Since we’ve both been writing a lot about the topic recently, Robin Hanson invited me to sit down and chat with him about the global fertility decline and prospects for depopulation. We recorded a conversation this week, Robin posted it on YouTube, and I’m sharing it with my readers on this site.
Could you point me to an article about *why* declining population is a problem? I don't necessarily disagree with you. I just don't have enough information to form an opinion yet.
I keep coming back to what I regard as the central stylized facts of the modern fertility predicament, as summarized from what I understand of Lyman Stone and his collaborators' research (please correct me if any of this summary is inaccurate!):
1. People's average sincerely desired number of kids is plenty to sustain the population, if only they could realize that desire. The dominant (not the only) reason for societal TFR << 2 is a big gap between sincerely desired fertility and realized fertility. That's *not* the dominant reason for TFR 2 vs 4+, which is more about secularization, female emancipation, decreased infant mortality, etc. But those really are, as you say, two different demographic transitions.
2. The dominant (again, not the only) reason for the desired/realized gap is failure to form the kinds of partnerships that make people feel safe and well-supported having the number of kids they sincerely want. That's why TFR is near/above replacement *among married couples* even in the lowest-fertility societies.
Of course people have all kinds of explanations for why that failure to form partnerships happens. Still, at least realizing the above facts narrows down the problem a lot. And it points the way to a solution strategy we should welcome as fully compatible with modern liberal values, since
(a) people getting the big things they want in life is good, and kids are a thing people still want a lot
(b) people being able to form stable, committed, loving partnerships is also really good for their flourishing in ways that go beyond fertility.
The other day in the New Yorker there was a memoir piece by Leslie Jamison that I think illustrates many aspects of the problem at once:
The experience Jamison describes is truly awful (and beautifully described-- well worth reading just as a great personal essay) and I would wager that to the extent modern Western educated women feel unable to have the kids they want, it's in large part because they fear *ending up like her*. And if you think about the Amish or other trad societies, there are a bunch of reasons why women in those societies very rarely have to fear that kind of an experience:
-- there is very little loneliness in those societies; they are famously tight-knit socially and their marriage-making institutions work.
-- the burden of childcare is traditionally spread among the women in the extended family, which for all its faults, does spread out the burden and reduce the maximum intensity of burden on any one person-- and it's that maximum intensity which can get really overwhelming and scary, as any parent of an infant knows.
-- they also tend not to have the cultural expectations around intensive parenting which further increase that maximum intensity of burden for minimal demonstrable benefit to the kids.
There's a whole portfolio of things we could do to give non-Amish prospective mothers more of those benefits: technological, institutional, cultural, economic. Figuring out the highest-ROI, least-coercive ways to do that seems like a more constructive conversation topic than most of the handwringing and culture-scolding that are currently so prominent whenever fertility comes up.
I've always wondered what the dating/marriage market is like for alt-right men and super-woke women. It can't be great.
The US isn't in as bad a position as South Korea but the growing gender gap in party affiliation, combined with Americans' increasing tendency to make politics central to their personal relationships, suggests things are moving in that direction. And I think it may be worse in parts of Europe, where the age gap in left/right identification is weaker (or nonexistent) and many young men are gravitating toward parties on the far right.
You saw this in the latest Polish election, for example. Look at the youthful skew among supporters of Confederation, who are overwhelmingly male:
Opinion polls also found that a plurality of young Polish women identified "climate change" as the most serious problem facing the country, while a plurality of young Polish men chose "LGBT". I can't find the citation for this one but it's terribly embarrassing.
The gender gap in France seems to be smaller than in Poland but it's notable that in the first round Eric Zemmour, who ran to Le Pen's right, won 9 percent of men's votes but just 5 percent of women's.
It seems like educating women is one of those things that is good for individual women but bad for society as a whole. I forget where I read it, but "no nation has succeeded in educating its women without also getting on a path to extinction".
I generally assume everything is largely genetic so women's hypergamy is genetic not cultural. So if we educate women to a high standard (and Korea has the most PhDs per capita of any country, and women get more of them than men) we need more men educated to an even higher standard, and that is not happening.
As a man in his 70s something always strikes me as odd when I read journalism about fertility decline. When us baby boomers were young there were 3 billion people on the planet and now there are 8 billion. If anyone had any idea of this impending population explosion in the 60s they would have been staggered - and horrified. It would have sounded apocalyptic but 21st c. fertility agonising appears not to consider this near tripling of the earth's population something even worth mentioning. Yes I do understand that the mass starvation fears did not materialise (and Yes quite the reverse) but there may have been other downsides to the population explosion that should at least get discussed.
Why wouldn’t traditional supply and demand forces apply? For example, as children become more scarce, wouldn’t having them become more valuable and then drive the fertility trend in the opposite direction?
Any evidence that increasing support (economic and cultural) for, single mothers by choice would be a viable strategy to mitigate declining fertility rates?
Hi Brink,
Could you point me to an article about *why* declining population is a problem? I don't necessarily disagree with you. I just don't have enough information to form an opinion yet.
Thanks!
