Wealthier people are having more kids, reversing century-old trend

Century-long trend reverses as wealthier people start to have more children

What you probably already know: You may have heard about the compound Elon Musk has built in Texas, where he’s hoping his progeny and their mothers will come to live. Musk, who is the world’s richest person, has at least 11 children with three different women, and has stated that it is imperative that people have children to increase the world’s population. He’s even reportedly offered his sperm to friends who have struggled to conceive, like a modern day Genghis Khan. And, while that might make your skin crawl, there’s evidence that a century-long trend of wealthier people having fewer children than poor people is starting to reverse.

Why? In Europe, for example, the correlation between wealth and number of children had been negative until about 2017, when it shifted to neutral and then by 2021, was very slightly positive. Now, in wealthier nations, data shows that the larger a man’s salary, the higher the likelihood he will have multiple children. For women, the opposite is true — higher income and education levels lead to lower birth rates, likely due to the fact that there’s still outright discrimination in the workforce and the challenges of accessing affordable — or even unaffordable child care.

What it means: That divide — highly paid men having more children while highly paid women are having fewer — is easy to politicize, which is what we’re seeing in this current climate. Donald Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, put that in stark relief when he accused successful women of being “childless cat ladies.” The controversial “trad wife” trend on social media seems to reinforce the idea that women should aspire to stay home and raise children. Meanwhile, as the birthrate plunges across the globe, many countries are struggling to figure out how to incentivize people to have more children.

What happens now? People who do not have children report a variety of reasons for their decision, the largest of which is that they simply didn’t want to. But the second-largest reason is that they wanted to focus on their careers, and feel like having children would jeopardize that, according to Pew Research. Musk, who is now Trump’s most vocal ally, has called the declining birthrates a “national emergency” and implored his followers to have more children. His father, Errol Musk, told the New York Times last month that people are like horses, and should be bred, selecting good mothers and fathers that result in exceptional children.