for a while. Many people move closer to parents who are able to help (not an option for everyone, obviously). It's also not the end of the world to take a couple years off work. It's a hurdle, but not the end of the road. Many people do it. I think many childless people who don't spend a lot of time with parents or families become fixated on the infant phase. They see high infant care costs, sleepless nights, changing diapers, and imagine that's what parenting is like. In reality, it's a very short phase of your life.
- 0_____0 1y ago
  I'm expecting a kid in Jan. It was sort of unexpected (earlier than planned by about a year!). I'm gonna be honest I had a really grim talk with my partner about finances... I don't make tech money right now and my partner is not in a high paid field. You make good points and I'm looking into all those options now. I have friends who are doing basically everything you mentioned between them. I do think you missed the extra housing cost associated with children though. It seems like many families simply move out of the urban core when it's time to start or grow their family.
  - twoodfin 1y ago
    Congrats. Take care with the money, as always, but kids are the most rewarding “investment” imaginable.
- IAmBroom 1y ago
  > You can also hire a nanny. Yes, or just have your servants watch them. Most families in the US can't afford a nanny. Daycare is already stretching it. > It's also not the end of the world to take a couple years off work. It's a hurdle, but not the end of the road. Many people do it. Mostly women, and that helps keep the gender pay gap going.
WarOnPrivacy 1y ago
> When I see a family of 5 my first thought is "holy frak they must be loaded." I had 5 kids in the 1990s-2000s economy. I couldn't start out as a couple in this economy. Over the last 30 years, rent went from ~$400/mo to ~$2k/mo. Most critical expenses increased similarly. I now live with my adult kids because together we can afford to live.
billy99k 1y ago
If child care is that expensive, it's cheaper for one person to stay home, unless both parents have high paying jobs.
- triceratops 1y ago
  Revealed preference tells us people would rather have "no kids and 3 money" (credit to Homer Simpson).
- supportengineer 1y ago
  As something of a tautology, when both parents have high paying jobs, child care can charge whatever they want. And they still have limited spaces, which the highly paid parents are now competing for.
- const_cast 1y ago
  It can be, but it's incredibly risky for women to stay home to take care of children. And, let's be honest - they're the ones actually putting in the effort here most of the time. Most women don't want to be at the complete financial behest of their husbands, nor do they want to risk missing out on a decade of work experience.
  - swagasaurus-rex 1y ago
    Men are avoiding marriage due to the possibility of alimony, child support and courts favoring mother’s custody over children. It happened to my dad, my mom got over $1 million in 2011 when they divorced. Overall it seems like marriage is a bad gamble for both genders whenever divorce is easy to get.
    - angmarsbane 1y ago
      Divorce laws vary by state. California is equal property, and alimony kicks in immediately (no minimum length of marriage). As a female, higher earner, I paid my ex-husband alimony for a 1 yr 9 month marriage.
MisterTea 1y ago
> Costs $2500-4000/mo for infant care where I am. That's what grandparents are for. Growing up my immediate family lived in the same neighborhood. My mother's parents lived two blocks away and walked over. My fathers parents lived ~15 minutes away. Everyone worked locally. Baby sitters were always named grandma :-) Now you have to move across the country for a lucrative tech job, leaving behind your support network. You either plan for these things or deal with the consequences. Though I have a feeling many young tech oriented people starting their careers dont have family on their minds... And lastly, it depends on where you live. An ex military friend moved to a shitty town in PA to be near his mother and sister and bought a hose using the GI bill. He has a federal job, five kids and a stay at home wife. Pretty wild to have a family of seven these days but he is happy and doing good. Family support helps big time.
- angmarsbane 1y ago
  I have been in tech for 7 years and it would be a stretch to afford the house I grew up in. Plus the commute to the city from my parents has increased from 45 minutes to 2 hours over the last 30 years. My high school recently closed down because families can't afford to live in the neighborhood.
  - wink 1y ago
    The house my parents bought in the early 90s (after local inflation) would cost between 1/3 and 1/4 of what such a house goes for right now. Big surprise I didn't buy one, but I suppose with 2 incomes we would have bought one for that price.
- bdavbdav 1y ago
  Which worked great when people had long retirements and were procreating early. Grandparents are working longer, older age when their children have children, and generally enjoying retirement more instead of grand parenting.
  - MisterTea 1y ago
    > and generally enjoying retirement more instead of grand parenting. These are just people who never liked kids. My friends parents were still working and went out of their way to watch the kids when available. Believe me, there are people who LOVE kids.
486sx33 1y ago
[dead]
moralestapia 1y ago
The funny thing is that childcare is ... actually free.

