That and the fact that having children makes them poor by robbing them of the time to improve themselves and earn a higher salary.

It's the conclusion that you draw from this that matters. Is poor decision making and low impulse control also just a consequence of poverty, of being born in an environment that does not nurture these skills? Or does the buck stop there and do these poor people only have themselves to blame?

The same applies to addiction, whether to a particular substance or obesity-related. It was only when I spent some time in Texas that I realized how much harder it is to eat well and exercise compared to my life in Amsterdam!

Or religion. Having experienced both a very religious life, and a very 'secular' life, the one thing it taught me is how little, in the end, my behavior and beliefs were shaped by my 'individual' thoughts and decisions. Very humbling.

I tend to be on the no-blame side on these issues, as I strongly believe we're much less 'individuals' than we think, and much more a product of our upbringing and our path in life, which is to a large degree out of our hand. The ability to make choices is, in itself, largely not a choice.

I hold that position because I've seen and experienced how fragile and context-dependent people are, and because there are volumes of research that support this.

I also believe it is, regardless of the facts, a more optimistic, constructive, and humble approach to life. It reminds me am not the product of (just) my own willpower and craftiness; I am the product of nurturing parents, a good education, a relatively stable upbringing, and inspiring, like-minded friends and acquaintances.

Doing these things would reduce poverty, crime, and quite importantly our environmental impact.

I'd be happy to be wrong on the second part.

In a wealthy society it ought to be.

Raising children is a pretty basic part of the human experience. It's easy to say "just don't have kids!", but rather harder to live that life if you're someone who wants a family.

I know a couple who has had 3 kids by age 19 and both parents have dropped out of high school to support them. What's their endgame? They basically are going to live off the state for their rest of their lives and will always struggle with money and food. If they would have continued with their education and waited 5-10 years, their situation could have been drastically different...

I disagree. I see people suggesting that on a regular basis.

I absolutely agree that it's much better to wait and plan more, and we need to encourage people to do that as much as possible. We still need to collectively realise that our society will always have poor people. That being the case, my opinion is that denying the poor the moral right to reproduce is unfair.

I have not heard anyone mention yet that federal aid programs do incentivize having kids, lots of kids. Any compassionate ideas for fixing that?

Who's to say that these people were in their present state since the choice to follow through with a pregnancy? The one kid looks like 6-8 y.o. That's pre-crash. A lot changes in 7 years. You can have bankruptcy discharged in 7 years.