Why Gen Z DON'T WANT Kids

Kind: captions Language: en We are constantly told that Gen Z is the most selfish generation in history. Instead of starting a family, they spend their time and money on Tik Tok, travel, and skincare. But the truth is much darker than they'd have you believe. By 2050, the working age population in countries like South Korea is projected to shrink by 35%. It's not because the youth are selfish. It's because they're rational. Gen Z is practicing extreme risk management. They're the first generation to realize they've been recruited into an economy that's about to go bust. Their refusal to have kids is the only leverage they have left. Gen Z is staring down some terrifying 2050 projections. The global working age population, especially in rich countries, is drastically shrinking. In Europe, the working age group will decline by 10 to 53%, just over half of the population. In parts of southern and eastern Europe, the decline will be much more dramatic. The working age share of the population will plummet by over 20% in countries like Greece, Portugal, Bulgaria, Romania, and Hungary. What does that [music] mean for the young people living there? A lot more pensions to support and a totally broken economy. For every senior in Europe today, there are an average of three working age people. That means there are enough people working to keep the economy going or literally taking care of the retirees. [music] But by 2050, that ratio will go down to less than two working age people per senior. And that is a huge issue. Europe won't even experience the worst of it. That would be South Korea, which had a record low fertility rate of 0.72 in 2023 and 24. It's a record low in its own history and the world's. The working age population there is going to contract by 50% by 2070. That's like a company losing half of its staff while its obligations for elderly care grow significantly. It is a demographic death spiral [music] because 2070 is not that far off. Most of Gen Z will be in their 60s and thinking about or actively in retirement theoretically because in countries like the UK, half of Gen Z already think state pensions won't exist anymore by the time they'll need them. Some of the young adults who do think they'll have pensions believe they probably won't see them until at least 75. So, they're squirreling away as much as they can, which is not much. How in the world are they going to raise kids on top of that? This is the world Gen Z has grown up in. The population is collapsing and the youth are being handed the bill and the blame. But if the consequences are this apocalyptic, why are our leaders blaming the victims instead of fixing the actual problem? Because as it turns out, it's easier to just blame an entire group than accept that you have destroyed the system that was supposed to support their future. It is generational gaslighting. Everywhere you turn, from newspapers and websites to political statements, the narrative for Gen Z is clear. They are selfish. All they do is travel. They go to brunch and they buy whatever Tik Tok tells them to buy. Instead of settling down and having children, they're booking a retreat in Bali and making content. Leaders of every type have made their position clear. Pope Francis said, "Today we see a form of selfishness. We see that some people do not want to have a child." JD Vance said the nation was now run by childless cat [music] ladies. The media is no better. Fox News commentator Ashley Stlair described Gen Z as people who just want to pursue pleasure and drinking all night and going to Beyonce concerts. It's this pursuit of self-pleasure in replace of fulfillment and having a family. But is that really what the generation is all about? More importantly, is that really the reason they're not having children? Or is something much more serious at play? [music] Sociologists and researchers looking at the bigger picture don't agree with those assessments of Gen Z. They think the issue is much larger than selfishness. In fact, one university director's study found that most Americans in their teens and 20s still want to have children. Two, in fact. In almost every survey of people that age, they rarely find more than 20% overall who want to remain childless. However, most of these young adults want to hit certain milestones first, whether it's paying off student debt or owning their own house. When they enter the job market and have to support themselves, they quickly find that their dreams of a debt-free home-owning, kid-filled existence may be financially impossible. As a family demographer, Dr. Karen Guzo says, "It's not about being selfish and saying, "I'm not having kids because I want to sleep in all the time." When fertility rates are down, that's because people don't feel like they have a future they feel confident in. And that's partly because work looks so much different now than it did when the boomers had two and a half kids in a white picket fence. Gen Z, as well as millennials, are increasingly reliant on the gig economy for work. A 2025 survey found that 43% of Gen Z workers take part in the gig economy way more than any previous generation. While the perks of gig work may seem enticing, the reality is often not what it's cracked up to be, especially if you're trying to become financially stable enough to have a child. Gig work is, as the name implies, unsteady. You never know exactly what you're going to be earning next year, making financial planning for a child anywhere from difficult to impossible. With some specialized exceptions, gig work also isn't really financially rewarding, even at its best. The same survey found that the median earnings for Gen Z gig workers in the US were $32,000. If you live in the US, you may recognize that number as not a whole lot to live off of. If you live in any major city, it sounds five times worse. To get an idea of how bad it is, the median income for a full-time year-round worker in the US was just under $63,400, almost double what most people make as gig workers. That makes most freelancers too financially strapped to even think of things like daycare, which averages $1,400 per month across the US. But it can easily run up to $3,000 in high cost of living cities. To top it all off, gig workers usually don't get one huge financial relief that most boomers got. company provided healthcare, making medical coverage a further out-of-pocket expense for almost half of Gen Z. Since the average cost of pregnancy, birth, and