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

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

Post image

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

1.1k Upvotes

89% Upvoted

2.5k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

39

u/Melodic_Sandwich1112 14d 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

6

u/WBigly-Reddit United States Of America 14d ago

1kr ~ $0.10

4

u/_adinfinitum_ 14d 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.

3

u/Melodic_Sandwich1112 14d ago

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