WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.960 --> 00:00:07.040 This is parent data. I'm Emily Oster. Last fall, I 2 00:00:07.160 --> 00:00:09.879 partnered with The Free Press to create and host an 3 00:00:09.920 --> 00:00:15.360 incredible project, a limited series podcast called Raising Parents, where 4 00:00:15.400 --> 00:00:19.239 we tackled hot button parenting issues from a data driven perspective. 5 00:00:20.200 --> 00:00:24.840 We interviewed countless experts from all across the ideological spectrum, 6 00:00:25.040 --> 00:00:27.880 many of whom both agreed and disagreed with one another 7 00:00:28.200 --> 00:00:32.720 and with me and me with them, which is my favorite. 8 00:00:32.760 --> 00:00:36.040 We looked at the impact of different parenting philosophies, from 9 00:00:36.120 --> 00:00:39.560 gentle parenting to spanking. We looked at the role of 10 00:00:39.600 --> 00:00:43.120 smartphones as it relates to our teens' mental health. We 11 00:00:43.159 --> 00:00:45.559 looked at the different ways of feeding our kids, of 12 00:00:45.640 --> 00:00:50.479 monitoring our kids, of medicating our kids. And the final 13 00:00:50.560 --> 00:00:54.520 episode we released was ironically the biggest question of all, 14 00:00:55.080 --> 00:00:57.960 the one that leads to all the others. Should you 15 00:00:58.080 --> 00:01:03.360 have kids today? We're sharing this episode with you. The 16 00:01:03.440 --> 00:01:06.360 focus is on the data. What's going on with our 17 00:01:06.400 --> 00:01:09.080 global fertility rate, what we thought was going to happen 18 00:01:09.120 --> 00:01:14.000 fifty years ago, that is overpopulation, and what has actually happened, 19 00:01:14.080 --> 00:01:17.480 which is pretty much the opposite. We talk about climate 20 00:01:17.560 --> 00:01:21.160 change and economic challenges and all the other reasons people 21 00:01:21.240 --> 00:01:25.039 are waiting to have kids, if they plan to at all. 22 00:01:25.080 --> 00:01:28.440 But we also get into the emotional side. I talk 23 00:01:28.480 --> 00:01:31.080 to people who have made the decision not to have 24 00:01:31.160 --> 00:01:35.600 kids and why. I talk about some of the reasons 25 00:01:35.640 --> 00:01:38.880 we do have kids. We talk about how hard that 26 00:01:38.959 --> 00:01:42.800 decision can be, both arriving at it and then defending it. 27 00:01:43.400 --> 00:01:46.480 There's no right or wrong answer. As always, I am 28 00:01:46.520 --> 00:01:48.720 a firm believer in doing what is best for you 29 00:01:49.240 --> 00:01:53.360 and your family, whatever family means to you. It's what 30 00:01:53.520 --> 00:01:59.760 makes the conversation so interesting and so important. I'm really 31 00:02:00.120 --> 00:02:03.480 out of this series and especially of this episode, and 32 00:02:03.560 --> 00:02:07.880 I am delighted to share it with you. You can 33 00:02:07.920 --> 00:02:10.600 listen to the whole series on The Free Press's website 34 00:02:10.760 --> 00:02:15.440 at THEFP dot com, slash Listen, Slash, Raising Dash Parents, 35 00:02:15.600 --> 00:02:21.519 Dash with Dash, Emily dash Auster, or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, 36 00:02:21.840 --> 00:02:27.600 or wherever you get your podcasts. After the break, Raising Parents, 37 00:02:27.680 --> 00:02:35.519 Episode eight, Should You Have Kids? 38 00:02:43.840 --> 00:02:46.760 I always wanted to have kids. There was never a question. 39 00:02:47.120 --> 00:02:49.280 So I got older. I know if I ever dated 40 00:02:49.440 --> 00:02:52.520 someone who didn't want to have kids, I just probably 41 00:02:52.600 --> 00:02:54.360 would have well, I know I would have ended it 42 00:02:54.400 --> 00:02:57.080 because there was no point. It was just always there 43 00:02:57.160 --> 00:02:59.520 for me. I wanted to be there for someone, and 44 00:02:59.720 --> 00:03:03.880 it's very rewarding. Husband and father really two most important titles. 45 00:03:03.919 --> 00:03:06.519 The idea of kids was literally that I would recoil 46 00:03:06.680 --> 00:03:10.519 from the thought of that, because it seemed so phenomenally 47 00:03:10.560 --> 00:03:13.920 on another planet that I was like, oh God, no, 48 00:03:14.320 --> 00:03:16.640 there's no chance of that. I'm just living my life. 49 00:03:16.680 --> 00:03:19.560 I chose to have kids, I guess. I definitely thought 50 00:03:19.760 --> 00:03:21.720 the world would be a better place with more of 51 00:03:21.760 --> 00:03:22.959 me in it, no doubt. 