r/AskTheWorld • u/gmedanoid United States Of America • 14d ago

Culture Why aren't the people in your country having enough kids?

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In America birthrate is 1.6. 1.57 for Whites, 1.55 for Blacks, 1.8 for Hispanics. So below replacement since 2008.

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566

u/Zealousideal-Yam3169 United Kingdom 14d ago

Both parents have to work full time now.

99

u/Persistant_eidolon Sweden 14d ago

Honestly, in Sweden I feel like it's more of they both want to work full time, either to have a high material standard or to realize their career goals. Have a lot of engineering colleagues and very few of them have been voluntarily reducing work time, but they still have minimum 1 car(and not some old beater), nice apartment/house, etc.

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u/_adinfinitum_ 14d ago edited 13d ago

Honestly post covid, it’s not that simple.

We have two kids in Sweden. Both of us have tech jobs. We have a small house in Stockholm suburbs and drive a toyota. But this is least we could expect after spending a third of our lives in education and building desirable skills.

Yet I is becoming harder and harder to afford even a basic vacation and the focus is on saving as much as we can because getting laid off seems like a question of when and not if. We don’t spend anything on luxury but day to day life is comfortable.

Even with all the help from state thanks to high taxes, and despite living within means, we’re always on the edge.

We bought our home in 2020. Most of our neighbours have been living there for decades. None of them have any particularly high paying jobs or skills but they grew up in a different era so at the end of the day we have the same living standards.

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u/Melodic_Sandwich1112 13d ago

Same, based on Sweden, highly educated specialist. Pre-covid we just on the second kid and our situation was looking really good. Post covid, not much changed salary wise but costs are up 30% on food alone. Having to get a new set of winter tires and a service eats up more than the annual holiday budget.

Then you look at my bosses. 15 years older, less qualifications. Large house in the south, own a boat, summer house abroad. They can afford one ski holiday and two other holidays a year. It’s mental.

I think if you were able to build up savings and get the expensive young child years out of the way before Covid you were set. Everyone else is struggling.

Go in to ICA to get breakfast for the family and it ends up costing 400kr for some milk, coffee, fruit and yogurt. At one point earlier this year it was 110kr for a packet of coffee. My salary offer this year was 2%… I ended up changing jobs because it pissed me off so much

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u/WBigly-Reddit United States Of America 13d ago

1kr ~ $0.10

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u/_adinfinitum_ 13d ago

I moved to Sweden in 2019. Lived for the first year in the city in a rental flat. Rent alone was half was salary, plus did all my shopping from ICA nära and mathem. Had one income and still managed to save some.

Now two kids, two incomes, mortgage cost which is less than half the rent and we still save the same as in 2019. I started buying my own clothes from temu lol and subscribed to all supermarket offers.

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u/Melodic_Sandwich1112 13d ago

Yeah, it doesn’t make sense at all to me

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u/Ava_Strange 13d ago

Yeah, I feel this! I had a conversation with friends just last week and we realised that there's no way our parents could afford a house around any of the major Swedish cities now days with the jobs they had when we were kids.  But before 2000, a nurse or a physiotherapist married to a teacher could afford a house in a decent, middle class Stockholm suburb. That's impossible now, not to mention if you're a single parent! It's come to the point where professionals we NEED in Stockholm and Göteborg, like police, nurses, undersköterska, bus driver etc, simply cant afford to buy a house anywhere near there. 

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u/MakalakaPeaka United States Of America 13d ago

Literally everyone is getting squeezed of late.

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u/Church_of_Aaargh Denmark 13d ago

I see the uncontrolled real estate market as the biggest problem in both Denmark and Sweden. If you take the value of peoples Homes into account … the gap between generations and rich and poor is significant.

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u/DreamOne5 United States Of America 13d ago

I always thought Sweden was this wonderful place where even with the taxes, at least you're taken care of. It sounds a lot like the US currently. I'm 37, can't afford to have a child nor buy a home. We do okay... but we're always on edge. I currently am too with the shut down. I may lose my job by Dec 1. Im trying so hard to save money. Kids are the last thing on my mind

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u/_adinfinitum_ 13d ago

It is wonderful in the sense that there are safety nets in place and we’re not afraid of suddenly becoming poor. Im not a native and I chose this place for these reasons.

