Once upon a time, children were relied upon as a workforce by their parents. You know-— farm hands and coal miners.
Since we have moved away from an agrarian and industrial culture, the need to have children has diminished. Children are no longer a resource, they are a liability.
For cultures and societies that still believe children are a resource, birth rates are higher. Where they are a liability or a novelty, the birth rates are lower.
If you paid people to have children (welfare already does this, AFAIK) you get a higher percentage of poor people having children (IE, they are now a resource (or an asset) that monies can be generated from). However, these children will essentially be wards of the state until they are eighteen.
Have a good look around you. There is a reason abortion clinics are big business. As a society, we no longer value children because they no longer needed for our own financial survival. Therefore, in the eyes of some, they are nothing more than an eighteen year commitment (the humanity of the fetus is either ignored or irrelevant).
As far as human nature is concerned, ALWAYS filter out altruism. Humanity does not function like that.
APf
Most women now work. This is the single main reason not to have kids. They can work more and get more stuff and they do until they start to get older.
At 30 or so they start to think it not all that much fun to work all the time and maybe a kid might be nice.
Then they have to find a man who is worth a poop. This may takes 5 years because most men these days just want the milk but no cow, so now she is 35 years old and having their first child. This is too late to have a big family so they just have 1 or 2.
We really need to just state the fact that we need more people to have large families. (If you said this in any of the schools today they would flip out but abortion is OK to talk about) In our PC world it looks like we can never say or do what is best for our country so we just import our next generation from Mexico like cheep China made toys.
It’s sad really.
IMO, you’ve nailed it. While the factors the original poster mentioned certainly influence birthrates, when children become a net economic liability birthrates plummet.
Tell that to anyone who is relying on Social Security for any of their retirement money.
If you invert the pyramid the scheme collapses. Without children, the pointy end points down.