52 00:03:23.080 --> 00:03:26.800 I was in the boat of two is ideal. And 53 00:03:26.840 --> 00:03:30.640 then I got pregnant with our third, and now I 54 00:03:30.720 --> 00:03:35.400 realize how people have many, many, many children because one 55 00:03:35.440 --> 00:03:37.640 two of your third you're like, oh yeah, we just 56 00:03:37.680 --> 00:03:38.280 like keep going. 57 00:03:38.400 --> 00:03:41.240 We got this down, Like we can, we can do this. 58 00:03:41.400 --> 00:03:44.840 It comes to talking about child free versus childless. For 59 00:03:45.000 --> 00:03:48.200 some of us, it goes more towards the side of 60 00:03:48.720 --> 00:03:52.240 oh yeah, I am so child free. I just never 61 00:03:52.320 --> 00:03:54.920 thought about having children. Put my fist in the air 62 00:03:54.920 --> 00:03:58.520 and declare with pride, Yeah, man, I am not responsible 63 00:03:58.600 --> 00:04:05.480 for parenting anybody. 64 00:04:07.040 --> 00:04:09.880 For most of human history, having kids wasn't much of 65 00:04:09.920 --> 00:04:14.440 a choice. Social expectations, lack of birth control, and limited 66 00:04:14.480 --> 00:04:19.039 autonomy for women delivered a limited set of options, say 67 00:04:19.200 --> 00:04:23.440 have children or join the convent. But beginning in the 68 00:04:23.480 --> 00:04:27.320 nineteen sixties, a combination of better birth control options and 69 00:04:27.400 --> 00:04:30.960 better opportunities for women gave many more people a choice 70 00:04:31.040 --> 00:04:34.560 about both how many children to have and whether they 71 00:04:34.560 --> 00:04:38.640 should have any at all. Fast forward to today, many 72 00:04:38.680 --> 00:04:41.320 more people are making the decision not to have children 73 00:04:41.400 --> 00:04:45.240 at all, and for a wide range of reasons. People 74 00:04:45.279 --> 00:04:47.960 tell me they don't want kids because of financial strain 75 00:04:48.440 --> 00:04:52.680 or climate apocalypse. Others say they do want kids so 76 00:04:52.720 --> 00:04:55.840 that they can heal generational trauma or give their first 77 00:04:55.920 --> 00:04:58.680 kid a sibling. I once spoke to someone who told 78 00:04:58.760 --> 00:05:00.799 me that it was important for him to have children 79 00:05:00.839 --> 00:05:06.320 to pass on his spectacular genes. Maybe that's an underlying motivation, 80 00:05:06.600 --> 00:05:10.520 even if most people would not put it quite so directly. 81 00:05:10.680 --> 00:05:14.159 Having children is a personal choice. However, it's a choice 82 00:05:14.160 --> 00:05:19.320 that has broader implications. And what's undisputable is this Virtually 83 00:05:19.600 --> 00:05:24.240 everywhere across the globe the US, Europe, Asia, Africa, fewer 84 00:05:24.320 --> 00:05:27.719 children are being born. Having kids has become a strange 85 00:05:27.720 --> 00:05:30.800 part of the culture wars. On one side, you have 86 00:05:30.920 --> 00:05:34.919 pronatalist public figures like Elon Musk saying everyone needs to 87 00:05:34.960 --> 00:05:38.440 have more kids now in order to save humanity. I 88 00:05:38.440 --> 00:05:41.640 think he has twelve kids to date. And on the 89 00:05:41.640 --> 00:05:44.960 other side you have people like climate activist Greta Thunberg 90 00:05:45.360 --> 00:05:48.359 saying that the rising sea levels are so catastrophic that 91 00:05:48.480 --> 00:05:52.640 having kids in this era is akin to genocide. But 92 00:05:52.760 --> 00:05:55.599 what everyone can agree on is that the fertility rate 93 00:05:55.680 --> 00:05:59.520 is plummeting in America but also around the world, and 94 00:05:59.560 --> 00:06:01.920 in my life of work, the speed with which this 95 00:06:02.000 --> 00:06:04.919 number is going down in the US is causing concern 96 00:06:05.000 --> 00:06:07.000 for all of the economists in the room. 97 00:06:07.720 --> 00:06:11.840 Americans are not having babies anymore. The US fertility rate 98 00:06:11.880 --> 00:06:14.640 fell to a record low, declining two percent from a 99 00:06:14.720 --> 00:06:17.640 year ago. This marks the lowest rate recorded since the 100 00:06:17.680 --> 00:06:20.400 government began tracking the data in the nineteen thirties. 