There's a certain level of elitism in this thinking, namely in the fact that educated, wealthier people tend to underestimate how happy poor people are. To a point, wealthier people are happier and worry less, but I don't think it's in practice so much more that say one wealthy, well-educated person has more total happiness than two poor people.

It circles back to kids. There are a lot of things in my life, in terms of education and career path that make me happy. I worked very hard in grad school for several years and got exactly the job I wanted, and that accomplishment makes me happy. But my daughter makes me much happier than that, and she was the product of five minutes and something it takes no education or intelligence to do...

In a vacuum, if a couple has only one child, that child had better grow up to support those two people in retirement. If four grandparents only have one grandchild, it's even worse.

The current answers to that problem are immigration (in which case someone else is still paying for benefits) or incredibly low take-home pay for workers (lots of withholding for personal or public retirement funds).

This was more of an opinion coming from my hometown, where we have an epidemic of twenty-somethings divorced with three kids because they took on too much too fast.

edit: also, when you're at a bar and the first questions are: - are you divorced? - how many kids do you have?

But I agree that people should be wiser about planning their lives out. I'm not sure that's a solvable problem, though.

Eh, I think Japan's problem is more that they have a very narrow idea (ethnically speaking) as to what they want Japanese people to look like. If they were willing to loosen up a bit on that, there are plenty of people who would be willing to come, become Japanese, and if it's anything like immigration here in the US, probably have a fair number of children.