[morepedantic]

Perhaps they simply have unrealistic material expectations not in line with individual productivity. In fact, if your expectations are a function of your childless consumption levels, then it will always exceed what you can achieve with the same income spread over more people.

[AngryData]

Maybe in your job losing your partner's income may merely represent lowering your consumption levels, but the vast majority of people aren't earning enough money to simply lower consumption levels when their income is halved. I don't consider people living in a 2 bedroom 1 bath house, driving 15 year old cars, and buying a few video games to be some sort of excessive living or high level of consumption.

[brabel]

The people living a simple life as you describe have more children than the higher paid inner city folk. Explanations like yours are shown again and again to not explain reality.

[disgruntledphd2]

But if your fixed costs are much lower (housing etc) then it makes more financial sense to have kids as there's less of a hit from the loss of lots of income (plus expenses, kids are not cheap).

Like, we have two kids and a top 10% (bottom of the top though) salary, and we have no discretionary income or ability to save (very much) after paying for the costs associated with kids and housing. I can completely understand why people don't want to do that, particularly given that 90% of households in my country earn less than us.

[morepedantic]

Sometimes there is an income problem. Sometimes there is a spending problem. And sometimes there is a cost problem. But cost is unlike the others, because income and spending are individual, but cost is universal.

Inflation from 2020-2024 was absurdly high. This was a universal hit to cost, and everyone felt it.

But outside of that recency bias, Americans have poor financial literacy. Americans have spending problems: credit card debt, car loans, and student loans come to mind. Each of these debt categories aren't inherently bad. Student loans are great if the degree has earning potential, but most Americans don't seek those degrees. Car loans aren't bad if it's a practical and affordable vehicles, but Americans like luxury SUVs. Credit cards aren't bad if you buy a washing machine to save on laundromat visits, but Americans like expensive vacations.

Americans also have problems with income, but that's even more complicated.

[disgruntledphd2]

> Americans have poor financial literacy. Americans have spending problems: credit card debt, car loans, and student loans come to mind.

Sure, but I'm not American and we have none of those debts. It's mostly housing/bills and childcare that screw us.

[morepedantic]

That may be, but this is the internet. Everyone is an American, didn't you know?

[morepedantic]

You mean those people with running water, indoor plumbing, central heating, electric lights, and a passenger vehicle capable of reaching speeds faster than the fastest land animal who entertain themselves with a magical rock that performs trillions of calculations a second to render 8-bit animals on an island to display on a sheet of quantum dots? Not to mention vaccines, antibiotics, cell phones, free education, supermarkets, and all the other modern wonders?

My point IS that you don't consider this to be a high level of consumption. To you it's normal. You've acclimated, and would again if the quality of life were 10x higher.

If people decide to build careers before having children, and DINKs acclimate to their income levels, then any child would feel like an unacceptable quality of life. You'll always feel like you're a rung below where you need to be, and this property would be independent of any particular scale.

Call it pedant's hypothesis. I've proposed it as an explanation. I can neither prove nor disprove it.

[BobaFloutist]

If people having children is a public good, maybe it shouldn't be disincentivized?

[morepedantic]

It's called hedonistic adaptation. Most people scale material consumption with income, and the new consumption level quickly feels normal. If this happens to you, then it's plausible that children will always look expensive, no matter your earned income.

The quality of life that modern, affluent people consider unacceptably low for a family would be considered decadent by most people who ever lived anywhere.

[BobaFloutist]

Sure, I'm saying maybe we should distribute public funds to reduce or minimize the affect of having children on your quality of life, if we agree that having children is a public good.

The same way that we give people tax breaks for making donations, because we think making donations is good, people having children are donating their time, physical health, money, and earning potential to the greater good of society, so maybe they should be compensated for it.

[morepedantic]

Regulating with positive feedback is usually unstable and rife with unintended consequences.

Can we start by striking down regulations that make having children more expensive? Zoning laws, environmental laws, development approval processes, and even building codes have significantly increase the cost of housing. Regulations made daycare prohibitively expensive, while also subsidizing that model over traditional childcare models. High costs are first order effects of these regulations, but there are plenty of second and third order cost increases as well.