101 00:06:20.560 --> 00:06:23.600 Our fertility rate is below the replacement threshold. It's been 102 00:06:23.600 --> 00:06:25.640 that way for several years since two thousand and seven, 103 00:06:25.640 --> 00:06:29.560 which is basically the level our generation needs to replace itself. 104 00:06:29.960 --> 00:06:33.000 And that falling birth rate and has implications obviously for 105 00:06:33.040 --> 00:06:34.839 the economy For demographics, one. 106 00:06:34.720 --> 00:06:37.080 Of the first effects we will see is when social 107 00:06:37.120 --> 00:06:40.480 security funds are expected to run low in the twenty thirties. 108 00:06:40.600 --> 00:06:43.520 The lower birth rate in twenty twenty two will have 109 00:06:43.600 --> 00:06:46.520 long term effects. In a couple of decades, there could 110 00:06:46.560 --> 00:06:48.760 be a shortage of young adult workers. 111 00:06:50.440 --> 00:06:53.560 The basic problem is that economic growth relies at least 112 00:06:53.600 --> 00:06:58.240 in part on population growth, Plus the older population relies 113 00:06:58.240 --> 00:07:01.960 on the younger population for support through contributions to social 114 00:07:02.000 --> 00:07:06.240 security and taxes. But before we all panic, what does 115 00:07:06.279 --> 00:07:12.720 the data say. Presently, American women on average have one 116 00:07:12.800 --> 00:07:16.520 point six kids. In the nineteen fifties, it was three. 117 00:07:17.120 --> 00:07:19.800 The replacement rate in the United States, which is the 118 00:07:19.800 --> 00:07:23.679 fertility rate needed for a generation to exactly replace itself 119 00:07:23.960 --> 00:07:29.160 without considering immigration, is approximately two point one berths per woman. 120 00:07:29.800 --> 00:07:32.560 The average age of first time mothers has increased to 121 00:07:32.680 --> 00:07:35.800 about twenty seven years old, up from twenty one point 122 00:07:35.840 --> 00:07:40.040 four years in nineteen seventy. The proportion of Americans aged 123 00:07:40.120 --> 00:07:44.640 sixty five and older is projected to almost double, increasing 124 00:07:44.720 --> 00:07:48.560 from sixteen percent in twenty nineteen to twenty three percent 125 00:07:48.640 --> 00:07:51.960 by twenty sixty. This shift means that nearly one in 126 00:07:52.080 --> 00:07:55.560 four Americans will be in the senior age bracket. And 127 00:07:55.880 --> 00:07:59.280 this isn't just happening in the US. From nineteen fifty 128 00:07:59.320 --> 00:08:03.040 to twenty twenty one, the global total fertility rate more 129 00:08:03.080 --> 00:08:06.840 than halved, falling from four point eighty four to two 130 00:08:06.840 --> 00:08:10.640 point two to three, as many countries grew wealthier and 131 00:08:10.720 --> 00:08:14.880 women had fewer babies. Notable highlights from the data include 132 00:08:15.000 --> 00:08:17.960 sub Sharran, Africa, which has the highest fertility rate in 133 00:08:18.000 --> 00:08:21.000 the world, but has dropped from six point three in 134 00:08:21.080 --> 00:08:24.440 nineteen ninety to four point seven children per woman today. 135 00:08:25.840 --> 00:08:30.480 South Korea, with the world's lowest fertility rate, has only 136 00:08:30.560 --> 00:08:35.240 zero point seven to eight children per woman. So today 137 00:08:35.720 --> 00:08:40.520 birth rates, personal decisions and their broader implications. After a 138 00:08:40.559 --> 00:08:43.200 whole series focused on the state of our children, we 139 00:08:43.280 --> 00:08:47.160 cap things off with a fundamental question, should you have kids? 140 00:08:47.880 --> 00:08:55.040 And what happens if we all don't. I'm Emila Astro 141 00:08:55.360 --> 00:08:59.000 and from the Free Press, this is Raising Parents. 142 00:09:00.280 --> 00:09:03.640 Emily aust and Economists by Trade has gathered the data, 143 00:09:03.760 --> 00:09:06.120 crunch the numbers, and is now debunking some of the 144 00:09:06.120 --> 00:09:08.760 most controversial myths about parenthood. 145 00:09:09.000 --> 00:09:12.400 I think what everyone is most interested in, like pregnant women. 146 00:09:12.440 --> 00:09:14.680 They're like, can I drink? You know you shouldn't have 147 00:09:14.840 --> 00:09:15.360 like a lot? 148 00:09:15.520 --> 00:09:16.960 Where is this data coming from? 149 00:09:16.960 --> 00:09:19.439 The fundamental answer is we get data on people by 150 00:09:19.559 --> 00:09:22.240 asking people about their behaviors and what they do, and 151 00:09:22.240 --> 00:09:24.120 by collecting information on how their kids do. 152 00:09:24.400 --> 00:09:26.760 Poster doesn't shy away from other charge topics. 