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I think you understand this pretty well. For educated people parenting is a choice. They wait for the right moment in the career, they make sure they will be able to provide their children with everything they may need and that their kids will have optimal conditions for growth and development, they consider their other passions and projects and weight them against having kids.

Uneducated people simply have kids and don't really give it a second thought. You have kids, you feed them some junk food, give them phone to play with and that's it. You're a happy family.

If you're looking at people in developed countries where more kids doesn't necessarily mean more labor, the difference can also be somewhat explained by religion and quality of life concerns. Extremely religious people in the us, who tend to be less educated and have lower incomes, may not believe in contraception and believe that "god will provide". That may sound like an exaggeration, but I personally know someone with 7 kids who cannot afford to feed them but thinks that they will go to hell if they use condoms and denying their husband is also a sin somehow. They just talk about how god intended for their family to struggle. That's not a mindset you generally see in high income families.

The other factor is quality of life (and yes, education). If you're making enough to afford a home and a good education for 1-2 children, you may be looking to give your child a good life and a good springboard for their future. If you know that no matter what you do, you will never be able to afford a college education for your child, then that makes having a child "less expensive" in that regard. You know you won't be able to afford sports or extracurricular activity equipment, or new clothes, so while a family earning more may spend a smaller percentage of their income on any single child, the resources they are expecting to be able to provide them increase. A lot of low income families may have the approach that if a child is fed they've done the thing. Check mark on parenting for the day. If that's the approach to parenting then it's less resource intensive than a more involved approach that some high income families may have. I want to be clear that this is not a moral failing or some kind of judgement being passed. I think a lot of people don't realize the day to day of very low income families. There are still people in the US raising families with no access to electricity or even running water. They have a very different background and understanding of what a family looks like. I don't think they are inherently evil for having more kids and being unable to provide for them in the way others may expect, but I also think that's not an excuse to allow children to live in unsafe conditions. I legitimately believe that if we had better education in low income and rural areas that you'd see this disparity drop, as they learn the different options education can provide and strive to ensure their own children get the best education and support possible.

Inequality is the primary factor. If people making $150k to $200k can reasonably conclude that having children would be a burden on their future economic prospects (in an already uncertain future), they will decide against it. $50k to $75k is probably more in the "fuck it, we might as well have more sources of potential labor and income and maybe a subsidy or two since we're already at this point", and people making $400k or above have nothing to fear from child expenses.

A lot of that might also be location based. Where I am right now we're paying ~1700/mo for daycare. Wife got a job for nearly double our current combined income (for 260k) so moving to Boston, daycare going to ~3000/mo and housing going from 2k/mo to looking at 6-10k/mo. It almost feels like a paycut...but at least driving should become more optional.