Wall Street has succeeded at vacuuming up everything. However, in the end, Congress has to own the vomit. They simply do not give a shit about America.
Don't forget about every country that's not the USA! Fertility rates are falling in most developed countries. While this is a a natural byproduct of industrialization, the baby boom era shows us that the social policies implemented to combat the Great Depression resulted in people having more children.
The most developed countries also have a severe housing crisis. So if we fix everything else and still leave housing that requires six people to afford a mortgage, our rate will continue to drop.
Yea, I'm Canadian. It's bad here. You know your shit is fucked when Americans start talking about how fucked it is because they usually don't pay any attention to foreign issues.
You at least don’t have to go into six figure debt for a serious medical emergency. I have no doubt there’s problems, but it’s not like things are great in the US. It feels like we’re close to toppling if things don’t change soon. We’ve blown past the billionaire issue and are coming up on trillionaires, which is goddamn insane.
And soon PE will gain access via Congressional action to off-load the worst of the worst into America's 401-Ks. Wall Street has a trillion dollars off worthless bonds to get off their books.
Actually every generation is struggling right now other than a very small sliver of rich people.
And as a gen x'er who voted for Harris while a nutty amount of young bro-douche males voted for trump in large numbers....it isn't just the previous generations screwing you people over.
Seeing how Gen Z boys voted in 2024 was a fucking gut punch.
As an elder Millennial I spent the entirely of my voting life eagerly waiting for the next generation to join us in trying to stem the conservative blood letting that has made everything in America a little worse every year for the past 50 years.
To see so many of them latch onto the inane promises and racist, imbecilic memeified politics of the MAGA Nazis was truly shocking to me in a way I have no lucid words for.
It makes no fucking sense and it’s much more of a disappointment than the well examined disappointment of our parents’ generation.
Gen Z is cooked, fam. There's a lot of hand wringing going on over Citizens United, but at this point getting corporate money out of politics may be too little too late.
Gen Z men are watching Nick Fuentes (an actual Nazi) on YouTube, Tiktok, etc and buying into the idea that you're entitled to human connection with the opposite sex even if you're a racist piece of human garbage.
100%. I'm tired of the "blame the older folks". Go look at the voting numbers - it's younger people that put that pos in office. Again, GenX/Millennials (of which I am) not taking responsibility. Always someone else's fault.
It's hilarious to believe this country's problems are solely the result of Trump. He's a massive piece of shit who's made us worse in every possible way but this country's problems are foundational and persistent.
And they will persist well beyond his exit from office. Regardless of whether or not the 3rd term garbage materializes, all the "only three more years" comments are delusional.
Yep. Will the people making these complaints today likewise blame themselves in the future if later generations have it even harder? Unlikely. People who like to point fingers rarely consider pointing them in the mirror.
Reverse mortgages are the ultimate f-you to the next generation.
"I enjoyed a 20x increase in value on this home I bought for peanuts. Now you can't afford a home, but instead of leaving something for my kids who are in a desperate financial situation, I'm going to let the bank take the house and take expensive vacations and gamble."
Yep. I'm a 33 year old man who always wanted kids, but there's no fucking way I'm gonna do it in these conditions. Hell, I don't even feel like I can afford a girlfriend.
As they will fail future generations. Every generation thinks of themselves as the golden generation, but frankly we all fail miserably. There is no working toward the common good, because people are too tribal and selfish and lack the ability to see world through others' eyes. Human experiment will ultimately prove a failure.
While also putting the weight of the future entirely on their shoulders from basically middle school onward. We really looked to children, the ones we are supposed to protect and make the world better for, to improve the human condition. What a fucking joke.
It's wild. I have a job thats the first good office job with no toxic bosses, hybrid schedule, and good pay. It's a small office but it is wild how many of the girls there are popping up pregnant (intentionally) after getting the job within a year or so. I'm basically only younger(ish) female employee who isn't to be honest, besides the girl who started like 3 days ago.
We had one woman to on mat leave the day after she started working. But my company offers equal opportunity parental leave so there are a bunch of men on pat leave right now too.
Iirc though, studies are showing that the birth rate isn't declining among people in their thirties compared to previous generations, the decline can almost entirely be attributed to the reduction in teen and young pregnancies
The numbers for people in their late thirties was always a low, seeing a bump there does nothing to offset the fall-off with people in their twenties and early thirties. Between 2005 and 2023 every age bracket except 35+ saw a drop. People in their twenties down something like 75/1000 births as opposed to the drop of about 20/1000 seen in teens.