153 00:09:26.960 --> 00:09:30.680 People are using your database as an example as to 154 00:09:30.720 --> 00:09:32.520 why schools should reopen. 155 00:09:32.640 --> 00:09:34.000 What kind of reaction did. 156 00:09:33.880 --> 00:09:36.280 You get to that? I imagine that was a little controversial. 157 00:09:36.400 --> 00:09:37.679 It was a little controversial. 158 00:09:37.840 --> 00:09:40.160 Yes, you're an economist, You're not a doctor. I mean, 159 00:09:40.360 --> 00:09:41.800 what do you think people are going to take away 160 00:09:41.800 --> 00:09:42.920 from what you've written in this book? 161 00:09:42.960 --> 00:09:45.360 All that I'm trying to do here is really show women, 162 00:09:45.400 --> 00:09:47.760 here is what the evidence is, and why don't you 163 00:09:47.800 --> 00:09:52.920 think about some of these decisions for yourself? Episode eight, 164 00:09:53.200 --> 00:09:54.120 Should You Have Kids? 165 00:09:55.360 --> 00:09:57.640 I grew up in New Haven in the nineteen eighties 166 00:09:57.640 --> 00:10:00.559 and nineteen nineties. At a certain point in high school, 167 00:10:00.600 --> 00:10:03.560 I was assigned some kind of bulletin board project on 168 00:10:04.000 --> 00:10:08.600 the intersection between science and some kind of major world 169 00:10:08.640 --> 00:10:11.719 issue or trend, and I ended up choosing population. 170 00:10:12.360 --> 00:10:15.240 This is Ross Duthett. He's a New York Times columnist 171 00:10:15.400 --> 00:10:17.200 and father of five children. 172 00:10:17.679 --> 00:10:20.400 And I went to the library as one did back 173 00:10:20.400 --> 00:10:23.360 in the day, and went to the section of books 174 00:10:23.400 --> 00:10:26.800 that were about that subject and Most of them seemed 175 00:10:26.800 --> 00:10:30.480 to be written by Paul Erlik, who was quite famous 176 00:10:30.559 --> 00:10:33.960 for a while as the profit of overpopulation and Doom. 177 00:10:34.720 --> 00:10:38.280 And I checked out a number of those books, probably 178 00:10:38.280 --> 00:10:42.160 The Population Bomb his original and then his follow up, 179 00:10:42.200 --> 00:10:44.400 I think it was called The Population Explosion. 180 00:10:44.800 --> 00:10:45.600 Those were sort of. 181 00:10:45.559 --> 00:10:50.040 Prophecies from the nineteen sixties and nineteen seventies about the 182 00:10:50.120 --> 00:10:52.880 demographic tide overwhelming the world. 183 00:10:53.080 --> 00:10:56.839 That world population is increasing by twenty three people every 184 00:10:56.920 --> 00:10:57.720 ten seconds. 185 00:10:57.960 --> 00:11:01.960 It's clear that world population both remains completely. 186 00:11:01.440 --> 00:11:03.640 Out of control. Look at what the year two thousand 187 00:11:03.720 --> 00:11:03.960 will be. 188 00:11:04.160 --> 00:11:06.720 Our cities are going to be choked with people. They're 189 00:11:06.760 --> 00:11:08.959 going to be choked with traffic, they're going to be 190 00:11:09.080 --> 00:11:10.800 choked with crime, they're. 191 00:11:10.559 --> 00:11:12.480 Going to be chokum with. 192 00:11:12.679 --> 00:11:15.040 Pollution, and they will be impossible. 193 00:11:15.120 --> 00:11:18.280 As a good student, I compared those books prophecies to 194 00:11:18.360 --> 00:11:21.480 what was actually happening in the world. And this was 195 00:11:21.520 --> 00:11:25.079 about twenty five or thirty years ago. And even then 196 00:11:25.280 --> 00:11:31.000 it was quite clear that for various reasons, Erlk's prophecies 197 00:11:31.480 --> 00:11:37.160 of doom had not been fulfilled. His demographic projections no 198 00:11:37.200 --> 00:11:40.160 longer matched what was happening really anywhere around the world. 199 00:11:40.200 --> 00:11:43.679 But definitely didn't match what was happening in the developed world. 200 00:11:44.000 --> 00:11:47.240 Paul Erlik wrote his book The Population Bomb in nineteen 201 00:11:47.280 --> 00:11:51.480 sixty eight. He described the impacts of overpopulation in a 202 00:11:51.600 --> 00:11:55.079 very visceral way. It was easy to make it scary. 