Poor people have more kids than rich people. Anyone who has taken a labour economics class knows this to be true. At least it used to be true. According to a report from the St. Louis Federal Reserve. Rich, highly educated white women are having more kids than ever before. The chart below shows fertility (on the vertical axis) and income Decile (on the horizontal axis). A 10 on the Income Decile is the to 10% of wage earners and 1 would be the bottom 10%. in 1980, women in the top 10% of wage earners were having an average of 1.82 kids.
By 2010 that number jumped to 2.66. Meanwhile, the reverse is true for women in the bottom 10% of wage earners who were having 3.38 kids on average in 1980 compared to 2.96 in 2010. The report from the St.Louis Federal Reserve concludes that as income rises it makes more sense for women to pay for childcare costs so that they can work longer hours. Working longer hours allows them to further increase their income and be able to financially afford to have more children.
