Why do Less Affluent People Have More Kids?

November 16, 2006 1:32 PM

Is there a study outlining the reasons that childbirth rates tend to be higher for lower income people not just in the US but worldwide? Beyond religious reasons - and above and beyond farming reasons (presumably even in the US when farming was a bigger part of the workforce, more kids meant more "free" workers to tend and pick crops) ... is it some immortality gene driving that? Is it as banal as having nothing better to do?
posted by jbelkin to society & culture (26 comments total)

Access to reliable contraception, and the sex ed that teaches you how to use it, and the jobs that let you buy it, would increase as your socioeconomic status does.

Women who want to have careers tend to find it hard to pursue them if they have many children. So fewer children would be a way for women to increase their own SES, and presumably that of their entire family.
posted by occhiblu at 1:43 PM on November 16, 2006

If you're concerned about where your next meal is coming from, more than likely some of your least concerns would be going to the OB/GYN and getting a prescription for the pill. Also, condoms are pretty expensive if you are using more than two a week. So really, economically, safe sex sometimes isn't a top priority.
posted by banannafish at 1:43 PM on November 16, 2006

Studies? Try here.
Or maybe here.
posted by b33j at 1:55 PM on November 16, 2006

You might find more info from the Population Reference Bureau as well.

Really, though, much of it just has to do with the status of women. If women aren't allowed access to birth control and other family planning resources and education, either due to government or religious policies, poverty, or lack of resources (the US government refusing to help fund international facilities that even talk about abortion, for instance), then they're going to end up having more kids. In areas in which this is a problem, women probably have low enough social status that they're also not going to be able to insist on men using condoms, and I think it's pretty rare for men with that much social power to voluntarily take on the burden of birth control. So poverty leads to high population growth.
posted by occhiblu at 2:00 PM on November 16, 2006

Beyond religious reasons - and above and beyond farming reasons (presumably even in the US when farming was a bigger part of the workforce, more kids meant more "free" workers to tend and pick crops) ... is it some immortality gene driving that? Is it as banal as having nothing better to do?

In order to argues strongly for any kind of causal relationship somoene would have to conduct an experiment. I don't think it's really possible to randomly assign people to conditions of low or high income and then see how many kids they have.
posted by Packy_1962 at 2:09 PM on November 16, 2006

You may well be confounding cause and effect: maybe people with more kids have less time and energy to devote to their careers, and higher outgoings, so they end up being in a lower income bracket. People with few or no kids have a lot more time and energy to use making money. Or, perhaps ambitious people are generally more prepared to forgo children in the pursuit of their goals.

Either way, I don't think it's as simple as "poor people have more kids".
posted by nomis at 2:12 PM on November 16, 2006

Actually, now that I think about this some more, it seems to me the more useful question is: "Why are People with More Kids Less Affluent?"
posted by nomis at 2:14 PM on November 16, 2006

Having a child is actually the number-one risk factor for poverty for a woman in the US. Just in and of itself, having children makes you vulnerable to economic risks that you wouldn't face otherwise.
posted by occhiblu at 2:26 PM on November 16, 2006

We might also challenge the very premise of your argument.
posted by The Radish at 2:27 PM on November 16, 2006 [1 favorite]

Access to reliable contraception, and the sex ed that teaches you how to use it, and the jobs that let you buy it, would increase as your socioeconomic status does.

In Britain anyone can get free contraception - and I don't just mean condoms - and schools in poor areas are likely to get more sex ed lesson than others, but you still end up with poorer people having more kids, and having them younger, than richer people.
posted by Lebannen at 2:36 PM on November 16, 2006

My take is that the poorer you are, the less focused you tend to be on the long term. The direction of causality is debatable. Take it from the poverty-first direction, and obviously it's hard to focus on, say, saving for your kids' college when you're busy trying to make next month's rent. Poverty is depressing and depression makes it hard to plan out too far, too. But it is also clearly the case that people who are depressed or who find it hard to make long-term plans or control their impulses often end up poor. Either way, it easily becomes a habit of thinking, and you stop thinking of the future because, well, what good does it to to think of it when you generally can't do a damn thing about it?

Considering that what you're about to do tonight may, nine months from now, result in the birth of someone who depends on you nine months from now? How can you worry about nine months from now when you don't even know where you'll be living or working (or if you'll be living or working) then? Of course that is exactly the time you should be careful not to have kids, but the mindset you're in is diametrically opposed to making that choice.
posted by kindall at 2:51 PM on November 16, 2006

Right. And so once you've got the basics taken care of with birth control, you then start moving into the career issues. If you expect to have a career, rather than just a job, holding off on kids until you've got your career established tends to make sense. If you're a women with a career, limiting your offspring tends to make sense if you want to continue pursuing that career.
posted by occhiblu at 2:54 PM on November 16, 2006

(Sorry, that "right" and the rest of the comment was in response to Lebannen.)
posted by occhiblu at 2:55 PM on November 16, 2006

This is a concept fundamental to humankind known as the demographic transition.
posted by waldo at 3:16 PM on November 16, 2006