203 00:11:55.520 --> 00:11:58.880 He wrote about people dying from hunger because there literally 204 00:11:58.920 --> 00:12:04.040 wouldn't be enough food, defeat everyone, sufficient calories, major political upheavals. 205 00:12:04.520 --> 00:12:07.239 Every inch of the world would be looking like Bangladesh 206 00:12:07.240 --> 00:12:10.520 in terms of density, poverty, and disease. 207 00:12:10.720 --> 00:12:15.400 Everywhere, and back then, especially in Western Europe and to 208 00:12:15.440 --> 00:12:19.040 some extent East Asia, especially Japan, where you could see 209 00:12:19.400 --> 00:12:23.640 that the trends were likely to go in the entirely 210 00:12:23.679 --> 00:12:27.840 opposite direction. Basically that population was peaking and was going 211 00:12:27.880 --> 00:12:31.280 to pass a peak and start declining, that the richest 212 00:12:31.320 --> 00:12:33.240 parts of the world were going to get old, very 213 00:12:33.320 --> 00:12:39.000 very rapidly, and that, in fact, most likely the big 214 00:12:39.040 --> 00:12:41.960 demographic challenge of the twenty first century was going to 215 00:12:42.000 --> 00:12:45.960 be not population growth but population decline. 216 00:12:46.520 --> 00:12:50.000 And it's sort of amazing. I mean, we're talking about 217 00:12:50.040 --> 00:12:54.040 the nineteen eighties when this was already sort of somewhat visible, 218 00:12:54.559 --> 00:12:58.640 but the decline in fertility rates in the sort of 219 00:12:58.720 --> 00:13:02.400 period leading off to that and continuing is pretty astonishing 220 00:13:02.480 --> 00:13:07.600 because it isn't just the decline in more developed countries 221 00:13:07.640 --> 00:13:10.679 which have gone from replacement to under replacement, but it's 222 00:13:10.720 --> 00:13:14.160 an enormous decline in many of the places that were 223 00:13:14.200 --> 00:13:16.600 the highest fertility rates even in the nineteen eighties. So 224 00:13:16.640 --> 00:13:19.640 places that had seven to eight kid fertility rates are 225 00:13:19.720 --> 00:13:24.240 now down to three or four even two. I mean 226 00:13:24.280 --> 00:13:27.280 that the magnitude of that change over relatively short period 227 00:13:27.280 --> 00:13:29.600 has been pretty astounding. 228 00:13:30.160 --> 00:13:33.360 Yes, what you just described is the change that's happened 229 00:13:34.120 --> 00:13:37.120 from my bulletin board project to the present. Right, So 230 00:13:37.160 --> 00:13:39.640 twenty five twenty five years ago, in the nineteen nineties, 231 00:13:39.679 --> 00:13:42.640 whenever I was doing this, it wasn't quite as clear 232 00:13:42.760 --> 00:13:48.480 what was going to happen to population in China, South Asia, 233 00:13:48.840 --> 00:13:51.600 and Latin America. It was clear that they were not 234 00:13:51.720 --> 00:13:56.560 going to fulfill sort of Airlick's worst case scenarios from 235 00:13:56.559 --> 00:13:59.480 his perspective, right of just you know, too many people, 236 00:13:59.480 --> 00:14:02.120 too many men to feed. But yeah, at that point, 237 00:14:02.200 --> 00:14:04.800 it was clear that rich countries were going to get 238 00:14:04.800 --> 00:14:07.680 old quite quickly. And what's become clear since then is 239 00:14:07.720 --> 00:14:12.560 that middle income and even poorer countries can follow the 240 00:14:12.640 --> 00:14:16.800 same trajectory. You don't have to become Denmark or the 241 00:14:16.840 --> 00:14:22.800 Netherlands or Japan to enter into a shift not just 242 00:14:22.840 --> 00:14:27.360 to replacement level fertility, but something below replacement, maybe even 243 00:14:27.400 --> 00:14:28.520 well below replacement. 244 00:14:29.520 --> 00:14:32.160 The replacement rate is the average birth per woman a 245 00:14:32.200 --> 00:14:36.000 country needs to maintain its population. Erlck was alarming, and 246 00:14:36.080 --> 00:14:39.520 he was following an alarming tradition. Thomas Malthus in the 247 00:14:39.520 --> 00:14:43.880 eighteen hundreds had a similar set of dire overpopulation predictions. 248 00:14:44.400 --> 00:14:48.840 Erlck was also wrong. The predictions he made haven't come 249 00:14:48.880 --> 00:14:52.720 to pass, but the tenor of this argument hasn't gone away. 250 00:14:53.600 --> 00:14:58.160 In a way, it's transferred from overcrowding concerns to environmental 251 00:14:58.240 --> 00:15:02.920 arguments for lower population, and to moral arguments about human suffering. 