It is really quite blatantly clear: as societies get wealthier, the fertility falls instead of rising.
I'm curious what you think makes a 1950s quality of life? I agree that people expect more material things today, but many of those things e.g. computers are de facto requirements to be a member of society. It seems to me that it is significantly more expensive to afford a good meal or a decent sized apartment.
Qualitatively, I know a large number of people who grew up in the 50s and their experiences of the time are different qualitatively. None of them ever struggled to meet their housing needs as long as they were able-bodied, and then generally only needed 20-40 hours of work (this include lower end work: construction, landscaping, retail).
While I don't have the stats handy* materially we know that during the mid 1900s the bottom 50% of americans owned a higher percentage of private property than in any time in history. Since then, we have reverted to a much more unequal distribution. It's hard to imagine this does not impact the current feeling of people feeling they can barely afford a place to live.
*if you have access to a copy of Capital and Ideology I believe you can find references in chapters 9 and 10
Larry Page's grandpa was an autoworker, and had to carry around a pipe with a hunk of lead on it to avoid getting beaten up by his employer.
https://www.businessinsider.com/larry-pages-grandfather-kept...
I live Washington, and frequently travel around the rural areas here. The state is littered with coal mining towns abandoned a century ago, with lumber mills closed before WWII, with towns like Index, WA, which was established in late 19th century, and had its population and industry peak in 1920s-1930s.
Our history is history of dynamism and change, and while some fraction of Americans lived and retired working for the same big factory in Detroit, this has by no means been an universal experience of our ancestors. In fact, if you look at the data, people today move for work less than our ancestors had. Our past was indeed glorious, but it was not a past of wealth and stability.
Indeed it depends how far you go back. I mostly talk about the baby boomer generation (who are "our" parents in many cases as many people here are 25-50 years old). In general they experienced more financial and occupational stability than us since they had much stronger unions and globalization was only starting.
When boomers started entering job market en masse in 1970s, they entered the economy of prolonged stagnation and high inflation, saw rationing of fuel, and by no means enjoyed significant stability. When they were buying houses, the nominal price was low, but mortgage rates were 8% at best times, 16% at the worst, making the mortgage payments scarcely more affordable than they are today. When they were entering job markets, the unions were already declining for two decades, and only something like a quarter of people were in a union in 1970.
Really, the boomers only made a killing in last decade or two, resulting from the low interest rates pumping values of assets. They certainly did not have it easy or stable in their youths, when they were forming families. I think your understanding of economic history needs more research.
So you might be happy with having little, but it's not going to be easy to send your kids to school and tell them they shouldn't have an iPad or an international holiday so mummy doesn't have to work.
My grandma (still alive today) grew up in the US without plumbing. She had to use an outhouse.
There's an inverse relationship between wealth and fertility. Wealthy countries are less fertile than poor countries. Within wealthy countries the wealthier people are less fertile than the poorer people.[2]
Not like life in America today is better than 99% of the rest of the world past and present. Spoiled people.
Sure, in raw numbers, maybe that's true
Compared to previous decades where you could get on the housing ladder reasonably easily and support a family with only one full time income, not so much