Turns out, dredging through the cosmic horror shit-show that is a low income life, being smart enough to increase your odds of finding better paying work, then understanding just how lucky you got once you're on the other side, just makes you very jaded. Then you realize you can't guarantee your new, privileged life to your kid, so you make sure you never inflict that pain on another living being.

I propose that increased well-being of the general population will lead to a population increase over time, but it is a multi-generation kind of process. People not only need to feel safe, but they need some kind of gaurantee to feel like their kids will be safe too.

I wonder what the data looks like if we were to separate fertility by how long those people were above the poverty line? Does the first generation of people who are well-off have fewer kids than people who come from two or three generations of being well-off?