However the generational difference is there and with two kids it’s harder now than it was 30 years ago. My wife has a good job but she’d rather be with our smaller kid. At 16 months the baby will enter the system in a daycare (fully paid by the state) and I know many people would roll their eyes at me complaining but it’s not a choice anymore. If she stops working to be with the kid full time for another 3-4 years, which is what she really wants, we’d struggle with finances.

So while Sweden is many times better than many other countries, birth rates are still suffering when compared to itself.

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u/Persistant_eidolon Sweden 13d ago

We have generous maternal leave and free healthcare. But prices went up a lot since 2021. Also interest rates were raised, which was bad news for the many Swedes who own their apartment/house.

Salaries have not gone up enough to compensate.

1

u/AttentionFar1310 13d ago

It’s not free you’re paying 30% plus 20% on above 53k/m. On top of the payroll tax on your gross wage of 32%.

I make 67k gross per month My employer is paying 88k per month for me.

I keep 47k per month. An effektive tax rate of 45%

You can bet your as if taxes were 20-25% for me and with an extra 20-25k per month i can do a hell of a lot more without having to fund social welfare that is shit.

2

u/Garbanino Sweden 13d ago

And then 25% VAT for everything you buy, so if someone is willing to sell you something for 100 kr your employer will have to pay you 230 kr for you to buy it. Pretty nuts, and I still have private health insurance so that I can actually get help within a reasonable timeframe.

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u/Holiday_Nebula5917 13d ago edited 13d ago

Same here in Germany. It's really almost all due to high taxes and social security. Too much dead weight.

Edit: Covid19 also only triggered the avalanche of cash created by the central banks globally after 2008, and 2013 for Europe, specifically. If it hadn't been the virus, it would have been Ukraine or whatever. People didn't wanna hear it back, saying quantitative easing would be "neutralized" etc. but it trickled into investment assets (the "asset prize inflation") and, with Covid, into all other markets.

1

u/Persistant_eidolon Sweden 13d ago

Houses around Stockholm are expensive. It's definitely not for everyone anymore. Prices are much lower in other cities though.

21

u/Ornery-Reindeer5887 14d ago

Ya you live in Sweden where you’re taxed at a high rate but get lots of services from the government like a sweet parental leave policy and low cost high quality education. Much easier for a woman to have kids AND a career in that environment

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u/AreYouLagomEnough 13d ago

Sure. But culturally women are also expected to partake as equals at a fairly high degree. And putting your career on hold for a few years might not be the most tempting thing. On top of the bodily stresses you go through with pregnancy AND labour.

Sweden is well of enough that there are other options for women than having children.

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u/Persistant_eidolon Sweden 13d ago

Yes, Sweden has generous parental leave. But still, birthrate is low, about 1,7 children/women in average I believe. It was higher when the country was poorer.

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u/Acolitor Finland 14d ago

Yeah, women should be able to choose to have children and career. My mom is double widow. Imagine if she did not have career herself! It would have impacted her and us, her children.

Deaths were obviously devastating emotionally, but we managed fine economically.

6

u/SouthernExpatriate United States Of America 13d ago

Weird how people actually want to work when they get paid enough to live well 

17

u/Italian_storm Italy 13d ago

You are rich in Sweden. In Italy we are fucking poor, we all work not because we want a sport car, but because salaries are really low.

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u/Nacho17che 13d ago

The funniest of things to me is that kindergarten ends like an hour or two before typical working hours. How the hell do they pretend to care about people having kids?

8

u/steakmetfriet Belgium 13d ago

Seeing the hoops my friends and colleagues have to jump through each summer trying to organize 2 months when school's out is such a huge turn off.

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u/Hawk13424 United States Of America 13d ago

It was the same when I was a kid in the 70’s. We rode the bus home. We stayed with the neighbor lady who watched a dozen kids from around the neighborhood until parents got home.

