Study Finds Surprising Group Has America’s Biggest Families
America’s wealthiest families are now more likely than any other economic group to have three or more children, marking a striking reversal of long-standing demographic patterns.
Nearly half of households in the top 1% have at least three children, according to a recent analysis of data from the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances.
By comparison, about 40% of all other US households have three or more children, based on an analysis by the left-leaning nonprofit Economic Security Project.
Raising a child in the United States costs an estimated $300,000 on average, not including college tuition. For a typical household earning $87,000 a year, adding another child can represent a financial commitment that takes years to absorb.
For families in the top 1%, however, the expense is far less daunting. Those households earn at least $660,000 annually and have a minimum net worth of roughly $13.7 million, making the cost of an additional child comparatively insignificant.
Mike Konczal, vice president of the think tank behind the analysis, told The Washington Post that the cost of raising children can amount to “a huge concentrated expense” for many families.
“A third kid is a much harder accounting problem,” Konczal said.
The findings reverse a demographic trend observed for decades, when larger families were increasingly associated with households farther down the socioeconomic ladder.
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A 2018 study of white mothers by researchers at San Francisco State University and Tel Aviv University found that, in 1980, wealthier women were less likely to have larger families.
Three decades later, affluent and lower-income women were both more likely to have three children, while middle-class mothers were more likely to stop at two.
The latest analysis arrives as surveys continue to show that many Americans hope to have larger families than they ultimately do.
About 42% of Americans say their ideal family would include at least three children, according to a 2025 Gallup poll. Respondents said they would prefer to have an average of 2.7 children.
In reality, the average woman has 1.6 children.
Elliot Haspel, a senior fellow at the family policy think tank Capita, told The Washington Post that financial pressure is almost certainly a major factor.
“Parents or couples are not having the number of children they want—not because they are unable to conceive, but because they cannot afford it,” Haspel said.
