Kids are amazing and expensive. I'm David Brancaccio in New York. The fertility

rate hit an historic low last year, but that's only one reason people are

having fewer kids in America. A new survey from the Pew Research Center finds that money is a major factor in the kids no kids decision among adults under 50 who say they're unlikely to have kids, 36% said they can't afford them.

Marketplace's Samantha Fields reports.

People don't have kids for all sorts of reasons.

They don't want to, they aren't able to, they don't meet a partner in time.

Increasingly, Giuliano Horowitz at Pew Research says a lot of younger people are also weighing

the cost. Younger adults are more likely to have college debt than their parents generation.

They're also more likely to live in their parents home.

And so there are some financial circumstances that might be leading them to say

that at least right now they can't afford to raise a child.

Alyssa Schmeer at the Advocacy Group Moms Rising says it's not surprising that so many

younger people are feeling that way these days.

If you think about just the first six years of a child's life, that is so expensive.

The cost of diapers alone was shocking to her when she first had a kid.

Then of course there's child care care which can be as much or more

than rent or a mortgage. And Schmeer says there's just not much support for parents,

financial or otherwise. If we had policies in this country, investments in things like paid leave, child care,

full expansion of the child tax credit, housing that was affordable, I think a lot of the

concerns would be subdued.

And more people might choose to have kids.

I'm Samantha Fields for Marketplace.

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