postpartum care alone are over 20 grand in the US, having a kid could literally be the difference between being able to pay the rent and being homeless. So, the generation has adjusted accordingly and logically. Deote found that more than half of Gen Z, 55% to be exact, and 52% of millennials are delaying major life decisions because of their financial situation. These decisions include marriage, having kids, starting a business, or pursuing further education. Putting this all down to Gen Z being selfish is a distraction from the systemic failure that's robbed them of their job security, chances of home ownership, and future earnings. And history actually proves the fault doesn't lie with Gen Z because they're not actually the first generation to stop having kids in the face of extreme financial distress. Enter the silent generation, the children of the Great Depression. During the 1930s, birth rates plummeted, while people had been hovering at close to three children per couple in the 1920s. During the Great Depression, they fell all the way down to 2.1 in 1936. Things are obviously not as bad now as they were during the Great Depression. The misery index for an average Gen Z 25-year-old today is 8 to 10%. While the silent generation during the Great Depression found themselves around 25%. But the feeling of being trapped, of having no faith in a healthy financial future, is similar. The Population Reference Bureau looked through the data and confirmed that birth rates have almost always been an economic indicator, not a cultural one. When people can't afford tomorrow, they don't create life today. When the economy for young people stagnates, people stop having kids. Sociological research backs up the viewpoint that Gen Z views childbearing not as a milestone, but as a financial existential threat. However, there's still something a little off about the comparison to the 1930s. The Great Depression came after a shocking stock market crash. But today, the stock market is booming. Turn on the news and you'll hear about the Dow Jones setting new records every so often. So, if the economy appears to be thriving, but Jenzie and the millennials aren't reaping its rewards, where is all the money going? It's mostly been hoarded by the older generations. A big component of Boomer's financial stability was their high rate of home ownership. By 1980, the oldest boomers had turned 34. Half of them were already homeowners. Almost 40 years later, only 39% of those aged 25 to 34 own their own home. And for most who haven't already attained that goal, the prospect of ever buying their own property seems like a far-off dream. No wonder since 1970, the average house has cost 2.4 times the average income. In 2024, it costs six times the average income, as anyone who has seen a two-bedroom dump being advertised for a million dollars in the tri-state area can attest to. That means in 1970, boomers only needed to set aside around 2 years of salary to buy their dream starter home. While today, Gen Z better get a full-time job and somehow save almost 8 years of that total gross income if they ever want to own a home. It is clearly an impossible feat. That's made obvious by the fact that the average age of first home ownership in Europe has climbed to over 31 years old. In the US is up to 40. Most people are already shopping for reading glasses by the time they can get a house in their name. Couples who want a home to raise their kids in, well, they don't have a lot of fertile years left at that point. [music] It's not just a housing problem either. Every dollar Gen Z has in their hands isn't as strong as it was. In fact, since 1970, the US has lost 88% of its purchasing power. So, what does that translate to? Someone shopping for their weekly groceries today will end up paying $100 to buy the exact same calories a boomer would have bought for 13 bucks in 1970. Add this to the fact that young people are holding less money and assets than ever, and then the picture starts looking really bleak. In 2019, the Federal Reserve found that millennials, while making up about a quarter of the population, held only 3% of the country's wealth. Even by 2025, Gen Z and millennials combined held only just over 10% of the country's wealth. Even the silent generation, the same people born before 1946 and raised during the depression, meaning most are either dead or retired in 2025, hold more wealth than young people, over 12%. Okay, but maybe older generations hold more wealth now because they are older and they've saved it up. No. As it turns out, when boomers were in their 30s, they held 21% of the nation's wealth. That is over double what two generations hold now. If the entire economy is 100 slices of pizza, boomers easily got 21 before they even turned 35, while millennials and Gen Z are fighting to death for their 10. The system priced out the future for young people. So, Gen Z responded by cancelling the family altogether. While boomers got a fair chance to save up, invest a house, and invest in their future life. Gen Z is barely keeping their head above water. And to make matters worse, housing and inflation may have destroyed this generation's present, and a new technology just destroyed their future. Where do you want to be in 5 years? The answer for most of Gen Z is staying afloat. The introduction of AI to a job market already stacked against its youngest entrance has put many long-term career plans into question. Almost 43% of Gen Z workers have adjusted their career plans because of worries about AI. It's not just that Gen Z can't predict their income for the next year. At this point, they don't even know if they'll have a job or the career path they studied and worked for. Onethird of employers admitted they will use AI to replace entry-level jobs, the ones that would put Gen Z on the career ladder. Many employers who responded worked at Fortune 500 companies, the firms with some of the biggest impact on the labor market. Getting a college degree in this job market won't do much for most young workers except put them into debt. The most affected sector is technology. More than twothirds of Gen Z workers think a college degree won't protect them from AI related job loss. For those who think fewer college degrees and more manual labor is the answer, the second most affected sector is manufacturing. And AI related job loss is not a far-off problem. 