The Surprising Changes in Family Size Among the Top 1%

Five years ago, we looked at “Car Seats As Contraception.” Saying that families had no room in the back of the car for a third child, scholars explained the decline in the U.S. birth rate.

But now there is more.

U.S. Birth Rates

We have always said that the 1970s were a turning point for women. With the spread of the pill, women could plan when to have children. As a result, we went to college and graduate school. As wives, we increasingly had careers. More affluent moms had smaller families.

Recently though, according to the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances, almost half of U.S. families in the top 1% had three or more children:

Rather than creating an economy of scale for a family, a third child tips them into eye-popping financial territory.  Extending child care by seven or eight years, it could cost another $20,000 annually. At $13,184, the average annual cost of child care eats up one third of the U.S. median household income of $87,000. Whereas a 1980 study displayed a linear downward-sloping connection between income and the number of children, more recently the trend became a “U.” In 2010, poorer and richer women were more likely than their middle-class sisters to have three children. (And, those richer women could afford the larger SUV that had the room in the back for a third car seat.)

Still, in the U.S. and beyond, at 1.67 babies per woman, we’ve sunk below our replacement rate of 2.1.

Our Bottom Line: Global Fertility Rates

You can see the downward trend:

With Niger on the high end (6.64 births per woman) and South Korea (1.12) among the lowest, these are the world’s birth rates. (The 2026 birth rate is a projection based on UN statistics.):

Meanwhile, in the United States, at 66.7 per 1,000, South Dakota’s households produce far more babies than Vermont’s (41.7):

My sources and more: Thanks to The Washington Post for inspiring today’s post. Then, to complete the picture, the World Population Review and the CDC  had the maps.