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Is 5 Kids Really Easier & Cheaper Than 2?
Where to Live Doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tq9rY1TCs49XHckWtzOowYz_xHXFnRpOZq8r0lE5JSQ
Should you have more kids? We discuss the REAL costs of additional children and why it gets dramatically cheaper after the first few. We also cover why private school, travel, restaurants, etc. are overrated for kids. Having a big family forces you to live more reasonably!
Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] The incremental cost of each additional kid.
Cause I think people might be really surprised. There was a study done on this and it shows, I think it's like after four, every additional kid costs on average about a thousand dollars a year. So not a lot.
In an article called The Marginal Cost of Children in the New York Times Archive. . By the time you get to kid three, you have fallen from a cost of. around 15, 000 a year for one kid to, well under 3, 000 a year.
And so you can see how you get down to like 1, 000 extra a year, or 800 extra a year when you get like four, kid number five, the costs just drop really dramatically.
Malcolm Collins: And, and the waste that you have when you're having a few kids, keep in mind, you still need to buy all the s**t, you know, whether or not you're having a ton of kids or a few kids.
So, you know, the next time you have a kid, it's no baby toys, it's, it's no, you know, no, no, no toddler toys.
Simone Collins: No new swings, or highchairs, or bibs, or plates, [00:01:00]
Malcolm Collins: or bottles, or sippers, or Every time we buy something for one of our kids, that's being used by like a huge chain of kids after them
Would you like to know more?
Malcolm Collins: Anyway. Hello, Simone! It is wonderful to talk to you today! So, we did this video on dinks, right? And we're like, dinks are actually good, right? Because They are we don't want these people having kids, they're not going to be good parents, probably not good for the gene pool so, let's march them into their sweet good night all by themselves.
Now, this But we got some
Simone Collins: interesting, we got some interesting comments on that video, and, and one I wanted to do a conversation about.
Malcolm Collins: Well, and I see this with other people, right? Like, the core point we made in the Dink video, or one of the points that we made, Is that you know, while we pity dinks, the people we pity more than dinks is people with only one or two kids, because it's all of the cost of kids and none of the real benefits of kids.
Well, you get some, I mean, you get like the, the shallow masturbatory feeling of I have a kid that the dinks don't get and like, you get to experience them and spend time with them, which is nice, but you don't [00:02:00] get like the genetic or cultural effects, right? You know, you're not really. contributing to a solution in a big way.
And, and it's actually harder. We argue like, like, and for us, it's very obviously harder. It is, it is much harder to have fewer kids than more kids.
Simone Collins: Totally. And we're stressful and
Malcolm Collins: way more stressful. And we need to talk about why this is the case. And in many ways, you know, we immediately saw it in the question that they're asking us about this.
It's like, well, I have two kids, but like, I don't know how I'm going to afford.
Simone Collins: I'll read the comments. There were, there were two comments. It sort of inspired this. So one person said, I have two kids, but I think I need to make more money before I go for number three. My mother in law is already very against her daughter having another.
So I was waiting to my economic situation changed to go for, for three. But should I, I know I want three because that's above replacement level. But
Published on 1 year, 11 months ago