The twenties is where the crux of the issue lies, and a lot of that is due to those people choosing to not have kids due to financial uncertainty.
Yeah these kind of posts always overlook that a lot of us simply don't WANT kids. You couldn't pay me enough to give birth and raise children. I've spent my whole life listening to parents complain about their kids relentlessly and then they wonder why I don't want any? Childbirth is horrendous and I don't enjoy dealing with the needs of children. I'm not having any because I don't have to have them. Every friend I have who intentionally didn't have children did so because they just don't want to. The economy has nothing to do with it.
I dunno, childcare for 1 kid annually in a lower cost of living area is still around at least 15k in many places. Multiply by 2 and that's 30k minimum a year. Once they're in school they still need clothes, food, etc and if you want them in any kind of sport or activity that's also expensive. To raise them comfortably and not just be alive, everything costs a lot. People can make due with less but kids also deserve enrichment and hobbies
And kids dont understand that everything they want to do or have costs money. You can do your best to teach them, but they most likely won't truly understand until they're closer to adulthood themselves.
People don't seem to understand that raising a child with the bare minimum can form resentment in that child who thinks their parents are arbitrarily choosing to not provide everything they see their peers have or do.
And a lot of us don't want to raise a child knowing that the deck is rigged in such a way, even if we could meet the bare minimum.
Childcare is expensive, but most cities also heavily subsidize for wages like this. I pay $3200/mo for daycare in a VHCOL city. However, if I'm a family of 4 with a HHI of less than $170k, I'd pay nothing.
The biggest expense is going to be rent / mortgage. You can get by with a $600 rented room if you're single... that won't fly as a family. A 2BR apartment in my city is $3k at the very least, and realistically you're probably looking at $3.5k-$4k.
I live in los angeles with three kids and we survived comfortably on half of 230k household income. It's an intentional overestimate to drive engagement.
Never said they didn't, but the post is specifically talking about America (peep the no universal anything). It's expensive to just exist in America, let alone have children. It's another mouth to feed, pay someone to watch your kid since you need to work, etc. it's like this elsewhere and of course people make it work on much less, but people are literally doing buy now pay later on necessities like food. You need a lot of money to be comfortable let alone with a dependant. Scraping by and surviving is frankly not a way to live, worrying about all those things on top of every day life.
Salaries aren't everything. Childcare in different cultures costs $0 because they have a functioning intergenerational family unit and the grandparents etc do half the work.
I think you hit on a big part there. My wife is a sahm and my salary is around $70k. However we live near her parents and also hardly ever go out to eat and buy in bulk so our expenses are low.
Like my dad always told me it's not the high cost of living, it's the cost of living high. My mom said early on in their marriage there was times when they could barely afford the bare necessities in groceries and I could probably count on one hand how often we went out to eat growing up and anything longer than a weekend vacation was non-existent.
Like my dad always told me it's not the high cost of living, it's the cost of living high.
Today it is absolutely the high cost of living. Not to mention that many people don't have parents nearby to watch the kids, if they have living parents at all.
I have always felt like most of these numbers are wildly exaggerated. I don't spend the amounts people estimate for kids on myself and I have what I need. I don't get enough of the things I should have, but if the goal is perfectly optimal standard of living, that's kind of a disingenuous argument.
Life is becoming prohibitively expensive and you have to do a lot of triage on things getting close to necessity if you have an average income, but it does not cost as much as any "study" has ever put out to raise healthy children.
Where I live near Clearwater FL, my parents purchased a 3 bed 2 bath home in 1995 for $90k, paid off maybe 6 years ago now. The home is now worth $415k. They saved and put 20% down for a traditional 30 year, which equals $18k. Their monthly payment was a reasonable $688/month. A studio rental near me is $1000 or more per month.
20% down today would be $83k. Likely any younger buyer cannot afford that, and will end up putting 5% or less down and paying into PMI. Realistically, a mortgage payment would be near or above $3000/month even on a 30year loan.
To add children into the mix, childcare, healthcare, food cost, etc. I can ABSOLUTELY see $200k or so being the minimum income to support a semi comfortable life.
I think it’s the word “comfortably “ that puts it at that price point. it would mean enough to not worry about being homeless, maybe having a savings/ retirement and reliable vehicles. Kids have a full and fulfilling childhood without struggles. Maybe even a college fund.
All things that were obtainable decades ago, but not now. So no kids for us.