Along the same lines as occhiblu, I know a person who worked in aid programs in India, and found that it wasn't actually the amount of money in a community that affected the birth rate, but the education of the women (which, of course, is often linked to the wealth of the community). So in Kerala (don't have the link sorry, it was personal correspondance), she instituted women's health and education programs. Once the women in the community were made more aware of the situation and were educated, they could be in a position to either refuse sex or insist on contraception.
posted by twirlypen at 3:55 PM on November 16, 2006

my theory is that the same reason poor people have the most kids is the same reason people in lower income brackets tend to do things like smoke or binge drink.

poor people can't afford to go to the movies. poor people can't afford to go on vacations, or to expensive dinners, or do a lot of the recreational activities that affluent people do.

cigarettes are relatively cheap and provide a sense of relief to the smoker. alcohol is relatively cheap and gets you really fucked up, and it's an enjoyable feeling to be drunk.

sex is free. sex is fun. therefore poor people will partake in it as often as they please. as the number of sexual engagements increases, so do the chances of successful conception.

i can say from personal observation of a group of friends who grew up in a specific rural (and very low-income) area that they knew goddamn well the risks of unprotected sex, but didn't take the risks seriously. they would have unprotected sex once or twice without getting pregnant and continue this mode of operation under the assumption that they were either sterile or their partner just wasn't potent--therefore condoms or pills were unnecessary so long as they were monogamous. as of the time of this writing, all but one of the aforementioned friends has at least one child. the one without kids wisened up after seeing what happened to the rest, and promptly got on the pill.
posted by Ziggy Zaga at 5:18 PM on November 16, 2006

For people who live in extreme poverty, they try to have as many children as possible to increase the chances that some will survive to adulthood, so that the children can take care of the parents in old age. For example, in some parts of the world a woman might give birth 10 times but only have 3 or 4 of those 10 babies live to adulthood.

There have been studies that tie food security to lower birth rates. If people know they will be provided for in old age no matter what, they have less children. I was just reading a book about this but I can't remember the name. They showed that in societies where everyone is guaranteed a minimum amount of food (such as Nicaragua under the Sandinistas, or Cuba) the birth rate goes down.
posted by clarissajoy at 5:51 PM on November 16, 2006

it seems to me the more useful question is: "Why are People with More Kids Less Affluent?"

According to Radish's link (great find) they're not.

It seems that for almost every state, families of 4 people have the highest median income, with 6 (and sometimes 7+) being higher in every state than the two person families. This runs counter to what my gut instinct would be.
posted by kaefer at 5:58 PM on November 16, 2006

Radish's link doesn't seem to indicate how many of those family members are adults, or how many are earning income.

I'm failing to find any support at all for the idea that poor people have more sex. The few studies I'm turning up seem to indicate no relationship between frequency of intercourse and socioeconomic status. And such a theory seems to rely on a complete romanticizing of poverty -- working minimum-wage jobs to support a family is exhausting. And I'm unsure why it being free would dissuade higher earners from partaking.

Whether socioeconomic status influences safe sex is another story.
posted by occhiblu at 6:10 PM on November 16, 2006

Some interesting cross-cultural studies on contraceptive use, many of which address how its use depends women's status, on PubMed.
posted by occhiblu at 6:22 PM on November 16, 2006

Others have said it, but to reiterate: It's not income level, its education level. More educated people tend to be more affluent, though I have to admit, by this logic Paris Hilton should have been on her 8th child by now. On the other hand both KFed and Anna Nicole have created offspring so maybe there is something to it ...
posted by forforf at 6:22 PM on November 16, 2006

In order to argues strongly for any kind of causal relationship somoene would have to conduct an experiment.

That's not true in cases where one thing happens before another. Poor people tend to be poor before they have kids.
posted by delmoi at 6:33 PM on November 16, 2006

My teacher (this is in Malaysia) said that poorer people usually have less distractions (TV, the Internet, etc) and so sex was really their only form of entertainment.

I don't know if that's true, but it's an interesting statement.
posted by divabat at 7:23 PM on November 16, 2006

Think of this this way: having children is the default. It's the "easiest" outcome: you have sex, do nothing else, you usually get pregnant.

When you're closer to your limit mentally, emotionally, financially, etc, you're more likely to just end up here, since it takes effort, money, education, and time to bring about another.

This is what people who are more educated and financially well off, with more leisure time to think and plan, are able to do: push events away from their default, "natural" outcome.
posted by gottabefunky at 8:29 PM on November 16, 2006 [1 favorite]

sex is free. sex is fun.
You can pretty much stop there. When you have no spare money, "Free and fun" wins.
Add to that our species strong predilection to breed, and you're done.
posted by Thorzdad at 4:49 AM on November 17, 2006

In order to argues strongly for any kind of causal relationship somoene would have to conduct an experiment.

That's not true in cases where one thing happens before another. Poor people tend to be poor before they have kids.

You still can't determine causality from this sort of correlational information without an experiment. What if there was a third variable (like education or religion) that determines poorness and number of kids. Even if you could establish a correlational relationships with a few other variables, and income and child birth rates, causality cannot be be determined without a manipulation.
posted by Packy_1962 at 9:49 AM on November 18, 2006