I donlt really know the answer to this either but I think technology and what not has a part to do with it. That and money among other things. Unlike a couple hundred years ago or even a hundred years ago there is no longer a whole lot of advantage to having a ton of kids. Most people donlt live on farms anymore and most that do have the use of machinery to do much of the work that would have required many people before. Not to mention with medical advances most children born will make it to adulthood whereas before many would have died in infancy or early childhood. And now with medical costs and other things raising a lot of children can cost a ton.
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Course most people still decide to have children something which I admit I myself have trouble understanding just as you have trouble understanding it seems why more people donlt want large families or any children at all. Most people it seems have maybe two or three kids at most though. Probably due to various reasons such as the cost of raising kids, having to go through pregnancy and birth, having not only money to raise your kids but to have some comforts of life too, and I am sure there are a bunch more. But the reasons people donlt have kids or only have a few are probably as varieted as there are people.
Likely the farming thing has something to do with it, but people had more children a few decades ago, even after the population had been mostly urban for a generation, and after the vast majority of children survived. Something else must have changed.
Certainly, there is the cost of raising children. You cite the comforts of life one can enjoy without children or with few. No doubt there are many reasons people have fewer children per couple than they once did. But people would have always been motivated to have or not have children for varied reasons. But when whole populations start to decline, one is inclined to look for “macro reasons” rather than “micro reasons”.
Is it as simple as opting for an easier life with more discretion in spending one’s income? Have most (or at least more) people simply opted for that?
Back to the farming economy. In some ways things change, and in some ways they don’t. Long ago, children were helpers on the farm, doing a substantial amount of the labor. The “middle generation” did the most demanding labor. The elderly did less demanding labor; child care, gardening, a fair amount of cooking, repairs. That was a fairly simple “intergenerational compact” by which each aided the survival of all.
There is still an “intergenerational compact”, but it’s now different. Children are not expected to work in any significant economic sense. They are expected to become independently supporting at a point in time. Then there is a disconnect within families, but there is still a “compact”. Not many in their prime working years directly support their parents or grandparents. However, they do so indirectly, in that everyone pays social security and Medicare taxes into a common pool that is then redistributed to the elderly. Clearly the pool of productive laborers is shrinking relative to the older people whom they support. But the younger group composed of children is also shrinking relative to the productive laborers. Unless technology is somehow able to make up for it, it seems the “intergenerational compact” is headed for disaster.
A long time ago, I read that if the child tax deduction had been adjusted for inflation based on what it was when Truman was president, the deduction would have then been $20,000 per child. Doubtless it would be more now; perhaps $30,000. That would certainly take a lot of parents off the tax rolls and perhaps ameliorate the cost of raising children. The “marginal rates” were higher then as well. It would be ironic, then, if conservatives, many of whom decry the paucity of children yet support lowered tax rates, would do better to support raising the child tax credit significantly and perhaps raising marginal rates as well.
Lowering tax rates, which allows people to keep more of their earnings, but failing to increase deductions or credits for children, does, indeed, reward those who make significant incomes but who decline to have children. Unfortunately, as above noted, this also tends to skew the “intergeneral compact” which, one might conclude, exacerbates the effect. As a productive worker’s obligation to support greater numbers of elderly who are not his own parents increases, his disincentive to have significant numbers of children to support, also increases.
