I largely agree with this, and it matches my experience. I too know lots of religious Millennials with large and growing families. But I don't think I know a single secular Millennial with more than two, and I'm aware of a few secular childless-by-choice married couples near the end of their fertile years.
I largely agree with this, and it matches my experience. I too know lots of religious Millennials with large and growing families. But I don't think I know a single secular Millennial with more than two, and I'm aware of a few secular childless-by-choice married couples near the end of their fertile years.
While culture and values are more important, I do think economics can have a marginal effect, but stable attachment to employment is more important than housing costs, and the effect is not really landing on all those who willfully call a hard stop at 0-2 children. I just believe it's an exceptionally rare decision for a family to say "If we had a bigger house, we'd have an extra kid, but we don't so we don't."
Instead, if you want to find an economic effect on fertility, I'd look to people who fail to ever get married due to a lack of marriageable prospects or not being marriageable themselves (or who divorce rapidly due to marrying someone unmarriageable), or people who start a family later than they would have hoped and then find that biology has constrained their family size. Or to things like dad losing his job and struggling to find new stable employment, with a temporary decision to hold off on more kids eventually turning into a permanent one. I think people are much more motivated here by economic uncertainty than about the certain and predictable prospect of being a little bit more cramped within an existing home.
I largely agree with this, and it matches my experience. I too know lots of religious Millennials with large and growing families. But I don't think I know a single secular Millennial with more than two, and I'm aware of a few secular childless-by-choice married couples near the end of their fertile years.
While culture and values are more important, I do think economics can have a marginal effect, but stable attachment to employment is more important than housing costs, and the effect is not really landing on all those who willfully call a hard stop at 0-2 children. I just believe it's an exceptionally rare decision for a family to say "If we had a bigger house, we'd have an extra kid, but we don't so we don't."
Instead, if you want to find an economic effect on fertility, I'd look to people who fail to ever get married due to a lack of marriageable prospects or not being marriageable themselves (or who divorce rapidly due to marrying someone unmarriageable), or people who start a family later than they would have hoped and then find that biology has constrained their family size. Or to things like dad losing his job and struggling to find new stable employment, with a temporary decision to hold off on more kids eventually turning into a permanent one. I think people are much more motivated here by economic uncertainty than about the certain and predictable prospect of being a little bit more cramped within an existing home.