<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>rayiner</author><text>&amp;gt;  people can afford fewer children, and many no children at all&lt;p&gt;People are much more able to afford children today than in the past, and some of the most affluent places (e.g. DC) are the most childless.</text><parent_chain><item><author>chrisseaton</author><text>I think the bigger trends you&amp;#x27;ve missed are:&lt;p&gt;* people can afford fewer children, and many no children at all&lt;p&gt;* I&amp;#x27;m guessing here but possibly people are coupling at a lower rate, and are living single long-term&lt;p&gt;* more people happy to say that they just plain don&amp;#x27;t want children, and have other interests instead</text></item><item><author>diego_moita</author><text>I see a couple of reasons:&lt;p&gt;* lower fertility rates&lt;p&gt;* fewer immigrants&lt;p&gt;* Covid deaths&lt;p&gt;* opioids deaths&lt;p&gt;* increasing productivity in farming with the destruction of small farms and increased economic inequalities&lt;p&gt;* crumbling infrastructure in rural areas, from closing supermarkets and schools to deficient roads and services&lt;p&gt;Except for Covid I don&amp;#x27;t think any of these trends will revert soon. Many of these counties have degraded so much that they might be uncapable of atracting remote workers.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Nearly 75% of US counties lost population last year as deaths outnumbered births</title><url>https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/03/24/census-population-counties-cities-covid/</url></story>
<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>piyh</author><text>People are having less sex too.&lt;p&gt;Cost is the biggest one I can think of.  If you didn&amp;#x27;t walk out of the hospital with a 8k bill (on a good delivery) and then have to figure out how to afford $1,500 per month childcare after 12 weeks unpaid leave, people would probably have a lot more kids.</text><parent_chain><item><author>chrisseaton</author><text>I think the bigger trends you&amp;#x27;ve missed are:&lt;p&gt;* people can afford fewer children, and many no children at all&lt;p&gt;* I&amp;#x27;m guessing here but possibly people are coupling at a lower rate, and are living single long-term&lt;p&gt;* more people happy to say that they just plain don&amp;#x27;t want children, and have other interests instead</text></item><item><author>diego_moita</author><text>I see a couple of reasons:&lt;p&gt;* lower fertility rates&lt;p&gt;* fewer immigrants&lt;p&gt;* Covid deaths&lt;p&gt;* opioids deaths&lt;p&gt;* increasing productivity in farming with the destruction of small farms and increased economic inequalities&lt;p&gt;* crumbling infrastructure in rural areas, from closing supermarkets and schools to deficient roads and services&lt;p&gt;Except for Covid I don&amp;#x27;t think any of these trends will revert soon. Many of these counties have degraded so much that they might be uncapable of atracting remote workers.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Nearly 75% of US counties lost population last year as deaths outnumbered births</title><url>https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/03/24/census-population-counties-cities-covid/</url></story>