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Comment by jiggy2011 | Hacker News Reader

jiggy2011

The problem is that smart people tend to earn more, thus the children tend to cost them more both in terms of opportunity cost (hours away from work) and actual cost (more likely to consider things like private school as essential). To incentive them you would need to start giving already wealthy people quite significant tax breaks etc.

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This is the silliest argument for why intelligence would be negatively correlated with number of children. FWIW, the original article very much did not assert that assertion; reproductive success (meaning having any children at all survive the parents) in fact may be positively correlated because the social status of richer/more intelligent parents translates to higher survival rates for their offspring.

Regardless, while the absolute cost of raising children may be higher for high-income families, the share of their total income that represents is much lower. Someone earning minimum wage will struggle to support even one child's basic food, clothing, and shelter; their counterpart making $1M a year could easily afford private school, childcare, and the best possible opportunities for a family of 3-4 children.

My comment doesn't argue that intelligence is negatively correlated with having children, it argues that it is difficult to incentivise intelligent people to have children. Although looking at figures for 2010 it does seem that there is a negative correlation between income and number of births (at least in the US).

http://www.statista.com/statistics/241530/birth-rate-by-fami...

Survival rate is unlikely to be highly correlated with income in a first world country because even the poor have relatively good healthcare. The group most likely to have children are those earning $10,000 per year or less, probably because at that income level the state will pay most of the costs associated with child rearing. In fact in some cases having children might make a person better off financially due to higher priority for welfare or public housing etc.

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