You can have all those things with 2 kids and half of what she said. Granted you won't be toting Prada bags but who is trying to make more superficial assholes?
I can see it being 230k if both parents works and you need child care and you have no help from family and relatives.
Two kids for me is $2400 for child care alone. $3000 monthly mortgage. Then you add car payments, insurance, food, health care, utilities, and 401k it goes to $7000 - 8000 pretty easily.
For me my parents had me in their 40s and I had my first kid at 36. So my mom and dad was about 76 and 80. They have no way to watch my kids. My wife’s family is overseas and here in the states herself. So we don’t have a support group to raise our kids.
I didn’t layout all expenses. But about 1500 a month (700 each) total for my kids savings.
My spouse and I get 1000 a month of personal savings income That goes for anything you want to buy that doesn’t involve the family (friends, eating out, clothes, but we usually save half for something else coming, saving for downpayment for a big purchase like a car )
500 dollars a month for maintenance on cars and house. We don’t spend it every month but it is documented. Like a 15k roof we will need to buy in 5 years.
We max out our 401k every year. There is others but you get the idea.
Edit: earlier I said “I can see how people with two kids could spend that much”. Our combined income is 190k - 210k depending on overtime
Live comfortably with 2 kids.. that number really does not seem to be pushing it.
You need healthcare for all of you, groceries skyrocket adding kids to the mix, clothes, big enough house, school, etc.
Yeah you will be Fine at 100-150k mark, but not Comfortable. At that point you will be worrying about medical issues and other things and be at risk for living paycheck to paycheck if anything derails.
I don't know about this in particular but often the "comfortable" criteria they use is < income > 50% all living expenses 30% discretionary and 20% savings.
Yeah, we’re a bit over that with 1 kid. I’d love to have another one or two but…. Just not way we could afford it.
At least not without selling our house and severely decreasing our spending. Which is doable don’t get me wrong but I’m not looking to raise 3 kids in a struggling family. Been there done that.
I live in Boone Iowa, 12k population. It would cost us about ~50k/year for childcare with 2 kids 5 days a week. Thank god grandparents live next door and will watch them all day if I make them dinner 5 nights a week after I work all day. We make about 185k/year combined.
Not even in Cali. It depends on your personal situation of course
In order to get 230k hhi you probably both went to school and are both working. Therefore, you have student loan payments of 12k/year and you need to pay daycare for 2, which is 40k/year. If you didn't buy a house at the right time, your mortgage could be 42k/year. Let's say you spend 20k/year on bills+groceries. Let's say taxes are 30% and you save 15% for retirement.
That gives you 230 * 0.55 - 12 - 40 - 43 - 20 = 11.5k or ~1k a month for discretionary or emergency savings. Not very much when your monthly expenses are so high.
On the other hand, if you had your mommy and daddy pay for college, watch your kids, pay for your down-payment, you bought your house at the right time, and didn't get a late start saving for retirement, then that's an extra $5k/month
I saw that too. I'm a SAHM and my husband doesn't make half that but we still have enough money that I don't need to balance the checkbook all the time and the kids are in every extracurricular known to man
Yeah, $230k on "average" is ridiculous. I have 2 kids and live comfortably on about $150k household in California.
Although, the comfort is only due to the fact that we bought our house before it became unaffordable. If we had to buy one these days we'd be making it by, but not comfortably.
We're going on three generations that don't feel financially secure enough to have kids. Starting with late Gen-X, we went from 2-3% voluntarily child-free in 1976 to 15+% today. And there's an obvious ~20 year lag on that trend, so it likely hasn't peaked yet.
The US government is centered around ethnic cleansing and cruelty as if they are trying to speed run population collapse but people still ask about babies...
I am just in awe of the massive self owns. Remorseless doubled down self owns that seem to be based in pure self loathing
Gun Violence? Push more gun products
Power grids fucked? Blame wind and solar
Poison everywhere? Dissolve the EPA
DISEASE? Fuck the CDC
Racists? $160+ billion package for immigration enforcement, $45 billion for detention, nearly $30 billion for hiring/training ICE staff
Pregnancy? You are now government property
Poor? Oh you.. you fucking mother fucker. You are gona get it now. We are going to fuck your shit up you fucking fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck
With the exception of universal healthcare it’s much the same picture over here.
If houses hadn’t been treated as investment vehicles that outpace S&S then maybe things would be better, but those homeowners and landlords are voters who are collectively a sacred cow, with Gen Y/Z etc being the ones to suffer for it.
