With the birth rate hitting an all-time low in the U.S. in April, analysts began looking into why fewer people are having children nowadays.
They found the biggest reason was that Millennials and Gen Z – the adults currently at the age most in the past have started families – do not feel financially secure enough to raise children.
The study, conducted by MassMutual, showed that 23% of adults between the ages of 18 and 43 said they do not plan on having children for monetary reasons, and those reasons are twofold.
Some said they enjoyed not having the expenses that come from supporting another mouth to feed. Meanwhile others said they simply don’t earn enough money to justify bringing a child into the world that they’d have to care for.
One recent study showed that having a child indeed costs a small fortune nowadays, estimating that parents now spend about $240,000 per child by the time they reach 18 years old. That total is an increase of 20% in the past eight years.
“Raising a family is a financial commitment. It has always been,” Paul LaPiana, certified financial planner and head of brand, product and affiliated distribution with MassMutual, told CBS MoneyWatch. “We are all faced with choices every day, and there is likely room for improvement when it comes to balancing decisions about immediate gratification with long-term happiness and financial security.”
While MassMutual’s study had not previously asked this particular question, a Pew Research poll revealed that the most likely reason people over 50 didn’t have children was that “it just didn’t happen,” rather than people actively planning to not have kids.
So are young people correct to worry about falling short of the monetary demands of child-rearing? The MassMutual study also showed that “money concerns” are the biggest stressor for parents whose kids are still minors.
“It is difficult to find a parent without some level of financial stress,” LaPiana said. “It is almost a ‘right of entry’ into parenthood. Market and economic cycles come and go, and there are always factors that impact financial stress for parents.”