Thursday, March 06, 2008

The Richest Families Are Having More Kids

I have previously reported the good news that the marriage rate and the birth rate among the most educated women has risen recently. I attribute this to more study of good sociology. :-)

Now there is evidence that the richest families are bigger. Among the top 1.5% of families by income, the proportion of 40-something women with three or more kids has risen over the past decade from 29% to 41%.

This group is too small to affect the overall birthrate very much directly. Indirectly, though, trends among the rich do tend to affect patterns among the upper middles, at least. And the rich are the people who can best afford more kids. This is a hopeful small development.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

wasn't there an article or study or maybe just a gossip bit a year or so about a 3rd child being almost a status symbol in some New York City circles.

I think the idea was that even if you weren't trying to show off you were demonstrating that you could afford another bedroom in manhattan, 3 private school tuitions etc.