America’s wealthiest households have overtaken every other income bracket in large-family size, a new analysis shows, upending a generations-old pattern that once saw poorer families raising the most children.
About half of families in the top 1% now have three or more kids, according to the Economic Security Project’s review of Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finances data. That 50% figure exceeds the 40% rate found among all remaining U.S. Households combined, the left-leaning nonprofit found.
The reversal marks a sharp break from 1980, when researchers at San Francisco State University and Tel Aviv University found that among white mothers, wealthier women were the least likely to keep having children. By 2010, that same study showed the affluent and the poor both trending toward three-child families, while middle-class mothers increasingly stopped at two.
Mike Konczal, vice president of the Economic Security Project, said that the financial burden falls unevenly across the economy.
“A third kid is a much harder accounting problem,” Konczal told the outlet.
The average U.S. Family earns $87,000 annually and faces an estimated $300,000 cost to raise one child through age 17, excluding college tuition. For that median household, an additional child can mean years of additional saving or debt.
The top 1% begins at $660,000 in annual income and $13.7 million in net worth, making the same child-rearing expenses what Konczal’s analysis treats as financially negligible.
Americans’ stated preferences have not shifted downward even as their actual family sizes have. A 2025 Gallup poll found 42% of Americans would ideally want three or more children, with respondents averaging 2.7 desired offspring. The actual fertility rate stands at 1.6 children per woman.
Elliot Haspel, senior fellow at family policy think tank Capita, tied the gap directly to economics in comments to the outlet.
“[P]arents or couples are not having the number of children that they want — not due to an inability to conceive but due to the fact that they can’t afford it,” Haspel said.
The 1980-to-2010 study focused specifically on white mothers, leaving open how broader racial and ethnic demographics may have shifted across the same period. The Economic Security Project’s newer analysis, drawn from Federal Reserve data, covers the full population by income tier without racial breakdown.
What was once a clear inverse relationship — more money, fewer children — has flattened and flipped at the extremes. The middle class, squeezed by costs that the wealthy absorb easily, now represents the demographic most likely to stop at two children or fewer.
The Gallup data suggesting persistent desire for larger families indicates the trend is driven by constraint rather than changing values, with Haspel’s assessment pointing to a market failure in family formation rather than a cultural shift away from children.
The Economic Security Project released its analysis as policymakers across the political spectrum debate child tax credits, paid leave, and other family support measures that could affect whether middle-income households can close the gap between their stated preferences and actual outcomes.