252 00:15:03.440 --> 00:15:05.720 Part of the legacy of this work is the sense 253 00:15:05.760 --> 00:15:09.240 that having more humans is just in some way bad. 254 00:15:10.240 --> 00:15:13.000 According to one new Pew survey of adults under fifty, 255 00:15:13.280 --> 00:15:16.440 the primary argument against having children is I just don't 256 00:15:16.480 --> 00:15:19.400 want to. All of this makes it harder for people 257 00:15:19.440 --> 00:15:22.560 to see the real risks of a declining fertility rate. 258 00:15:23.480 --> 00:15:26.520 You know, I'm a conservative crank, right, so I've been 259 00:15:26.520 --> 00:15:29.320 talking about it that way for some time, though I 260 00:15:29.320 --> 00:15:31.720 would say the trends of the last five years have 261 00:15:31.840 --> 00:15:36.200 been sort of more alarming even than I expected. People 262 00:15:36.240 --> 00:15:40.280 are sort of still surprised when they're confronted with some 263 00:15:40.360 --> 00:15:43.120 of these demographic trends. There's still sort of just an 264 00:15:43.200 --> 00:15:48.400 expectation that overpopulation is the main problem, which also then 265 00:15:48.800 --> 00:15:53.560 is entangled with anxiety about climate change, where people will 266 00:15:53.640 --> 00:15:58.360 either say, you know, well, clearly, the places where population 267 00:15:58.480 --> 00:16:01.480 is still increasing sub Saharan Africa above all, are still 268 00:16:01.520 --> 00:16:04.720 going to create some kind of overpopulation problem and also 269 00:16:04.760 --> 00:16:07.840 contribute to climate change, or people will say, okay, well, 270 00:16:07.880 --> 00:16:11.880 maybe we're getting demographic decline, but because of the threat 271 00:16:11.880 --> 00:16:14.040 of climate change, we should welcome it. 272 00:16:14.160 --> 00:16:14.360 Right. 273 00:16:14.720 --> 00:16:19.000 There's both a certain uncertainty shading into denial about whether 274 00:16:19.040 --> 00:16:22.040 this is really happening, and a kind of desire to 275 00:16:22.120 --> 00:16:27.640 put an optimistic environmentalist interpretation on it. For most places, 276 00:16:27.680 --> 00:16:33.360 the more realistic vision is old people dying alone in 277 00:16:33.480 --> 00:16:39.800 large numbers place is emptying. So many more ghost towns, 278 00:16:40.360 --> 00:16:45.880 rural areas emptying, but also potentially parts of cities emptying. 279 00:16:46.240 --> 00:16:49.000 It's just sort of a picture of not so much 280 00:16:49.720 --> 00:16:56.440 worn famine as deppopulation decay, and also kind of a 281 00:16:56.520 --> 00:17:00.360 clustering effect in an age of population decline. And let's 282 00:17:00.360 --> 00:17:03.200 say you have, you know, a country with eight major cities. 283 00:17:03.240 --> 00:17:07.119 It's not that each of those cities declines in population. 284 00:17:07.760 --> 00:17:11.440 It's that three of them decline in population, three of 285 00:17:11.480 --> 00:17:15.240 them have their population increase because everybody moves to them, right, 286 00:17:15.280 --> 00:17:17.720 because nobody wants to be in the declining places, and 287 00:17:17.800 --> 00:17:21.119 two of them turn into you know, Detroit at its emptiest. 288 00:17:21.600 --> 00:17:24.480 That's a weird future to get your mind around, I think. 289 00:17:24.920 --> 00:17:27.120 And what's at stake if we do that? I mean, 290 00:17:27.240 --> 00:17:28.160 why is that bad? 291 00:17:28.720 --> 00:17:31.960 You can frame it in sort of economist friendly terms 292 00:17:32.040 --> 00:17:35.359 and say, okay, this is a world of declining population. 293 00:17:36.040 --> 00:17:39.399 Is a world that's going to have slower economic growth. 294 00:17:40.000 --> 00:17:44.119 It's going to have less dynamism and less innovation. Older 295 00:17:44.160 --> 00:17:46.959 populations are more change averse. They're less likely to come 296 00:17:47.040 --> 00:17:49.760 up with new inventions. You know, when you have a 297 00:17:49.800 --> 00:17:53.760 smaller and smaller group of younger workers supporting the welfare 298 00:17:53.800 --> 00:17:56.920 states that rich countries have built up, that gets harder 299 00:17:56.960 --> 00:18:00.119 and harder to sustain. Those kind of societies are going 300 00:18:00.160 --> 00:18:04.320 to be more stagnant, less dynamic, less interesting in creative 301 00:18:04.359 --> 00:18:07.720 places to live. And then also they're going to be 302 00:18:08.480 --> 00:18:11.880 on the evidence we have now lonelier and unhappier places 303 00:18:11.920 --> 00:18:16.920 to live. Now, we only have sort of a generation's 304 00:18:16.960 --> 00:18:20.359 worth of data on what life in virtual reality looks like. 305 00:18:20.880 --> 00:18:24.720 And it's possible that once you know Mark Zuckerberg and 306 00:18:24.760 --> 00:18:29.239 Tim Cook perfect virtual reality goggles, that the Internet will 307 00:18:29.280 --> 00:18:31.919 become a different place than it's been so far. But 308 00:18:32.040 --> 00:18:34.760 right now, all of the data we have, I would say, 309 00:18:34.800 --> 00:18:40.720 suggests that young people growing up in virtual spaces, in 310 00:18:40.800 --> 00:18:45.479 a social media dominated social landscape, hanging out less in person, 311 00:18:45.600 --> 00:18:48.320 spending less time with friends in reality and more time 312 00:18:48.359 --> 00:18:52.040 with friends in the virtual, are unhappier in ways that 313 00:18:52.520 --> 00:18:56.199 in turn seem to be compounding the low fertility dilemma. 314 00:18:56.280 --> 00:19:00.600 They're unhappier, they're forming fewer relationships, They're less likely to 315 00:19:00.640 --> 00:19:02.560 have a boyfriend or a girlfriend. They're less likely to 316 00:19:02.560 --> 00:19:04.520 have sex, they're less likely to get married, they're less 317 00:19:04.600 --> 00:19:08.280 likely to have kids, and so the low fertility trap 318 00:19:08.440 --> 00:19:09.600 itself gets deeper. 319 00:19:10.280 --> 00:19:12.480 Tell me your best theory for why people are not 320 00:19:12.800 --> 00:19:13.560 having children. 321 00:19:15.000 --> 00:19:17.960 I mean there's like seventeen theories, right, seventeen. 322 00:19:18.000 --> 00:19:21.120 I mean, it's give me the best one. Ross. 323 00:19:20.840 --> 00:19:26.560 So trying to really simplify it. One, you just expect 324 00:19:27.280 --> 00:19:32.479 fertility rates to fall naturally in the transition from an 325 00:19:32.480 --> 00:19:37.719 agricultural society where kids are a net economic benefit in 326 00:19:37.800 --> 00:19:41.359 obvious ways because you have farms and you need kids 327 00:19:41.359 --> 00:19:45.240 to work on farms, to a contemporary society where kids 328 00:19:45.240 --> 00:19:48.000 are something that in order for them to do well 329 00:19:48.040 --> 00:19:51.439 in life, you mostly have to invest in them and 330 00:19:52.040 --> 00:19:57.000 get less back, and you don't need their support in 331 00:19:57.040 --> 00:20:00.640 the same way at least, you know, until there's stopp 332 00:20:00.680 --> 00:20:02.880 being no kids at all, as long as you have 333 00:20:03.400 --> 00:20:06.000 social Security and Medicare and so on. So there's sort 334 00:20:06.000 --> 00:20:10.240 of an economic basis for shrinking family size that you 335 00:20:10.240 --> 00:20:15.399 would expect. There's a health and wellness basis where people 336 00:20:15.520 --> 00:20:19.119 used to have larger families in part because fewer kids 337 00:20:19.320 --> 00:20:22.480 survived to adulthood. Infant mortality was very high until quite 338 00:20:22.520 --> 00:20:25.560 recently in our history. So it's not the case that 339 00:20:25.640 --> 00:20:28.960 most people in seventeen thirty, we're having thirteen kids and 340 00:20:29.000 --> 00:20:32.359 all those kids were surviving to adulthood. Your family size 341 00:20:32.359 --> 00:20:35.720 of sort of kids who grew successfully to adulthood would 342 00:20:35.720 --> 00:20:38.840 always tend to be four or five six kids, not ten, 343 00:20:38.880 --> 00:20:42.800 eleven or twelve. So again you expect birth rates to 344 00:20:42.840 --> 00:20:47.840 decline as infant mortality goes down. You expect birth rates 345 00:20:47.840 --> 00:20:52.439 to decline as you get more professional and economic opportunities 346 00:20:52.680 --> 00:20:56.080 for women. That's sort of an obvious expectation that has 347 00:20:56.119 --> 00:20:59.520 been fulfilled in every country we can see. So when 348 00:20:59.520 --> 00:21:01.720 you put all those things together, it's very easy to 349 00:21:01.800 --> 00:21:06.080 see why you would go from people having ten kids 350 00:21:06.119 --> 00:21:08.840 to having five, or from having six kids to having three. 