Aurornis 1y ago

> this, however people know what the sacrifices are, and very understandably don’t want to make them. My anecdote: As a parent, when I talk to people my same age or younger without children they often greatly overestimate the sacrifices necessary to have children. I can’t tell you how many times I've heard people (who don’t have children) make wild claims like having children means you won’t have good sleep for the next decade, or that they need a 4,000 square foot house before they have kids, or that it’s impossible to raise kids in a MCOL city without earning $200-$300K. A lot of people have locked their idea of what it’s like to have children to the newborn phase and they imagine changing diapers, paying $2-3K infant care costs, and doing night time feedings forever. I’ve had numerous conversations where people simply refuse to believe me when I tell them my kids were sleeping through the night after a couple years or potty trained by age 2. I think a lot of this is due to class isolation combined with getting a lot of bad info from social media. When you mingle with more of the population you realize most families with kids are not earning programmer level compensation and not living in 4,000 square foot houses, yet it’s working out. Reddit is an interesting peek into this mindset. Recently there was a thread asking for serious answers from parents about if they regretted having children. The top voted comments were all from people who said “I don’t have kids but…” followed by a claim that all their friends secretly regretted having kids or something. If you sorted by controversial there were a lot of comments from people saying they didn’t regret it and loved their kids, but they were all downvoted into the negatives. It’s wild.

korse 1y ago
Well said. This all tracks strongly with my experience.
bdavbdav 1y ago
I’ve got one fantastic child, the relief of starting to get my time and freedom back is still enough to remind me I don’t what to loose that again, even temporarily.
Der_Einzige 1y ago
The parents might be fine but the kids aren’t. I got my great programmer job entirely because of anger that my family was and continues to be in relatively bottom feeder jobs. The trauma associated with living in even relative poverty compared to your peers is hard to overstate. Being a parent is a selfish decision - full stop. Antinatalism becoming socially acceptable is entirely due to an authentic ethic of compassion that the older generation and parents have abjectly failed to embody.

parpfish 1y ago

one of my theories for why we specifically see highly-educated people waiting longer or opting out is that it's a consequence of tiger-mom/helicopter-parent upbringings its a double-blow to deciding to have kids -- a) they were raised to pursue personal/career excellence which deprioritized becoming a parent, and b) when they look back at their parental role models they see an unsustainable level of over-involvement that they don't have the time/money to match and think that that's what's expected of being parents. if we started normalizing more hands-off parenting styles where we let kids be kids and don't expect as much from parents, everybody wins.

salamanderman 1y ago
Agreeing with you, and connecting it to the link, my parents talk about their childhood as basically being feral. You had multiple kids in the house who entertained/babysat each other (possibly by beating each other up, but whatever) and you also had streets filled with kids doing whatever (baseball in a dirt field, playing in traffic). The rule was to be home by the time the streetlights came on. Organizing and transporting to playdates etc. was not a thing.
- billy99k 1y ago
  I grew up in the 80s and 90s. This was my childhood. In the summer, I would play with the neighboorhood kids until dark and come home. My mom would yell out the back door when it was time for dinner.
- anon291 1y ago
  Look at the way our cities are built. I live in a grid based streetcar suburb and my kids can be let out feral. If you live in a modern subdivision ... Good luck. The roads are too big, and there is nowhere for kids to go. Meanwhile, my local city has free lunch at the park for kids every day during the summer and kids can go unaccompanied. I see tons of kids out riding bikes and walking by themselves. Impossible in modern developments. You'd have to cross a six lane road with 50mph traffic to get anywhere not safe.
  - 1y ago

MisterTea 1y ago

> Having children younger seems like a solution to a lot of this, Indeed. I have a friend who's younger brother fell madly in love with a girl his family did not approve of. He left home at 19 to live with her then returned about a year later married, with his first child at age 20. Shortly after he had his second child he finished university then helped his wife finish university and nursing school. They're 37 now, 3 kids, both have a career, house, and they still go out with friends and have a solid social life. Just saw them this past weekend and his son is a young man looking at university, daughter is excelling in school, and a toddler (happy mistake.) BUT! He had a lot of help from family which is key.

WarOnPrivacy 1y ago
> BUT! He had a lot of help from family which is key. Yep. When typical wages equal 100% of rent, how is a new couple supposed to sustain themselves?

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

socalgal2 1y ago

Money is not the issue according to this from 4 days ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44529456 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44529456 According to that the issue is culture. We, as a species, have effectively just changed into people who no longer want kids (on average). Changing culture is hard. Sure, every little economic reason might have been some small influence on that culture but fixing the monetary issues will not suddenly snap the culture back. The culture has fundamentally changed. Just to cause arguments, some things which I'm guessing were an influence in getting her. Cars? (easy to get away from family/village, the culture that valued family). TV/Cable/Video-Games/Youtube? (infinite entertainment 24/7). Fast easy prepared food? (no needing to meet with others for meals). Computers/SmartPhones/Internet? (infinite entertainment and/or ways to interact with others but not actually meet). Suburbia? (the need to drive to be close others)

schmidtleonard 1y ago
"We gave 1000 lucky participants $3.50 and a used bubblegum wrapper to share between them, but it didn't measurably increase their marginal propensity to have kids at all! Clearly the root problem couldn't possibly have anything to due with economics!" It's wild how quick and eager economists are to discard money as a driving factor when the solution could possibly involve more social spending. If this were about taking credit for success, they would be tripping over themselves to explain how economics drives the cultural factors, lol.
- socalgal2 1y ago
  Did you just make that up? I don't see what that has to do with the linked study
- Scramblejams 1y ago
  It's mentioned in the piece: As Lyman Stone wrote in 2020, “pro-natal incentives do work: more money does yield more babies… But it takes a lot of money. Truth be told, trying to boost birth rates to replacement rate purely through cash incentives is prohibitively costly.”
1y ago