Tyler Cowen points today to a post from Robin Hanson expressing alarm at declining fertility rates:
I’ve recently come to estimate that the world population and economy will suffer a several centuries fall, with innovation grinding to a halt, ended by the rise of Amish-like insular fertile subcultures.... As a result, I’ve been watching many documentaries about various insular fertile subcultures, trying to get a feel for what it is that distinguishes them, and which of those distinguishing features we should credit for their successfully achieving persistent high insularity and high fertility.
This is hardly a difficult question:
Keep your women in the home and poorly educated. It's a simple strategy for high fertility if you're willing to pay the price.
In any case, high fertility subgroups never keep it up forever. There are periodic panics that Hispanics or Catholics or evangelicals are going to take over the country, but it never happens.¹ If they stay insular they stay small. If they don't their fertility goes down. Big and insular just isn't a stable combination.
As for generally falling fertility, it's homeostatic. People who don't want kids automatically shrink faster than those who do want kids and eventually a new equilibrium is reached even in the face of cultural changes. It happens slowly but it happens.
POSTSCRIPT: If you're really interested in subcultures that retain high fertility rates, try France. Over the past two decades fertility in the US has fallen about 20%. In France it's gone down only 5% despite high education levels. Why?
¹For a great modern example of this genre, check out this Daily Caller piece predicting an Amish population of 350 million by the year 2300 "provided no other factors impact or change the current growth rate." Uh huh.
No, but given humanity’s ever-increasing population, it seems other subgroups emerge to take up the slack…
This argument about the danger of falling population is SO idiotic. The earth has a finite carrying capacity. At some point (we may have already passed it), we need to stop growing. If we don't do it in an orderly way, nature will do it for us. And what does "innovation" have to do with it? That only makes sense if you think "innovation" means making and selling more garbage that nobody really needs.
Shades of "Brave New World"!
A few blocks away from me a group of Amish have bought an old apartment building and are climbing all over it reconstructing it. It's hard not to stop and stare, they're all so scenic.
What are they going to do with it? Got any pix?
I have no idea what they could possibly do with it. It's at the base of a really steep hill, hemmed in on all sides so it doesn't get any sun, and right nearby two busy intersections.
It's the kind of place that if you can afford it you'd buy something else.
It would probably have ended up a vacant lot if the Amish hadn't interceded.
I feel self-conscious gaping at them so I could never bring myself to snap a picture.
????
Every once and again an advertisement for Amish-made furniture will/would appear on the Mother Jones website. What was ... surprising ... about it was it showed a man with the typical beard, hat, light shirt and dark pants in front of ... a large, electric circular table saw.
Last summer I bought a bunch of bright yellow sweet rolls from some Amish at the farmer's market. They were phenomenal. Ate the whole thing at once.
The next day you could read a book by the bright yellow glow coming out of the toilet bowl. God knows what the hell that was.
Probably just food coloring. There are no Amish prohibitions on artificial colors or flavors, and since most Amish are astute at business they will sure as hell use whatever means to sell their products.
Amish does not equal natural, nor wholesome.
There are a lot of different shades of practice among Amish people. The caricature is the strictest of Old Order, only human or animal muscle for labor, and no electricity allowed. But there are plenty of other gradations between that and living like the "English." Often in parts of PA and Ohio "Amish" labeling for things like carpentry and construction means that you can anticipate a decent work ethic and more-or-less reasonable pricing and doesn't signify much about anybody's actual lifestyle.
Just to be specific: if anyone who advertises as Amish is willing to bid on your job, they'll come to your site in F150s and use circular saws, nailguns, and paint sprayers like everybody else. The only near-sure thing is you can be at least 99-44/100ths percent sure your crew will be non-union.
Maybe there's a subconscious realization that we're pushing the Earth's carrying capacity? Maybe "Nature" is trying to strike a balance? Maybe cancerous growth isn't the most important achievement for "man"kind? Maybe, as the chart of women's reproduction v education, we're getting smarter?
Sadly, that's not so. The chart shows clearly that poorly-educated women have more children. Those children are reared by ignorant people. It emphatically does not mean that their mothers can't be intelligent, but it does mean that they pass on a bunch of neolithic mental garbage that their kids have to struggle their whole lives to forget.
If they're lucky.