351 00:21:09.200 --> 00:21:13.720 The harder question is why does fertility go from two 352 00:21:13.760 --> 00:21:18.200 to three kids, which is what most people still say 353 00:21:18.240 --> 00:21:21.679 they want, not just men but also women, you know, 354 00:21:22.000 --> 00:21:25.480 both sexes in rich countries. If you ask you know, 355 00:21:25.560 --> 00:21:28.320 what is your desired fertility, it's still going to be 356 00:21:28.359 --> 00:21:30.919 around let's say two point four two point five, not 357 00:21:31.920 --> 00:21:34.880 one point two or something. You know, that's the trillion 358 00:21:34.920 --> 00:21:38.600 dollar question, right, because if fertility rates settled at two 359 00:21:38.640 --> 00:21:42.840 point five, then populations would be stable or slightly increasing, 360 00:21:42.880 --> 00:21:46.640 and you wouldn't have this kind of depopulated wasteland future 361 00:21:47.040 --> 00:21:50.000 looming ahead. And there, I think you have to get 362 00:21:50.000 --> 00:21:55.879 into some mixture of essentially just the sheer scale of 363 00:21:56.240 --> 00:22:00.919 wealth and immediate pleasures available to people modern life that 364 00:22:01.760 --> 00:22:06.640 make having kids seem like a special kind of burden 365 00:22:06.760 --> 00:22:10.000 that you are more likely to postpone until you feel 366 00:22:10.040 --> 00:22:10.879 completely ready. 367 00:22:11.960 --> 00:22:14.240 One thing I wanted to add to Ross's analysis here 368 00:22:14.320 --> 00:22:17.240 is the question of social support. It's not lost on 369 00:22:17.359 --> 00:22:19.840 me or most of us that support for children in 370 00:22:19.840 --> 00:22:24.240 the US is pretty lousy. There's no national paid maternity leave, 371 00:22:24.760 --> 00:22:27.800 there's limited childcare support. A lot of US look to 372 00:22:27.840 --> 00:22:32.120 places like Sweden with its seemingly unending support for parents 373 00:22:32.560 --> 00:22:35.760 and say, surely with that support there would be more children. 374 00:22:36.240 --> 00:22:39.080 But in fact, fertility rates have gone down as much, 375 00:22:39.280 --> 00:22:42.879 often more in those places than in the US, and 376 00:22:42.920 --> 00:22:46.640 in general, policies which have tried to increase childbearing by 377 00:22:46.680 --> 00:22:50.600 offering incentives to do so have fallen flat. This leaves 378 00:22:50.640 --> 00:22:53.679 me back to Ross's final point, It must be something 379 00:22:53.760 --> 00:22:55.119 else which explains this. 380 00:22:56.160 --> 00:22:58.000 The main thing I noticed is that most people make 381 00:22:58.040 --> 00:23:00.919 their decision about do I let another based upon I 382 00:23:00.960 --> 00:23:04.199 feel exhausted right now. I mean, I just think that 383 00:23:04.280 --> 00:23:06.840 a lot of times people are making these decisions impulsively. 384 00:23:07.680 --> 00:23:11.560 Meet Brian Kaplan, a professor of economics at George Mason University, 385 00:23:11.800 --> 00:23:15.080 a New York Times bestselling author, and a father of four. 386 00:23:16.280 --> 00:23:19.919 In his book Selfish Reasons, to have more kids. He 387 00:23:20.160 --> 00:23:23.720 argues that raising children is actually less demanding and stressful 388 00:23:23.760 --> 00:23:27.560 than many people think. He suggests that the current trend 389 00:23:27.600 --> 00:23:31.600 of having fewer children might be because parents overestimate how 390 00:23:31.640 --> 00:23:35.520 hard it is to raise a successful adult. Brian tries 391 00:23:35.560 --> 00:23:38.240 to ease parents' worries so they can enjoy their kids 392 00:23:38.240 --> 00:23:42.000 in the short term and consider having more children for 393 00:23:42.400 --> 00:23:43.800 long term happiness. 394 00:23:44.240 --> 00:23:46.719 Like you wouldn't say I'm too tired to go and 395 00:23:46.840 --> 00:23:49.479 shop for a dishwasher because I'm doing too many dishes, 396 00:23:50.040 --> 00:23:52.400 And it's like, well, if you just put a little 397 00:23:52.440 --> 00:23:54.480 investment in and get the dishwasher, then your life's is 398 00:23:54.520 --> 00:23:57.600 going to be easier every day. So, like a lot 399 00:23:57.600 --> 00:23:59.119 of times, if your life is hard, you've got to 400 00:23:59.160 --> 00:24:01.080 do something and makes it worse for a little while 401 00:24:01.119 --> 00:24:03.480