My name is Emily Astor, I am an economist, I work at Brown University.

And let me ask you this easy question, we'll start.

Why do people have kids?

Emily, I mean biological imperative apart, unless it's all the biological imperative.

I think this is probably an open question for debate.

I think many people would tell you that it's the biological imperative.

I think that some people would tell you kids are enjoyable.

I think that some people would tell you particularly in developing countries, people have kids as

an investment in their old age or even to work on their farms when the kids are young.

So I think those are probably the leading candidate explanations.

Okay, and those are all good and believable in theory.

Do we have any data that suggests that we actually know anything about this question or not really?

We have some data and I think that probably you'd see all of those things show up as explanations.

I mean, we certainly see people having remittances from their kids and telling us that, you know,

remittances from their kids are an important reason to have children.

And certainly, you know, many people will tell you I enjoy having my kids, maybe not at every single moment,

but that broadly I like them and that that was a reason to do it.

But I think it's hard to separate the biological imperative because of course your biology is telling you

that that's something you want to do and once you've done it, you hardly want to say actually that was all biology.

It was all biology and you know, exactly.

From WNYC, this is Freakinomics Radio, the podcast that explores the hidden side of everything.

Here's your host, Stephen Dupner.

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