The paper interestingly finds that fertility rates have fallen to historically low levels in virtually all high-income countries due to a fundamental reordering of adult priorities rather than economic factors.
That implies adult priorities are independent of economic factors. Which is rather weird - many lives would be so different if they involved less future worries and fight for survival.
So far I've only skimmed the paper, but here's an interesting quote:
> Among respondents of a 2018 survey conducted for the New York Times, the desire to “have more leisure time” is offered as the leading reason for not having children among adults who...
If your assumption is that economic reasons cause the decline in fertility rates, it's tempting (and natural!) to view every alternative explanation in the context of economics. In other words: all alternative explanations are symptoms of economic problems, so the root cause remains money.
But quotes like this can also be interpreted as people changing their priorities regardless of income and worries about housing. Maybe, freed of traditional role models, people would rather watch Netflix all day long in their single person household.
Fact is, people in the past had far more worries and were fighting for survival much harder than the average person in rich countries today - and still had far more children.
Absolutely, yes. There's lots of factors, and any answer that just says "Because this one reason obviously", without giving arguments and statistics showing why it's that and not something else, is worthless.
It's pretty clearly not simply household income vs. cost of living, though, the data just doesn't support it.
It’s called sour grapes or more charitably: people adjust their expectations according to their opportunities. It’s entirely rational to cease wanting what you cannot have.