If the economy will "suffer" and "grind to a halt" because people are able to make choices and live the lives they want to live, then maybe there's something wrong with the economy and not something wrong with how people want to live their lives.
+1
+1, too. Hey, it’s not like those women who aren’t tending children 24/7 are going to innovate in the time they gain, amirite? /s
Hanson seems to be one of those 'free market' economists who are rather comfortable with oppression, so long as the 'right' people get oppressed, and the governmental aspect of that oppression can ignored.
I object to Hanson's use of the term 'estimate' in his post; 'assert' fits better. His first two paragraphs are absolute BS, discussing something and then trying to use it to somehow prove something entirely different.
His use of the word 'recalibrate' make no sense whatsoevers.
"I’ve recently come to estimate that the world population and economy will suffer a several centuries fall, with innovation grinding to a halt, ..."
Argument ex ano.
"ended by the rise of Amish-like insular fertile subcultures, much like how Christians came to dominate the Roman Empire. "
If I were to pick adjectives about the rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire, 'insular' is not one I'd use. 'Evangelical', 'proselytizing' would fit much better.
Christians only dominated the Roman Empire at the very end, after several generations of Christianity being the only legally tolerated religion (with a small carve out for the Jews). The estimates I've seen for the time of Constantine put Christians at about 10% of the population, though they were almost all urban, not rural (most of the population was rural) so they seemed more numerous than they were from the POV of the urban intelligentsia and ruling c\lass of the time.
Anyone that is worried about the effect of declining fertility rates is an idiot.
Currently the main problem we (humanity) have is too high fertility rates in regions that are economically backwards.
Personally, I find freaking out about fertility rates a particularly gross form of panty sniffing, only a little different than people who get weird about mixed-race couples.
Concerning yourself with shaping society to coerce the breeding behavior you favor is a disgusting kink. People like Hanson should work on developing a less harmful one, like foot fetishism or BDSM.
Right? How about we work on creating an economic system that's not dependent on young workers to support the older ones? No need for a constantly increasing populations then to support the oldsters.
That isn’t actually a thing. Dean Baker explains it all for you: https://cepr.net/aging-populations-and-great-power-politics-the-problem-is-for-the-elites-not-the-masses/
The tl;dr story is that productivity growth swamps demographics: tomorrow’s workers, though fewer, will produce more goods and services than today’s workers.
The other factor that most SS hand-wringers ignore is that while the working population has a proportionately larger cohort of aged dependents, it has fewer children. One needs to consider the overall dependency ratio (working to non-working population), not just retiree-to-worker.
Good article, thanks for the link.
Why isn't it a legitimate Darwinian fitness/reproductive success concern?
I'm a great believer in the Western civilization and ideals like the rule of law and equal rights. But if those societies are dying out because they can't breed, that is a problem.
If western society is a Shaker-like dead end, then that is a problem.
It's more like western civs are living high because they restrain their breeding. More resources for each new person!
You keep speaking about my reproductive choices as if they're the business of "society".
They are not. Period.
>If western society is a Shaker-like dead end, then that is a problem.
Western society is driving head-first in to an ecological disaster that will swamp any delta from the choices of individuals. For all your apparent concern with population numbers. you appear disinterested in that cause, in order to concentrate on peoples' reproductive choices.
So again, I repeat: keep your gross kink to yourself and your nose out of other peoples' panties. (Unless they're in to that sort of thing too.)
Your dichotomy between individual choices and society is false.
The collective individual choices of the population defines society-- especially in a democracy where there is a feedback loop to elected officials.
The collective individual choices of the populations in Western-style democracies look like they are leading to the end of those Western-style democracies.
I think that is a legitimate concern.
As for the environmental problems-- heck yeah, make no mistake, an enlightened dictator could solve the ecological crisis with the wave of a hand. The thing is, there is no guarantee that the dictator will be enlightened.
Like I said, I value Western-style democracies. It is a shame that they are dying out.
"If you're really interested in subcultures that retain high fertility rates, try France. Over the past two decades fertility in the US has fallen about 20%. In France it's gone down only 5% despite high education levels. Why?"
my understanding is that France works hard at making it easier for families and especially women to bear and raise children. From universal Healthcare to state subsidized daycare and kindergarten, and on and on. stuff that is anathema to America.