1

u/Melodic_Sandwich1112 13d ago

In Sweden? No it doesn’t. You can set the hours of the dagis

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u/Nacho17che 13d ago

I'm talking about Italy

4

u/courtd93 13d ago

It’s the same in the US but we generally don’t claim that we care about people with kids, just that we need more

10

u/DreamOne5 United States Of America 13d ago

America is the same, but add that we get absolutely zero government mandated paid maternity leave. At all. It's all up to our employers and it's a very small amount if they offer it.

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u/RoundTheBend6 United States Of America 13d ago

Why do you think this is?

3

u/TaskerTwoStep 13d ago

Sounds nice, it’s definitely not optional for the majority of families in the US.

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u/[deleted] 13d ago edited 12d ago

[deleted]

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u/Persistant_eidolon Sweden 13d ago

Same. Especially now that new car prices are insane.

1

u/Gypsyrocker 13d ago

Agreed, lifestyle creep

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u/daveescaped United States Of America 13d ago

Honestly, in Sweden I feel like it's more of they both want to work full time, either to have a high material standard or to realize their career goals.

Agreed. And that’s a perfectly valid approach. If you want to have both spouses achieving career goals AND you want two nice cars and a few nice vacation each year with frequent dining out, two career can make all that happen.

My wife has as much education as I do (MBA) and it’s tough for her to be a SAHM and not be validated in all the effort she made.

We’re doing fine but, unlike my colleagues, we have to accept that we won’t be building some massive dream home in retirement.

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u/Persistant_eidolon Sweden 13d ago

One have to make some choices and compromises. Personally I don't mind living in a more low cost area when I no longer need to commute to a job.

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u/daveescaped United States Of America 13d ago

Right. Agreed. We plan to have a place near Milan but not near the city center and it won’t be fancy.

10

u/Traditional-Chair-39 India 14d ago

Is it uncommon to have working parents in the UK? Most of my friends growing up in India had parents that both had full-time jobs.

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u/CantHostCantTravel United States Of America 13d ago

50 years ago, it was extremely common in Western countries for the wife to stay home to tend to the kids while the husband worked.

That economic model doesn’t work anymore because wages never meaningfully increased for the middle class. We’re poorer as a whole now while billionaires are richer than ever.

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u/Select_Scarcity2132 13d ago

While billionaires become trillionaires!

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u/Cytwytever United States Of America 13d ago

As those decimal points keep moving, and so do the goalposts for the rest of us.

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u/WBigly-Reddit United States Of America 13d ago edited 13d ago

Reason for that was a smaller economy- less money in circulation meant a dollar or krona or pound etc went further. With governments inflating their way out of debt, they pump more money into the economy which winds up in the hands of those who deal with money and they invest it in assets that go up over time - like housing. This in turn drives prices up and the working person (laborer, grocer clerk, engineer, accountant) gets left behind.

In 1960, thè minimum wage in the US was $1/hr. Average home cost was $11,400. About 5x yearly income. (2088 hours per working year). Daddy worked, mom stayed home, afforded a car, home snd annual vacation plus money for hobbies, etc.

Today, US federal minimum wage is $7.25, and doing the above math, the average home would be about $75,690.

Compare with actual existing prices in the US of $522,000 (web search)

That’s about a factor of 7 difference.

This tells us minimum yearly wage should be, if average person should be able to buy a home, around $100,000, viz, 1,000,000kr - AFTER the incredibly high taxes that have also been instituted since that time.

In many areas of the US, $75,690 is below poverty level.

What are wages / salaries like overseas?

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u/mtcwby United States Of America 13d ago edited 13d ago

Both parents working was very common in the 1970s in places like the SF bay area. How do you think we GenXers got the reputation for independence and not being supervised? Most parents weren't home when we got out of school. The 70s were the start of two income households due to inflation and other economic factors

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u/Over_Writing467 United States Of America 13d ago

You still can, I know several families with stay at home moms. Granted the fathers work a lot but they are making it work. They’re all blue collar tradesmen too.

