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Comment by EduardoBautista | Hacker News Reader

Then why are children far more common in families with lower incomes?

I think it's because the proportional cost of children actually increases as you move up the income ladder. Probably only starts to reverse once you hit the mid-high hundreds of thousands of dollars. Kids are cheaper for poorer families, because they dedicate less resources towards kids. If someone lives in a place where housing is cheap and don't expect anything beyond public primary and secondary school then another kid only really costs some extra groceries and clothes. By comparison if someone expects to give their kid a private education, subsidize their college education, and afford to house them comfortably in an expensive neighborhood, then kids can be incredibly expensive.

Lower income people often trend towards the former, higher income people towards the latter. Of course there are exceptions - some lower income people dedicate great resources towards their kids, some wealthier families don't.

> I think it's because the proportional cost of children actually increases as you move up the income ladder.

The opportunity cost as well. Having and raising a child means there are things you can't do because you have to raise/take care of the child.

> If someone lives in a place where housing is cheap and don't expect anything beyond public primary and secondary school then another kid only really costs some extra groceries and clothes.

At the end of the day, even for people with low COL raising a child to adulthood is still on the order of tens of thousands of dollars. Planning might also be a factor there, it's likely more present higher up the income ladder, meaning the wealthier segments see the kind of costs associated middle/long term and go "maybe not yet".

Yeah, buts tens of thousands of dollars over the course of nearly 2 decades isn't all that much money. If your kid takes the bus, goes to public education, and you don't need childcare then the cost of a kid just boils down to room and board. Contrast that with a parent that sends their kid to private school, and wants to pay for a private undergrad. That's going to be on the order of at least the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Probably close to half a million.

Raising a kid to the expectations of an upper or even upper-middle class family costs orders of magnitude more than raising a kid to the expectations of a poor family. But said upper middle class family probably doesn't make a proportionally larger amount. I'd consider someone "poor" if they make 20-25k a year and "wealthy" if they make 200-250k+. But the costs of raising a child to the expectations of the latter is probably more than 10 times greater. Probably 20-30 times greater. Thus why kids are more proportionally expensive for higher income class people.

The ridiculousness of what you’re saying becomes readily apparent if you substitute cars for children. For instance: cars are more expensive for rich people, because a top of the line Mercedes costs $100k, rather than $15k for a used Toyota. No, cars (and children) cost the same for everybody. Some people choose to spend more because they have convinced themselves that anything less simply would not do.

Except cars aren’t comparable to children. There is a significantly different expected return on investment of a child that goes to high performing schools and has a network of other high performing high net worth individuals than for a child that isn’t given those opportunities.

The best predictor for someone’s economic security in life is the zip code they grow up in.

Kids don't work like cars. For cars, you can trade them in and buy a new one when you feel like it if you have the cash. You can buy a clunker, treat it poorly, and then when it dies nothing is stopping you from buying a Lexus to replace it (if you have the money). Kids don't work like that. You can't give a kid a mediocre childhood for until 10th grade, and then throw enough money at it to make it as though your kid had a great education, upbringing, and enrichment opportunities throughout all of childhood.

Of course there are people who don't have much money and still do their best to raise their kids as best they can. But the reality is that things like education and upbringing do have a significant impact, and often getting the best out of those things takes a significant mount of money.

The material living standard for a middle class family in the West is better than the material living standard of anybody who ever lived, at any socio economic class, before 100 years ago. And here you are arguing that somehow the reason middle class people aren’t having more children is because they can’t provide adequately for their children?

No, it's because parents in the West don't want their child to end up with the global average standard of living. They want a good standard of living as per their expectations of growing up in the West. The globsl median household income is under $10k per year. This is destitute for an American. The prospect of one's child endind up in such a situation is not appealing.

Hence, why Westerners are waiting to have kids and dedicating more resources towards them. Furthermore things integral to raising children like education have actually increased in cost over the past several decades.

There are plenty of safety nets when you're low income if you take advantage of the available benefits. Your children will be taken care of with medicaid/medicare, you'll receive food stamps, housing assistance. If you're not low income, you're on your own, which can be really tough for people in a middle income range slightly above being able to get those safety nets.

My Nana is the first-born of six children. Somehow we got to talking about the link between poverty and birthrates and her guess was that sex tends to be the first and last vice available to a person after losing everything else.

People with less prospects are more impulsive because they have less of a future to worry about putting in jeopardy.

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