[locococo]

It's not the expense that is scary but the risk.

Most of what children need, healthcare, food, shelter, supervision. Is directly tied to employment of the adults.

If an adult loses employment you lose all pillars to support your child.

The social safety net in the US is not sufficient for people to feel safe in having children.

Further, the argument of why people should have children so the economy is supported is very shallow. I am not raising children so the economy can have more consumers.

As a society we should have larger goals then the next quarter results of publicly traded companies.

[inglor_cz]

The social safety net in most of EU is much stronger than the American one.

Fertility is absolutely abysmal, though, and even worse among the natives (less so among recent arrivals from Afghanistan, Africa etc.)

Meanwhile the winner in the global birth rates is Niger, a country near the bottom of the world economic ladder.

It can't be primarily about social security.

[locococo]

That was my second point, the political environment does nothing to convey why people should have children

[red-iron-pine]

security is relative.

as a westerner most you, if you lose your job, will have no way to feed yourself. how many of you have the skills, infrastructure, and available bodies on hand to set up a subsistence farm? where is the land to be able to do that?

the guys in Niger are a lot closer to the land, to traditional food-ways like herding animals, and don't have much by way of creature comforts, which means they don't have much to lose, may have things to gain, by having kids.

in many ways it keeps them poor, but poor with a lot of kids is a society that continues, while rich but depress and to anxious to go outside and meet people and breed is a society that doesn't have a future.