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Comment by jonathankoren | Hacker News Reader

The welfare queen meme that somehow having kids is a net income gain for poor people simply isn't true, and never was. Kids are incredibly expensive, and there really isn't much economy of scale with them.

The reasons why poor people have more kids has been well known among public health and economic researchers for years. It's lack of family planning and economic opportunities.

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There’s plenty of economy scale to having more children. The bare necessities scale quite rapidly with sleeping space (one more bed costs less than one more room) and large pot cooking (one trip to the store and buying in bulk). Most children’s clothing can be handed down to at least one other child.

The child rearing also scales when you have a single earner family unit as even the stay at home parent’s eyeballs can be shared. And after a few years the older children themselves provide some of that as well.

What doesn’t scale are things we used to consider luxuries. Plane tickets, paid summer camps, or private school tuition.

I think it’s more selfishness on the part of higher income earners than anything else that prevents them from having more children. Both in time commitments and the thought of having to give up or pare down an expensive vacation.

In all seriousness, how many kids do you have, and how close are their ages?

Not the GP, but all of the above is true. There's a warped "coastal 9.9%" perspective on having children where someone in the Bay area working at FAANG on principal level told me they cannot afford a 2nd kid because of how much private school/bigger house/... would cost. There's also the model the rest of the world uses, and probably "normal" people in the USA too, where you share a room with your siblings, wear your older cousin's clothes and then pass them on to your younger sister when possible, etc. ;)

Children are not expensive for most poor people, I don't understand how you can claim that. Most poor people have stronger family networks, because a lot of poor people are immigrants, with stronger communities than most 'Americans'. If you have family / community help, children are not expensive at all.

My mother was an english teacher in a predominantly hispanic area. The women (it was mostly women given time of day) openly admitted to having more kids for the checks. I have no problem with that personally. They hardly paid anything extra for their kids. They had grandmas, sisters, friends, churches, etc to take care of the kids. And my mom watched them too during class. Didn't cost them very much. Education in this country is free.

The 'studies' that find having kids costs more money, assumes everyone lives like rich white people.

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