And why the pyramid scheme is going to collapse, unless we can continue to undercut our own workers with cheap/static cost immigrant labor.

Singapore has entered the chat with the lowest birth rate in developed nations despite massive leverage of cheap foreign labor.

I mean, that makes sense. The immigrants are there to replace all the missing kids (as well as unskilled workers).

The workers were there before the lack of kids.

What's interesting is birth rates say otherwise. The wealthier you are the lower your birthrate. People that can certainly afford to have many children are not where as very low income people are having many. I think it's something more than people feeling like they can't afford it.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/241530/birth-rate-by-fam...

Birth rates for lower incomes are plummeting too, so I think it is mostly lack of access to birth control like IUDs and pills, but also lack of women’s financial independence.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/562541/birth-rate-by-pov...

Possible causality inversion? People have more money because they chose to not have kids, all else being equal.

per the article's central thesis. If Income inequality changes direction births will rise.

Unlikely. Educated, empowered women with access to family planning facilities have less children if they have any children at all. Birth rates in developed countries with more robust social safety nets and less inequality have total fertility rates below that of the US.

https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate#what-explains-the-...

More likely than unlikely.

> Educated, empowered women with access to family planning facilities have less children if they have any children at all

This has nothing to do with wealth inequality. This does have to do with optimizing for wealth accumulation. Possibly something to do with Quality of Life, wherein children used to improve it comparatively, while now they are more of a risk proposition. For people in poverty, they are a (subsidized) source of income, which is unfortunate.

What's interesting though as that households with over $200,000 in income have the lowest birthrate of all. The highest birthrates are in households with very low income. In essence, for every dollar of household income you have, your birthrate decreases.

I suspect birthrate’s biggest factor is women’s financial independence and access to cheap and convenient birth control such as IUDs and birth control pills.

Birthrates are plummeting even for low income households, and I would bet it has something to do with Affordable Care Act of 2010 greatly increasing access to birth control by making it free. From the women I have spoken to, it is almost a no brainer to get an IUD.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/562541/birth-rate-by-pov...

I think societies are about the find out the real price of having babies now that they are not simply a byproduct of sex or women not having power.

> I think societies are about the find out the real price of having babies now that they are not simply a byproduct of sex or women not having power.

Can you expand on that, I'm not sure I follow?

Up until a few decades ago, women did not have a nearly foolproof way of preventing pregnancy while still being able to have dec. As well as having the power (financial independence) to say no to anyone pressuring them into getting pregnant. So now, the fertility rate will more accurately reflect a woman’s desire to get pregnant (at a certain age, at a certain income/wealth, given a certain set of possible partners, given a certain number of other children they already have, in a certain culture/time).

The caveats in the parenthesis are almost unnecessary though, since we are seeing declines in birthrate across all incomes/wealth levels around the world. I think we will see very, very few women choosing to have more than 3 kids, or even 3 kids. I actually only know of 1 couple with 3 kids, everyone else has 0, 1, or 2, and I am in mid 30s.

Decline in birthrate is a good thing, especially if we combine it with the reduction in mortality, and hopefully slowing aging and reversal of aging.

I suspect high income >200k/yr households are also highly correlated to high CoL locations. If you live in an SF 1 bedroom that costs 1.5 million dollars the marginal cost of an additional child is likely to be over a million dollars in the first 10 years of life. A family with exactly 200k/yr is at the entry point for financially achieving what would have traditionally been viewed as a middle class financial situation in the US e.g. owning a home, funding a retirement, taking regular vacations, paying for children's college etc. Even 1 child in a high CoL location can jeopardize these goals.

A relevant number would be the difference between income and the marginal cost per child.

There is a crossover point somewhere on the income/QoL scale where children go from utility to liability.

It's incredible recently, and still only in some countries, where children are in the liability area. By and large for all human history, children where a utility. More or less free labor to help support the family.