[angiolillo]

> My take is that modern culture just doesn't want kids.

This is true for many people. I know a few childfree couples that you could offer them a hefty salary to raise kids and they would decline.

However I know even more people who ended up having fewer kids than they would have liked, especially when I lived in a big city. Typically because they couldn't find a suitable partner, got divorced and remarried too late to have kids, found raising their current child(ren) challenging enough that they didn't think they could handle another, or reevaluated their preferences after watching friends and neighbors struggling.

> It doesn't matter how cheap you make having a family, for many it's just not remotely the same culture as it was 50-70 years ago.

For many, sure. But for other people addressing the root causes (of which cost is one) can move the needle.

[socalgal2]

> Typically because they couldn't find a suitable partner, got divorced and remarried too late to have kids

You then brought up cost as the reason. Cost can basically be removed as a reason. There are plenty of studies that it was far more costly in the past than now.

[angiolillo]

> You then brought up cost as the reason.

To be clear, I said cost is one root cause, I did not say it was the root cause.

> Cost can basically be removed as a reason.

How have you come to this conclusion? From an empirical standpoint, Pew Research finds that financial concerns rank among the top reasons adults say they are unlikely to have more children, the US Census reports that a substantial share of women who expect to have fewer children than desired cite economic constraints, and OECD fertility analyses find that financial insecurity and housing costs are closely associated with lower realized fertility in OECD countries.

> There are plenty of studies that it was far more costly in the past than now.

Can you provide more detail about these studies? At least when it comes to paid childcare in the US this seems to run counter to the data. Before the 1940s paid/institutional childcare was less common in the US, with most childcare provided by mothers, extended families, neighbors, religious institutions, and charities. From 1990 to 2025, the Day Care and Preschool CPI index increased ~280%, outpacing the ~150% increase in overall CPI during that same period.

Not to mention that double-income households are much more common, especially in high cost-of-living areas, and this raises the opportunity cost of having a child compared to a couple with only one income.

And not to mention housing costs outpacing inflation, and for many people stable housing is often a prerequisite for considering starting a family.

Again, I'm not saying spiraling costs is the only reason, and I would not even claim that fertility is highly elastic, but the worsening economics of child rearing do seem to be shifting behavior at the margins.