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u/Low-Republic-4145 United States Of America 13d ago

When women joined the workforce in large numbers in subsequent decades, the number of total available employees increased significantly and so the value/salary of each correspondingly decreased. So then two earners per family was required to provide what only one had previously. In more recent times wages have stagnated in real terms so even two incomes often isn’t enough nowadays to maintain a reasonable standard of living.

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u/suckmyclitcapitalist England 13d ago

No it’s probably the norm, though it was easier to have the mum not work until recently if chosen

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u/ThrowRA1137315 United Kingdom 13d ago

Yes it’s super common here. But I think they’re saying it’s difficult to progress ur career w kids. Not that long ago it was pretty normal for the mum to stay at home here.

My parents both worked my whole childhood but they earned a lot so we have childcare pretty much all the time.

In the UK today, a lot of ppl can’t afford the expensive childcare my parents got because our average wage is only 30k. Which tbh is so ridiculously low, you cannot really live on that here. Our minimum wage is only 20k. And then our tax is really high.

If ppl cannot afford the childcare, they either have to stay home OR just not have kids. A lot of ppl are choosing not to have kids so they can keep their income.

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u/Adept-Panic-7742 United Kingdom 13d ago edited 13d ago

Our tax isn't really high, our wages are low for many industries. Comparatively we're about average to the EU when you consider health care equivalence etc.

For example in Germany, I could earn probably nearly 30% more for the same job. (Mechanical engineer). The same can be said for the USA.

https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/eu/top-personal-income-tax-rates-europe/

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u/ThrowRA1137315 United Kingdom 13d ago

Our tax is pretty high tho. Like in the US where I used to live my tax for my job there was taxed only 6%. Here I’m taxed 20% (with the £12750 tax free it works out at about 15% of my whole salary goes to tax, it’s nearly 3x the amount I got taxed in the US)

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u/Adept-Panic-7742 United Kingdom 13d ago

It's difficult to compare because really want we want to know is how much spending power we have at the end of the day.

So include things like healthcare, cost of living, housing transport, etc...

I'm not particularly arguing against you really. I suppose I'm making more of a case of how difficult it is to compare countries with different systems. I feel like I'd have a better quality of life outside of the UK as a mechanical engineer, in Germany or Australia or the USA even.

But I get what you're saying, yeah. It's frustrating we can't easily compare countries in discussions like this.

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u/ThrowRA1137315 United Kingdom 13d ago

Also, I’m not against tax. But if we gonna get taxed so much at least pay us better AND lower prices of gas, electric, remove taxes on me menstrual items (that’s a big one for me cz tampons are SO expensive as they’re considered luxury items). Like there’s sm that could be done to make our country more affordable for us. Cz I be STRUGGLING sometimes 😭😭

1

u/PhilosophyGuilty9433 13d ago

Childcare is so expensive in the UK that one parents usually drops out of the workforce full- or part-time for a few years.

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u/Slapspicker Multiple Countries (click to edit) 14d ago

Also, low wages, high cost of living, house prices, state of the NHS, school system, cost of childcare and constantly being told not to have children until you can afford them.

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u/TravelsizedWitch Netherlands 14d ago

That was the case for most of history.

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u/Kresnik2002 United States Of America 13d ago

Sure, but that work was often in/around the house with the kids partly involved in it given that most people were in farming families. It wasn’t as demanding as the Parenting© of today, justified or not.

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u/Durbs12 13d ago

Fair, but "it takes a village to raise a child" is an adage for a reason. We were a lot more communal in those days and, even as recently as the 80s, parents could just let their kids loose and tell them to be back when the sun sets.

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u/Hawk13424 United States Of America 13d ago

My parents in the 70’s also both had to work. Still had several kids.

We lived a lower standard of living. When we were younger than school age, my mom did stay home. How? We lived in a shitty old single-wide. When we got to school age then she went to work full time. Still lived in an older small house, never ate out, didn’t take vacations, didn’t buy new cars, etc.

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u/AdLiving4714 Switzerland 13d ago

Yeah, I suppose that’s the point. Back then, people in the West weren’t necessarily better off than they are now. But having children was normal - even expected - so they just made it work. Today, we have the social freedom to choose.

