What would make you want to have more children? This week on “Interesting Times,” Ross Douthat speaks with Dr. Alice Evans, a social scientist who is as concerned about the global decline in fertility as he is. The two discuss why this isn’t just a gender issue — it’s “a solitude issue” – and whether there’s a way to bring relationships back.02:03 - What are the stakes of declining fertility?06:41 - Alice's master theory for why birth rates are falling09:04 - There are too many single people10:27 - We can thank technology for the coupling crisis12:58 - The digital segregation of men and women16:31 - Men have less to offer these days20:11 - What can bring the sexes back together24:31 - Could Hollywood help fix the problem?25:46 - Can the government incentivize people to have babies?27:30 - What role does religion play in all this?28:59 - The role of IVF40:50 - Does the fantasy of youth impact the numbers?43:43 - The world in 2080...(A full transcript of this episode is available on the Times website.) Thoughts? Email us at [email protected]. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Chapter 1: What are the stakes of declining fertility?
From New York Times Opinion, I'm Ross Douthat, and this is Interesting Times. 50 years ago, the world feared a population bomb, an explosion of population growth that would yield famine, war, and disaster. But for most of my career, I've been trying to persuade people that actually population decline is now the greater peril.
And in the last few years, the world has finally caught up with my once eccentric anxieties. We're undeniably headed towards a period of global population collapse, one that threatens to maroon today's children, mine and yours if you have them, which, by the way, you should, in a world of emptying cities and slowing economies.
Chapter 2: What is Alice's master theory for why birth rates are falling?
Our guest today has literally traveled the world studying this issue, trying to answer the hardest question. Not just why birth rates have declined, but why they've declined so far and so fast in so many different places. So, Alice Evans, welcome to Interesting Times.
Indeed, thank you so much.
Chapter 3: How does technology contribute to the coupling crisis?
So you're a sociologist at King's College London, is that correct? Yes. And you write a lot about, and I think you're working on a book, about the key social forces shaping the decline in fertility around the world. And those include, in particular... The failure of men and women to relate to one another and pair off. And those issues are part of why I'm especially interested in talking to you.
Chapter 4: What role does digital segregation play in relationships?
But before we dive into why population decline is happening. I'd like to try and sort of quantify the issue a little bit and maybe help sound the alarm for some of our listeners who, unlike myself, haven't been obsessed with this issue for years or decades and may still assume that we're living in a world where the biggest problem is likely to be overpopulation. So let's start out.
When we talk about declining fertility and population decline, what do we mean by
Okay, so fertility is collapsing everywhere all at once, perhaps with the exception of sub-Saharan Africa, where rates are still very high. But across Latin America, the Middle East, North Africa, all those trends are going sharply downwards. And
And economically, this has catastrophic implications for middle income countries, because as you have an aging population, then older people typically have lower rates of labor force participation. They're less economically productive. You know, it's the young people who are. you know, innovative, productive, starting up new companies.
But as the entire economy ages, then it becomes more sluggish. And those younger people, either through savings or taxes, need to pay for elderly health care or pension costs or provisions. And that then creates a massive fiscal squeeze because governments or individuals need to spend a higher amount of their money given those rising dependency rates.
And if we're concerned with things like climate change mitigation, the governments just won't have enough money to spend on extra costs if you're spending more on old people. And on top of this, if younger people are saving more, as they are in China, then they're going to be spending less. So that has a knock-on effect on the entire economy.
And when did you become interested in the fertility crisis? You started out working on gender equality, the socioeconomic status of women in developing countries. How did this issue, which I should say it has long been the province of, you know, to be kind to ourselves, right wing cranks, right? How did this issue become a big part of your focus?
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Chapter 5: What can bring men and women back together?
So I think fertility and women's choices and men's choices about how many children they want, that's always come up in my interviews because I'm always interested, you know, what do you want to do for your life? So I've got so much data on this going back for the past 15 years. You know, when I was in Zambia, women would always encourage me to have another baby. Oh, you must have a baby.
You must have a baby. That was so imperative for them.
This is what I say to my colleagues, too. So it's, you know, it's not just Zambia.
So I was constantly pestered. And then I think in East Asia, in South Korea, where I was looking at the data so intensely and I was having so many of my interviews and I just realized it was so omnipresent. And then I looked at the data more broadly. So I think going to South Korea is really what fertility pilled me, so to speak.
Chapter 6: Can Hollywood help fix the relationship crisis?
Right. And a country like South Korea has a fertility rate of 0.7. That means that over the course of two generations, the population goes from 50 million to, what, 20-odd million, let's say, 15 to 20 million. Does that sound right? I'm just trying to give people a sense that when we talk about in these – with the numbers we have now, when we talk about –
Chapter 7: Can government policies effectively incentivize childbirth?
The reason you use a term like population collapse is we aren't talking about a kind of gentle slide from above replacement fertility to slightly below replacement fertility where you need to adjust the retirement age so that people stay in the workforce five years longer.
You're talking about cities being empty, buildings standing empty, economies grinding to a halt, and just seeing a country that has gone furthest Yes, absolutely.
Chapter 8: What impact does religion have on fertility rates?
And you see it in Italy, too. For example, when you get off the train in Rome, you see the pet store rather than the kids store.
No, we took our family to Rome and we're trying to find a children's store. And it turned out that there was an important children's chain that had closed a bunch of its stores. of its places. But also, I mean, when I traveled around Italy, the hill towns are empty, right? The rural areas are aging and emptying. The big cities, people move there.
And so they stay densely populated, even if they're having fewer kids. And so this can actually end up being kind of invisible in an interesting way, because if you're in the big city, there are more people there than ever, right? And so you think to yourself, well, how can there be a population crisis?
Yeah, I mean, I would say one more thing. I suppose one aspect of me as a sort of social scientist is I teach on international development. So I'm very interested in economic outcomes and how we can all become richer, the sort of abundance idea. But I also study culture. So it's the interconnection between all these economic consequences of our cultural choices.
So, okay, why is this happening? And just before you tell us, I think it's safe to say everyone has a sort of particular pet theory, right? So if you talk to people on the political left for a long time, they would insist that it's just a problem of the provision of public services, right?
And they would say, you know, the developed world just needs to become more like Scandinavia in terms of paid leave and parental support and People on the right, conservatives, are more likely to talk about the decline of religion and a sense of moral obligation to the future.
You have people who focus right now, especially in developed countries, on climate change and say, oh, you know, the young people don't want to have kids because they're afraid of the human future. And you'll have people who say, look, this is just about women's choices. This is just once you have a more egalitarian society, women understandably are less likely to choose to have kids.
And this is where we end up. And all of these arguments have problems and as you know it's hard to fit them all to the general trend and especially since even places like scandinavia have sort of headed towards the cliff in recent years generous benefits and all so what is your master theory of all of this
So let me add on the Scandinavia point, you know, left-wing progressives may say, oh, Scandinavia is so family friendly. You know, there's universal childcare. It's easier to be a working mother. But actually, the U.S. has higher fertility, right? So that signals to us that that theory isn't working.
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