They don't "look"... Those are the ones that want kids. Those who weight the pros and cons, most likely reach the conclusion that having kids is not feasible.

Having fewer children is something that is positively-correlated with a society being wealthy, rather than the other way around.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/children-per-woman-fertility-rate-vs-level-of-prosperity

The phenomenon of societies having their birth rate fall off as they become wealthier is called the demographic transition.

And further, that correlation exists across a number of axes:

• Time (that is, as societies have become wealthier, the number of children they have has dropped).

• Space (poorer societies today tend to have more children than wealthier societies do).

• Within a society. Poorer people in society tend to have more children. Here's the US, and more-generally:

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_and_fertility

  Income and fertility is the association between monetary gain on one hand, and the tendency to produce offspring on the other. There is generally an inverse correlation between income and the total fertility rate within and between nations.[3][4] The higher the degree of education and GDP per capita of a human population, subpopulation or social stratum, the fewer children are born in any developed country.

There is the real issue of how a society will support its aged population with significantly less young people working than in the past. It requires changes to regulations and taxation and many nations arent ready to accept that and instead somehow expect the smaller number of young people to just pick up the slack and accept they won't get to retire when they age.

There was a podcast I listened to a while back that indicated the opposite, the idea was that the better off people are, the less likely they are to have kids. One of the explanations I remember was that the better off people are, kids are just another competing thing that they can do. For example, if you are well off and can go travel for a long period of time, you might be more inclined to do that vs deciding to have kids. Another stat was that birthrates were higher for lower income people.

And for a non-zero number of those, it's because no fuck.

But there's no problem with the economy*

*According to metrics that ignore working class savings, inflation, and prices for basic goods and services like groceries and housing increasing faster than inflation.

Literally Cancer's modus operandi

well that and having to watch the kids have a lower quality of life than you had and that includes the part you provide as well as their long term prospects.

I think previous generations felt they had no choice.

Previous Generation here, you're wrong.

Life has a lot to offer without giving your entire existence over to children

I'm also a parent and if you are giving your entire existence over to your children then you're doing it wrong. Yes being a parent means making time and energy for your children but that demand fades the older they get and even while they are young you should still be making time for yourself and your partner.

Societal pressure to have children is a huge factor for sure. I've heard from previous generations in my family that during the baby boom era, rumors would circulate in their community if you didn't have enough children, like "something must be wrong with the Johnsons down the street because they only ever had two kids" (and this was in upper-middle class WASP America).

Obviously this attitude continues today in certain communities (Mormons, small rural towns, etc), but it's no longer as prevalent.

To raise a child with the correct moral characteristic takes time and input from many people. The saying “it takes a village to raise a child” is spot on.