Policy makers: “Why won’t they have babies?!? We need more babies the whole system will collapse! We must urgently do something! But what? What ever should we do??? We’ve tried EVERYTHING! We even give them straight cash if they have a kid! This is the greatest mystery of our time!”
The population in nearly perfect unanimous voice: “Work life balance is shit and we can’t afford to have kids, neither time wise nor monetarily”
Policy makers: “Such an enigma, truly so mysterious, woe is us, evil evil selfish young people that don’t have kids!”
…
Policy makers: … come on! … we need your children to replace you and your slave wages to keep our investors wealthy.
Fewer
It’s a comparison, what’s wrong with less
Huge caveat: they only surveyed unmarried 18-49 year olds. Three huge problems are obvious:
- Unmarried people are more likely to want to remain unmarried
- People who are past typical marrying age are less likely to want to get married
- People who are past peak child rearing ages are less likely to want children
So, no. The headline is inaccurate. If we only survey single 18-49 y.o.s then of course we’ll get higher numbers of people who want to remain unmarried.
Still an interesting result, but very different from the clickbait headline.