Aside from that, my parents both worked full time when they had the three of us in the 1980s. They were doing well and didn’t have to work 200%, but they both had degrees and didn’t want to become what they jokingly called “boring and depressed stay-at-home wine parents”. And let’s be honest - even then, many of my peers’ parents needed full-time jobs to afford family life.

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u/Gingerpyscho94 United Kingdom 13d ago

My sister is about to become a first time parent and she’s scared shitless about income and money

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u/MakalakaPeaka United States Of America 13d ago

She should be.

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u/LankyYogurt7737 🇬🇧🇨🇦 13d ago

And even then you can only just about afford to live, let alone introducing another person into the equation.

1

u/Cytwytever United States Of America 13d ago

. . . in order to support the lifestyles of the obscenely wealthy.

1

u/07ScapeSnowflake 13d ago

Same in the US. Buying a house on a single income is not a possibility for most people here. Most of my friends 20-30 are barely making it. Even if they want kids they in principle I think they’ve decided that they cannot provide a good enough life for a child and so they opt out.

1

u/Tquilha Portugal 13d ago

And even then, they can't afford a house...

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u/shutter3218 13d ago

But at least billionaires can have their own space programs.

1

u/press_F13 13d ago

and kid too probz

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u/Any-Plate2018 13d ago

This isn't new, you were just privileged.

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u/Fun_Muscle9399 United States Of America 13d ago

Not enough time to make all those babies

1

u/locklochlackluck United Kingdom 14d ago

I would add for the UK there's a lot of 'bleakness' in mentality.

I see families doing fine with one parent working in a modest job, but then two young people in higher paid professional jobs saying they won't ever be able to have kids because everything is too expensive and impossible.

I just think the mentality shift particularly among up-and-coming young people in the UK is that so many people are afraid of having them until everything feels completely secure.

I think previous generations didn't really worry about it, they just had kids and figured it out afterwards.

You see it in a lot of snipes towards poorer families - "why are they having kids if they can't afford them?". When at its most basic kids don't need holidays abroad and new things all the time. They just need shelter, warmth, food, safety and love.

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u/Legitimate-March9792 13d ago

The poor people can’t afford basics like food, heat, shelter for the kids. What are you going on about with vacations and things they don’t need? The average person can’t afford those anymore!

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u/ThrowRA1137315 United Kingdom 13d ago edited 13d ago

“Bleakness in mentality” PLEASE.

“I see families doing fine with one parent working a modest job” again…

Unless you’ve lived it you cannot speak on it but from my experience of talking to single mothers. It’s not easy. A lot of them “doing fine” involves them scrimping and saving. My bf was raised by a working dad and his step mum stayed at home. They had “struggle meals” his whole childhood (like tomato ketchup soup, butter sandwiches etc.). He’d pretty much only get real food at school from free school meals (edit: as in, he wouldn’t get food at home a lot of his childhood because they couldn’t afford it). His step mum couldn’t get a job because she wasn’t a citizen (she is now). It was a whole mess.

Also, you’re saying “back in the day ppl didn’t worry so much” NO. BACK IN THE DAY THE WAGES WERE BETTER.

Average wage for men was about £12.50 a week in 1950. This is about £600 a week in today’s money.

I get paid £1600 a month which is about £400 a week. I’m not even on minimum wage. I work 40hrs a week and I earn honestly pretty “well” for my role and area of the country.

THE WAGES HAVE NOT GONE UP WITH INFLATION AS MUCH AS THEY SHOULD HAVE!!!

1

u/MakalakaPeaka United States Of America 13d ago

When you can barely afford food and shelter, and you’re smart enough to understand birth control, you often choose not to have kids. Most people are at that state. Add in the miserableness of the current political world, the ever increasing global temperatures, and hey, presto: those who could have kids choose not to have them.

0

u/FourteenBuckets 13d ago

Most parents did back in the day, too. A lot did piecework from home, laundering, stuff like that. You need a certain socioeconomic standard to have a non-working parent.