Elon Musk says people should worry less about the cost of having children and 'start immediately'

• Elon Musk says people should worry less about the costs of raising kids and just have them.
• The world's richest man, who has 11 known children, said "you won't be sorry" and "it'll work out."
• Pew surveys have found jumps in the number of US adults who say they're not planning on having kids.

Elon Musk says people are too concerned about the costs of raising children and should just go ahead and have them.

The Tesla and SpaceX CEO was asked at a pro-Trump rally in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, on Saturday night what advice he'd give to the younger generation about having children.

"My advice regarding starting a family is start immediately," he replied.

"I think people worry too much about having kids, and it's sometimes difficult to make ends meet and whatnot," said Musk, the world's richest person with a $242 billion net worth per the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

"But honestly, there's really no time like the present," he added. "Just have kids. You won't be sorry. It'll work out."

The tech executive, who has 11 known children , has for years been urging people to reproduce , warning of global population collapse if they don't.

"Just have kids one way or another or humanity will die with a whimper in adult diapers!" he posted on X in May.

"I'm doing my best to encourage more people to become parents and ideally have three or more kids, so humanity can grow," Musk wrote on the social-media platform in February.

Musk said in a December post that he understood if someone couldn't have children. "However, I don't think it's cool to deliberately not have kids," he said. "It's anti-human."

He also replied "exactly" to an April post saying children aren't expensive but people's lifestyles are.

Financial fears

Musk's Saturday comments come as historic inflation and surging interest rates have raised people's living costs in recent years. A number of surveys have suggested that many prospective parents worry about the impact of starting a family on their finances.

In surveys from the Pew Research Center , the share of childless US adults under 50 who said they were unlikely to ever have kids jumped to 47% in 2023 from 37% in 2018. Within that group, 36% of the 2023 respondents said a major reason was that they couldn't afford to have children.

Musk isn't the only superrich person to shrug off the costs of having children. Kevin O'Leary has said to "forget about money when it comes to kids" and to "get married sooner; have more kids."

The "Shark Tank" star has expressed regret that he didn't have his two children earlier, saying he would have loved to have more time with them when he was younger.