1. In rich countries (like the US, where I live), some of the cost of children is subsidized for poor people.
2. Middle class parents are very unlikely to raise their children at the same cost as poor parents. If they can afford better things for their kids, they will. There is enormous social (even moral) pressure on parents to make sacrifices for their kids.
Note that I think both of these things are good things. But the upshot is that, in pure economic terms, the short term cost of kids for society and for parents is high. Long term, they are a great investment, but even this is more true for society at large than for parents directly.
But if parents were only thinking about children in pure economic terms, birth rates would be even lower than they are. There are other really good reasons to have kids. But I think a lot of young people don't see or hear about that, or don't believe parents when they say it.
There was a great article from Cartoons Hate Her[0] where she made the point that one thing you can do to increase the odds your children will want to have children is to "make parenting look fun". The way I would say this is that you want to make sure kids aren't only aware of the not-fun parts (when their parents are mad and frustrated, it's obvious), but also the times when you're really enjoying having them around.
I think this applies at the society level too. Parenting does suck, but it's also awesome. We don't need to lie about the sucky parts, but we should make sure that's not all we're showing young people.
My two cents as someone that had his only child past the age of 40:
More than low birth rates, I think that the problem is that people are postponing children until the last possible moment biology allows for it.
The reason is that people need to have their life in order before having children. I imagine it was easier in the past than nowadays.
You have Children and need to work? Daycare is extremely expensive. Want to buy a house? Well, Children weights against you when trying to get a mortgage. And I am not even getting into the actual costs of raising a child.
People say that low birthrates are a problem, but while raising children is a personal endeavor, nobody is willing to make a collective problem (it is fairly unpopular to direct taxpayer money to pay for it).
I wouldn't say "more than", I would just say that these are both different problems, with different impacts. I don't think it's obvious which thing is a bigger problem. But yes, I agree that the root causes are likely similar.
Children are an asset for net tax-recipients, but a liability for net tax-payers. I grew up in a very poor area and heard firsthand teenage girls excited over how much welfare money they can receive for babies. It's an inversion of the natural order. It's state-manipulated breeding incentives between different classes of people. It's literally eugenics.
Children are a massive asset for tax-payers. Money is a claim on the production of a country. Without that production, money is just a useless piece of paper or useless entry in a bank database. And for a country to produce, it needs people of working age.
More concretely, let's suppose you're 92 and you need full time nursing care. You still have retirements savings so should be able to pay for it. Now let's say there are more people needing nursing than there are nurses. What happens to the cost of that nursing? It goes up until some cannot afford to pay and demand balances supply.
Without a working age population, your retirement assets will be inflated away into worthlessness.
Nobody thinks like this. Not a single intelligent, successful, prosperous woman is going to be even slightly motivated to have a baby over the long-term viability and credibility of fiat currency, whereas I personally know of two people who only exist because their welfare-dependent mother impulsively took advantage of a government cash bonus by getting knocked up by a man she barely knew, and then promptly did so again with a different one.
> Now let's say there are more people needing nursing than there are nurses. What happens to the cost of that nursing?
The cost does not change. This situation that you describe is already present a many countries who have an acute nurse shortage. The gap as always is filled by immigrants from the global south.
Everyone wants their kids to do better than they did.
But, if you are poor enough in a rich country, you have lower absolute aspirations for your own children / you probably get child related government benefits that approach your costs / etc.
If you went to college and want your kids to do the same.. the costs are enormous.
1. In rich countries (like the US, where I live), some of the cost of children is subsidized for poor people.
2. Middle class parents are very unlikely to raise their children at the same cost as poor parents. If they can afford better things for their kids, they will. There is enormous social (even moral) pressure on parents to make sacrifices for their kids.
Note that I think both of these things are good things. But the upshot is that, in pure economic terms, the short term cost of kids for society and for parents is high. Long term, they are a great investment, but even this is more true for society at large than for parents directly.
But if parents were only thinking about children in pure economic terms, birth rates would be even lower than they are. There are other really good reasons to have kids. But I think a lot of young people don't see or hear about that, or don't believe parents when they say it.
There was a great article from Cartoons Hate Her[0] where she made the point that one thing you can do to increase the odds your children will want to have children is to "make parenting look fun". The way I would say this is that you want to make sure kids aren't only aware of the not-fun parts (when their parents are mad and frustrated, it's obvious), but also the times when you're really enjoying having them around.
I think this applies at the society level too. Parenting does suck, but it's also awesome. We don't need to lie about the sucky parts, but we should make sure that's not all we're showing young people.
0: https://www.cartoonshateher.com/p/how-to-have-grandchildren