Universal health care, maternity and paternity leave, child benefits for first 3 years, family benefits for 2 or more children.
Yup. When I lived there a few years ago the (free) preschools were a wonder. In a nothing-special neighborhood the facilities were gorgeous, the food excellent ( one day I was there the 3-year-olds were eating pork chops with mustard sauce), a high teacher-student ratio (with teachers well paid according to my friends with kids there).
They make it really easy to be a parent.
The other result is that people see very concrete benefits for the high taxes they pay.
Yes to all of the above. We are the cause of a great, on-going, mass extinction. Wouldn't it be great if we could actually reverse human population growth without war, plague, or starvation. What would be wrong with slowly getting the human population down to a couple of billion or so? Why not leave room for other species?
The only people who seem to be really worried about a declining population are the billionaires, who want cheap labor and lots of customers, and the racists. As Yehouda pointed out, these people are idiots.
This is the only remotely rational, feelings based perspective anyone should be considering. Yes, should, because it's a moral and survival issue. And yes, the 'billionaires' (i.e., the entire group, class, population of people who are, consciously or unconsciously, inflexibly attached to self interest as the greatest good) and racists are indeed idiots. They are also existentially committed to to the destruction of everything in pursuit of their idiocy, that is, their self interest and they will not stop unless forced to. Good luck with that.
If you track the takeoff moment for almost all the degradative processes that are now destroying a livable planet, the inflection point is consistently around 1970 or soon after when the human population was about 4 billion. As every study and paper in the past five years looking at the ongoing destruction of our biosphere points out, it's population pressure and consumption rates that are driving the destruction of every biotic and abiotic system on the planet. The fact that this discussion here is even happening at this point is to me almost incontrovertible evidence that humans cannot and will not, as a species, overcome their drive for self preservation above all else, especially when we've functionally and ideologically enshrined pure selfishness as an unquestioned good.
"In France it's gone down only 5% despite high education levels. Why?"
Workers are paid enough to support larger families. Healthcare is affordable.
A big part of the reason why France's fertility rate has not fallen as much as the US's over the past two decades is because two decades ago France's fertility rate was already significantly lower than the US's. Now they are effectively equal (1.848 vs 1.784). In other words, France has NOT retained a high fertility rate.
Looking at macrotrends graphs since 1950, we can see that both France and the US had a sustained decline in fertility rates in the '60s and '70s, leading to a minimum in 1978-1979 when both countries had almost the same fertility rates as in 2022. That was followed by modest increases with local peaks in 2009-2010 before the fertility rates in both countries began falling again.
1.8 is high by developed country standards nowadays. It would be good to find out why.
Canada shows 1.484 despite universal health care, generous child benefits, and a stronger social safety net overall than the US. The UK is 1.754, considerably higher than Canada and almost up to the US and France. The way the numbers are scattered suggests that "why" may be a VERY difficult question.
Canada's is so low because they live next door to a 24/7/365 loud-party whorehouse.
Thank you, this is what caught my eye and is about how I was going to react. Decline is relative, and France's starting point 20 years ago was comparatively low to begin with.
Low fertility has been the bete noir of French governments since the 1920s, nigh unto obsession; the allocations familiales mentioned by @cedichou express that anxiety. They did have a baby boom like ours after WWII but their fertility rate dropped like a rock from 1965 to 1980 and despite a minor peak during the past 20 years was actually a little lower in 2020 than in 2000 and almost identical to what it was in 2005.
This is not a simple issue. Better pay and better family support should be givens regardless of anything else-- we are, after all, the wealthiest society in the history of the known universe-- but it's just dumb to approach them as bribes, let alone think they're sure to be effective ones. And to the extent that US-born babies are supposed to be a substitute for immigrant labor or an incentive to cut off immigration, I think that's a silly pairing of alternatives.
Natalist worries have been present in France since the 17th century, when Louis XIV limited immigration to the overseas colonies in fear that if too many people left there wouldn't be enough cannon-fodder for his armies.
Fertility rates are hard to measure precisely, so different sources give different estimates. The CIA World Factbook gives the fertility rate of France as 2.02 and the fertility rate of the United States as 1.84.
The Amish have been getting squeezed lately. Their preferred lifestyle is farming, but the price of farmland has gone up and most young Amish men can't afford a farm anymore. Many are making a living on furniture, but what will they do once that market is saturated?