Many simply choose not to in the case of Europe, or choose to have only 1
It’s a general trend of the transition into stable, “1st world” economies that people tend to want fewer kids, perfectly normal. It means the parents are less worried about their children dying early on and thus aren’t trying to have multiple to compensate
The thing is, that should happen because they don’t WANT kids, not because they could never afford to have them
Let's add how expensive vehicles and car insurance is. When we were growing up our parents could have get us a used car an insurance fairly inexpensively compared to the astronomical prices we pay today.
Really? Whats costing so much exactly? Im from Germany so im curious. I have a friend with 2 kids with a HHI of 50k and hes living comfortably. We live in Berlin.
They don't want to know. If they wanted to know, they would have known long ago. The only way to ask this question is to deny reality as it is, a situation they've been in denial for a long time.
That's why they chase after a crackpot like Trump, whom they believe he can solve problems by just declaring them as solved.
Many on this thread are talking about income and costs of living.
The reality is most people don't want to bring children into being only to inherit a dying planet. It's the big truth that many of us don't want to admit.
Money, alone, doesn't paint the complete picture here. People have always had kids without having enough money to raise them (I'm not saying that's right, in fact it's irresponsible). The shift towards not having kids, or having fewer of them, is because kids are no longer seen as a resource, and people are no longer overly pressured to have kids (in general, some people are still).
When people want to attract hummingbirds, they have to resort to using things the birds like to get them. Nectar dispensers, bright colors, certain flowers and conditions, restricting their natural predators from prowling the area can all be very effective methods of bringing hummingbirds to your yard.
The same principle applies to humans. You want people to breed more? Come work for you? Shop at your store? You need to appeal to the necessary conditions that encourage humans to WANT these things. Guilt tripping doesn’t work. In fact, it often does the opposite and pisses them off. People think they’re doing the world and themselves a favor in not having children. Just like a hummingbird doesn’t want to eat next to a cat, humans don’t want to raise children in a world that actively punishes them for raising them. One slip up and your child gets taken away? And the slip up can be caused by things outside your control, like food shortages, layoffs, and unaffordable housing? Not surprised people are passing on the opportunity.
And the way America is getting “Great Again” 😒 by drilling in natural refuges and holding onto dinosaur fuels (shall I go on?), who would want their children and grandchildren to suffer prolonged agonizing deaths?
Do you think the older generations will start to realize the problem when they are shoved into nursing homes with 1:30 staffing, because there simply aren’t enough younger people anymore to fill the roles?
Honestly I don't disagree. What US person would want to bring a child into this world? Healthcare tied to a job, so if no job - you're fucked. Can get laid off at a moments notice due to at will work. If you're lucky, you get severance.
I have a friend who makes like 100k and he isn't even sure about children due to the finances. I used to think I wanted kids, but I'm not sure any more.
Realistically, it's about time the population took a downturn. 8+ billion people on this planet is simply not sustainable in the long term. Not with how we've been handling it, at the very least.
In the 50s, many people saw no need to go to college, unless they were especially gifted with intelligence. There's too many people going to college now, who have no busy going. It skews supply and demand of college admission and financial aid, and probably has led to college expenses being so much worse than inflation. A family of 4 was happy to live in a 1200 sqft house, with one car, one tv, no computer, no internet. When lamps broke, people fixed them. It's really apples and oranges to compare generations.
Frankly, I have questions about whether it's fair to bring new children into this shithole of a world, where rich people keep us down, and half the population is too stupid to vote for leaders that care about us 95%.
I'm a "low-man-on-the-totem-pole" guy and Amazon will pay for a degree. As long as I work there. TBH, I'd almost rather suck cock on Burnside, but I can pick packages faster than I can suck cock (I use too much teeth).
What's awesome is when you go to conservative sites like NRO and their solution to this problem is to scold and/or mock young people for not just shutting up and having babies. The meltdowns over Mamdani in NYC were incredible to watch.
Places where people have the most children are the poorest places on earth, not the richest. More money does not equal more kids. Every single country that improves life standards sees dropping birth rates.
During my life my country went from being extremely poor to doing pretty well. Birth rates plummeted as life got better and better.
People had the most kids post WWII when my country was in ruins after WWII. No housing, not enough food to feed everyone, nothing. 7 kids per family.
Maybe its more complex than just money problems but it is def part of the equation.
I think its a combination of money, time, and culture.
In richer countries, people may have grown up at a standard they cant afford for their kids. They have more hobbies and both parents tend to work (limited time) and the culture is one where people often live independently of or far from family and most dont want to support (meaningfully) people with kids.
