[gottorf]

A person with no skills wouldn't be able to support themselves regardless of the number of kids.

And I suppose that's ultimately the problem: through a combination of technological advances, which automate much unskilled labor, and a broken incentive structure in many social welfare programs, which disincentivize investment in human capital (because of the "benefit cliff"), a larger and larger underclass of unemployable[0] people grows.

[0]: meaning, the economic value of their labor output is less than the minimum cost to employ them.