Money has been shown convincingly to not be an important factor. Please read about it for a while and you will quickly see that it’s a discredited argument, not least because poor people everywhere have always had more children. Also, fertility rates are falling everywhere, especially in countries that are becoming wealthier.
Perhaps money alone is not a reliable factor, and there are certainly confounding variables, such as poor people having low access to healthcare including contraception and education about options and how to use it.
More important than money is economic security, the ability to expect a reasonable long-term access to a sound source of income.
Having to worry whether you'll be laid off next week and not be able to get new work, and have that worry be constant over a decade is a real discouragement to having children.
Having a stable situation in life is vastly underrated, and not easily measured by current net worth or income.
> Money not infertility, UN report says: Why birth rates are plummeting
> Roughly 40 percent of respondents cited economic barriers – such as the costs of raising children, job insecurity and expensive housing – as the main reason for having fewer children than they would like
That’s what I am saying: this is just utter bullshit that almost every other study disproves, as well as a quick check of the reality around the world! Hence why I suggested to read more on the topic.
Notice that the sentence you wrote says this is the reason people give. People are very unreliable when trying to explain their own behavior. People almost always say what they think is right not what they really feel. I suspect a lot of people don’t have kids because they are afraid of having ugly or stupid or sick children… would you say it out loud if that was the case for you? I am sure you would not and you would rationalize it as being about money somehow.
> Notice that the sentence you wrote says this is the reason people give. People are very unreliable when trying to explain their own behavior
1) The surveys are designed to figure out these things
2) Even if the surveys are not, the shift y-o-y, from previous statements, providing trend data. Respondents can always choose different masking reasons for their choices. Pricing becoming a standout reason speaks volumes.,
3) If you reject both those points, you can postulate any theory you like, and there will never been current data to back it up. At this point we can assume any reason, as a matter of preference not as a matter of fact.
Using “The invention of the single mother” is a poor way of explaining away Bad Marriages and relationships.
Also, there was a UN report which came out that showed that a major factor behind people choosing not to have children, globally, is money.