Recently, the proportion of wealthy families with three or more children has been increasing, breaking the long-held notion that top 1% fertility rate trends lean toward smaller families or single-child households.
According to the California Post citing the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances, nearly half (49%) of the top 1% of U.S. households by income have three or more children. This represents the highest proportion across all income brackets.
In contrast, data analyzed by the progressive nonprofit Economic Security Project showed that only 40% of American households outside the top 1% have three or more children.
Raising a single child is estimated to cost an average of $300,000, excluding college tuition. Given that the median household income stands at $87,000, the cost of raising just one child amounts to several years’ worth of income.
However, for the top 1% of householdsβwho earn a minimum annual income of $660,000 and possess a net worth of at least $13.7 millionβsuch child-rearing expenses do not act as a significant financial burden.
Mike Konczal, vice president of the Economic Security Project, noted in an interview with the Washington Post that child-rearing is an enormous expense for many, making the decision to have a third child a much more complex financial calculation.
This survey result demonstrates that the traditional pattern of lower-income households having more children is shifting.
A similar shift was identified in a 2018 study published by researchers at San Francisco State University and Tel Aviv University.
Focusing on white women, the study revealed that while higher-income women tended to have fewer children in 1980, a follow-up survey 30 years later in 2010 showed that both high-income and low-income groups saw an increase in the proportion of women having three or more children. Meanwhile, middle-class women mostly maintained a two-child family size.
Recent surveys indicate that while many Americans desire larger families, a significant gap remains between their ideal number of children and actual fertility rates.
A Gallup poll conducted last year found that approximately 42% of Americans consider three or more children to be the ideal family size. Although respondents desired an average of 2.7 children, the actual U.S. total fertility rate hovered at around 1.6 children per woman.
Experts agree that high child-rearing burdens are the decisive factor preventing additional births.
Elliott Haspel, a senior fellow at the family policy research organization Capita, analyzed in the Washington Post that parents are failing to have as many children as they want not because they do not want them, but because they simply cannot afford them economically.