If they find themselves having to move into more normal jobs that require more normal education and normal participation with the rest of society and its institutions, they won't really be Amish anymore, just normal people with stricter-than-normal rules about what tech their kids can use at home.
Robin's been watching A Handmaid's Tale, hasn't he?
The birth rate of humanity is currently 2.27 and sinking like a rock. In 1950 there were 31 countries with birth rates of at least 7.0 - today there are none. As the countries of sub-Saharan Africa gradually develop and more girls go to school, even that part of the world will see their birth rates decline.
If you are younger than 30 then you have a real chance of living to see the global population plateau and begin to decline. Which, to be clear, would be a good thing.
If you think that massive investments in technology is going to be necessary to slow climate change, huge drops in fertility in the developed world is probably not a good thing. We need enough economic growth in those countries to fund technological change. Shrinking places don't invest in new infrastructure. The elderly of the developed world may be just fine with letting the planet die along with them.
It may be a pointless argument anyway. We'd have to change the culture of parenting in the developed world to really increase fertility rates there, and that's unlikely to happen. In the developed world, raising a child is an extremely time-intensive activity. The cultural assumption is that parents are supposed to monitor their children at all times, not take their children into "adult" spaces like restaurants, and invest heavily in each child's education. That's no fun. Child rearing is almost entirely the job of the parents, especially mothers. No wonder so few women in South Korea or Japan want to take it on. Even in more egalitarian countries it's a pretty unpleasant amount of work and sacrifice. If AI really starts to take over a lot of work, the gulf between the life of leisure of a childless person and the life of constant toil of a parent will seem even more stark. No amount of government subsidy is going to overcome that.
Totally disagree with the first paragraph. Economic growth from population growth is little more than zero-sum: more workers produce more, but they consume more also. Productivity growth means more output despite fewer workers. Infrastructure is only one factor in increasing productivity. A bigger contributor is research that adds to our knowledge, and investment to apply that knowledge to production systems. It’s per-capita growth that builds wealth for society.
If AI really starts to take over a lot of work, it can take over a lot of child care drudgery. Wealthy parents have always had nannies; the robot revolution may give all parents nannies.
for France, two words: allocations familiales
if you have a third child, the state pays you. and pays you more if you have a fifth or a fifth...
If I may speculate, look at the direction of immigration rates (number per 1000 residents). The number of immigrants is less important than the direction if you're trying to ascertain the direction of the fertility rate as opposed to comparing fertility rates.
Even ignoring the immorality of it, the "marry them young and keep them out of school" countries have heavily declining fertility rates as well - and far lower rates than what they were decades ago, even if they're still above replacement.
That's including the Amish, whose fertility rate is lower than it used to be. Not really surprising - the larger the Amish population gets, the less sustainable it was for them to do agriculture and the more they shifted into essentially rural business and other stuff. That changes incentives.
What we should really be doing is putting more research into anti-aging and longevity. That would make low fertility much less of a problem, and the number of overall children might even go up over time because people would have more time to have them and raise them.
"anti-aging" Well, maybe. But it would be good to have these struldbrugs continuing to do useful, maybe even creative, work, as opposed to getting 60 years or so on social security/pension.
Many people can work longer (at least in sedentary careers) than they do. However there needs to be an utter change of mind among employers, and especially HR departments for that to happen as currently age discrimination is rife in hiring and laws banning it, at least in the US, have fewer teeth than the average hen. We need to start touting "Hire the over 40 set" with the same fervor as "hire women and racial minorities"
Once again, Tyler Cowen gets something wrong.
The basic premise of conservatism is psychopathic thoughtlessness,
https://www.rawstory.com/tim-sheehy-montana-senate/
The two policies that give the biggest bang for the buck (as well as in absolute numbers) in terms of reducing anthropogenic emissions are a)easily accessible and cheap birth control for women, and b) providing for the education of women. This conclusion has been arrived at by study after study after study.
IOW, not only is Tyler Gowan wrong, he's deliberately being wrong because he's in service to his petrobuddies. The man really is scum. Hanson too, of course.
I'd forgotten that Hanson was the "women should be forced to sleep with incels" guy. No wonder Cowen likes him.