I think the "cost of living" explanation for low birthrates is just wrong, and not even plausible (anecdote: my grandmother had 17 siblings, and they could not even afford proper sunday shoes for all of them, much less current living standards).

I think the biggest impact is from kids being obsolete/net negative as both workforce (when young) and retirement scheme (when the parents are old). But there is no reverting that development.

Easy access to contraceptives probably makes a significant difference too, though.

This is often a commonly blamed reason, but I think the data at this point pretty strongly suggests that the more affluent a country is the less kids they have.

You look at some of the most third world places in the world without strong economic security, yet somehow they manage to have babies at a higher rate than Western countries do.

This comes up in every discussion about demographics. But counterintuitively, there are no examples of financial incentives actually fixing this problem.

For example, in 2022 Hungary was spending 6.2% of GDP on such incentives[1], but this only managed to bring total fertility rate up to about 1.6 [2].

It is the same everywhere else. The real reason fertility has declined since the sixties is because people have access to effective birth control. Nobody wants to be a baby factory.

[1] https://abouthungary.hu/news-in-brief/hungary-to-spend-6-2-o...

[2] https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/hun/hun...

If that were true then we would expect to see a positive correlation between income and family size, but households making 500k are basically the same size as households making 50k.

More that young(er) folks could afford to live on a single income for the pre-school years. Or, I guess, that there's extensive parental leave and support for the parent doing primary caregiver.

Lots of people are doing the math and explaining why what the people who aren't having kids are saying is wrong. They have their math and the people still don't have kids.

Is housing really that expensive? When you price out a loan on a starter house it really ain't that bad. I'm a recent first time homebuyer and I don't understand why people think they aren't affordable. There were plenty of cheaper homes that I looked at and even with rates at their highest would be cheaper than my rent.

Do people expect a palace? Are there more unmarried people today who can't afford it alone?

God forbid paying the masses a living wage or allowing them access to things their forebears had. They will own nothing and they will be thankful for it.

[/s just in case it goes over someone's head]