

The rich are having more children -- an important change in demography - babakian
http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14164483

======
mooism2
Rich _countries_ are having more children. The evidence doesn't say whether
rich people in rich countries are having more children, or poor people in rich
countries, or whether it's all sections of society in rich countries.

(I interpreted the title initially to mean that rich _people_ were having more
children.)

------
aik
"No doubt all these social explanations are true as far as they go, but they
do not address the deeper question of why people’s psychology should have
evolved in a way that makes them want fewer children when they can afford
more."

I've always explained this as so (I have no evidence for any of this): 1\.
People in different social classes have different inherent desires in life.
Some people simply want a family and have no other ambitions. 2\. Lower class
people (or people that have more children on average) have a harder time
delaying gratification on average. Delaying gratification is a skill very
beneficial when attempting to be successful and is related to the ability to
think ahead and visualize the future. Having this ability instills different
desires in a person and may detract a person away from parenthood due to truly
understanding how much of a commitment children actually are (20+ years of
your life, hours a day). Having this ability also helps one realize the
difficulty in caring for many children.

~~~
psranga
My wife works in development. Her theory is insightful and simple: she says
mortality from disease (even until age 20) is _VERY_ high for poor people (I
know of a poor 10-yr old who died of rabies in India, which is _extremely_
uncommon among the middle-class of India). So they're being rational by having
more kids.

Which is why development reduces fertility; people have higher confidence that
their brood will survive into adulthood even if it's smaller.

------
brc
In Australia you get $4000 for having a child. No questions asked : produce
baby, get cash. This has done wonders for the birth rate. It's actually a
response to the problem of the baby boomers : they know they need more workers
to pay taxes to look after them, and encouraging babies now will pay off in 20
years time when baby boomers are retiring in record numbers.

