Sorry I'm going to be contrarian here but if "people can't afford kids", then why is it well established that poorer people have more kids while richer have fewer? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_and_fertility).
Answering my own question.. I think the reason people are having fewer kids is more to do with urbanisation and all the social and cultural changes that come with that.
Poorer populations have less access to sex education.
The government pays $850 a fortnight to a single mother, on top of a $5000 baby bonus and various other incentive schemes. Poor social classes see this as an easy means of money compared to working a "dead-end" job.
Maybe they have kids to escape their reality. People cope in different ways; drugs, drinking etc. Maybe they desperately want to live through their kids.
> Poorer populations have less access to sex education.
This is likely an accurate thesis based on macro and micro studies.
TLDR Education, empowerment (contraceptives), labor force participation = decline in fertility rate. Provide access to all of the above, fertility rate drops off.
I would sum it up as counterintuitively "Because they can't afford not to have kids." Urbanization is certainly a factor in how affordable kids are as in rural contexts they essentially paid for themselves via farm labor.
In the world wide context of rich vs poor in the third world it is often the case that your children are your social security. This may also be culturally enshrined as a literal legal duty for offspring to care for their parents no matter how alienated they were.
It would be technically accurate yet misleading to say Social Security and pensions are anti-family. Ensuring care in old age regardless of savings or offspring ability to provide undermines the obligatory support network role. Of course modern perception of family has evolved in the same sense that marriage is seen more about love instead of an economic transaction.
And that is before any conscious or subconscious k/R strategy. Essentially "elites" are incentivized to get the "best" heirs and dedicate more resources to them. Those struggling and incentivized to reproduce enough to have some survive and be successful.
It’s very simple. If you are poor, your needs can be met with a small budget. If you are rich, (upper middle class..truly wealthy people don’t have to care)the ‘fixed costs’ are higher.
You are lower middle class and Disney world is fine to take your five kids and you don’t have to break the bank. But if you are upper middle class or even borderline rich, every additional expense due to extra progeny is many times over. Your savings can’t be stretched if there is a dip in earning potential. It’s difficult to ‘step down’.
A very simple example is mortgage/owning house vs renting. Less riskier to be laid off as renting capacity is elastic vs losing mansion and cost of living of a certain lifestyle is inelastic.
Of course it's rational, and I don't think anybody suggests we ban contraceptives, but the fact is having children was never a rational choice(except for treating children as pension funds), children were just a byproduct of sex being pleasurable.
People can't afford kids. Not enough time, not enough income, even hiring help is out of most people's budget.
People are being squeezed and the middle class is shrinking. No wonder they don't want kids whose lives will be worse than their own.