I keep coming back to what I regard as the central stylized facts of the modern fertility predicament, as summarized from what I understand of Lyman Stone and his collaborators' research (please correct me if any of this summary is inaccurate!):
1. People's average sincerely desired number of kids is plenty to sustain the population, if only they could realize that desire. The dominant (not the only) reason for societal TFR << 2 is a big gap between sincerely desired fertility and realized fertility. That's *not* the dominant reason for TFR 2 vs 4+, which is more about secularization, female emancipation, decreased infant mortality, etc. But those really are, as you say, two different demographic transitions.
2. The dominant (again, not the only) reason for the desired/realized gap is failure to form the kinds of partnerships that make people feel safe and well-supported having the number of kids they sincerely want. That's why TFR is near/above replacement *among married couples* even in the lowest-fertility societies.
Of course people have all kinds of explanations for why that failure to form partnerships happens. Still, at least realizing the above facts narrows down the problem a lot. And it points the way to a solution strategy we should welcome as fully compatible with modern liberal values, since
(a) people getting the big things they want in life is good, and kids are a thing people still want a lot
(b) people being able to form stable, committed, loving partnerships is also really good for their flourishing in ways that go beyond fertility.
The other day in the New Yorker there was a memoir piece by Leslie Jamison that I think illustrates many aspects of the problem at once:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/01/22/the-birth-of-my-daughter-the-death-of-my-marriage
The experience Jamison describes is truly awful (and beautifully described-- well worth reading just as a great personal essay) and I would wager that to the extent modern Western educated women feel unable to have the kids they want, it's in large part because they fear *ending up like her*. And if you think about the Amish or other trad societies, there are a bunch of reasons why women in those societies very rarely have to fear that kind of an experience:
-- there is very little loneliness in those societies; they are famously tight-knit socially and their marriage-making institutions work.
-- the burden of childcare is traditionally spread among the women in the extended family, which for all its faults, does spread out the burden and reduce the maximum intensity of burden on any one person-- and it's that maximum intensity which can get really overwhelming and scary, as any parent of an infant knows.
-- they also tend not to have the cultural expectations around intensive parenting which further increase that maximum intensity of burden for minimal demonstrable benefit to the kids.
There's a whole portfolio of things we could do to give non-Amish prospective mothers more of those benefits: technological, institutional, cultural, economic. Figuring out the highest-ROI, least-coercive ways to do that seems like a more constructive conversation topic than most of the handwringing and culture-scolding that are currently so prominent whenever fertility comes up.
I've always wondered what the dating/marriage market is like for alt-right men and super-woke women. It can't be great.
The US isn't in as bad a position as South Korea but the growing gender gap in party affiliation, combined with Americans' increasing tendency to make politics central to their personal relationships, suggests things are moving in that direction. And I think it may be worse in parts of Europe, where the age gap in left/right identification is weaker (or nonexistent) and many young men are gravitating toward parties on the far right.
You saw this in the latest Polish election, for example. Look at the youthful skew among supporters of Confederation, who are overwhelmingly male:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Polish_parliamentary_election#Electorate_demographics
Opinion polls also found that a plurality of young Polish women identified "climate change" as the most serious problem facing the country, while a plurality of young Polish men chose "LGBT". I can't find the citation for this one but it's terribly embarrassing.
The same thing happened in the last French presidential race, where Macron relied on older voters to defeat Le Pen in the runoff: https://www.politico.eu/article/macrons-france-vs-le-pens-france-in-charts/
The gender gap in France seems to be smaller than in Poland but it's notable that in the first round Eric Zemmour, who ran to Le Pen's right, won 9 percent of men's votes but just 5 percent of women's.
This all looks very discouraging.
It seems like educating women is one of those things that is good for individual women but bad for society as a whole. I forget where I read it, but "no nation has succeeded in educating its women without also getting on a path to extinction".
I generally assume everything is largely genetic so women's hypergamy is genetic not cultural. So if we educate women to a high standard (and Korea has the most PhDs per capita of any country, and women get more of them than men) we need more men educated to an even higher standard, and that is not happening.
As a man in his 70s something always strikes me as odd when I read journalism about fertility decline. When us baby boomers were young there were 3 billion people on the planet and now there are 8 billion. If anyone had any idea of this impending population explosion in the 60s they would have been staggered - and horrified. It would have sounded apocalyptic but 21st c. fertility agonising appears not to consider this near tripling of the earth's population something even worth mentioning. Yes I do understand that the mass starvation fears did not materialise (and Yes quite the reverse) but there may have been other downsides to the population explosion that should at least get discussed.
Why wouldn’t traditional supply and demand forces apply? For example, as children become more scarce, wouldn’t having them become more valuable and then drive the fertility trend in the opposite direction?
Any evidence that increasing support (economic and cultural) for, single mothers by choice would be a viable strategy to mitigate declining fertility rates?
This is fascinating and the opposite of what I would hold in terms of causality.
I have a hard time accepting that falling fertility rates, the likes of which we are currently witnessing, have happened before in human history.
Interesting thesis, nonetheless.