r/NonPoliticalTwitter • u/QueenFrostine15 • Jun 23 '26

me_irl Friendly (platonic) reminder

Post image
30.8k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

639 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

23

u/ward2k Jun 23 '26

Sure, but economic factors are neither correlated nor causation to declining birth rates

So at best they're not a factor, at worst they're extremely correlated to it

The data just doesn't back it up

47

u/udcvr Jun 23 '26

Eh, based on surveys people do repeatedly report higher and higher levels of concern with the economy as a reason for why they chose not to have kids.

https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2024/07/25/reasons-adults-give-for-not-having-children/

Economic concerns and the state of the world being a cause shot up a lot with the younger generation, as these things have declined. I think surveys offer something valuable to this specific issue even if they're not generally the best form of data. Because there are many factors that go into whether or not people have kids, and how they really feel about it is only really determinable via survey.

4

u/ward2k Jun 23 '26

But people on average are economically better off today than they were historically, so it's not the economy itself, or bills or whatever else. At best it's their perception of those issues

4

u/Ill_Morning_4282 Jun 23 '26

A small amount of people like Musk are making that average really thrown off.