...kids arent actually that expensive, especially when they're small,
you're just stuck in the keeping up with the joneses mentality, and like crabs in a bucket you collectively put yourselves into debt to match your neighbours lavish spending even though he is also being indebted via credit card for the same reasons,
low fertility is purely a middle class phenomenon, it isnt because kids are expensive, the poor still have kids at about or just under the same rate, the rich havent changed, its just the middle class who are mentally so locked on materialism and unwilling to admit they arent uber rich that they cant budget wisely,
as an aside though,
i mean really, france had worse fertility in the 1920s than now,
and they were poorer, the economy and having kids are not actually linked to eachother strongly IF AT ALL, i am beginning to suspect it is partly some biological response that is somehow tied to prevailing culture, maybe it is the reverse or both ways actually🤔, but the point remains, stop bringing economics into the fertility discussion, it is categorically false, and no nation has disappeared on earth from low fertility, again see 1920 france, it does mean a contraction though and you will get poorer, but that's not necessarily a bad thing, life isn't about money, past a certain point having more on average harms you.