39% of executives admitted that they have already laid off workers because of AI. Even though more than half of them say they regret it, it still creates a completely unstable work environment. With all this unpredictability in the labor market, how are any of them supposed to commit to financially providing for a child for 18 years? It's like being asked to sign a 20-year mortgage while standing on a trapdo. In response, governments are panicking and throwing money at the problem. But those programs are almost all failing. Because while they may be well intended, they're not getting to the heart of the issue. Government subsidies can't fix birth rates. They can make life and finances for parents a little easier. They can help people who have already decided they are somewhat stable enough to have kids, but for most of Gen Z, subsidies aren't going to help much at all. The primary example of this is the Nordic model. Despite massive family-friendly subsidies and some of the most generous parental leave programs in the world, Nordic countries like Norway and Finland have seen fertility rates drop to historic lows. In 2024, Nordic fertility rates ranged from 1.2 25 children per woman in Finland to 1.91 in the Pharaoh Islands. [music] According to the Nordic Statistics Database, in rich countries, women need to have an average of 2.1 children to achieve stable replacement of the population. Most of the Nordics are nowhere near. Despite the fact that the subsidies and regulations for parents are generous, Sweden allows couples to take off 480 days of paid parental leave. That's more than 15 months. If your child gets seriously sick, you can get another 120 days off, the fertility rate in Sweden, 1.4. Because all the subsidies in the world can't fix the instability young couples feel, and the rocky future they see ahead of them. One Swedish professor put it perfectly. If those who are young adults 29 and under have kids, they are not in a good economic position. So, it's not very strange that they don't want to have kids. In Denmark, one survey found that the percentage of young people who want to have two to three kids in 2021 is exactly the same as it was in 1970. The reason they're not having them, as one younger woman says, I think it would be irresponsible. What's shocking about all these countries isn't just the fertility rate, it's how fast it's fallen. Since 2010, while the overall EU fertility rate fell by just over 10%. In Finland, it dropped by a third. >> [music] >> This proves that financial incentives alone do not offset the deeper issue. The problem isn't just people's financial situation. It's a form of structural hopelessness. Asset inflation that makes life milestones, including marriage and kids, seem absolutely hopeless. If free money doesn't make people want kids, what's the actual root cause that is keeping a lot of Gen Z childless? It turns out the system isn't really fixing the demographic crisis because the system is the one that caused it in the first place. Governments all over the world have spent the last 40 years prioritizing asset values, housing equity, and pensions of the oldest generations. And it's been at the direct expense of the purchasing power and stability of the young. In the UK, for example, studies found that boomers were net beneficiaries of the welfare state, [music] and they will get more benefits than they have paid in tax. The younger generations will be net contributors. A lot of this is because of the gray vote. The co-founder of the Intergenerational Foundation says, "The older generation have more voting power. They lobby more. The MPs and the policy makers are more likely to be baby boomers. So, young people's interests tend to be treated as less important. After benefiting from the state their whole life due to tax cuts and generous pensions, to name just [music] a few, the boomers are now in charge of making the rules, which are made to protect them and their wealth at the expense of young people. While working age benefits in the UK and across much of the global north are being cut, the government's decided to protect state pensions by guaranteeing an annual rise of 2 and a.5% minimum. Which seems odd as many of those pensioners have more assets and wealth than most. But even those who are welloff receive government handouts. Retirees in the US receive on average six times more government money than young people. That added up to $2.7 trillion in 2025. While they hold the most wealth and assets of any generation, young people are literally seeing their potential wealth stolen out from under them while their future gets destroyed in front of their very eyes. State governments have massively cut back on college subsidies while the cost and the necessity of a degree has skyrocketed. In 1975, when boomers were graduating, states subsidized 60% of college tuition. In the 2010s, this was down to 34%. In 1960, 2% of a parent's spending went to childare and education. Fast forward to 2013, and that share was then 18%. Higher educational costs, daycare costs, and the necessity of two working parents, and insanely expensive healthcare costs all add up, and those numbers are only getting worse over time. Gen Z is being asked to hand over 1/5if of the wealth they don't have to raise a kid. While wealthy boomers continue to receive government protection and handouts, the social contract was broken by the very leaders who are now calling Gen Z selfish, they forgot to plant trees for their grandchildren, opting to chop them down for firewood instead. So, what happens when a generation refuses to participate in a broken game? Gen Z running away from having kids is not the tragedy of selfishness that the media and leaders often depict it as, but an act of quiet rebellion against a broken system. They're simply refusing to bring life into what they view as a liquidation sale. Every indication shows that Gen Z wants kids, but to actually have them, they need some sense of stability and actual hope for the future. Until governments around the world decide to seriously invest in the future of their youth, create affordable housing, and allow real hope to return to a generation that can't even imagine a good future for itself right now. The birth rate trend will continue to collapse. And unlike the silent generation, there may be no coming back from it this time. It seems like a lot of the issues lie at the feet of one generation and they're not getting any younger. Watch this will happen after baby boomer generation dies off to find out what the future might look like for millennials and Gen Z. Or click on this video.