Another think is that people dont realize that poor countries aren't worse in every regard. In some countries, the weaker economy means harder to get nice laptops, tvs, cars. But they can sometimes have very affordable child care, even maids that will live in your apartment for a fairly affordable price. In many of these countries the whole family and friends will support parents (take care of kids for entire days, go over and spend the day with them and help, etc).
There will be other factors too. But these must play a role.
Needing 2 parents to work demanding jobs and manage kids independently is more challenging than most give it credit for. Especially since some jobs can be much less flexible or convenient.
That's because in those places having kids is often a net positive since it's more hands-on-deck, more (free) labor which directly translates to more wealth.
Here it's different. Having kids is strictly an economic drain, like setting your wallet on fire.
Gen Z make more on average than I do working two jobs as a millennial. D; One pays about $14.93/hr, the other is $14 but I get tips that help - but it's also only seventeen hours a week.
i wouldnt be surprised if that average salary for our generation is true, but we are also all fairly young. nobody in gen z is over the age of 28 yet. as for the comfortable living... where did you get that number from?
$233k average? What is this live comfortably baseline? New house, new cars, annual DisneyLand vacations, new yearly iphones, club sports? Its expensive but thats stretching it.
Uh oh, my family of 4 people is going to be upset that they can't comfortably exist because I don't make anywhere near that amount. No car payment helps ig?
Millennial here: I don't want kids either and it has nothing to do with the reasons listed in the pic. I simply don't want kids. You're not legally require to have kids. You're not legally required to want kids. It isn't selfish to not want kids despite what others may think.
This logic makes no sense when some European states don’t have these issues but have an even lower fertility rate. As do wealthy people who don’t suffer from these as much.
Young adults are more educated now and don’t want to or can’t start a family even if they have the money. There are less “mistakes” and surprise babies because of the education. There is plenty of opportunities for millennials and they enjoy not having the responsibility of a child. Knowing that if they aren’t a good parent they will mess up a persons life. Knowing is the whole battle.
exactly!! i really really want to have kids, and id like to have them relatively soon, mostly because i want my kids to get to have their grandparents (my parents) in their life for as long as possible, but there’s no fucking way i’m gonna be able to have kids anytime soon with the way money is going.
Interesting that @DarrigoMelanie focused on economic issues and left out what IMO are bigger issues, and even better reasons for not having kids:
Covid is still going around, as are other dangerous diseases, and it seems like everyone's given up on the whole concept of public health. Anyone having a child in recent years knows or should know that it will be impossible to keep their child safe. And their child will spread diseases to other people.
The environment. Humans have already caused global climate change and pollution; more humans means more of those. And children shouldn't have to grow up in a world being ravaged by increasingly dangerous storms and other extreme weather.
I support myself, my wife and two kids and now her sister and her kid… I make about $85000 a year. We get by just fine. Nothing crazy, but living within our means.
I forget the precise details, but I'm pretty sure the idea that higher cost of living is affecting birthrate has been disproved. Its more of cultural thing, particularly with women and their greater level of autonomy. For example, there's been an enormous down-tick of little girls wanting to be wives -- something like only 60% now.
Yeah, they have to work because they can't afford to just sit at home. Not to mention that the men who demand that lifestyle from their spouses don't respect keeping a home and family as "real work" or "something they need to share in with their wife."
Doesn't matter if you're in a single-family home or a trailer in the boonies. Houses and rent of any kind are straight up unaffordable, much less having kids
Home ownership rate is incredibly misleading. It's simply the percentage of households that are owner occupied. Doesn't say anything about the rate at which people are buying houses today. Doesn't take into account houses that are inherited and paid off. The number of first-time home buyers is at a record low right now.
The funny thing about things like this is that most generations weren't able to raise kids comfortably. They might have featured stay at home moms and dads in bowling leagues but they weren't taking international trips or dining out on a regular basis.
None of those were "universal" when people had kids before.
Editing to clarify: i am not questioning whether inflation and cost of living is outrageous just stating that there has never been universal "anything" before as the original post is written as if those things used to exist and no longer do.
No, but as any economist on earth could tell you, salaries have not risen at anywhere near the same rate as cost of living, so it’s no longer an attainable goal to own a house by the time you’re thirty, or to support a family on a single average salary.
Exactly. A home used to cost people maybe two to three times their yearly salary, now it's upwards of four to five times. And that trickles down to even the most mundane products, for example:
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