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Comment by ricardobeat | Hacker News Reader

This is extremely location-dependent. In countries where you have universal healthcare, free education and childcare benefits, the financial impact of having a child can be very low.

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What are the birth rates in these countries? If you check (Our World In Data Fertility Rates), you’ll see it’s lower than the US, even countries with strong pro natalist policies. The opportunity cost of kids is just too damn high.

When fathers in Spain were given more parental leave, they have less kids, for example. The revealed preference is clear.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/children-per-woman-UN

https://qz.com/work/1614893/after-men-in-spain-got-paternity...

“As the authors point out, it’s impossible to draw sweeping conclusions from this observation of a single data point in a single country.”

The study doesnt mention any effect on career progression or any other type of opportunity cost either. You’re entitled to your opinion but this article does not support it.

Those countries just offload the cost of the child onto other people. The cost is not low.

The cost to a society of not having children is also quite high, so pick your poison.

No disagreement there, although I think perhaps society should stop treating children as crops to be harvested for the commons. A tragedy of the commons has been created as society claims social security tax from grown children to pay to the elderly, so the economic incentive is to be a free-rider and live off other people's children while having none of your own.

> so the economic incentive is to be a free-rider...

I'm reminded of societies in which families have more children than they want because there is no social safety net. Children are the safety net. Talk about harvesting human beings. Children suffer immense pressure and even abuse in such places.

Just to think through this a little bit further. There is a proportion of "free-riders" in every given population, even those without a safety net. Some free-riders will exploit their own children, the government, their family's status, their spouse, or whatever or whoever is at hand. Some people decide they would rather be homeless than exploit anyone. In short, let us acknowledge that free riding is a thing that happens, and that it is usually morally reprehensible.

Which will lead to a more stable society: social safety net, or no social safety net?

In my experience and observation, societies that have protections from poverty seem to be far more stable as compared to societies that do not have them.

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