Why People Are Hesitating to Have Children: It’s Not Just About Money
Birth rates are falling across much of the developed world, including in countries with generous family policies, high female employment and relatively advanced gender equality. For decades, researchers have explained declining fertility mainly through the cost of raising children, insecure jobs, delayed partnerships and the unequal division of care.
Those explanations still matter. But they may no longer be enough. A new comparative study suggests that decisions about parenthood are increasingly influenced by something larger and harder to control: people’s confidence in the future of society itself. Economic crises, climate change, democratic erosion and geopolitical conflict are not merely background noise. They can alter whether having a child feels safe, realistic or responsible.
The research was conducted by Arnstein Aassve, Letizia Mencarini, Chen Peng, Samuel Plach and Alonso Roman Amarales, all affiliated with Bocconi University’s Department of Social and Political Sciences and the Dondena Centre for Research on Social Dynamics and Public Policy, together with Maria Letizia Tanturri of the University of Padua’s Department of Statistical Sciences. This research was funded by the Italian Ministry of University and Research (MUR) within the PRIN 2022 call (Projects of Relevant National Interest), project “FER-MO: Italians’ FERtility MOtivations in disorienting and uncertain times” (PRIN 2022, CUP J53D23009530001), Principal Investigator Letizia Mencarini.
Their paper, Parenthood Decisions in Uncertain Times: Experimental Evidence from Four Countries, compares fertility intentions in Italy, Germany, the United States and Argentina. Rather than asking respondents only about their current circumstances, the researchers presented them with hypothetical family situations in which income, housing, childcare, gender roles and wider social conditions were systematically varied.
A child is a long-term decision in a short-term world
The study begins from the idea that becoming a parent is one of the longest commitments people make, yet it is increasingly considered in societies experienced as unstable.
As the authors write, fertility decisions are embedded in “broader narratives about societal futures, and not only in household resources and gender norms.”
That distinction is crucial. People do not decide whether to have children by looking only at their salary, apartment or working hours. They also imagine the world in which that child will grow up. Will the economy collapse? Will housing become even less affordable? Will democratic institutions remain stable? Will climate change make the future more dangerous? Will international conflict spread? These are not abstract questions when parenthood is being considered. They shape perceptions of security—and perceived security is central to long-term planning.
The experiment
The survey was conducted in May 2025 among 8,334 adults aged 20 to 44 across the four countries. Each participant evaluated five pairs of hypothetical families, producing 83,340 completed vignette responses.
The scenarios varied the woman’s age, whether the couple already had a child, household income, homeownership, the division of paid and unpaid work, access to public childcare and four macro-level conditions: climate change, economic crisis, democratic stability and war.
Respondents first chose which of two scenarios would make them more inclined to have a child. They then rated, on a scale from 1 to 10, their intention to have a child within the next three years under each set of circumstances. Since these characteristics were randomly assigned, the researchers could compare their relative influence. The result is not a prediction of actual births, but an experimental measure of how fertility intentions change when people imagine different personal and social future possibilities.
Income matters most, but security matters more than wealth
Unsurprisingly, household income has the largest effect on fertility intentions. Yet the relationship is not linear. Moving from a low income to the median produces a much larger increase in fertility intentions than moving from the median to the highest income categories. In the pooled results, the first increase is almost twice as large as the second.
The implication is that people may not need to feel rich before having children. They need to feel secure. The authors describe this as a threshold effect:
“what matters most is reaching a sufficient level of economic security rather than achieving affluence.”
Homeownership also raises fertility intentions, reinforcing the importance of stability and long-term planning. Public childcare helps as well, although its effect is smaller than that of income or owning a home. Full-time childcare provision produces an effect equal to roughly two-thirds of the homeownership effect.
The underlying idea is not that childcare policy is ineffective. It is that family services operate within a broader economic environment. A nursery place can reduce the practical burden of parenthood, but it cannot fully compensate for insecure work, unstable housing or fear of the future.
Climate, democracy and war enter the family equation
The most distinctive contribution of the study is its comparison between traditional household factors and macro-level uncertainty. In every country, fertility intentions were higher when respondents imagined a stable climate outlook, a lower risk of economic crisis, secure democracy and civil liberties, and a reduced likelihood of international conflict. Individually, these effects were smaller than the largest income changes. But they were comparable to part-time public childcare and stronger than the effects associated with different gender-role arrangements.
When translated into income-equivalent terms, favorable macro-level conditions were valued at about 1,000 purchasing-power-adjusted international dollars per month on average—approximately one quarter of median monthly household income. That is close to the value respondents placed on full-time public childcare.
This monetary comparison does not mean that people consciously assign a price to democracy or a stable climate. It shows the magnitude of the trade-off embedded in their choices: wider social stability carries a weight similar to substantial household resources. As the paper puts it,
“macro and policy environments are not abstract background features but are perceived as central components of family planning.”
One pattern, four different national sensitivities
The overall pattern is consistent, but national differences reveal how uncertainty is filtered through lived experience.
In Argentina, where inflation and economic volatility have been persistent, fertility intentions are especially sensitive to income, economic stability and climate risks. Material security appears to function as a basic condition for considering parenthood.
Italy and Germany occupy an intermediate position. In Italy, respondents react to several macro risks, with climate change and international conflict somewhat more salient. In Germany, democratic stability and geopolitical tensions have a relatively stronger influence.
The United States is the least responsive to macro-level shocks overall. In particular, international conflict has little effect in the experiment. The authors suggest that geographic distance from major war zones and the normalization of prolonged military engagement abroad may reduce the perceived relevance of conflict for everyday family decisions. This remains an interpretation rather than a directly tested mechanism.
Family policy cannot stop at the family
The study does not argue that gender equality, childcare or work-family balance are unimportant. More equal divisions of paid and unpaid labor are associated with stronger fertility intentions, and public childcare has a positive effect. But those policies may have limited power when young adults see the wider future as unstable.
The broader policy lesson is demanding. Governments concerned about falling birth rates cannot treat fertility simply in terms of baby bonuses, parental leave or childcare places. Family formation also depends on affordable housing, reliable employment, social protection, democratic confidence, climate credibility and peace.
In other words, people may postpone parenthood not because they no longer want children, but because they are unsure whether the world around them can support the life they want to build. Stronger fertility intentions do not automatically translate into more births. Yet the authors identify a central feature of contemporary demographic decline. Parenthood is shaped not only by what families have today, but by what they believe society will become tomorrow.
