^ This guy gets it. The widespread idea that too little material wealth, and lousy working condition is what prevents family formation and procreation is one of those things that the people who inherit the earth from us (should there still be any) will be laughing in a few hundred years, just like we find it unfathomable that our ancestors honestly believed in witches and the reality of curses and magic spells.
Consider that it's more expensive to have children have children as well. It's not so much too little material wealth as it is too little wealth to sustain the "normal" childhood. Not so long ago, kids existed as cheap labor and a retirement account. One didn't need to treat them like human beings much less provide literacy or schooling to them. Whatever functional uses they had before have been replaced by machines and and markets. Today, unless one is passing down the family company, having a kid serves no functional purpose except as a "fun" activity or cultural performance. Anyone who is having children today is choosing to invest in/burden themselves with a more expensive responsibility than previous generations had.
My grandparents had 2 and 4 children respectively in communist Poland in the fifties in sixties, while living in what nowadays would be classified as abject poverty (e.g. a 6-person family living in 400 sq ft flat). Being very, very poor and having to work 6 days a week didn't stop them from starting families. It's all about what you value in live and for them children were top priority, so they made it happen, even though they came with huge sacrifices.
Obviously, people in our times just don't care about having children that strongly, so even mild (in comparison) sacrifices required are enough to make them go childless.
